[dogcomplex]

Computer Science absolutely has ethics. In the process of constructing systems which humans interact with, we simultaneously cause cultural and societal repercussions. Even if the choices we made could be perfectly justified by "maximum efficiency", or "just the optimal way to structure things" (which is rarely the case - as this book likely argues, there's always a human design factor), then Computer Science must still work to understand the societal ramifications of those structures. To give a tiny sampling: Online shopping, social networks, VR, drones, office drones, automation, AI, the internet - all were arguably inevitable results of the new abilities computer science unlocked. All with deep ethical concerns.

If anything, the people who design the structures of life have the most ethical responsibility of anyone. We're the ones who make it possible, and who have the strongest understanding of what it is we're creating. Personally understanding the full ramifications might not be easy, with so much else to know, but certainly our field as a whole should be working to understand them. To say we have no ethical responsibility because we're scientists and mathematicians dealing with the technical problems is to say Frankenstein had no ethical responsibility when creating his Monster.

[crimsonalucard]

Naw. It doesn't. Programming, UI, UX has ethics. But computer science doesn't have ethics just like mathematics doesn't have ethics.

Pure computer science and pure mathematics have axiomatic foundations that are formally scoped and defined. The application of mathematics and computer science via engineering has ethics, but computer science itself is devoid of ethics just like algebra is devoid of ethics.

[sabas123]

The work that gets done in a strictly theoretical area ripples out onto practical areas and thus society.

Cryptography is a rather "pure" form of math, yet it has major implications on society.

[crimsonalucard]

Yeah so does mathematics itself. Right? Mathematics is applied everywhere and is even used to calculate the trajectory of nuclear bombs yet it's utterly clear to most people that ethics and mathematics have nothing to do with each other.

The thing with computer science is that people are just confused because they use it as a more lego like artistic endeavor rather than a mathematical field. The reality is... Computer science is really just mathematics with axioms rooted in two isomorphic primitives:

Lambda calculus and turing machines.

[abdullahkhalids]

It is absolutely not clear to me that ethics and mathematics have nothing to do with each other. Let me give just one example. In statistics, there is a great debate about Bayesian methods vs frequentist methods. People in other fields using Frequentist vs Bayesian has real world consequences. For instance, medical scientists using frequentist statisics abuse the methods to publish cures that will not cure or help any sick people. This is not to say that the same scientists using Bayesian statistics would not attempt to abuse the system, but my belief (which could be wrong), is that the abuse will be less with Bayesian statistics.

So for me the math professor, who teaches pre-medical students frequentist statistics or the mathematician who creates yet another adhoc frequentist test for some specific situation, is doing something bad according to my ethics. They are making the world a worse place because of the particular kind of mathematics they choose to do.

[crimsonalucard]

I'm talking about the categorization of ethics with mathematics. You can tell some story putting them both together it doesn't make the category make any sense.

I think the bayesian way is more beautiful. Does that mean now I have to insert beauty into the description? No.

[dogcomplex]

If you want to make an arbitrary categorization of what is mathematics (or computer science) to divorce it of perspectives of ethics, beauty, etc, then go for it. But those perspectives are there (and valid), and good luck coming up with a robust definition that successfully divides them without dramatically limiting your ability to say things about math/csc. (e.g. you may not be able to favor any representation of one formula/program over another without creating a definition of beauty, which leads you down the rabbit hole again).

Point being: categorization is fuzzy. Ethics, beauty, etc are fuzzy but foundational and applicable to pretty much everything - like any other perspective. Denying them a place in CSC/Math/etc because they're seen as too "hard science" is a dead end road, because meeting your own bar of using only logical truth while still expressing anything useful about a subject is (probably) impossible - which is the general consensus in modern philosophy (as I understand it).

[TheOtherHobbes]

Yes, mathematics has ethics - in the sense that as soon as you start talking about something being "right", while other understandings are "wrong" you're making an ethical choice. That doesn't just imply right/wrong in a logical sense. It also implies that you may be choosing use an analogous process - possibly automated - to find right/wrong values in decisions of all kinds.

Philosophy is about understanding patterns, habits, and traditions of thought. You can look at the patterns from different angles, one of which is ethical.

If you don't think at this level, math just "seems right because it is" - obviously and self-evidently.

But that's exactly why you need philosophy - to understand why that's a superficial misunderstanding of how math works, how the foundations of math aren't as stable as they seem to be (see also Hilbert's Project), why empiricism cannot possibly be genuinely objective and only works up to a certain point, and why even something "obvious" like the concept of True/False is contingent and questionable.

Philosophically, any sentence that starts with "Obviously..." or "It's completely clear that..." turns out to be the product of a cultural habit of thought, not the absolute and immutable objective truth that it pretends to be.

If you have no experience of this you're going to find this hard to understand, and you may even deny it outright.

But that may be taken to suggest that you haven't learned to think outside the usual socially-defined norms, and therefore can't imagine anything outside of them - which is not in any way the same as having infallible knowledge that there is nothing outside of them.

[crimsonalucard]

I get it. Your saying philosophy is foundational. A framework that’s even lower level then logic. My argument is that at this low level, why is philosophy talking about high level stuff like religion and ethics?

My guess is historical reasons. People in the past could not delineate the dichotomy between the human experience and hard logic, but they saw a deeper meaning in many topics. Hence philosophy is a basically a relic from the past.

[dogcomplex]

Yes, philosophers argue "hard logic" is a subset of philosophy and the human experience, and its claim to truth is as unstable and fuzzy as the rest of said human experience - to the extent it can be applied to the real world at all. Moreover, the use of "hard logic" brings its own relative cultural perspective that steamrolls others without foundational claim to truth. Appealing to "hard logic" without awareness and acknowledgement of other arguments for claims to truth is thus seen as naive or arguably unethical, especially when imposed into systems that limit other discussions of truth.

That said, there are logical positivist philosophers that believe reality is consistent with a hard logic view of the world, and thus it is foundational. They are a minority these days as far as I know - falling out of favor since... Kant? (I forget my history).

But no, philosophy is not a relic of the past in the sense that it has been surpassed by logic/science/etc - not til those can lay claim to truth better than a bunch of old Athenians. Jury's still out.

[smhost]

nobody knows whether mathematics really exists "out there", independent of human minds, which is what you're talking about. people are generally more interested in how mathematics appears to humans.

the basic tools and methods we have of investigating mathematics is designed for human minds. what are mathematical axioms if not the attempt to discover the point beyond which human cognition can't go? if you truly believe that there is a mind-independent mathematics "out there", and you believe that humans are really that insignificant, then you must believe that the totality of mathematics is vastly beyond the reach of human minds. so then the mathematics that is available to humans as of today must be a very small part of mathematics in itself, and it's not a coincidence that we find it so useful.