[TeMPOraL]

Strongly agreed. Exposure to social sciences won't fix problems caused by your business model, because market competition is stronger than individual morals. Even if you decide not to proceed in harmful way, there will be a competitor who's less moral and will corner the market in your place.

The more I participate in the "tech won't fix social problems" kinds of discussions, it dawns on me that it's not the tech that's the problem, but the business models behind that tech's development and deployment. Sure, in small companies, the "tech person" and the "business person" are sometimes the same individual, but I still can't think of a single example where harmful technology was irresponsibly deployed "because it would be elegant/useful/cool" - the problems happen when the motivation is, "because it's easy money".

But that line of thinking reduces the issue to the usual problems of society run by market economy, which is already a well-trodden ground, so you can't find new scapegoats there.

[kbit]

I agree that the market economy is the underlying problem of it all. However, I wouldn't completely dismiss computer scientists' lack of knowledge in social science as part of the reason. I'm hopeful enough to think that, knowing the incredible harm the software they are writing could inflict on other people or society as a whole, some computer scientists would be less willing to participate in it.