[tdeck]

Those other engineering professions some harmful things too. Didn't engineers design prisons, casinos, nuclear weapons, land mines, plants that manufacture harmful chemicals, etc..? The only way to believe that these oaths make a difference is to ignore all those things.

Anyway, at my university (CS/computer eng. major) everyone in the engineering school goes through the same induction ceremony that I think had a similar oath. I still have the Wash. U. Engineer's Creed card in my wallet. I vaguely remember that Tau Beta Pi had a similar thing. Honestly, I appreciate the ideals, but I don't think the oath made folks from my program any more ethical than those from other schools.

[m0zg]

All of the things you've listed aren't universally bad. Prisons keep bad people out of society (and yes, I'm aware that some folks shouldn't be in prison, and I wish that'd change, but majority are in the clink for violent crime). Nuclear weapons ensure superpowers can't attack each other - that's why we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years in spite of some pretty crazy tensions. Land mines make land invasions difficult and protect those who installed them. Harmful chemicals usually are not made just for the harm - they have their own useful functions. So I'd draw the line much further than that: somewhere near biological and chemical weapons which have no useful function at all, and do not help with maintaining peace.

[vasco]

The fact you can justify land mines says it all about the ability of some oath to ensure anything about the behaviour of large groups of people.

[m0zg]

Yes, soldiers on the battlefield are very thankful for the land mines, assuming they're the ones who installed them. With any luck a dude from the other side might not be able to cross the field and slit their throats in the dead of the night. Just as pilots are thankful for fighter jets not crapping out in mid-air, and nuclear submarine sailors are thankful for the engineering that went into the hull, and a gunner is thankful for the shells which don't explode in the barrel of a howitzer. War is hell, but if you're going to win it (or even deter it), you'll need engineers who know how to design weapons. And this is not the kind of game that you can just decline to participate in unless you'd like to learn a foreign language in a concentration camp.

[sekh60]

The big problem with landmines is they are not generally cleaned up after the war, leaving them around for innocents to trigger and get hurt, maimed, or killed.

[m0zg]

Yes. They can be deployed irresponsibly, but that's hardly the engineer's fault.

[ljm]

> we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years

This is of little comfort to the many victims of US foreign policy over that same period

[m0zg]

Believe me, things would be _a lot_ worse if there were no nukes and superpowers could go at one another. We're talking 100x the casualties. Most of the violent deaths in the 20th century were the fault of the governments, one way or another. The only reason they don't do that anymore is it'd be self-destructive.

[fighterpilot]

Nothing inherently wrong with prisons. They're necessary. Even the most egalitarian societies will have at least one person who is relentlessly violent and needs to be forcefully confined.

[m4rtink]

Our faculty (Masaryk University Faculty of Informatics) definitely has such an oath & everyone has to take it - here in Czech: Section 33 (5): https://is.muni.cz/do/mu/Uredni_deska/Predpisy_MU/Fakulta_in...

Machine translated to English (FI MUNI is heavy into NLP anyway ;-) ) it looks like this:

a) at the bachelor's degree: “I solemnly promise to dedicate my life to the service of humanity; I will keep Masaryk University, where I obtained a bachelor's degree, and its teacher in the memory and respect that belong to them; I will be faithful to my profession and I will be fair and accommodating to his colleagues; I will develop the projects I participate in to the best of my ability so as to serve man; I will not tolerate evil, bad practices or bribery; I will not allow that issues of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social status my professional decisions; I will not abuse my professional knowledge and skills even under duress. So I promise to my honor, freely and of my own free will. "

b) at the master's degree: “I solemnly promise to dedicate my life to the service of humanity; I will maintain my love and gratitude for Masaryk University, where I obtained a master's degree; I will responsibly perform all my professional duties and consider the ethical implications of my professional activity; I will not allow my activity to be in conflict with the rights of individuals, groups or organizations to respect their privacy and integrity and will not allow their knowledge to be misused and the ability to enable their violation; I will not abuse the properties of the processing systems information or knowledge of them for their personal benefit; I will be in my professional career to act with awareness of the limits of my professional competence and the field in which I work; I will help deepening awareness of the nature and possibilities of their discipline in society. So I promise myself honor, freely and of one's own free will. "

c) at the doctoral degree “I solemnly promise to dedicate my life to the service of humanity; I will preserve love and gratitude to Masaryk University, where I obtained a doctorate; I will carry out all their professional duties responsibly and consider the ethical implications of their actions in their profession and scientific field; I will expand and develop knowledge in my discipline; I will work in this direction to deepen / deepen the awareness of ethical responsibility for the consequences application and use of procedures and knowledge of informatics in society; I will respect protection intellectual property rights and to weigh it responsibly in relation to the free flow of the open scientific knowledge in international public ownership. So I promise to my honor, freely and of their own free will. "

I strive to respect this oath but I'm not sure if all the other absolvents do or even remember taking it. :P