[smsm42]

So in Canada, software engineers never cause harm to anyone? Nice to know.

>>>> I think we do need a set of rules we can dogmatically follow like the Hippocratic Oath.

So you don't actually have to employ your own brain and your own moral judgement, because somebody already did it for you and wrote this nice set of rules, that you swore by Apollo to faithfully execute, without thinking, not unlike that box of wires and silicon chips you are paid to play with? Nice arrangement, I suppose.

>>>> I think it's our jobs to make sure we don't promote poor practice and un-ethical behaviour.

And you need to sign an explicit oath to do that?

[darxius]

I think you're missing the point. The oath is to remind you to use your head, your best judgement and a body of ethics and to act in the interest of the public. Sure engineers still make mistakes, but the code of ethics isn't some magical document that eliminated human error.

Also, I think you're sort of merging the HO with the Code of Ethics for engineers in Canada -- two very different documents and I suggest you give them a read. And no, no one still thinks they're swearing to Apollo.

[smsm42]

>>>> The oath is to remind you to use your head, your best judgement and a body of ethics

Why you need an oath for that - shouldn't it be always the default behavior?

>>>> and to act in the interest of the public.

"Interest of the public" is a very dangerous thing. I can remember a lot of very bad things that were done "in the interest of the public". You can make almost anything pass as "in the interest of the public" if you want to. Murder? Millions were murdered "in the interest of the public", because they were of the wrong ethnicity, class, physical features or just in the wrong place in the wrong time. Robbery? Millions were stripped of their property and reduced to utter poverty because it was claimed it is "interest of the public" to do so. And so on, and so forth.

I would rather steer clear of anything that has "interest of the public" written on it, at least until it's very clear what is underneath. Too many things that were underneath such writing proved to be a disaster.

>>> no one still thinks they're swearing to Apollo.

Swearing to a document composed by a faceless bureaucracy is no better. If you have code of ethics, live by it, if you do not - get one. What Apollo or his modern equivalent, the almighty bureaucracy, has to do with it?

[base698]

Because that's how humans work?

bookoutlines.pbworks.com/w/page/14422685/Predictably%20Irrational

One more variation: Nina, On, and Ariely conducted a similar experiment. But, one group was asked to write down 10 books they had read in high school, and the other group was asked to try to recall and write down the 10 Commandments. When cheating was not possible, the average score was 3.1 When cheating was possible, the book group reported a score of 4.1 (33% cheating) When cheating was possible, the 10 Commandments group scored 3.1 (0% cheating) And most of the subjects couldn't even recall all of the commandments! Even those who could only remember 1 or 2 commandments were nearly as honest. "This indicated that it was not the Commandments themselves that encouraged honesty, but the mere contemplation of a moral benchmark of some kind." Perhaps we can have people sign secular statements--similar to a professional oath--to remind us of our commitment to honesty. So Ariely had students sign a statement on the answer sheet: "I understand that this study falls under the MIT honor system." Those who signed didn't cheat. Those who didn't see the statement showed 84% cheating. "The effect of signing a statement about an honor code is particularly amazing because MIT doesn't even have an honor code."

[smsm42]

Interesting experiments, the question is if this persists - i.e. if you read the 10 commandments at the beginning of the semester and take the test at the end - would the difference still remain.

[jimbokun]

"So you don't actually have to employ your own brain and your own moral judgement, because somebody already did it for you and wrote this nice set of rules, that you swore by Apollo to faithfully execute, without thinking, not unlike that box of wires and silicon chips you are paid to play with? Nice arrangement, I suppose."

So I assume you never use any open source code in any of your programming projects, since you are fundamentally opposed to adopting any ideas that are not exclusively your own?

[smsm42]

You assume wrong, this in no way follows from what I have said and I never said that I am "fundamentally opposed to adopting any ideas that are not exclusively your own". You must have by accident commented in a wrong branch.