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What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

#41

Post by TempleOS »

I made the official third temple of God. God talks. I have a space alien, basically. Why on Earth would I do anything else? I have a fucken talking space alien. Get that in yer thick nigger-monkey skull.

I have a talking space alien.

I will never suck cock.

God says... rebuts carcinogen exclaiming encamp jabberer bootblack's bigotry's McNeil soldier's Whitley floors unacceptability austerity opposes addenda pedlars underscores exorcize entente's troubleshooter's abbess confine's innumerable Columbus's testify carports serfdom's Daniels Rick's guzzler peter severance

Re: What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

#42

Post by WWLink »

chrisbennet wrote: post #18

I avoid working on projects where my software will kill people on purpose or by accident i.e. missle guidance or medical devices. The former former for ethical reasons.

Medical devices: The risks are scary, but somebody has to do it!

Re: What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

#43

Post by flukus »

dragonwriter wrote: post #40
flukus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you make an exception for something purely defensive, like an ICBM interceptor?

ICBM interceptors are (among other things) for neutralizing an enemy's retaliatory deterrence thus enabling the protected party to carry out nuclear first strikes. They are not purely defensive.

I'm not sure if it's helpful to think about things that way because it can be applied to just about everything. Does body armor make war more likely because we can kill more of theirs than they can kill ours? Does that mean personal body armor can not by considered purely defensive?

Re: What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

#44

Post by geofft »

tropo wrote: post #30
smt88 wrote: post #5

I refuse to work with companies who store sensitive data (financial, medical, etc.) and fail to take it deadly seriously. If the company won't hire a third-party security firm to audit and provide guidance, I won't work for that company.

Who will audit the auditor? They could be useless. They could BE the criminals. So you need an auditor for your auditor, and for that too you'll need an auditor. It's auditors all the way down.

It's not true that "X could be useless" implies "X is useless". If your expectation (in a probability sense) is that X is useful, a policy of requiring X is, broadly speaking, a better idea than a policy of not bothering at all.

In the specific case of auditors, they tend to be large, well-known companies with a reputation, a common system in our society for figuring out if people are useful or criminals. Arthur Andersen, for instance, made a series of bad ethical decisions in its accounting audit practice. They no longer practice auditing for accounting, and their consulting business has been rebranded (to Accenture) because they lost the reputation of their original name. So they did, in effect, get audited eventually. Which again is better than not bothering.

Re: What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

flukus wrote: post #43
dragonwriter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICBM interceptors are (among other things) for neutralizing an enemy's retaliatory deterrence thus enabling the protected party to carry out nuclear first strikes. They are not purely defensive.

I'm not sure if it's helpful to think about things that way because it can be applied to just about everything. Does body armor make war more likely because we can kill more of theirs than they can kill ours? Does that mean personal body armor can not by considered purely defensive?

> I'm not sure if it's helpful to think about things that way because it can be applied to just about everything.

It can be applied to just about anything (well, anything combat-related) because, in fact, nothing combat-related is purely defensive; it's all, including things whose direct use is protective, developed and acquired in order to improve the ability to destroy the enemy.

It's not helpful to delude oneself into believing that the purely defensive exists.

Re: What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

#46

Post by [deleted] »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #36

I moved out of ad tech, around the time my boss asked me to do something I thought was unethical. I don't know that I'm out of it forever -- I find few industries a hard "no". Rather, it has to do with the people I'm working with and the exact project. I try not to make things that are addictive or harm the psyche, or that perpetuate social ills. I try not to do things that can be repurposed for those things. Some in…

[deleted]

Re: What type of software will you refuse to develop for ethical reasons?

#47

Post by breeny592 »

Anything where the customer and their real needs is not the focus. If a product places sales or money above the people it's dealing with, I'm not interested. Ironically, I now work for a bank - just luckily a bank that has very good ethical practices and takes their responsibility to their customers very seriously.
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