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How professional ethics work

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Re: How professional ethics work

#41

Post by OkayPhysicist »

efficulty wrote: post #19
hackyhacky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the words they are using give me a hint of high pride, high ego, arrogance. Feels a bit like militaristic zeal. Really? I didn't get that sense at all. Can you give an example?

Sure. "You are told what the ethics of your profession are. Indeed, they are part of terms of participating in that profession, more on which below." -- wrong and somewhat patronizing. There exist professions which do have (recognized) ethics, but those ethics are optional, definitely not part of becoming a professional (because the field is informal and without licenses and too young to have that), and participation…

The whole point of the article is that enforced profession ethics are a leverage tool. If you don't have enforcement, you don't have that leverage. It's not pretentious, it's simply factual.

If you say "It violates my professional ethics to program the drivers for an orphan blender", your boss can fire you and replace you with some other developer with no such scruples. If a professional engineer says "It violates my (enforced) professional ethics to sign off on the blade design of this orphan blender, and anybody who did would lose their licensing", then their boss could fire them, but they're not going to get their blade signed off.

Re: How professional ethics work

#42

Post by alphazard »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #32
alphazard wrote: post #26

Licensure is a natural response to LLMs making code generation easier. People want to protect their jobs and AI is coming for them. Creating a regulatory cartel let's some in-group become "the real engineers" who are able to approve the output of LLMs, or other "non-engineers". All this under the auspices of "ethics", which as a reminder, is just an arbitrary set of rules which someone is trying to pass off as having…

As the article clearly lays out, there's no need for profession ethical considerations to be "of divine origin". It's simply a set of rules which an entire industry can hold as superseding the whims of the flunkies with MBAs that write our paychecks.

If they are just a set of rules made up by people, why can't we call them "laws"? You know, like those other rules made up by people.

The article advocates a set of laws intended to prevent certain people from writing software, and constraining how a select few do write software. It doesn't talk about how exactly those laws will be decided on. Although it does say they are "facts", it doesn't tell me about a way to observe them for myself, so I guess the author just looked into the mind of God, and I should take his word for it.

Re: How professional ethics work

#43

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

version_five wrote: post #28
titanomachy wrote: post #23

I think the author's main point is insightful. Professional ethics are much more effective when they have the weight of regulation, because then your employer can't just replace you with someone who will do the unethical thing that they want. In my opinion, it is probably still worth refusing to build things that violate your personal ethics. You will sleep better at night, and you will introduce friction to doing un…

In engineering (electrical, mechanical, civil) we have professional licensure[0]. It doesn't mean you can't design an electric system without a license. It means you can't represent yourself as an engineer, nor can you stamp engineering drawings. There are some legal situations, particularly building / structural where stamped drawings are needed, and so only a P.Eng can do that. But if it's say designing a circuit b…

Within British Columbia at least, the "practice of professional engineering" means the provision of advice or services that are based on an engineering discipline, or ancillary to those. "Engineering discipline" means "agricultural, biomedical, bioresource, biosystems, building, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, food, forest, geological, geomatics, industrial, marine, mechanical, mechatronics, metallurgical, mining, naval architecture, nuclear, petroleum, software and structural engineering and engineering physics".

So professional licensing is required for any provision of advice or services relating to software engineering (etc), including services internal to a company. And a professional engineer is required to stamp any documents containing engineering content that are expected to be relied on by others.

(I'm not disagreeing with you. You don't need to be a professional engineer to have a circuit board made or a part machined. But you might need to stamp your design drawings as part of a certification process, or if others will be relying on them).

Re: How professional ethics work

#44

Post by [deleted] »

titanomachy wrote: post #23

I think the author's main point is insightful. Professional ethics are much more effective when they have the weight of regulation, because then your employer can't just replace you with someone who will do the unethical thing that they want. In my opinion, it is probably still worth refusing to build things that violate your personal ethics. You will sleep better at night, and you will introduce friction to doing un…

[deleted]

Re: How professional ethics work

#45

Post by titanomachy »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #43
version_five wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In engineering (electrical, mechanical, civil) we have professional licensure[0]. It doesn't mean you can't design an electric system without a license. It means you can't represent yourself as an engineer, nor can you stamp engineering drawings. There are some legal situations, particularly building / structural where stamped drawings are needed, and so only a P.Eng can do that. But if it's say designing a circuit b…

Within British Columbia at least, the "practice of professional engineering" means the provision of advice or services that are based on an engineering discipline, or ancillary to those. "Engineering discipline" means "agricultural, biomedical, bioresource, biosystems, building, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, environmental, food, forest, geological, geomatics, industrial, marine, mechanical, mechatronics, met…

> professional licensing is required for any provision of advice or services relating to software engineering... including internal to a company.

Even if this is what the law says, I've never seen it have any impact on the real world. In BC, like everywhere else, people with no license of any kind routinely write software that other people depend on and release it into the world, with no oversight from a licensed engineer at any point in the process.

Re: How professional ethics work

#46

Post by kazinator »

biomcgary wrote: post #29
titanomachy wrote: post #23

I think the author's main point is insightful. Professional ethics are much more effective when they have the weight of regulation, because then your employer can't just replace you with someone who will do the unethical thing that they want. In my opinion, it is probably still worth refusing to build things that violate your personal ethics. You will sleep better at night, and you will introduce friction to doing un…

First, they came for C compilers and you said nothing. Then, they came for Python interpreters and you said nothing. Now that they are coming for Excel, who will defend you?

> Now that they are coming for Excel, who will defend you?

A rectangular fortress formed between by two protected columns and two protected rows.

Re: How professional ethics work

#47

Post by alphazard »

_fbpp wrote: post #40
alphazard wrote: post #26

Licensure is a natural response to LLMs making code generation easier. People want to protect their jobs and AI is coming for them. Creating a regulatory cartel let's some in-group become "the real engineers" who are able to approve the output of LLMs, or other "non-engineers". All this under the auspices of "ethics", which as a reminder, is just an arbitrary set of rules which someone is trying to pass off as having…

All this under the auspices of "ethics", which as a reminder, is just an arbitrary set of rules which someone is trying to pass off as having a divine origin. They are arbitrary only in the sense that, sans a religion's God laying down ethics from on high, all ethics are arbitrary human creation. But we care about ethics all the same. Engineers care about ethics because if they do not, they kill people . Civil engine…

I wouldn't use "ethics" to describe any of the rules in place to ensure the quality of the designs or deliverables in civil/mechanical/electrical engineering.

I'm glad that there are building inspectors, and safety standards for consumer electronics. I'm also glad that those rules are written clearly in terms of lbs and amp*hours and volts, and not philosophical terms.

If you want rules, say you want rules, but don't try to hide the fact that some of your rules will have not objective justification, and will be based on the personal philosophies of those in charge.

Re: How professional ethics work

#48

Post by kazinator »

k__ wrote: post #2

That explanation makes quite the leap from "personal ethics are an opinion" to "professional ethics are facts". Everything that comes after that seems just to explain why professional ethics are crucial, but I'm still missing where the opinions of a bunch of people suddenly become a fact.

No it doesn't; it just says that professional ethics aren't your opinon, not that they aren't opinion.

Re: How professional ethics work

#49

Post by alphazard »

version_five wrote: post #4

I just skimmed it, personally I'm not convinced by what I saw: the premise that professional ethics is not personal ethics, while true, is not really meaningful to technical disciplines. In my engineering ethics and professional practice courses I never saw anything "nontechnical" in our ethics, most of it was don't do stuff you're not qualified for and awareness of applicable law. The problem with ethics is that the…

> The problem with ethics is that there is a vocal group that wants to turn their personal ethics into our professional ethics and impose on software a bunch of judgements that are super subjective (and thus outside the profession).

This is exactly right, and the word "ethics" pretty much encompasses all of this subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.

If you had a rule about testing aviation firmware a certain way, it would just be a regulation, there would be no need to call it an ethical principle. Anyone who understands the relevant technology could understand why it was in place. The same cannot be said about most statements under the umbrella "ethics".

Re: How professional ethics work

#50

Post by [deleted] »

k__ wrote: post #17
dan-robertson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you would prefer an analogy to law where there are things which are illegal and they may not precisely correspond to the things which you personally consider unethical?

I mean, I understand that laws and professional ethics are enforced. But that doesn't make any of them anything other than opinions.

[deleted]
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