Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM • Hacker News Board

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#421

Post by base698 » Thu, May 02, 2013, 1:40 PM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #264

darxius wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

>>>> 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 publi…

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."

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#422

Post by freshhawk » Thu, May 02, 2013, 10:02 PM UTC

pekk wrote: post #391

freshhawk wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No, it's our responsibility as decent people" Well, yes. But there is a reason that every profession that has tackled this problem has used a system of oaths and certification. Engineers, Doctors and Lawyers are the canonical examples. You need something that is given and can be taken away for bad behaviour in order to change behaviour at this level. Damn human brains.

Taken away by whom and on what basis? I would dispute that you need the ability to take away other individuals' ability to lawfully write software. That ability is bound to be abused for political reasons (which is also what it looks like when people have reasonably different ethical systems and one imposes his by force). Anyway, the issue at hand is bad corporate behavior, not bad programmers. I don't see why we nee…

This is just a bonding/licensing arrangement, it's in use by every other profession that has this exact problem.

So go ahead and try and stop bad corporate behaviour, everyone else can use a proven system so that programmers can easily say "no" when asked to do something unethical and not be fired for it.

I'm often confused by how often programmers completely reinvent the wheel when faced with social problems. The idea of looking to other similar industries never comes up, even if the problem is exactly the same.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#423

Post by freshhawk » Thu, May 02, 2013, 10:18 PM UTC

thesz wrote: post #360

duncan_bayne wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has worked pretty damn well for Engineers, Doctors and Lawyers. ... and has pretty much screwed over the rest of society, at least in the latter two cases. The legal and medical cartels have done incredible harm to their customers over the years. See http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=51 (law) and http://mises.org/daily/4276 (medicine) for details.

I have to say that your link about medicine is short of laughble. Even if there was some bad "allopathy" back in the day, there is more bad eclictics and homeopathy right now. And to practice medicine you have to understand scientific method, especially falsifability. And I also have to say that the "free market" idea isn't falsifable. "Let it to free market" rarely works.

Parts of the "free market" idea are falsifiable.

They assume rational actors (people making decisions based on their own self interest). That's been falsified (when applied to humans).

Most variations of the efficient market hypothesis have been disproved as well, for the same reasons:

Humans have cognitive biases and other types of irrational behaviour.

But anyone linking to mises.org is probably a follower of the church of the free market. And they generally strongly disagree with the idea that humans have cognitive biases (because their faith requires it not to be true).

I'm glad someone else laughed at the pro-homeopathy / conspiracy theory around the history of snake oil salesmen content on there.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#424

Post by duncan_bayne » Fri, May 03, 2013, 3:33 AM UTC

freshhawk wrote: post #423

thesz wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say that your link about medicine is short of laughble. Even if there was some bad "allopathy" back in the day, there is more bad eclictics and homeopathy right now. And to practice medicine you have to understand scientific method, especially falsifability. And I also have to say that the "free market" idea isn't falsifable. "Let it to free market" rarely works.

Parts of the "free market" idea are falsifiable. They assume rational actors (people making decisions based on their own self interest). That's been falsified (when applied to humans). Most variations of the efficient market hypothesis have been disproved as well, for the same reasons: Humans have cognitive biases and other types of irrational behaviour. But anyone linking to mises.org is probably a follower of the c…

> They assume rational actors (people making decisions based

> on their own self interest).

That's untrue of some schools of economics that advocate free markets, e.g. Austrian.

> But anyone linking to mises.org is probably a follower of

> the church of the free market. And they generally

> strongly disagree with the idea that humans have

> cognitive biases (because their faith requires it not to

> be true).

That's an ... interesting ... claim. Care to justify it?

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#425

Post by ivanca » Fri, May 03, 2013, 4:42 AM UTC

claudius wrote: post #420

ivanca wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's why I think exponential grow in fines for repeated offenses by a company is a good idea, it will eventually be net negative for the company so they will stop doing it.

But why do you want to grow fines instead of imposing appropriate (i.e. high-enough) fines on the first offence?

Because you can't know the net positive in advance; is way too dependent of the context and that includes the size of the company.

It also discourages the searching of flaws in the system because even if you get away with it once (net-positive) you know the next time the fine will make unviable.

BTW this is similar to how already the civil justice system works in many countries, where after repeated minor offenses you go to jail.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#426

Post by freshhawk » Fri, May 03, 2013, 7:17 AM UTC

duncan_bayne wrote: post #424

freshhawk wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parts of the "free market" idea are falsifiable. They assume rational actors (people making decisions based on their own self interest). That's been falsified (when applied to humans). Most variations of the efficient market hypothesis have been disproved as well, for the same reasons: Humans have cognitive biases and other types of irrational behaviour. But anyone linking to mises.org is probably a follower of the c…

> They assume rational actors (people making decisions based > on their own self interest). That's untrue of some schools of economics that advocate free markets, e.g. Austrian. > But anyone linking to mises.org is probably a follower of > the church of the free market. And they generally > strongly disagree with the idea that humans have > cognitive biases (because their faith requires it not to > be true). That's a…

> That's untrue of some schools of economics that advocate free markets, e.g. Austrian.

I took the term "free market 'idea'" to be specifically talking about those for which it's true. That seemed to be the point, and the site linked to was Austrian. Both articles make the assumptions in question about the ability to self-regulate that assumes rational actors. So yes, my statement was not true of all schools, but it seemed like those types of Austrians were not in the scope of the discussion.

> That's an ... interesting ... claim. Care to justify it?

Subjective opinion. I read economics news and neuroscience news because it's interesting. Comment threads, especially here, frequently have two types of subjects that start the vocal libertarians arguing and proclaiming: government regulation and the phrase "humans are irrational".

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#427

Post by smsm42 » Sat, May 04, 2013, 2:13 AM UTC

base698 wrote: post #421

smsm42 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>> 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 publi…

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, th…

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.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#428

Post by smsm42 » Sat, May 04, 2013, 2:21 AM UTC

claudius wrote: post #32

gcv wrote: post #15

Could this just have been a good old-fashioned programming bug, rather than spamming or malicious intent?

How could this possibly be a programming bug?

Oh, I can easily see possible scenarios. For example: have a functionality when you add a contact to the list of contacts, send her a message welcoming her, after asking the user if it's OK. Reuse the same code in the part of the application where you initialize the database from existing contacts. Put wrong defaults there so that the code does not ask "send welcome message?" (because that'd be stupid - of course you don't want to ask somebody 200 times for each of the entries in initial import) but still sends one. Boom! - initial import causes 200 welcome messages to be sent. Happens more than you'd like. Something like that happened to me too, in different form and was caught in testing, nowhere near production, but still.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#429

Post by pjbrunet » Mon, May 06, 2013, 5:59 AM UTC

pjbrunet wrote: post #312

gtaylor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android shows the permissions each app is requesting before you install, and even lets you know if they change their permissions between updates. While what Path did is crappy, they didn't subvert the Android permissions system. The thing that burnt the poster is that while a social app asking for access to their contacts might not rise a brow, the user has no way to know what they are going to do with that data with…

"Android shows the permissions each app is requesting before you install" Yes and no. Google often hides the most offensive permission requests under that "see more" arrow. And the permission requests (and accompanying explanations) are too vague and ambiguous. For example: Does "request access to network" mean they're able to sniff all my incoming/outgoing data, granting the app access to everything?

Congrats __chismc. Shortly after this post it appears they moved the "Install" link under the permission requests.

Re: Path texts my entire phonebook at 6 AM

#430

Post by thenonsequitur » Tue, May 07, 2013, 7:43 PM UTC

Cub3 wrote: post #346

seiji wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "Hippocratic Oath for developers" sounds like a great idea, but we vastly underestimate the number of jerkbags in the world. People want validation. Line-level employees want praise from coworkers and bosses. Executives want praise from their peers, investors, industry, and press. Concepts like ethics, "right," or even this-is-good-for-thie-world isn't a concern when faced with "X will increase my social status and…

This would be great... I remember having to put my job on the line a few times for refusing to program / setup something awful. One of the worst was when I was asked to combine all divisions email lists and send out a marketing email selling some overpriced book, this was against the Privacy Act (AU), against our privacy policy and highly unethical to boot, refused and was given a written warning.

There was once when I did this as well.

It was a contract web development company I was working for, about ten years ago. One of our clients wanted some SEO work done, and my supervisor had recently been reading a lot about SEO. He started out reading white-hat stuff, but by this point he was delving into some black-hat research, and he essentially asked me to program a message-board spam-bot. I just told him straight up that I believed that would be unethical and I refused to do it, knowing full well that simply refusing to do assigned work could cost me job.

Thankfully, not only did this not cost me my job, it caused my supervisor to re-evaluate his own position and he decided to go back into completely white-hat SEO. And in the end, he actually thanked me for refusing to do that work.

I feel like lucked out on that one.