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  • Jared White (ResistanceNet ✊)jaredwhite@indieweb.social
    Aug 9, 2026, 4:52 PM

    If you're wondering why so many people who build software today are unethical,

    may I introduce you to the previous three decades of people who built software unethically. 😕

    Yeah I know. It's a hard pill to swallow. I spent most of my career thinking there were a few bad apples. I wasn't willing to admit the whole barrel was spoiled.

    If we want to “fix software” we can't merely critique tools. Because ultimately our challenge is cultural in nature. *And real solutions lie in the humanities.*

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  • Lone Spelunkerlonespelunker@mastodon.social
    Aug 9, 2026, 5:07 PM

    @jaredwhite Agreed. And it is hard to reliably have coders make ethical software when unethical people control their paychecks, so it won’t be sufficient to simply deal with unethical developers - we also need to deal with unethical CEO’s, CTO’s, etc.

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  • Raven667raven667@hachyderm.io
    Aug 9, 2026, 9:12 PM

    @lonespelunker @jaredwhite there is a solution for that from the civil engineering discipline, licensure. The way engineering deals with unethical owners who _always_ want to cut corners is to set professional standards and have each member hold their career hostage to push back on compromising those standards.

    "Sorry boss, no-can-do, I'd lose my license for that"

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  • Lone Spelunkerlonespelunker@mastodon.social
    Aug 9, 2026, 10:06 PM

    @raven667 @jaredwhite

    Imagine being able to say, “Oh sorry, making that functionality opt-out instead of opt-in would cause me to lose my license. You‘lol have to ask people to opt IN to AI scraping their private conversations and publishing them on Times Square displays.”

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  • Chris Moorehead 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇬🇱cjmoorehead@techhub.social
    Aug 9, 2026, 11:11 PM

    @raven667 @lonespelunker @jaredwhite This isn’t just civil engineering. In Canada, you have to hold a valid professional engineering license to even call yourself an engineer. And we have a very stringent code of ethics in which protection of the public is paramount. That being said, I was never asked to do anything unethical when I was practising actual engineering (automotive, aerospace, computer hardware)…only when I worked in the software sector with pretend “engineers” (who at least in Canada can’t use that title). So, yes, my work was more ethical when I was designing weapons than when I was creating software.

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  • Theodora Wardtheodoraward@mastodon.social
    Aug 9, 2026, 6:51 PM

    @danlyke @jaredwhite not that there aren't things to critique about institutional philosophy -- there definitely are -- but i will say that, outside of peter singer (who is a big deal), it's mostly people outside of the discipline who've made EA important. macaskill and ord aren't in actual phil departments or anything. every time i bring them up with my philosopher of science friend he's just like, "yeah idk. that's not really what any of us are up to" lol

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  • Dan Lykedanlyke@researchbuzz.masto.host
    Aug 9, 2026, 7:08 PM

    @theodoraward okay. I ran screaming from the required philosophy class in college, read a bunch post-college (I was a Randian, so had to read Kant and Marx, obviously, and assorted others), later hit one of Singer's books and from the introduction I could tell where he was going. And that killed the whole field for me.

    @jaredwhite

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  • Dan Lykedanlyke@researchbuzz.masto.host
    Aug 10, 2026, 3:14 AM

    @bms Rand also does a fairly good job of taking down herself, eventually. For me it was her Letters on patents, and the space program. That was my "wait, she's totally arguing pragmatism here" moment.

    And once I got to that framing, the rest of it (and my upbringing that reinforced those belief structures) crumbled.

    Getting screwed over in business by some self-titled Objectivists also helped...

    @theodoraward @jaredwhite

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  • Dr. Bruce Simpsonbms@bsd.cafe
    Aug 10, 2026, 3:49 AM

    @danlyke @theodoraward @jaredwhite Yeah that sort of happened to me as well, but not right away, and as I was a contractor, I was somewhat less exposed to it. Subprime crisis happened, VCs pulled out, Chinese ended up with all the IP assets a few years later. They seem to go for get' em while they're young as a tactic; adjacent to Rand, transhumanism sounded palatable when I was 19-21, now, they can all go to hell. I had encountered the political theorist Richard Barbrook socially but didn't examine his co-work The Californian Ideology until years later, whereupon it explained much of what we had all suffered at the hands of VC.

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  • Astridluxliquida@lgbtqia.space
    Aug 9, 2026, 8:21 PM

    @danlyke @jaredwhite

    Yeah, I dont think there is any field of study that is wholly good or evil... Even economics has one or two people who want to make the world a better place

    The humanities are systemically undervalued in western society, especially America, but pointing to them as the cure for bad behavior in STEM is reductive at best

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  • Dan Lykedanlyke@researchbuzz.masto.host
    Aug 10, 2026, 3:17 AM

    @luxliquida I believe the entire academic system is based on fundamentally abusive mechanisms, and this starts with the classroom lecture being a shitty suboptimal structure for learning, so: yes.

    Cc @jaredwhite

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  • Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPETimWardCam@c.im
    Aug 9, 2026, 9:05 PM

    @yora @jaredwhite I spent a whole career without having to become unethical.

    I did, about twice ever, have to hint to an employer or client that I would refuse to do something against my professional code of conduct, such as lying to their customers about how late their project was, but that was about all.

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  • Androcatandrocat@toot.cat
    Aug 10, 2026, 10:51 AM

    @yora

    Ehh... is FOSS capitalism? It does not provide any immunity.

    Like Linus "Leave ethics out of the kernel" Torvalds, there are no domain not afflicted by bad (mostly) guys.

    @jaredwhite

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  • dex77dex77@chaos.social
    Aug 9, 2026, 9:05 PM

    @jaredwhite
    "there is no echical consumption under capitalism" + trying to solve organistional problems with software

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  • Demi Marie Obenouralwayscurious@infosec.exchange
    Aug 9, 2026, 9:09 PM

    @jaredwhite Corrolary: the humanities need to be presented in a way that people like myself can relate to, so they actually listen rather than seeing the humanities as something to avoid.

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  • Stacey Cornelius 🇨🇦StaceyCornelius@zeroes.ca
    Aug 9, 2026, 9:46 PM

    @jaredwhite Well, dammit. I spent a stupid amount of money on a private software developer training program and was disgusted by what I encountered. The marketing was "the best and the brightest" while the reality was easy, fast money bros.

    I fled the industry in record time, but it's taken until just now to get confirmation from an actual human with actual experience. Bugger. But validation, so thank you. See also: Dammit.

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  • Nate Gaylinnngaylinn@tech.lgbt
    Aug 9, 2026, 9:53 PM

    @jaredwhite I feel rather naive for ever thinking "my company is different." It was when it suited them. When times were good, it was easy to imagine everyone around me was doing things for the same reasons as me. When times change or the opportunity arises, folks show their true colors.

    Some are bad apples. Many are just working a job, and don't care too much what the code is for.

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  • EliElindur@retro.pizza
    Aug 9, 2026, 10:00 PM

    @jaredwhite I would say that anthropology should be included. The study of our impact on ourselves, our cultures, what we create, it's something that includes the impact of unchecked technocracy and capitalism as well, and if you really want to up the impact, throw a couple sociology courses in there, as well. The impact of the individual on the whole, and the impact of the whole on the individual, is where I feel tech is lacking.

    (Also, there's overlap with the "soft" sciences and humanities, which is why I personally don't feel there should be one without the other.)

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  • Poligofsky 🇨🇦 .. 🚫🤖8r3n7@mstdn.ca
    Aug 10, 2026, 11:55 AM

    @jaredwhite I wish it were that simple.

    Ethics, and morals, are not emotional: biological. Our actions are bound to our feelings. Doing bad makes us feel bad. Or, conversely, what makes us feel bad is, retroactively, bad. Whether we do it, or someone else does.

    Unless causality is broken. Unethical work becomes tolerable—ethically and morally neutral—when done through intermediaries, and/or after a mechanical delay. The machine did it. The user did it. The system did it. At scale, it becomes normalized.

    Most of modern civilization involves such causal interruptions, where our moral instincts are conveniently sidestepped. Culture doesn't cause them, but it provides an endless stream of justifications and rationalizations. It enables good people to behave like psychopaths, with a clean conscience. There is suffering, but no one is apparently to blame.

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  • Sewer Pirouette ⒶWouter_Pieterse@todon.eu
    Aug 10, 2026, 12:21 PM

    @jaredwhite

    When I graduated as a logician and went looking for a job in the nineties I was appalled by the 'quality' of software being produced. Even critical systems, like those managing the closing off of railway crossings, couldn't be proved to work right.

    It wasn't called vibe-coding back then, but same attitude.

    Found a different job.

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  • johnejohne@denvr.social
    Aug 10, 2026, 12:29 PM

    @jaredwhite The Nazis went to IBM for help tracking the Jews, gays, and disabled they exterminated.

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