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> Technical professions are generally hold responsible for what they enable. Biology: researchers can't do anything they want on plants, animals or humans. Medicine: doctors are expected to follow strict guidelines with their patients. Even engineering: implementing a cheating system for diesel tests will (rightfully) get engineers into trouble.

Biology researchers are held responsible for what they do. Not usually what they enable. The examples you gave are biology researchers themselves doing something. The relevant analogy would be if we held the inventors of CRISPR responsible for some future super-virus engineered using it.

I like you analogy if in your story, the inventors of CRISPR can exert some sort of power or control over the actors who are engineering a super-virus and thus make a moral decision to do so or not

In science, the only kind of control you can have is keep the research secret , or not do the research at all. Both are worse options

Hosted services is an ongoing act of support though - it's more like the inventors of CRISPR taking a contract that let someone use their equipment to engineer a supervirus.

They should have never discovered DNA. Look at this mess, now the police have files on all of us and our cousins

Your examples aren’t very convincing for biology and medicine. The counter examples seem way more numerous.

Biologists enabled chemical warfare. Same harm has been done with mathematics. Physics.

I think we largely let researches do research, and don’t hold researchers accountable for harm enabled with that research.

In other words, self policing of customers seems like a newer and uncommon phenomenon.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Biologists at large may have "enabled" biological (not chemical, that's chemists) warfare by learning about biology and contributing to humanity's understanding of it, but it was only specific biologists who actively created biological weapons, and only those biologists should be held accountable (and they should).

Mathematicians at large may have enabled various terrible things again by contributing to our knowledge of math, but those mathematicians are blameless; only the ones who used their knowledge to (insert bad thing here) are the ones who can be blamed.

Doing research that can be later used for good or evil is generally fine. To say that improving our understanding of biology is a bad thing is clearly ridiculous. However, actively contributing to a biological weapons program is a very different matter.

For a hosting service, that's much more like active contribution than simply providing knowledge. The people who wrote the Linux kernel are akin to the biologists who simply increased our understanding of biology, but people who manage a hosting service with actual customers are not like this: they have the power to decide who is using the service for actual evil, and the ability to refuse their business.

How does arguing if politician X or politician Y is better makes tech more responsible?

Supporting politician X doesn't make person more moral or ethical. Same as believing in god A over god B.

Politics discussions are just tribal wars.

It seems you are understanding "politics at work" as "discussions about political parties, candidates and elections".

IMHO, politics is much more than partisan politics. In the broad sense, it is reflecting and deciding on how live together. And parties and candidates are only a part (maybe the most divisive) of it.

Software development is not actually a profession, it's just an occupation. That's not necessarily a bad thing but let's not pretend that it's something that it isn't. In order to be a profession on the level of law, civil engineering, medicine, arms, accounting, etc it would need — among other things — a clear code of ethics. Years ago the IEEE made some tentative steps toward turning software development into a profession but they didn't get much traction.

I think you're confusing "being a profession" with "having the trappings of a profession".

No I haven't confused anything at all. Perhaps you misunderstood my comment.

Nope. I disagree with your definitions. And I disagree with the definiteness of your definitions. That is, you speak as though this were the only possible definition of "profession". In that, I believe you are in error.

The definition of a profession in the western world has been well established and generally understood for centuries. My comment was fully consistent with that definition.

From dictionary.com:

1. a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or science: the profession of teaching. Compare learned profession.

2. any vocation or business.

3. the body of persons engaged in an occupation or calling: to be respected by the medical profession.

It goes on, but the rest have to do with "profession" in the sense of declarations.

So, you can make your claim all you want that you have the correct definition of "profession", but you seem to be mistaken...

This fetishization of these "professional careers" has got to stop. Particularly this fictional glamourization of the philosopher professional who is held responsible for all outcomes of his work. To this day, Dr. Jeffrey Glassberg roams free despite mistaken forensic DNA tests putting so many innocent people in jail. That is one, but I could produce hundreds. As a matter of fact, I challenge you to name a single inventor (who, for sake of this argument, we may choose to be also a 'professional') who is innocent by this metric.

> hold responsible for what they enable.

That's irrelevant. The rules are for conducting responsible research, not for pondering the potential misuse or evil use of whatever technology. Physics and bio have a far greater record of evil uses, and it was never questionable. It was accepted that scientists do science, and ask questions later. The before-the-fact crusades are a very recent (like, 10 years) phenomenon limited to the west coast of the US

> limited to the west coast of the US

I'm from Europe, for the record :)

That said, you're right, of course there are no laws regulating the potential misuse or evil use of research results.

However I feel we, as societies, tend to feel that researchers have some kind of moral responsibility in the use of their discoveries. That somehow, the researchers working on nuclear bombs are not entirely unrelated to its use – and, on the other side, that Alexander Fleming deserves some moral credits for the uses of penicillin.

My point is that in software engineering we are usually held responsible neither by law or by this shared understanding.

> Technical professions are generally hold responsible for what they enable.

Not really. Doctors are expected to do the best for their patient without worrying about societal consequences. If Hitler came to a doctor in need of medical help, the doctor would be ethically required to do their best for him, desolate the negative consequences of Hitler to society.

Same with lawyers. Even if their client is a serial murderer and has co fessed their guilt to them, they still have to do their best in representing them.

> Even if their client is a serial murderer and has co fessed their guilt to them, they still have to do their best in representing them.

IANAL but I believe this is untrue. It would not be acceptable for a lawyer to represent to the court something that they have reason to believe is false.

"Do their best" does not mean "lie to the court." The defense does not have to turn over incriminating evidence that it does not intend to use, and lawyers can ethically and accurately enter a "not guilty" plea and argue that the prosecution has insufficient evidence available to prove guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt.