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> act like professionals and take responsibility for being clueful about the impacts of our work.

Well said.

I think there's a lot of work to do before we can even figure out what those impacts are and how to work in such a way as to minimise the harms. Something along the lines of a Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm".

Replace 'harm' with 'evil' and I thing you've got something there....

Yes. I think this is exactly the issue. We can't on one hand say we're cogs in a wheel, and on the other complain about the state that we are in. The choice begins with us. Don't work for companies that produce software that is unethical. Do what ever it takes.

> It's implausible to me that we're simultaneously both highly paid geniuses and clueless tools.

It can happen to the best of us [1].

    "" I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military
    service as a member of this country's most agile military force,
    the Marine Corps.  I served in all commissioned ranks from Second
    Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most
    of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for
    Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a
    gangster for capitalism. "" - Gen. Smedley Butler

[1] https://man.fas.org/smedley.htm

I think Butler had a harder problem. His job was to produce violence and threats of violence. It's harder to know whether that's truly used for good ends than, say, a web form.

Honestly, that's not a great example. Re-evaluating your ethical impact on the world is not the same as understanding the direct consequences of your daily work. Both are important, but really different. After all we are not discussing some more abstract issues of modern software propagating capitalistic values (we are all "the system", etc, etc).

> Honestly, that's not a great example. Re-evaluating your ethical impact on the world is not the same as understanding the direct consequences of your daily work. Both are important, but really different.

Why does the difference matter again?

Because looking back at the decades of your work while being retired is just a sweet ethical exercise with very few direct personal and financial consequences.

If you are an engineer employing dark UX patterns _today_ you must look at yourself and evaluate the ethics of your work _today_. This will likely have direct personal and financial consequences.

So the stakes are completely different.

I always took it that Butler underwent an epiphany after years of believing something else. Maybe it was a case of eyes wide open. Nonetheless your distinction stands and yes it's very significant. I wonder how many developers are being hoodwinked and how many are just not being very honest with themselves.

I might be wrong, but I always lean towards this being the result of prioritization. Most engineers know the difference but prioritize other aspects than ethical. I am not even judging that, just describing. After all, implementing a dark UX pattern that will inconvenience some unknown to you users is not as high priority as providing to your own family.

It's a different mindset. When you're in uniform, under oath, you don't speak out, you salute and do what you're ordered to. When you retire, you take the uniform off and are your own man again.