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Comment by lukan | Hacker News Reader

It seems to work somewhat with medical doctors and the Hippocratic Oath.

But I would argue it is way easier there. Building software has way more grey areas.

I don't think there are more grey areas in software engineering than in medicine. The difference is the feedback loop of the outcome - if you design a dopamine slot machine you will ruin the generation and that's a long arc.

And that makes it hard. I am open for banning all comercial advertisement - but general society is largely fine with it. So is someone designing new targeting algorithm for ads breaking his potential oath of doing good for society?

What grey areas are there for doctors?

Tangential, but where do you draw the line on commercial advertisement? If a podcast is sponsored by a business & supports behavior the business benefits from, is the podcast advertising? What if it also contains useful educational content related to that activity?

There probably will never be a clear line and none of this is realistic, but I would start with banning all flashy light polluting physical advertisements. Any advertisement people cannot evade.

A podcast I can choose to listen or not. A news site I can also evade. But any (internet) service people must use, should be ad free. Ideally all of society, but any regulation here will have a hard time in the real world.

Prescribing meds which you could avoid while receiving 'courses' from Key Opinion Leaders in fancy places from the pharma companies. This ranges from antibiotics through psychotropics and up until the pain meds. You can argue some of it is on the safe side, some may be beneficial, etc. Should you accept an invitation to a conference which will increase your skills?

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