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Comment by AsymetricCom | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr: how to be a good robot.

You really think that taking an oath to be morally responsible for what you create and how you create it is being a robot?

What a ridiculous thing to say.

An important note here: "Moral" does not refer to a singular set of values, behaviors or beliefs. It only refers to a moral system, any moral system. That is why that oath the PP carries around from morning till night is "moral", yet does nothing to encourage the larger ramifications of their work, such as ecology, human rights, etc. It's only one moral system, not one which respects others' rights (beyond efficacious contractual obligatoin), etc.

Interesting how the wiki version of the "Obligation of the Engineer"^1 seems to speak toward being a good steward of technology, humanity and public resources where the oath the OP quotes is more focused on delivering a good product and being obligated to do so by your pay.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Engineer

Um. It talks about fair wages. How is that being obligated to do so by your pay?

It really depends on the context you read it in and how you define some of the key words.

So... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4XT-l-_3y0

So?

No. How to be a responsible engineer who doesn't get people killed. There are situations in life that require one to grow the fuck up, and being a professional engineer is one of them.

> How to be a responsible engineer who doesn't get people killed.

Actually, the above oath will maximize the number of people killed if the sworn engineer happens to be working on a weapon. There is absolutely nothing in that oath about not doing harm.

There's a difference between a collapsing bridge (the original reason for the oath) and a weapon. You knew from the start that the weapon was going to kill people. I'm ok with designing weapons; my ethical beliefs allow that. It would be unethical to accept the project but deliver a weapon that didn't work properly.

> I'm ok with designing weapons; my ethical beliefs allow that. It would be unethical to accept the project but deliver a weapon that didn't work properly.

Sabotage for a good cause is unethical? You have strange ethical beliefs.

> Actually, the above oath will maximize the number of people killed if the sworn engineer happens to be working on a weapon.

That depends on the weapon. If a weapon malfunctions and kills its operators, that will help maximize casualties. But it would still be a failure on the engineer's part. If it's supposed to kill its operators, then it wasn't.

Many engineers are employed to create devices that kill as efficiently as possible.

And an ethical engineer would design those weapons so that they don't blow up in a soldier's magazine or a submarine missile tube.

It's about adhering to a code of ethics, not undertaking some Hippocratic oath. In most places that code is actually a concrete document, which can be used as grounds to discipline/prosecute/regulate you, should you breach it.

I'm not pulling this stuff out of my ass, and I'm not sure why people seem to want to discredit my thesis that engineers are/should be ethically bound to not endanger the public good.

You do what you think is right. If you think designing weapons helps the greater good, you should design them well. Remember nuclear weapons prevented at least one global war and a couple regional ones.

And no. I have refused to design weapons early on in my career and I would refuse to do so now. I took my oath (a slightly different one, because I am Brazilian) and I take it very seriously.

Being called "a good robot" is beyond offensive.

Due to anthropic selection effects, we don't know how many wars were really caused by nuclear weapons...

Many wars of the late 20th century were proxy wars between nuclear powers. My bet is that, without MAD, they would have happened anyway, with the powers fighting directly. It would be very ugly.

Besides, we may need nukes to vaporize incoming asteroids. They can also be handy if you need to quickly dig a hole, move a mountain or if you need a cannon that can reach orbiting spacecraft.

This is the second time in as many days that I've seen a position reduced to "You're like a kid, and I'm like a grown-up." Cool argument.

edit: I hereby coin The Argument From Maturity - of which the simplest prototype is, "Grow up."

Equivocating taking the engineer's oath with being a 'good robot' is childish, at best. I could also call it ignorant, or perhaps on its to criminal (if somebody truly believes that and puts it into practice).

The engineer's oath towards ethical practice is precisely about not being a robot. We have specifications, years of technical brainwashing in school, and employment imperatives to make us into robots. Ethical practice is about having a watchdog thread in your brain that monitors your situation as an engineer. When a situation comes up where you could be a robot and do something stupid/illegal/dangerous/corrupt, the hope is that you can invoke your ethical/moral compass and make the right choice. Hopefully your compass is better calibrated than some unnamed folks in this thread.

You want to talk about reducing a position simplistically? How about taking the backbone of a healthy engineering infrastructure, one which everybody relies on and must trust, and equating its core values to being a 'good robot'. I'm not reducing that person's position, I'm defending the position of the person who understands what they're talking about.

So, yes, I reiterate to anyone who agrees with the OP: grow up. Or better yet, don't be a god damn engineer.

> The engineer's oath towards ethical practice is precisely about not being a robot.

How so? I didn't get that at all from the oath.

Can you elaborate which part you think reads like being a robot? The main point is to do excellent work if you're going to do any work.

The argument reduces to "being a good engineer and not getting people killed". The insult is a dismissal with an eyeroll of a dumb comment.

How to build a good robot, you mean.

If you want to be a robot, you need a lot of practice. Walking that way is surprisingly hard.

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