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Comment by volkanh | Hacker News Reader

What makes a programmer different than any other person who needs to ask the same question to himself/herself? What about unethical weapons, medicine, sales practices?

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That's what the article is saying, but in last sentence. According to author we should have associations like doctors, IEEE and Association for Computer Machinery is already starting to do this.

And have been for years the late Daniel D. McCracken do work on this way back.

Everybody should ask these questions but in reality most people don't and go along with their leaders. Standing up for your values is inconvenient and often comes at a high cost if you are not independently wealthy.

Exactly. The problem is that everyone is beholden to money. If you do the right thing, you lose your job. And maybe even get blacklisted so you don't work again. Stuff like this is stuff of nightmares but it happens over and over again. Enough to make people think twice or thrice about going against the status quo.

Its enough to believe you may lose your job. Most people can't afford to find out if that's really the case.

But at least you can't give them your body and mind--that is the heart of resistance.

It's not difficult to do at least some research of a company before you accept a job. Take the extra month to find a job with a company that's never had any scandals that you're uncomfortable with, one whose business model isn't built on violating their customer's privacies or being otherwise ethically dubious, and one who emphasizes ethical responsibility in their code of conduct. In other words, pay the cost upfront.

It's not a sure way to ensure you never encounter these problems, but it will reduce the likelihood.

The market is either a supply market or a demand market. If you are in a job supply market, where there is more supply than demand, perhaps you can do that. If you are in a job demand market you can not do that. And sure this should be how a person exercises his morality. But I think most ethically dubious situations are not evident outright. Big companies spend a lot of money through P/R department to keep their images clean.

It's a two step process. First we teach all the programmers to always be ethical. Then we teach everyone to program. Boom. No more problems.

Nothing really. I think that providing a general ethics lesson then combining it with industry specific examples helps give people a more complete understanding of what these conflicts look like.

or legal tactics.

Pretty much the whole Military Industrial Complex is unethical and I have avoided them in my career. But here's the thing I realized: There isn't a single industry out there that isn't getting some kind of government subsidy, tax break, or major handout. So we're all ethically compromised! But I still won't work for the war machine directly. I'd rather go hungry.

Stepping in to alter what the 'free market' desires is not de-facto unethical.

Immoral yes. Unethical no. They do horrible things, but they do abide the rules placed upon them. Those rules are scant and toothless but that is a different question.

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