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Comment by pepper_sauce | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised by the mental gymnastics other commenters in this thread are displaying in order to avoid contemplating how tech can and should be held responsible for its own actions.

All the more reason to push for some form of professional ethics!

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I think those mental gymnastics are the result of cognitive dissonance. There's discomfort resulting from the idea that some action could be unethical in a non-obvious way to someone intelligent enough to be in the tech industry (this is sheer hubris and ignorance of course), or that intelligence does not lead to ethical behavior; or the idea that ethics could or should limit either innovation or income; or the idea that externalities are unacceptable exploitation, i.e. it really is someone else's problem. And like any ordinary person, people are resolving the discomfort with dismissal.

The history of the hippocratic oath shows that despite its age, it didn't really become popular in medicine until 1000 years after it was written. Seems reasonably likely there was quite a lot of mental gymnastics in the medical profession, arguing against an oath.

I don't find it surprising. A lot of what makes up the gold rush or Silicon Valley is based on implementing dark patterns and foisting things upon the user that don't actually help them. Being able to work on things that addict and deceive the masses gives a sense of power to a lot of people, and it promises a fair sum of money. I personally refuse to work for companies that use software for nefarious purposes, even if everything they're doing is legal.

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