s-shellfish

> Brent Hecht has a controversial proposal: the computer-science community should change its peer-review process to ensure that researchers disclose any possible negative societal consequences of their work in papers, or risk rejection.

Agreed.

> The idea is not to try to predict the future, but, on the basis of the literature, to identify the expected side effects or unintended uses of this technology.

Agreed.

> No, we’re not saying they should reject a paper with extensive negative impacts — just that all negative impacts should be disclosed.

Agreed.

> But we’re moving towards a more iterative, dialogue-based process of review, and reviewers would need to cite rigorous reasons for their concerns, so I don’t think that should be much of a worry. If a few papers get rejected and resubmitted six months later and, as a result, our field has an arc of innovation towards positive impact, then I’m not too worried. Another critique was that it’s so hard to predict impacts that we shouldn’t even try. We all agree it’s hard and that we’re going to miss tonnes of them, but even if we catch just 1% or 5%, it’s worth it.

Agreed.

> We need to be saying, based on existing evidence, what is the confidence that a given innovation will have a side effect? And if it’s above a certain threshold, we need to talk about it.

Agreed.

> We believe that in most cases, no changes are necessary for any peer reviewers to adopt our recommendations — it is already in their existing mandate to ensure intellectual rigour in all parts of the paper. It’s just that this aspect of the mandate dramatically underused.

Agreed.

> Then, the gatekeepers are the press, and it’s up to them to ask what the negative impacts of the technology are.

Agreed.

> Disclosing negative impacts is not just an end in itself, but a public statement of new problems that need to be solved. We need to bend the incentives in computer science towards making the net impact of innovations positive. When we retire will we tell our grandchildren, like those in the oil and gas industry: “We were just developing products and doing what we were told”? Or can we be the generation that finally took the reins on computing innovation and guided it towards positive impact?

Agreed.

I haven't read this article (https://acm-fca.org/2018/03/29/negativeimpacts/) in entirety but I agree with the bolded points. Only viewed bolded points up to the examples.

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Edit: I want to say thank you for your respectful tone in spite of my slightly aggressive(?) one. I'm grateful to people like you because it reminds me, it matters a lot.

I will not be convinced into believing a PhD represents less than what it does. They are absolutely fundamental to the retention, collection, understanding, and dispersion of knowledge. Otherwise intellectual understanding goes in circles. No progress.

Since when did Wikipedia become the authority on what a PhD represents?

That's a little freaking ironic if you don't mind me saying. A PhD represents it's own authority by virtue of being awarded by the tiny fraction of people in the world who actually understand the problem space you might be studying enough to say "Research accepted. We trust you can take our place as educators and researchers in the future when we are dead."

Also, there's a good reason the Greeks had that archaic way of categorizing knowledge. Hyper-connectivity of all knowledge available at once is a total clusterfuck to deal with from an individual mind perspective. Just because it's old doesn't make it wrong. History repeats itself, etc.

> We don't have moral discussions about the discovery of a new law of physics or a mathematical lemma.

Abstraction affects mental functionality. It forms expectations by designing a language in which the present can be expected to be predicted within some objective, measurable tolerance. The problem, always has been, and always will be - is that people can't be measured and tested like machines.

> This only becomes an issue when we can see how it can be applied to some aim.

So yes. That's correct, that's the terrible thing that can be observed and measured when it happens. Prevention is important.

> Thus if there were no engineers nobody would consider the scientists moral obligations with the exception of their experiments themselves causing harm.

Sorry, no, that again, ridiculous. You think that way. Not everyone thinks the same. Intent. Experimentation is intended to discover in a controlled environment while giving heavy weight to moral implications. People choose to opt in to scientific studies. People trust that process when they make that decision.

> The argument to limiting science is that engineers might take it and create some terrible machine with it. Perhaps the most notorious example being a nuclear bomb.

Yes, and what makes us think we are so evolved and so advanced to believe we can't accidentally create something similar with present technology - lacking awareness to it's creation? Evolution won't protect us against our own idiocy.

Reasoning about computation affects cognition, which has real world consequences that extend to everything else that is not reasoning about computation. That's just all there is to it.

> I believe we agree on the role of science, I don't think we agree on what their culpability should be.

They should be able to talk about personal, first hand experiences openly without being professionally attacked, first. Second, they should be able to talk about existing problems without fear of whose bottom line it might affect. There should not be blame in systems where everything is hard as heck to understand. Obligation to the truth - yes. Blame for the belief that there was the intent to create a problem by virtue of uncovering one? No. That has shortsightedness written all over it.

> Science and Engineering are inextricably linked in this discussion.

Of course they are, but this article is very specifically about the role of the scientist. Not the engineer.

Will negative disclosure cause problems for engineers? I don't know. What I do know, is it isn't fair to place that burden of knowledge entirely on scientists while tying their hands behind their back with respect to open discussion in a professional setting. Academic publishing is intended to be open without fear of professional and personal repercussion for increasing factual awareness. Get rid of that and, well, sit back, relax, and I hope we all can enjoy the apocalypse of knowledge, because that's where stuff is headed without the ability to professionally discuss existing problems.

> Nobody would be discussing the moral implications of scientific discoveries if it didn't ultimately lead to machines that cause effect in the real world.

That's just factually wrong. Mathematics. Philosophers. Logicians. All the living and dead theorists who built the abstract foundations essential for the functioning of our machines. People who deal entirely in the world of the abstract. You don't develop a passion for abstraction because you want something out of reality. You develop a passion for abstraction because reality is sometimes terrible.

Doctorate of philosophy.

The Ph in PhD actually means something. It's not some kitschy decoration.

This article is not about what could happen in the future.

This article is about what does happen now, and is stigmatized against being disclosed due of fear of personal reprecussions.

That was never the point of academia. These institutions exist with all their rules and regulations precisely because to discover and uncover, one must not be afraid of how it will affect oneself from keeping a roof over one's head.

Presently, this article is being severely misinterpreted.

Some people already experience societal consequences and they have yet to be academically discovered.

That's the point of this article. Not future prediction of what could happen. What is happening, and is presently an unknown.

Expect of others? No.

But are such questions important? Very.

There is a big difference between computer science and computer engineering.

Science is about understanding. Engineering is about using that understanding for building.

Well, hopefully that friend can learn how to see everything they do as amazing internally, when they want to.

Everyone needs that sometimes in life. Comes down to self belief, self expectations, hopes, dreams.

I don't know what your manic friend is like, but I do know that if you really care about them, think of yourself as a guide to find those things out, and help them get there.

As children we are allowed to believe we can do anything. It's vitally important to retain that part of you.

I can't assume that a lot of people understand their cycles. But we all have them. Every person I've met, known, or read from or about. Everyone has insecurities and dreams.

http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html

Being labeled mentally ill can feel like it's gas lighting, especially if oneself knows their self to be just as rational and competent as anyone else. Mental illness is often a matter of circumstance. Of course people who are homeless or fear the worst happening to them over and over are going to appear as though their decision making is being degraded by being called mentally ill. It's basically like being called an idiot, which is ironic, because, lots of mental healthcare attempts to reduce stigma, but still must discriminate between types of individuals for diagnosis, even though people really, really can't be labeled that way. It's always an observer bias.

I don't know if this helps or hurts generally, about mental illness, I don't know your specific circumstance or people you have interacted with who have mental illness. But feeling slapped with a label for the rest of your life feels like a huge burden to carry. Just because, you made some big 'mistakes', in front of someone who had the authority to give you that label.

Something I'm personally very stubborn about, and very outspoken about, is mental illness discrimination. You can read through these papers and see if they make sense to you, if you want to. I'm not sure how many of the papers I've read throughout my life about psychology, neuroscience, etc, but I've read a lot. I'm not a psychologist, therapist, or anyone who has been correctly (via an accredited institution) educated in mental health care, and I only study myself, and to a lesser degree, my family, as they study me. Mental illness should be a label you can have removed - because every variation of behavior mental illness describes as negative can also have a positive side, and trying to remove all the things mental illness labels as negative can really be handicapping, eventually. You need 'black and white' thinking for software development. Application of it to social systems, can be useful, but only in chaotic social systems where people identify you as 'the enemy', which is just as much up to them as it is to you.

Trying to identify one big thing as 'the error' in life just, this a burdensome mindset to have. No matter what it gets attached to. Oneself can convince oneself they believe 'that was it, that was the error' at any moment in time. Those things aren't future proof, and it's erroneous to assume they are.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1747091080231971...

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/49/11489?utm_source=Tren...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-29561-w

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6171/675

Trying to determine which one you are doing is hard problem, because, relying on incomplete information. I believe it's best to be internally positive about your own decision making, and let what is not you take over when it does. Sometimes other people know best, sometimes you do. Not everything is as easy to understand as a computer program, math proof, circuit board - anything logical, mechanical in nature, easy to understand, easy to identify gaps in understanding - because, it's a mechanical object. Those things lack consciousness. Being a rational being means having awareness for the difference (at least to me).

Selectivity in who to listen to, depends on trust, which is a hard problem, life can sometimes really beat up on any of us. I don't think it's a good thing to choose to interact with people you have to constantly decide between two binaries - manipulator or guide. That is the business world though, sometimes, unfortunately. Some people can seem like they are just out to get you, but that doesn't make it true.

Tolerance is important, but, emotions sometimes, seem mechanical in nature. At least how I understand my own, internally. Feels like being computer. Socializing in general always seems to be a hard problem. Even harder when there's a bottom line.

That goes down to base values.

Questioning ones that fundamentally don't align, but you never actually know, because you only see your own side.

You can think you see the other side, but that often is incorrect. Those things are built into us from everything we learn as we grow, from experience.

It's easier to just not consider people opponents, ones you choose to interact with. That's sometimes hard when the world seems screwed up.

The circular thing with dictionaries - that makes sense. I've always seen dictionaries as infinite. Shakespeare invented words. Computational definitions of symbols, mathematics, etc are different.

I don't really see it as circular, more like a spiral. Each layer of computation or math - in 3s. Computer, mind, paper. Or symbol relates to symbol through symbol. Deductive proof techniques, the memory of all existing knowledge filling in the gaps between each sequential step. Layers of definitions stack, those are computer programs.

https://youtu.be/Ad4T-j_bOVc

The internet makes so much of life weird. Memories, words. Everything a reminder, automatic.

My former PhD advisor said something along the lines of 'the incompleteness of natural language', this being one of the hardest problems he's been aware of.

This is him:

https://www.cs.stevens.edu/~naumann/publications/publication...

Was watching Sherlock Holmes recently.

'Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off of it.'

- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Thank you.

Time is something I'm learning to both be able to see as something to keep in mind from a practical perspective, but also, something I can seem to let go of. It's very challenging, sometimes - but it seems essential to grasp 'flow'. Thank you for that.

That's the one I intended, thank you!

Can't there be room for both awarenesses in a single mind?

For as much as reality is patterned, and can be comprehend 'absolutely' in a pragmatic, utilitarian sense - there's also another side to awareness (or many, I can never be sure). Imagine that everything that has to do with 'mind' is just as comprehensible in a different way. Or rather, imagine that that awareness 'takes over' or 'overrides' the natural awareness one was taught or learned to comprehend 'reality' with.

Science is vitally important to understanding things, making progress (however humanity defines it), building things, etc. But deep insight philosophically, I mean in my opinion, that's just as important, because they go hand in hand. One becomes a tool for the other. Or a tool turns into an awareness.

As someone whose had more than their fair share of experience wading in the somewhat deep (as in 'crazy') parts of the conscious pool of thought, yea, reality, comprehending it in the same way it's known to others - absolutely vital. But also not.

Doesn't make it pseudoscience. Just different questions, different things being noticed, taken apart, figured out, asked about, pondered on. Just like anything else, like ants on a trail to Feynman. Just because it looks 'weird', misinformed - whatever - for a brief instant, doesn't mean that's what it's going to turn into.

Yup. That's why.

I find it both chilling and lovely. Because on one hand, life, endless adventure, full of surprises, insights, new understandings and experiences, feelings, etc. On the other, absolute, fundamental, loneliness (sophistry?) of our own nature - having an individual sense of self but also feeling related to everything we define as not 'I'.

Why this life, why is this the one I have? Where did all of this come from? How did all of this happen?

Life is a waking dream, because we often completely forget that we really just don't know at all why we are here. But we pretend, we forget, we make up stories, we do anything we can do to run away from that question. Why. How did all of this happen? Why does everything happen the way it does? What does that mean, for what I am, all the way at the core?

It's not really nihilism, but it sort of is. It's just, that's the perpetual question that never gets answered directly.

I've thought of myself before as a monad - a being so fundamentally lonely in their own existence that they split themselves up into infinite pieces, just to forget, there's nothing more than what they are. Maybe some buddhist influences, but, we all have our struggles in life. It's not really intended to be sophistry. It just is a very beautiful, but very chilling awareness. What if I go back into what I was when I die?

You could see this as a mental metaphor my mind has arbitrarily made up for all events I've witnessed and been a part of, some sort of perpetual social ostracism I keep walking myself into. But I still think it's more than just that. I loved science growing up. But I can never answer that question - and I know absolutely, that I never will. What happened before 'I exist'?. For any of us. My father often has had a variant of this question, and in the past, it's rubbed people the wrong way because, only a fraction of it gets expressed. We all wear masks. Sometimes there's just a profoundly deep sadness that no one can see.

Chilling, and lovely. In perpetuity.

It's easy to get them flipped around. Inside of mind versus the outside.

Axiom of choice, choosing the right thoughts to have versus to speak.

If you don't understand, you don't want to. It's a perpetual type of terror that often has nothing to do with reality, but you can never be sure.

Human thinking models itself. Logic is just one way of avoiding the insanity of how crazy the experience of life can actually be. Relevance logic though, clever.

It's pain to learn one must take care to avoid confusing math with everything else. Unexpectedly, sure. Safe languages...sentimentality. Thought processes... everything it can be compared against. Here be dragons, tedious caution required.

"Proofs of programs are too boring for the social process of mathematics to work."

- Richard Demillo, Richard Lipton, and Alan Perlis, 1979

"... So don't rely on social processes for verification"

- David Dill, 1999

We always lack some awareness.

Knowing the difference is sometimes not knowing.

It's hard to unthink a thought when it's transcribed online.

> If Kyogen was asked 3 times, would he change his answer?

Probably depends on some stuff I don't have the awareness yet for.