Clint Adams: The hats were made in Nicaragua, really.
Numerous professional fields have codes of ethics. Numerous individuals
have their own personal casuistries which can manifest themselves in
structured expressions of moral or ethical belief.
For example, the bellicose snake cuddlers of the Martym Waste pledge
that they will never bet against their own snakes in any cuddle
matches. Permitting such behavior would be prone to abuse, as the
cuddler would be tempted to cruelly withhold love from the snake
in advance of the cuddle match, thereby sabotaging the cuddle
balance.
In Framingham, Massachussetts, there's a girl who refuses to buy
soap made from fish fat; only the pork-based soaps are acceptable
to her. The reasoning for this is irrelevant.
The American medical industry has many ethical rules, and the
American pharmaceutical industry does not.
Lawyers have to behave in certain ways with regard to their clients.
The American Psychological Association has
ethical principles.
In the area of experimentation, some principles are shared with the
medical industry: informed consent, for instance. For non-professionals,
this is not an issue, and you will see laymen performing experiments on
unwitting persons all the time.
I once saw someone announce that she found Panama hats irresistably sexy.
She thought it would be fun to lie to see whether or not anyone would
wear Panama hats the next day. A few people did. She laughed and called
them pathetic losers. For a legitimate psychologist, this would be
improper behavior; the victims of the experiment did not give informed
consent. For her, apparently, there is nothing objectionable in this
behavior.
Another important precept is the post-experiment debriefing. One may
assume that an experiment is just a one-off thing and if things don't
work as planned, one can just move on and try something new.
Unfortunately, social experiments can cause irreparable harm to the
participants, which is why the experimenters take precautions to
avoid harm throughout the experiment, and do damage control as part of
the debriefing if the preventative measures have failed.
For the Panama hat girl, there is no obligation for avoidance of
harm, debriefing, or cleaning up any mess she might have caused.
Perhaps karma or ill will will bite her in the ass. Perhaps not.
Fortunately, people do not submit to whimsy and perform social
experiments without thinking through the potential consequences
very, very carefully. Under other conditions, the world might
be a place of distress, and sociology books might be more than
4 pages thick.
Then we had theory about servers and a little bit networking, I mean, most IT-students administrate some servers in their office and we learned today “A server provides a service in a network”, very interesting! Yes, so I will better forget this day!
catch(ExceptionMarioDemotivated md)
There are also reasons to celebrate! Today are 2 birthdays which are quite important to me. First Kerim, one of my best friends, became 17 and has now only to wait one year anymore until he’s “adult” here in Switzerland, ok, “to be adult” is relative anyway. Kerim, I wish you a lot of luck and love and whatever for your future! Stay as you are and I’m already glad to go to Zurich with you again (I’ll pay the next Frappu)
The other important birthday belongs to the Debian project which is now 13 years young. Thanks to the whole community. For example I’m writing now this blog (and serve it) with Debian, so it’s time to say all “members” THANK YOU to make it possible! I’m thinking again about the future, what will be actual in 13 years in the IT? Will we win “the war” against software patents and all the other problems? At least our success with the ODF is motivating for the next 13 years!
Ok, I’m quite busy now with baking some Debian-bread, I will offer a little brunch tomorrow in the office. Details, pictures and recipe will follow tomorrow.
