Ethics & Engineering

Table of Contents

1. Why Does It Matter?
2. Current State
3. Mindset Going Forward (And Back)
4. Call to action
5. Further reading
6. Footnotes

Why Does It Matter?

Since thousands of years ago we have had doctors and we have had engineers. (Proof from ancient Iran, at least ~7500BC)^{1 2}
Medical practitioners and doctors have had codes of conduct for ethics, like the Hippocratic oath by Hippocrates (400 BC) and Ethics of Doctors by Ishaq Bin-Ali Al-Rahawi (600 CE).
They at least have to take one course about ethics and take the Hippocratic oath, which doesn't mean they will necessarily obey it, but at least they have heard it once.
This is important because doctors and medical practitioners work with lives, and them not abiding by ethics can cause disasters and cause the loss of lives.

I want to talk about why is there no mandatory course about ethics and philosophy for engineering students? Or even if there is, it is not a topic very much talked about in the world of engineers. We are much more fascinated by technicalities than matters like ethics.
Although in the world of software engineers the matters of ethics are very bold, with movements like Free software and FOSS, the percentage of engineers who truly care and support these concepts is very small.

Of course, what doctors do is very delicate and deals with human lives and safety a lot, but doesn't an engineer's work deal with lives? Can't we safely say that in the current age, The work of an engineer is more critical than the work of a doctor? The footprint of engineering is more prevalent in our lives than any other time in history. Everything, even medicine heavily depends on engineering now. You can't make pharmaceuticals without engineering, you can't conduct a surgery without engineering, and hell, you can't even obtain knowledge from your computer without engineering. Engineering is the pillar of our society's advancements.

Sadly, most engineers (that I know of, at least) have never even considered that there is a concept such as ethics in engineering.
The same way that it means everything that a doctor abides by these ethics, it is even more critical (Whatever "More critical than critical" means) for an engineer to abide them and think about the consequences of their actions.

This issue is felt more in a field that is very abstract, like software engineering. A civil engineer can see and know that if they build a road wrong or a building wrong, it will visibly cause disaster and people will be hurt. They will directly see the consequences of their mistakes. But software engineers, for example, deal with much more philosophical and abstract concepts like consent, privacy, freedom, fairness, neutrality, etc.

A software engineer designing embedded software for a pacemaker must be very aware of the consequences of a bug in their software, and the consequences can be very tangible. But if they implement the capability for the pacemaker to connect to your smartphone and then send all your cardiac and maybe other biological data to their servers without your consent, or in a way that you cannot really refuse it, which they will eventually sell the data to the best buyer, the consequences of this action are not very tangible.
The engineer might convince themself that this is not a big deal and no harm can be done through this. Because things like privacy are abstract matters and are not widely accepted as a basic human right.

I have had countless debates with educated people about why privacy and freedom are important. And sometimes I can't convince them at all!
If I punch somebody in the face, they will immediately realize how bad punching someone in the face for no reason is, and how much it hurts, and if it bleeds.
But it is very hard to make people see and feel the consequences of lack of something like privacy and freedom.
It's very hard to make somebody numb to getting punched in the face, but it's very easy for them to become numb to the lack of freedom.

“In a world where privacy is seen as a luxury, remember that it is a basic human right.”

– Edward Snowden

If you need help understanding why privacy is important, visit this short article. Also visit whyprivacymatters.org

Current State

So we see how a lack of ethics can ruin our world, especially the lack of it within the disciplines of engineering.

Here are some significant elements of the state of our world today:

• Constant surveillance and control (No privacy)
• Humans have the illusion of freedom but they have less freedom than ever before.
  • You have to pay for water, good air, food, soil, things that nature just gave us but are monopolized and restricted now.
• You are a product to big companies. They are making money off of you and then selling it back to you.
  • Think about how YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, etc. are making money.
• The majority of people are following mindlessly whatever is forced onto them.
• Unethical company owners and managers give unethical orders, and unethical engineers follow through with the orders.
  • This is no different from the military leader ordering genocide and the soldiers that execute the order. Both are guilty and immoral.
  • Think about the harm that is caused by the engineers who are implementing forced telemetry and surveillance into software like Google Search or your phone's OS (or every other closed source software).
  • Think about the engineers who hid and redacted known faults of the reactor in Chernobyl, which caused the death and suffering of millions of people.
• People are getting more and more powerless against the things that are happening to them and eventually become numb. So they will follow through with more unethical acts. And close their eyes more upon injustice.
• The planet that we are living on is at its worst state from the beginning of human kind. The planet and its nature will never be destroyed, but our lives that depend on it will be.
  • Humans are a small fraction of nature and the world's ecosystem. We are currently moving against nature, which is THE "unstoppable force". The only outcome will be our eradication.

This, This is the result of a lack of ethics in engineering. We are living the consequences of lack of ethics. Not only in engineering but in all the fields. But I think that currently, the lack of engineering ethics is having a very notable effect on us.

Following ethics, needs a backbone. The courage to stand up, the courage to say no, The courage to turn down a big paycheck for a more modest paycheck with a better cause. To go a different route than the others.
And it also needs integrity and dignity.

I understand it is very idealistic to never break. We are human after all and make mistakes. And sometimes, there is no other choice. So first ask yourself, "Is there really no other choice?", If there isn't, choose the bad option not the worse option. But if there is another viable choice, there are no excuses.

Note:

A human without morals and ethics is no human, But a talking animal...

A human without morals and ethics is no human, but a talking animal. What differs humans from animals is our morals and ethics, our codes of conduct, boundaries and philosophies.

It doesn't matter to me how much technical skills you have, If you can write an operating system in 10 minutes, Or if you have figured out quantum computers. If you do not have morals and ethics, to me you are just an impressive beast. The same way a puzzle solving chimpanzee might amuse me.

This is why I do not admire people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and the rest.
I am in love with engineering and technology, but it doesn't matter to me what technical achievements they have made. From what I see, the net outcome of their actions is that they have made our world a worse place.

In the name of progression, we are losing the true meanings and values of life. The train of life is getting more steam power and moving faster and faster, and we are not riding it anymore, we are not looking out the window and enjoying the view, we are not eating at the buffet. We are only trying to catch up because we are not on board anymore.

We are having a hard time breathing, our drinking water is mostly polluted, The food we eat is mostly polluted, We are constantly being spied on, and you will shamelessly get punished for trying to fight or escape them.
This is not progression. We have gone the wrong route because we have forgotten our base values.
The world has become greedy, and nothing can satisfy it.

Mindset Going Forward (And Back)

Do you know why my country is called Iran and our people have called themselves Iranian for thousands of years? "Iranian" means free. Free from greed, free from temptation, free from envy. Free from this mortal world.^[3]
This is what my people chose to call themselves because this was the highest value for them. Being free.

In the old times in Iran, We had Hakims.
Hakims were known and praised for their hekmat(wisdom). We also had scientists but they were not nearly as celebrated and respected as our wise men and women. People would go to these people and ask for guidance and wisdom. These were people like Hakim Abolqasem Ferdowsi (who wrote the Shaahnameh), Saadi, Mowlavi(known as Rumi in foreign countries) and so on.
The words of these people are still alive and inspiring millions of people all around the world. Their wisdom is still relevant and words to live by.

We have moved on from wisdom, to an obsession and fetishism for pure science and technological improvement.
Technology for the sake of technology, without philosophy and thought behind it.
Technology must be solving problems and improving life quality, not creating more problems to sell more solutions.

Note:

Technology must be solving problems and improving life quality, not creating more problems to sell more solutions.

When you mention that technology is making our lives worse, a very common argument is along the lines of:
"Have you seen how people lived a hundred years ago? Working in fields with all kinds of diseases and all the problems?".

I agree. Life was indeed hard, and I don't suggest we should get rid of technology and improvements, But emphasize on the improvements part. And people being dirty and sick doesn't necessarily mean that they were not happy either. I might be wrong, but when my grandparents tell me their stories and stories about their parents (Even though none of them were dirty, sick, or doing hard labor) and show me their photo albums or diaries, the prior generations seem much happier to me, and they agree with this.
If you read stories from the books of Saadi from around 850 years ago, people were pretty much as happy as we are today, if not happier.

Because happiness isn't an absolute value, it is relative.

Call to action

I don't have solutions for the biggest problems of humanity, of course. But here are my thoughts.

We should start from ourselves. Each and every one of us are another building block of this world. A single brick can make or break a million brick structure. We cannot change the whole world but we can change ourselves, and the sphere of life that we carry around us.

Ever since I was a kid, long before I knew what quantum mechanics were or what quantum entanglement is -And I still don't know what they are-, I always thought about a concept that defines how we humans and our universe are fully entangled. I strongly believe in this and have felt it. Even a thought forming in your mind can change the thoughts that form in the minds of others, Your intents have direct reflections on other people and the outside world. And when those intents and thoughts get materialized by strong belief, they have far greater and more noticeable results.
So form and cultivate your intents, And materialize them by your belief. This is my plan for changing the world, maybe a microscopic step. But billions and billions of microscopic steps create a whole marathon.

Even though there are inherently bad and evil people and groups, trying to actively make the world worse, but they will always exist and we can't change them. So while we do fight them, don't blame everything on them and then do nothing.

Forgive me if I have ranted too much, but I think we engineers are too busy (or have been purposely made busy) with "Check out this new framework", "Check out this new Rust rewrite" "Check out this cool new tool" "Check out this brand-new research" that we are constantly playing catch-up and working mindlessly, and we have strayed from our true purpose.

Dear colleagues and engineers around the world, please put down your tutorials and tools for a while, And think about why you are doing this? What is your purpose? And what are the ethics and morals of it? Are you currently doing anything unethical or immoral? If yes, how can you stop it? How can you actually make the world a better place?

May we create a better society and find harmony with each other and our world, Starting with ourselves.

Further reading

• https://ethicalengineer.ttu.edu/articles/engineering-ethics-and-its-impact-on-society
• https://raeng.org.uk/media/batgo4ye/engineering_ethics_in_practice_shorter.pdf
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering_ethics
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_technology

Footnotes