Ethics in abstract disciplines (was: Making a better textbook (was Re: The Deitel book))

[Charles Krug]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2002 15:27:26 +0000, Alan Kennedy <alanmk at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Cameron Laird wrote:
> 
>> I don't understand this description.  It
>> certainly interests me, though.  I take
>> it that "CS" here means the kind of soft-
>> ware engineering and technology that's
>> typicall taught in college.  And you're
>> seriously saying that sections on ethics
>> appeared in half of your classes?  Can
>> you give a few examples of such content?
> 
> When I was studying for Computer Science degree, in each of the 4 years
> we had a term (semester) of ethics classes, 1 hour per week. These were
> usually given by the same lecturers who gave courses in more technical
> Comp Sci matters.
> 
> The one that really sticks out in my mind is the following question that
> was posed to us in 2nd year (age ~20).
> 

(snip)

> We were posed the following scenario: "You are asked to develop a
> software simulation of the spread of a chemical warfare agent. The
> purpose of the simulation is to maximise the death toll from the use of
> that agent".
> 

That's far more interesting than our ethics unit, which dealt
exclusively with the Usual Suspects of copy protection and file access.

Were you in the real world outside of the Chemwar industry, the same
question would be coached in terms of fertilizer dispersal.  Your
employer would get the same information, but would avoid cluttering up
the question with folks emotions.

The same graph theory that solves networking problems also solves
indistrial logistics problems, and military transport problems.