Children are always told that they could become a scientist or engineer one day and that this would be a great thing to achieve. Scientists and engineers are so highly regarded, yet they are often complicit in creating the necessary technology and machinery for most of the worlds worst projects. Climate change, plastic pollution, nuclear weapons, are all created by the worlds smartest and all the while they’re being told they’re doing a great job and bettering the world.
Ethics needs to be mandatory in all STEM studies. Jesus at least just make them watch Oppenheimer.
Ethics is largely mandatory for engineering majors (source: am finishing my bachelor’s in electrical engineering), but the first job or project you take will ask you to throw that out the window. (Source: family members who are also engineers)
There are two areas of safety considered: Operator/client safety, and regulatory compliance. All other safeguards are optional and ignoring them is encouraged.
Good point, there was also an ethics module in my engineering studies, but it didn’t really encourage you to think about where you’re employed, just what to do what you’re there. Which is useless
As a civil engineer with only a tiny bit of experience cos I switched to software. That holds true. Environmental and other ethical concerns are not even an afterthought in vast majority of engineering projects.
I think this is true of most civil engineering majors I know. After getting their degrees, very few actually ended up working in civil engineering because the money was better in software or other tech.
I had very little ethics being taught in my academic career. Most of what i know is high school level philosophy (from a country that still used to care about that stuff but aiming to change it soon). I would have loved more humanity courses. On the other hand, if you had given me the choice between a course in my speciality and a humanity course, I would have chose the specialty one every time
100%.
Children are always told that they could become a scientist or engineer one day and that this would be a great thing to achieve. Scientists and engineers are so highly regarded, yet they are often complicit in creating the necessary technology and machinery for most of the worlds worst projects. Climate change, plastic pollution, nuclear weapons, are all created by the worlds smartest and all the while they’re being told they’re doing a great job and bettering the world.
Ethics needs to be mandatory in all STEM studies. Jesus at least just make them watch Oppenheimer.
Ethics is largely mandatory for engineering majors (source: am finishing my bachelor’s in electrical engineering), but the first job or project you take will ask you to throw that out the window. (Source: family members who are also engineers)
There are two areas of safety considered: Operator/client safety, and regulatory compliance. All other safeguards are optional and ignoring them is encouraged.
Good point, there was also an ethics module in my engineering studies, but it didn’t really encourage you to think about where you’re employed, just what to do what you’re there. Which is useless
As a civil engineer with only a tiny bit of experience cos I switched to software. That holds true. Environmental and other ethical concerns are not even an afterthought in vast majority of engineering projects.
Holy shit, I’m not the only one?!
I think this is true of most civil engineering majors I know. After getting their degrees, very few actually ended up working in civil engineering because the money was better in software or other tech.
I had very little ethics being taught in my academic career. Most of what i know is high school level philosophy (from a country that still used to care about that stuff but aiming to change it soon). I would have loved more humanity courses. On the other hand, if you had given me the choice between a course in my speciality and a humanity course, I would have chose the specialty one every time