> it's very common for ethicists to have advanced degrees in the scientific/technical area.

Maybe, I can't tell, I am missing hard data on the distribution of degrees among ethicists. The one from Facebook whose lectures I attended had no technical degree but multiple degrees related to philosophy and sociology. One of the first lecture statements was that "technology is inherently about power", which is obviously how people outside tech perceive us and what many SWEngs are naively missing as we tend to think it's all about fun and self-realization (well, OK, it's dystopian now after profit-sensing individuals invaded our field). So those people outside want to regulate us with "ethics", i.e. creating power structures they rule and we need to consult for permissions.

> sheet paranoia

Was this truly a line of thought you wanted me to follow in order to become unreasonable?

In any form of human co-operation we need to agree on some rules how that activity is carried out. It's not about some "ethicist" telling you what rules you must follow but majority of us agreeing to what the rules should be. The job of an ethicist then should be to point out problems in proposed and already agreed-to rules.

Yes, we already have those. They are called laws.

Ethics as is currently practiced in tech is using the mob to remove whoever you don't like.

To put it another way: the only person to lose their job over Epstein running a rape island was Stallman for being right but uncouth.

> Ethics as is currently practiced in tech is using the mob to remove whoever you don't like.

To the extent that that's even arguably true, it's irrelevant, since it's about the practice of basic organizational ethics within the tech community, and not about either the theory or pragmatics of any the discipline ethics of technology, or any of it's subdisciplines like AI Ethics, which is and are about the ethical implications of the application of technology, and not about the personal, non-tech-related ethics of people who happened to work in the field of technology.

> To put it another way: the only person to lose their job over Epstein running a rape island was Stallman for being right but uncouth.

Yeah, that is a very good illustration of how you are talking about something that has nothing to do with the Ethics of AI or any other ethics of technology subfields.

Pointing out that the interests of the supposed gatekeepers of morality are misaligned with society is a lot more worth while than doing the same for a group of people whose only crime is having a wage 50% higher than the median in the US.