By this logic every class other than pure math involves a “priestly caste” because teaching involves decisions about what to cover and how to do so. In reality, what happens is that professionals in the field set standards for what should be covered and those are periodically reviewed and updated, and what keeps that from being the exercise in dogma which you appear to be worried about is having that process and the results public. The problem with priests occurs when they’re given special privileges without accountability, and that’s far less of a concern when, say, the standard is “a panel of experts recognized in the field accepted this standard after public comment” than “$DEITY says you have to do it my way, no questions”.
Put another way, real engineers, doctors, scientists who work with human subjects, lawyers, finance people, etc. do not seem to have a conceptual hazard from professional ethics codes. Why would we expect software development to be so different?
Re:Reflections on Palantir
by deltarholamda on Thursday October 17, 2024 @04:31PM
(#41873460)
>Why would we expect software development to be so different?
It isn't. Recall the big push on DEI initiatives, quite similar to the push to remove blacklist/whitelist or master/slave in the software world. Or the guardrails put onto LLMs so they don't become antisemitic or whatever. Why was it a good thing to do? Because the priestly caste said it was, and tolerated no questions about it. You seem to be unaware of the concept of institutional capture.
And, yes, all teaching involves some sort of bias. We haven't yet created the human that is free from bias.
That's a priestly caste. Of if, as you say, there may be a problem in the formulated standards, then the body that formulates the standards would be the priestly caste. I don't have a problem with the concept, actually, but it's best to call it what it is. Pretending that this would be perfectly neutral is daft.