Quotes About Ethics

People in startup-land live inside it. They see themselves as really good people even when they're doing something that's very bad. There's a huge disconnect from reality in the tech world.

I'm ambivalent about tech.

If a tech journalist needs financial security before doing what their conscience dictates, I'm not sure they should be calling themselves journalists at all.

If we really wanted to have a reorientation of the tech industry toward what's best for people, then we would ask the second question, which is, what would be the most time well spent for the thing that people are trying to get out of that situation?

I believe GamerGate is at its core a positive movement that fights against obvious corruption in journalism and the tech industry.

There are some people that are trying to cure death, this tech immortality... That seems mentally ill.

For a long time I think journalists and society at large really did drink that Kool-Aid. They bought the message that the tech industry is good and they can do no wrong.

None of most powerful tech companies answer to what's best for people, only to what's best for them.

It always makes me super nervous how many tech companies don't have data ethicists.

There is no quick technical fix for a social problem.

To address questions of scientific responsibility does not necessarily imply that one needs technical competence in a particular field (e.g. biology) to evaluate certain technical matters.

Psychopaths know the technical difference between right and wrong - which is one of the reasons their insanity pleas in criminal cases so rarely succeed; they just fail to act on that knowledge.

Politicians are expected to spend half their time talking to funders and to keep them happy. Given this context, it's not hard to see how a bribery charge can feel like a technical argument instead of a moral one.

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

In the past, you might have said, 'This player is technically not good - let's prey on her.' But now, the game is professional in most countries - you can't just play on that.

I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that is immoral, even if it is technically legal.

I actually don't mind whether people can choose the sex of the baby - in fact humans have been trying to do it for 3,000 years. But there is a real issue about the safety of the technique.

You get Don King's point of view in what is almost a Shakespearean, classical technique. He comes across almost like a lovable rogue, like Iago in 'Othello' or Richard III. He's doing all these bad things, but I kind of like him. It's like 'Pulp Fiction': Everybody's a bad guy, yet you like them.

And I say in the book, 'Hard Measures,' that actually they were pretty wimpy if you really - if the American people actually knew what these techniques where, they would say, what are you talking about?

Enhanced interrogation is not to be considered lightly, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques does not require moral people to abandon their beliefs. Rather, it is precisely during these difficult times that one's beliefs about life, justice and mercy become indispensible.

There are no techniques in politics.

I don't believe in technological determinism, especially not in biology and medicine. We have strong laws to keep doctors from monkeying around with humans that will remain in place. It's simply not true that everything that is technologically possible gets done.

When technological advancement can go up so exponentially, I do think there's a risk of losing sight of the fact that tech should serve humanity, not the other way around.

The technological way of thinking has infected even ethics, which is supposed to be thinking about the good.