Comment by dekhn
7 months ago
Perhaps the people who think it's goofy may have actually put some thought behind their statements and have good reasons? For example, I find the oath as written to be effectively impossible to implement- it's very lofty sounding, but depends greatly on the nature of "honesty":
"I shall participate in none but honest enterprises"
Who defines honesty in this context? What if two engineers disagree in their interpretation and come to different conclusions? The statements in this are so vague as to simply not be implementable in any sort of self-consistent way. Signing a vacuous unimplementable statement isn't integrity, it's mindless follower behavior.
Many of us act with integrity without signing oaths of loyalty.
> Signing a vacuous unimplementable statement isn't integrity, it's mindless follower behavior.
Aspirational ethics exist outside of verifiable scenarios.
"Honest enterprises" also falls into the trap of anthropomorphizing organizations. Companies are not people and cannot be honest/dishonest, moral/immoral, etc. Companies are made up of people who choose to take certain positions and actions. The oath sounds nice, but ultimately is empty.
Wait so because different people have different concepts of honesty you reject the concept of honesty wholesale?
Like surely you have some concept of honesty that you strive for... Unless you're like a sociopath?
I'm not saying it would be wrong to be a sociopath or to genuinely have no concept of an honest enterprise. I'm just trying to understand if you are truly amoral here, and that's why you can't formulate the statement in a way that makes sense to you, or if you're belaboring the point in protest because you need the statements to be more precise. I suspect it's the second one - you're just not aware of the common components of what an ethical enterprise is.
If you need a principal to be more precise, the usual way is to define sub principles that make up the principle. These principles in turn would tend to be defined in terms of other principles but let's assume that just one level of recursion gives us more meat to really judge the meaning of honest Enterprise. Then we might adopt principles like this:
Defining an "honest enterprise" in a way that is precise and actionable could incorporate several key principles. Here I have asked GPT4 to provide them, since it's excellent good at these kinds of ethical elaborations. I also happen to agree with the principles that it came up with.
Honest Enterprise is commonly taken to mean:
1. *Legal Compliance*: An honest enterprise complies with all applicable laws, regulations, and standards. This is a baseline requirement, reflecting a commitment to operate within the legal frameworks that govern its activities.
2. *Ethical Integrity*: Beyond legal compliance, an honest enterprise adheres to ethical standards. This includes transparency in operations, fairness in dealings with customers, suppliers, employees, and other stakeholders, and integrity in financial reporting and corporate governance.
3. *Social Responsibility*: The enterprise actively contributes to the welfare of the community and environment. This includes practicing sustainability, engaging in community development, and avoiding actions that harm the public or the environment, even if such actions are technically legal.
4. *Accountability*: An honest enterprise holds itself accountable to its stakeholders by being open to scrutiny and responsive to feedback. It should have mechanisms for addressing grievances and correcting misconduct.
5. *Commitment to Truth*: The enterprise should commit to honesty in its communications, advertising, and all forms of public interaction. This includes not engaging in deceptive practices or misrepresentations.
6. *Employee Respect*: Treating employees with respect, providing fair compensation, ensuring workplace safety, and supporting their professional development are signs of an honest enterprise.
7. *Innovation and Fair Competition*: The enterprise should engage in fair competition practices, respecting intellectual property rights, and avoiding practices that unfairly eliminate competition.
By strongmanning these principles into the definition of an honest enterprise we gain an ethical principle that is much harder to dispute or disagree with. Someone encompassing all these principles will tend to naturally have credibility and ethos.
It's not about the fact that the principles are arbitrary and vary from person to person. It's about the fact that you have taken great pains to collect a set of sub principles that are powerful and effective.
Oaths may come from a Time when such principles would have been more or less normalized through society. But we still have the power, by reflecting upon and studying the component principles of honest Enterprise, to adopt a strong and effective principle here. When you see a vague ethical principle, just take it to the strongest and the most effective version that you can reasonably compile. I think that's all that can really be expected of someone, ethically.
I stopped reading at "I have asked GPT4". Write your own words.
For your benefit the following text was handwritten:
All the words you saw previously were written with my permission and vetted by me. I took pains to make sure that every ethical concept was good. And I told you that I was using AI. I encourage you to read the principles and benefit from them.
But if that's not good enough for you, I invite you to go kick rocks. It's your choice and your life.
Personally I judge writing on its own merits, or I am making the genetic fallacy.
If I cannot critically analyze text regardless of source, I will lose opportunities to learn and benefit from knowledge. We are entering a time where both good and bad text will be written by AI. We will need to be able to know the difference.
Good luck and have a good day.