It's just a waste of my time!

I went to a major medical university and studied humanities. The amount of soon-to-be doctors and nurses complaining about why they needed to study things like ethics, philosophy, or history astounded me, it's like these people didn't want to deal with the human aspect of medicine and instead just wanted to make money.

I wouldn't be shocked if more medschool students dropped out from the humanities courses than the medical ones, they hated it

I didn't hate them, but it's tough when every professor assigns homework like they're the only class you're taking.
Not meaning to imply they should be dropped, but looking at the state of the world most people aren't internalizing anything from the humanities.
- I had a professor that said a good student will study Monday to Saturday the amount of hours a day as the amount of credits you take. Take Sundays off. We all had 15 credits a semester.
- I was interested in the humanities, so I interacted with that material very deeply. I would say that most of my classmates weren't interested in humanities, but they weren't really interested (as in curious, questioning, interacting) with the STEM classes either.
Did any of those courses succeed in teaching empathy, sociality, ethic? If it's similar to what I experienced in my university, it didn't do jack shit. University is great at teaching scientific knowledge but horrible at teaching philosophy. I learn more about ethics, philosophy and history via YouTube than from university
- Students have an obligation to respond and receive the materials. If you chose not to engage with the classes, then that's on you, but it's generally a good thing for doctors and people working with the public to have an education on things like empathy and history (specifically the history of discrimination against marginalized groups).
  I learn more about ethics, philosophy, and history via YouTube than from university
  Oh, you're one of those people.
It's funny because doctors make like nothing compared to finance bros.
Noticed the same when I studied computer science. My fellow students complained about having to study the history of computers, ethics, social studies and especially ex.phil. "I just want to program all day, not study things I will never use!'
I switched bachelor programmes after a couple of years
Was this in 'murica?
- *Laughs in big pharma*
- Unsolicited petulance like this is why, instead of being empathetic about a situation we both share, I will never not laugh myself to tears as I watch the NHS deal with its massive backlog by killing brits via slowly privatizing.
  You're like the weird kid on the playground, pulling our hair because you have a crush on us
You even have to study the history of film if you’re in filmmaking school.
I had more fun studying the required courses than CS at my university. I read TAoCP for fun in high school I could sleep through most classes. If I could do it again, I'd do geology as my profession.
So it's working as intended then?
There was any soon-to-be psychologist or psychiatrist among those students? And, if so, how did they reacted? 👀

I once had a chemistry professor who used to work as a senior drug researcher at a major pharmaceutical company. He often joked about how the company treated the monkeys used for testing far better than the PhDs. If a monkey suffered a negative reaction there was a major investigation. I'm incredibly surprised Musk can be killing monkeys left and right and hasn't been thrown in jail.

- You mean someone went onto the internet just to tell lies? on purpose?!
The difference is that guy was working at a major pharmaceutical research firm with animal advocates and whistle-blowers and accrediting board all over them. Musk's group is new and is still in the fucking around phase. As soon as they have to answer to any outside org, suddenly this will be a huge liability.
- We're still in the 'move fast, kill monkeys' phase.
  So agile. Much lean.
He could probably shoot somebody dead in Times Square and nothing would happen to him....
- But could he grab them by the... nevermind, if he can buy a horse, he can do anything.

I still think we should try it on musk himself. Those monkeys just didnt have moxie

Considering his recent behavior, I think he already tried it
- Who could be controlling the chip?

You are confusing taking a class with actually having ethics. No amount of attending a lecture about ethics will convince you if you do not, as a basic premise agree with the ethical principle that loss of life is a bad thing. And to be very clear, ethical principles are subjective. There is no objectively right or wrong thing as far nature is concerned.

Ethics class gives you tools to analyze a problem. Any good class is part of the philosophy department and leans on the classic philosphers approaches to analyze the problem. Many engineers would have no exposure to this otherwise and i think its a good part of any Universities' engineering curriculum.
And to be very clear, ethical principles are subjective. There is no objectively right or wrong thing as far nature is concerned.
Deonotlogists and other Moral Realists and Universalists are shook
But yeah, let's imagine moral ontology was solved, and that moral relativism and nihilism are the only ethical theories around...
- That sounds like a fun paradox.
  Is "The only objective moral fact is that there is no objective morality" a truthful statement? Is it rational?
Classes don't solve the problem entirely, but they're a start and without them in this case a company so large and powerful that it has a space program and foreign policy planks is being guided by nothing but the intuition of someone who grew up spending money earned by child slaves and who thinks that scuttling an army's mission in-progress is pacifism

The other 8 died, too. In excruciating pain. One of them vomited to death. These people are barbaric and should face animal cruelty charges.

Source?
- You're looking at a tweet from well over a year ago. They've killed well over 1500 animals at this point, and I think you might want to look up "neuralink" on literally any news site.

Funny story, the only ethics required in my engineering degree was a 2-day unit on our professional code of ethics. We had a 20-question true/false homework on it, and the thing about a professional code of ethics is it's not super intuitive. Most of the class thought they could gut feel their way through it, but you actually had to read the code because the wording was very specific sometimes. When it turned out that everyone failed the homework, the professor let us try again.

Ethics!

Business/economics and politics students also need classes in ethics.

Yes, but they cant win capitalism if they apply those lessons though.
Eveyone needs it. Aristotle starts out his Nicomachean ethics stating that virtuous acts are first and foremost for the benefit of the virtuous person.
Platonic ethics should also really be taught widely, even more so than Aristotle's because they're easier to receive. Even if he has some hard to accept views such as that commiting injustice is worse than suffering it, everyone would benefit if children grew up with the notion that everyone does what they think best, and that those who do "wrong" things do so out of ignorance of what is good, rather than what we currently have where everyone knows what is objectively good, and those who don't do it are willfully wrongdoers and you just need to punish them enough and they'll become good.
Although you can have the best educational plans in the galaxy if the educarional system is crap. I don't know about the rest of the world, but where I'm from all education from primary school to a master's degree is just a bunch of information being thrown at you with 0 context and reasoning behind it, and when you're able to reproduce that information on demand (without any context): congratz, you're educated!
Should start in kindy, tbh.

No amount of ethics teaching will change the behaviour of a narcisistic psychopath like musk.

Wow! Been a while since I've seen a Michael Crichton quote. I think I'll have to do a reread of Jurassic Park now.

At least you get to take an ethics class. Mine was just about patents and Therac-25

I mean, we really don't want a repeat of the Therac-25
- Still can't believe it happened the first time.
  "Oh let's just reuse the code and forget the hardware breakers on the machine it'll be fine."
  Like I have no ethics training but they even had a (human operated) control rod in the first chicago pile who trusts a radiation gun to a SOFTWARE toggle?
- I only learned about it from the "Well There's Your Problem" podcast. Can't believe my school never talked about it. We did hear all about Challenger though as well as a few other disasters where the lesson was "If you cut corners, or take chances, people can DIE"

RIP to the monkeys. They deserved better.

I had to take 3 ethics classes for my cybersecurity degree

Please explain how this is a meme.

No one knows what a meme is anymore. And idk if mods care.
- Not...really. I mean, I hate Elon too but that doesn't make it a meme by itself. It's how it is presented, and this ain't it, friend.

This startrek.website site loads like 15% of the time for me. It's really annoying.

It's been a bit laggy and inconsistent since the instance switched hosts last week. I wonder if that's still it...
How do I upload this bin file to my neuralink firmware ? DD?

I used to think like that but looking back those classes were pretty fun

I personally enjoy ethics as a subject, but has it been shown that studying ethics in uni actually leads to people behaving more ethically? I agree that ethics should be applied to science, but science should also be applied to ethics to determine the effective approach.

- The scientific method can be applied to more than what is distinctly objective. Just like you can probe a scientific instrument you can probe a human, ask them to rank their peers.
  OP is making an ethical judgement, saying that the monkeys dying in the Neurolink studies makes them unethical. I believe the studies fundamentally had unethical elements as the monkeys couldn't even consent. But if a class taught concepts related to either of these ideas, someone designing or carrying out these studies who had learned these concepts could be seen as not having grown practically from the ethical teachings, you don't have to accept that the teachings are correct in the first place.
  I hypothesize an issue with simply teaching ethical ideas is that humans are incredibly good at maintaining cognitive dissonance, or even more simply not thinking about how what they learn applies to their own behaviors and convictions.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Philosophy should be taught from very early. The hability to think, argue, relate to others and understand others while being capable of express your ideas is extremely important.

We don't in my country, and I'm 100% sure people would complain if there was one. Even if they attended it, it would go completely over their heads probably.

A shitty capitalist society with deeply rooted individualism can't be treated unless it's done from the root of the problem.

- What..?
- A QUICK look at his profile shows he's from Greece. Greece is not Communist. You're so angry about something you're yelling at the wrong people. Take a step back, breath, take a break from Lemmy. Even if what you're saying is accurate, the 0-60 attitude toward someone you didn't know anything about is literally crazy.
- You can have a bad government with any kind of economic system. As evidenced by the USA. They tend to commit most of their atrocities outside their own country but that doesn't make them any better than china or russia.
- Lump me in with a group you hate because you disagree with me and say we're all the same, that's great for proving a point.
  Just remember to always miss the point and half read everything and you should be fine.

And there are actual real life goobers dying to get one themselves.

It's so incredibly ironic that these are probably the same goobers who talk about microchips in vaccines.
I mean, I'd get it if there was an estimation on just how fast it would kill me.
And how painless.
I really want a neural pointing device, but not by this dork.
I absolutely would. I'd not line up to be among the first, but controlling devices via a brain interface is an inevitable step of technological evolution.
It will provide such an immense performance boost, that many professions may become unattainable without having one. Possibly within our lifetime.
- Enjoy the unskippable ads in your dreams.
- Inevitability ain't what it used to be.

He's not even stem the dude is a business major freak

Bussiness freak, failing upward with bazinga characteristics
He's a major freak. He paid off Penn for his education.
His education is clearly limited to color by numbers.
I think he did actually major in physics
- No he didnt he has the same degree in the same uni as our big wet boy.
- I don't think he actually finished that degree. I could be wrong, but i think theres some questions around it

My law/ethics prof was a big old NIMBY. Apparently, utilitarianism is when "neighbor allows cell tower in his yard and it block my view"

And he wanted to put those in humans?!?

Correction.. still does

Stop animal testing

Unfortunately there is no alternative
- There is.
  Do it in humans.
  Humans can understand the risks involved. Other animals cannot.
  If we're going to fuck something up, it better be on our own species.
Yea stopping animal testing sounds great, but animal testing is the backbone of drug and medical breakthroughs. So at least for now that's not possible
Would you like them to test on you instead?
What's the alternative?
- Recognition that animal testing is actually pretty fucked up would be a good start toward funding research into alternatives, such as biological computer simulations.
  We can simulate complex/chaotic systems, like weather, in nearly real-time, so biosim research is mainly a funding and staffing problem at this point.
  Probably we'll still need animal testing for the final phase before human trials, but we can at least reduce the need for it to bare minimums.
Cool, where should we test all the pet food and medical treatments for animals then?

Oh, I thought it was a meme similar to the old "Bush or chimp"-days, back when dubya was president, and was thinking: "surely they could have found a monkey that looked more like Elmo" but that's not the point of these pictures, it seems 😕

Bazinga mindset is a helluva thing

Because then you’ll be able to dismiss the ethics while being aware of the implications of your research.

Disregarding the ethics while not knowing them grants you no extra points, whilst deliberately ignoring the ethical ramifications but understanding them gets you all the points

This isn't unethical. This is why you use animals.

Oh man, there's gonna be a lot of angry vegans here soon. Godspeed, sir or madam.