Ethics

Full Title or Meme

Ethics are a real-world virtue that is measured in the digital world by Trust that a digital interchange partner retains their Identity and Ethics over time.

Context

Aristotle and most other commentators recognize that ethics must be ultimate focused on the end goal of providing some good for others. The utility function is defined as providing the greatest good for the greatest number. In tribal society ethics only extends to the members in good standing of the tribe. Most people use a hybrid version which gives greatest weight to the good of the family and then ratchets down from there to the community, the local government, the national government and for people as a whole. Now with the Internet spanning all populations there is a confusion of where ethics should apply in the digital world. The unfortunate answer seems to be, nowhere. Until we get a redefinition of ethics that will apply to the digital world, it is not likely that our experience on the internet will improve above its current abysmal state.

Popper makes clear that

Problems

To start with, not everyone agrees on the goals of a body of ethics. Is it material wealth, happiness, contentment or some less well defined goal altogether?

Our good friend Aristotle tell us that it is "foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs" as to the nature of ethics. But that "each man judges well the things he knows, and of those he is a good judge." But on the internet what is it that any user can know about their correspondent?

It appears that the rise of the right to privacy coincides with the collapse of ethics. Perhaps this is just a coincidence, a result of the dis-inter-mediation effect of the internet, but the possibility of a causal relationship does deserve to be explored.

Civics classes were started to teach kids to be good citizens (do we need a governance page instead?)

Conduct Risk

Solutions

We have seen that relative ethics can be twisted to meet the needs of the user. So what can be the basis for a good ethic?

Popper -- supernatural, cultural, religious??

hypocrisy reigns - religious leaders are not ethical - churches just a gathering places for the like-minded tribes of today - Inclusion would help, but trial tendencies are part of our genetics pool - is their any source of trust (does this belong on trust page?)

suspension of disbelief works on the stage and on the internet equally

Can there be any ethics without social norms - civics classes - sublimation of the individual

Contract for the Web

Facebook and Google have signed up to new internet standards designed by world wide web founder Tim Berners-Lee, who said just last week that the companies may have to be broken up to reduce their dominance. The "contract for the web" will require internet companies to respect data privacy and "support the best in humanity", after a year in which they have faced unprecedented criticism for data privacy scandals and the spread of fake news, hate speech and online abuse, writes the Financial Times. "Those of us who are online are seeing our rights and freedoms threatened," Sir Tim said at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon on Monday evening. "We need a new contract for the web, with clear and tough responsibilities for those who have the power to make it better." Nearly 60 companies, governments and business leaders have signed up to the contract, including Facebook, Google, the French government and billionaire Richard Branson. Amazon, one of the "huge companies" named in a report published alongside the contract, has not signed up. The contract sets out high-level principles for a "free and open web", such as improving internet access and promoting privacy. But according to a spokesperson, the standards will be more detailed after consultations with governments and companies, and could include a commitment to net neutrality, which the British computer scientist has fiercely advocated for after a rollback in the US.<FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE SIGN UP TO TIM BERNERS-LEE'S 'CONTRACT' (2018-11-06) Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland's National Public Service Broadcaster.