Dilemmas

Holiday

The class’s opinion was that option two was the best solution. They choose this because if anything were to go wrong with the installations of the units and Dan was not supervising the installations, he would be the one assigned the blame.

I felt however that because he had booked the time off and that Jerry was a compitentent engineer, he would be able to leave for his holidays before they were all the units were installed.

US Parts

Again my opione differed from the classes’ choice. Here I choice option one instead of conforming to everyone else’s opione in which they felt option two was correct. I felt that if he had told the problem with the bolts to his superiors, they probably would have given him the go ahead anyway as USAWAY would not have found out about the bolts. Also John would be handling all the repairs when, and if, replacements were needed for the bolts and he would have had the American bolts by then.

Logical Fallacies

Ad Hominem
An argument that attacks the speaker not the argument
Bill: "Bush's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 helped many US citizens."
Harry:"...But George Bush was an idiot!"

Appeal to Authority
A superior is always right and everything they say and do is right
"An expert on television said Fianna Fáil will repeat the same mistakes so that means they will if there are ever reelected"

Appeal to Ignorance
No contractible evidence so it must be true
"I cannot prove God exits, so he must exist"

Appeal to pity
The person who is arguing tries to get people on there side
By appealing to there sympathy
"I broke my leg so I should get an A for the test I missed"

Argumentum and Populum
If everyone supports the argument, it can't be wrong.
"100 million Americans support the right to bear arms so must be a good idea"

Begging the question
The conclusion is in the premise
"The belief in God is universal, after all every one believes in God"

Common Cause
A fallacy that P causes Q because P and Q are regularly grouped together
"Rap music causes gun crimes because rappers are always getting shot@

False-Cause Fallacy
A happened, B happened, A must have caused B.
"I broke my nose, and then I got a cold. My broken nose must have caused me to get a cold"

Middle Ground
Between two extremes, the middle ground must be correct.
"Sinn Fein wants to pay none of the 80 billion loan back to the IMF; Fianna Gail wants to pay it all back. The right amount must be 40 billion"

Novelty
Newer is better
"Fianna Gail is new in power, they must be better than the alternative"

Red Herring
A deliberate attempt to divert attention away from the actual argument
"Enda Kenny would be a failure as a Taoiseach. He is also receiving a 100k pension for being a teacher for only four years."

Slippery Slope
Some justifiable arguments now can lead to unjustifiable ones later on.
"Lenihan’s plan for paying tax by credit card could be ‘slippery slope’ to debt & poverty"

Straw man
An argument is based on a distorted view of an opponent’s position
"It is Fine Gael’s policy to end the Irish language as a compulsory subject for students in schools in the Irish educational system. This is incorrect, if reports are accurate. The FG policy is to retain it as a compulsory subject for the Junior Cert (which is the period of compulsory education) and have it as an option for Leaving Cert"

Weak Analogy
Comparing a weak analogy between the two arguments.
"James Connolly and Adolf Hitler were both evil because they were both socialists"

ACM code of ethics

A situation not covered in the ACM code of conduct is if you found out a fellow employee was convicted for a violent sex crime and you only learned of this because you are a human resource manger. Should you tell your other employees or keep the mater to your self? I believe according to the guidelines of the ACM code of conduct you should not tell anyone.

Supernaturalism

examples of supernaturalism in a debate about technology

I got nothing yet...let me work on it

Trolley problem
I'm pushing the fat guy to save the five people, as Spock would say,"the needs of the many out way the needs of the few"
I feel you have to intervene.

Is technology is neutral?

The first question we were asked this week was what:
  "Find an example of a cyber-ethics issue that can be effectively dealt with using current laws and morals".
For this I chose child pornography. There is no grey area with this subject, it universally known as wrong and against the law. Interpol, FBI and various law enforcement agencies around the world work together to prosecute these individuals. Operation Amethyst was a Garda Síochána operation that arrested over a hundred suspected paedophiles in Ireland on the 25th of May 2002.

The next question that was raised was:"Find an example of a cyber-ethics issue that cannot be effectively dealt with using current laws and morals and needs some new thinking" An issue that cannot be solved with the current laws and morals for cyber ethics is music piracy. This has existed for a long time going back to when there were bootleg copies of concerts made but with today’s technology, I can go online and within two minutes, I can download the latest Metallica cd for free. If a sharing site gets shutdown, there will be another one to take its place. A few people are charged every year for this to try and scare the public but the music industry is losing billions a year to piracy sites.


Find an example of a cyber-ethics issue from popular culture (e.g. Is Lt. Data from Star Trek TNG entitled to the same civil rights as humans?) and identify which into phase of cyber ethics evolution it belongs.
I chose a table-top game "BattleTech" as my example for this question. In the game, the timeline stretches from the 21st century to the 32nd century. It follows the expansion of humans from planet earth (terra) to other planets via FTL drives. The technology of the time period is advanced enough to build FTL drives and superluminal communication but also uses technology of today including projectile weapons and internal combustion engines. Humans are locked in interplanetary wars and feuding factions in the game. Humans are genetically engineering for piloting Mechs, 30 feet tall, 50 ton war machines that battle with each other.
The cyber-ethics issues raised are the genetically engineered humans and the technology is solely driven for war. This fits in with the current phase four of cyber ethics.

Google "Is technology neutral" and attempt to summarize some of the ideas presented
I the process of goggling "Is technology neutral", I came across varies viewpoints stating it was not neutral i.e. "A gun can be used as a paper weight but much more useful to shoot someone with" also " a knife can be used to cook, cure and a kill a person"