Ethics and Engineering: Nature or Nurture?

The following is an essay I wrote for a Computing Ethics course, in which I was prompted to answer whether ethics can or cannot be taught to engineers.

Ethics in the context of computing and engineering is concerned with the ethical implications produced by such work. I do believe that ethics can be taught to engineers and scientists and that ethics is not inborn or innate.

An individual’s moral compass is led by their intuition. When an individual performs an action, they will likely have no issue with their action unless it conflicts with their morals or interests. That individual’s understanding of what conflicts with their morals and what does not is a matter of what knowledge that have been exposed to and what knowledge they are ignorant of.

For example, the usage of blockchains and cryptocurrencies has become an ethical dilemma due to the impact that the energy costs of maintaining a blockchain are having on the Earth’s climate. In its conception, Bitcoin held a reputation as a cryptic yet innovative currency that could change the way the world exchanges currency. However, as blockchain-based systems grew in quantity and popularity, new cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFT’s) were introduced to the world.

All these systems utilize blockchains, a decentralized data structure that consumes high amounts of electricity in computational resources to perform transactions and update itself across many nodes. Besides exchanging cryptocurrency through transactions, people can “mine” cryptocurrencies by running hardware intensive algorithms to find the secret key needed to claim a certain amount of cryptocurrency. Due to the heavy reliance on fossil fuels for much of the world’s electricity to be produced, the mining of Bitcoin alone had the University of Cambridge “[estimate] that bitcoin mining consumes 121.36 terawatt hours a year. This is more than all of Argentina consumes, or more than the consumption of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft combined” (Cho 2021). The high consumption of electricity leads to high consumption of fossil fuels, which inevitably leads to the production of harmful greenhouse gases and pollutants that threaten the Earth’s climate.

Due to the analysis of the environmental cost of blockchain technologies, many individuals previously interested in the development of blockchains have shifted their opinions against them. Mozilla, a non-profit organization known for their dedication to a free and open internet, recently began accepting cryptocurrency donations. Many Mozilla fans opposed this decision and voiced their disapproval, leading to Mozilla placing a hold on cryptocurrency donations. The original creator of Mozilla’s web browser engine, Peter Linss, is quoted in Jay Peters’ article saying “I’m glad Mozilla reversed course here. They play a crucial role in keeping the web open and free. I’m also grateful for the support of all the fans of Mozilla helping to keep them accountable to the ideals they were founded under” (Peters 2022).

Despite the growing opposition to the harmful use of blockchains, enthusiasts aiming to reduce the harm of blockchains have led to new discussions of pursuing eco-friendly blockchain implementations. For instance, “ever since Tesla CEO Elon Musk brought to focus a number of issues surrounding Bitcoin’s native mining processes, the topic of blockchain energy consumption has gained a lot of traction globally” (Reynolds 2021).

In conclusion, by analyzing the case of the public perception of blockchain technologies over time, we see that individuals are evidently capable of forming new opinions and taking new ethical stances from their growing knowledge of current issues whether those individuals chose to oppose blockchains altogether or pursue alternative implementations of the same data structure.

Sources

• Cho, Renee. “Bitcoin’s Impacts on Climate and the Environment.” State of the Planet, 16 Sept. 2021, news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/09/20/bitcoins-impacts-on-climate-and-the-environment.
• Peters, Jay. “Mozilla Pauses Accepting Crypto Donations Following Backlash.” The Verge, 6 Jan. 2022, www.theverge.com/2022/1/6/22870787/mozilla-pauses-crypto-donations-backlash-jwz.
• Reynolds, Amaury. “Here Are the 5 Most Environmentally Sound Blockchain Ecosystems in the Market Today.” CryptoMode, 23 Aug. 2021, cryptomode.com/here-are-the-5-most-environmentally-sound-blockchain-ecosystems-in-the-market-today.