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  3. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department," said Wernher von Braun, the pioneer rocket

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department," said Wernher von Braun, the pioneer rocket

admin2022-11-01  27
问题     "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department," said Wernher von Braun, the pioneer rocket scientist who worked after 1945, with equal enthusiasm, for NASA. Now a rather different mathematician, Hannah Fry, has called for a Hippocratic Oath for scientists and technologists to help them carry constantly in their minds the ethical consequences of their work. This is a proposal that deserves serious consideration: if it achieves nothing else, it will help to dispel the idea that technologies like software development are in themselves morally neutral, so that ethics, or morality, can be dealt with by someone else. Those who send the rockets up need to think carefully about where they might come down.
    There are three obvious issues with her plan. The first is "Whose ethics? Which rationality?" There is no single, universal code of ethics to which all scientists around the world subscribe and the wars of the 20th century show how quickly many could be recruited to weapons research in the name of defending civilisation. And absolute pacifism has not been a feature of earlier efforts at scientific ethics. The philosopher Karl Popper proposed in 1969 an oath for all students of science; even then, he could, and did, justify some work on nuclear weapons.
    The second problem is the extreme difficulty of foreseeing the uses to which pure research can be put. There have been a few occasions in recent times when scientists have drawn back from research until some at least of the ethical consequences of its application have become clearer: the suspension of genetic engineering in the Asilomar conference is the most celebrated. But fundamental research has uses far beyond the imagination of the people who carry it out. No one could blame Alan Turing for YouTube’s role in stirring up extremism.
    Beyond this horizon of ignorance appears what might be called a horizon of influence: any one individual can only accomplish a limited amount compared to the forces of states and huge businesses. Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web, is horrified by some of the ways in which it has developed but he has been powerless to stop them. It’s true that collective action can have effects, but these are limited. A revulsion among the workers at Google has so far stopped the company from cooperating with the US immigration service. It has not stopped its YouTube algorithms from corrupting politics in Brazil. Any effective moral action must come from corporations as a whole, not just some of their workers.
    But for all these drawbacks, this is still a worthwhile idea. The choice between individual and collective ethics is not either-or. Both are needed. The dominant ideal of the last decades has been boundless selfishness, both individual and corporate. Whatever helps to put limits on that is not just desirable but essential.
According to the author, what is the role of Hannah Fry’s proposal?
选项 A、It reminds scientists to keep the consciousness of responsibility.
B、It helps to arm people with the knowledge of the Hippocratic Oath.
C、It educates people not to use products offered by illegal tech firms.
D、It instills the idea of moral neutrality in software development.
答案 A
解析 根据题干关键信息Hannah Fry’s proposal定位至第一段第三句。该句提到，这一提议值得认真思考：单凭这个提议就有助于消除这一观念，即软件开发类的技术本身并无善恶之分，因此其伦理道德是由人决定的。由此可知，汉娜.弗莱的提议帮助人们消除了错误的看法，最后一句，那些发射火箭的人需要认真思考火箭会落下的地点，换言之，对于科学家而言，更要对自己研究成果使用的道德性保持高度关注才不致危害社会。第一段第二句也说道，汉娜.弗莱提出这个提议，是为了帮助科学家和技术专家时刻提醒自己的研究工作会带来的道德伦理结果。因此，选项[A]It reminds scientists to keep the consciousness of responsibility．“它提醒科学家时刻意识到自己的责任”为正确答案。
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