Rogue One Engineering Ethics

[FoxRox]

KENAT - interesting analogy. I'm not sure I know your meaning. Is it because we are viewed as:

A.) silly, mindless robots with below average singing capabilities?

or

B.) the ones behind the scenes who make everything work?

 

[Lomarandil]

Wait, oompa loompas were robots?

 

[FoxRox]

Apologies if I unwittingly included a spoiler. I thought everyone had by now watched until the end of the credits and seen the oompa loompa manufacturing plant scene.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

The Right plant or the Left plant?

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[KENAT]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iidGV_6rCGQ

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[TehMightyEngineer]

HAH!

Professional Engineer (ME, NH, MA) Structural Engineer (IL)
American Concrete Industries

http://www.americanconcrete.com

 

[drawoh]

truckandbus,

The problem with using Star Wars as an analog of real world engineering, is that all the movies in the series I have seen are pure melodrama. The good guys are pure goodness, and the bad guys are pure evil. If Darth Vader and the Emperor approach you to build something, you know it is intended for something nasty. As an engineer, your job will be to implement someone's evil plans. You would be better off becoming a bandit or smuggler. Maybe you will score a hot princess!

In the real world, you feel some sort of patriotism and trust in your leaders. Any sabotage you do will hurt the people on your side. Government reveal military secrets on a need to know basis. You won't be told the final evil purpose.

Let's take the closest historical case of pure evil. You are in Germany in 1944. Your cities are getting the crap bombed out of them. You are asked to design a super-duper new fighter interceptor. Do you sit down with your family and point out that we all deserve to have the crap bombed out of us? Do you even know you deserve to have the crap bombed out of you? If you build a weapon that shoots down the attacking bombers, can you make it so that babies and cute puppies are safe from it?

--
JHG

 

[IRstuff]

"The good guys are pure goodness"

We're talking Rogue One, so Finn is someone who switched sides, and can't be considered pure anything. Han Solo murdered someone in cold blood in episode 4 and was well on the way to following his own path of roguedom until he returned to bail out Luke at the end. But, while this is fiction, it's also a series of snippets, and were we able to observe any of ourselves under similar circumstances, I doubt we'd see that much difference.

Would we sacrifice ourselves to save others? Possibly. There are certainly examples even just in the news in the last week where 2 people were brutally murdered while protecting a woman from a possibly "pure evil" person. I don't know that the two people who died were "pure good" over their entire lives, but for a couple of minutes, they were, and that is in this real life snippet.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[monkeydog]

IRstuff,
Thanks for the "I'm an expert!" link, saw it before and needed it today.

 

[HamburgerHelper]

I feel bad for all the carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. All of them happy they got a government gravy train project that just keeps going on and on on this thing called a "death star". You would think after the first few times it got blowed up, the empire would have a hard time finding contractors.

 

[IRstuff]

Seems to me that would depend on how tightly they are able to control the news. For that matter, it's unclear whether any of the interior tradespeople would even know what they're working on. You sit on a shuttle with no windows for a 12-hr trip, land in an enclosed shuttle bay, report to deck 5A Aft, and start to work. You could be on anything or anywhere. The guys in white probably won't tell you anything.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

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[drawoh]

HamburgerHelper,

There were tradesmen on the HMS Prince of Wales when she engaged Bismark in the Denmark Straight. Fortunately for the tradesmen, the HMS Hood was the ship to not be on.

The battleship Musashi was built in Nagasaki across the bay from all sorts of foreign embassies. They did everything possible to conceal it from the foreigners. This included executing any tradesmen who revealed classified information. I would guess that Darth Vader and the Emperor did not encourage a free press.

Hopefully, Death Start was complete at the point anything bad happened to it. Far be it from me to spoil and ending.

--
JHG