I used the word "direction", not "decision". Vast numbers of decisions may be taken, but only in line with the direction that has been set by specific people at the top. In your 777 example - the direction is to improve profits, and perhaps an overriding motivation such as connecting up the planet, in the belief that it is good for mankind; and the need to stay ahead of their competitors, so that their ideas will dominate. Or perhaps it is simply a way of getting rich, and there is no social philosophy.
In any case these are business decisions, which are independent of the type of work the tecchnical staff are assigned to do. If you take a job at Boeing doing metal fatigue analysis, you can expect that this is the level of science you will be involved in regardless of whether Boeing joins a cause to lower greenhouse gas emissions, or some other ethical cause.
In doing that, they are ignoring other things - eg. purely as examples - the pollution caused by the new technology,
That would be a business decision, not a scientific one. The scientist would always be looking for the cleanest solution, unless for some reason other priorities demand it. For example, a helicopter may be regarded as having too high a carbon foorprint to be used for delivering parcels between two offices of some scientific enterprise. But if the goal is to get the kidney from one operating room to another with minimal opportunity for necrosis, then this may be chosen over ground transport in order to arrive at an optimal solution. Note "optimal" generally means sacrificing some goal to some degree in order to achieve another. It's actually an area of mathematics called Operations Research (OR). So a lot of the thrust of your questions falls into how, when and why scientists exploit the techniques of OR to "do no harm", which really means "to optimize a multivariate problem, such that harm is minimized among a set of other constraints".
or the natural world that suffers for it, or the workers who lose/gain from it.
The large corporations are usually already experienced in environmental impact studies. Depending on the nature of the enterprise, it may be a necessary part of doing business. If it's not, they may still elect to do them. But these are business decisions, not usually scientific ones.
If "profit" is the main guiding force, all the advances in technology are done for that purpose; and it is for the shareholders, and everyone involved who wants more money and power.
For-profit corporations do exist for profit and for the enrichment of shareholders. I think you pigeonholed "all advances in technology" here. First "All" would mean "all within the set of all technologies pioneered by the enterprise in question" which depends on the enterprise. Not all enterprises who do science are engaged in developing new technology. For example a fertilizer company that has been making the same product for 50 years may employ chemical engineers, but they may never be involved in advancing the formula for fertilizer, assuming that technology has stabilized at say, anhydrous ammonia, and is not expected to ever change. Companies that manufacture microprocessors, on the other hand, will continually attempt to invent a faster, leaner, smaller product and their scientists will be tasked around new development projects, even on a daily basis. Their goal is profits and their sciences cluster around the technical problems the new technology presents. If they solve them, and break some perceived barrier with the new better product, then odds are their profits will increase.
That is itself a reflection of the moral compass of the people involved, and a result of their upbringing in this society.
Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. Every permutation of conditions is possible. Maybe maximizing profit invokes ethical questions and maybe not. I can't think of any generalization that applies.
It is a tricky thing to figure out. Maybe the surgeon is motivated purely by helping people, and maybe by money, or by duty (a medical tradition in his family), or fear of the authorities, or he is inspired by something he saw on TV or in a medical journal, or something someone said.
I suspect if you took a poll, most would say they want to save lives and prevent disease, that sort of thing. The motivation to make a certain amount of money usually is made when she accepts the position.
It would become evident if you look at how he operates, and the decisions he takes.
Maybe so.
Those values are instilled into him by society - advertising, literature, family or peers, prevailing medical ethics, etc - from a young age.
I agree that people are acculturated at a young age into the norms of society. But people, and especially these highly educated folks, are also in possession of an intellect. Provided they took care of it up until the time they became doctors, then it won't matter too much what influenced them when they were younger.
It may matter far more thn you realise.
I may realize more than you think; the question is whether we can narrow this down to specifics, otherwise I'm left to only realizing whatever the assumptions lead me to realize.
Great! That means you're made of the same good cultural DNA that exchem is made of, which has proven time and again to produce a scientific mind of the highest caliber. No wonder you guys produced Stephen Hawking and far more than your share (per capita) of the world's leading geniuses. Great place, all the better if Scotland decides to stay in the club.
I know that kind of stuff happens in Amerika! - it is a sad aspect of an otherwise great nation.
Yes and in translation this would be the infiltration of the Tories into science agencies across the UK, such that scientists and academicians feel the scourge of an inquisition. This is how bad American religiosos got, especially after fleeing the various conflicts in England, and then being thrust into the wilderness of the early US, where they grew up without schools and books and became the world's most ignorant Christians on record. Of all things, rather than giving credit to Darwin, they chose instead to maintain the British religious traditions of Darwin's era. (Victorian Christian principles.)
I was amazed recently to read about US political campaigners spending 100s of millions of dollars on their campaigns, and vowing to spend more - because in Amerika (as opposed to America, by which I mean the good bits) money and greed call the shots more than anything.
The issue is grave. By sheer luck, the Right Wing has been able to stack the Supreme Court, and it was the appalling and unprecedented decision they rendered a few years ago, giving Corporations "the right of free speech" solely reserved for individual citizens, at least that's what the majority called it, by which those Corporations are allowed to spend as much as they want in advertising a candidate of their choice for office. It's ruling that I believe will be overturned only if our left and center oriented voters get up off their asses and turn out to vote. For this reason alone everyone in the US should vote straight Democratic ticket until the death of the last Republican appointed justice (one of the worst, the young Chief Justice John Roberts). That may take 30 years or more.
It's not that great here, mind. But in the USA, it is extreme.
We've had waves of extremism. We saw it in the founding of the KKK, in the John Birch Society and the Cold War Inquisitions against liberal celebrities who were accused of being "card-carrying" Communists. But the most pervasive elements have been the Christian fundamentalists. What makes them particularly dangerous is their high number of illiterate members. Just to understand how bad that is, even the really nasty justices they put in office fear them, occasionally issuing rulings to protect against "mob rule".
Any amount of reasonable debate that could be had, for the benefit of the nation, is subjugated to the ego and the wealth of the people running for election.
That's the huge travesty we must live with pursuant to the deplorable Supreme Court ruling.
That obsession with wealth drips down into the population, and sets the direction for a lot of stuff. Meanwhile, vast numbers of people in poverty are sidelined and ignored.
So true. This became profoundly obvious early in our own Industrial Age. Many of the victims of negligent and belligerent employers were principally immigrants, women and children who had no voice and were not respected as human beings equal to white men. Of course the legacy of ignoring the poor was slavery. Once you equate a person with chattel, then all bets are off when it comes to sheltering them, making sure they have food, clothing and blankets, and of course adequate medical care. What is so outrageous about this is that it's perpetuated today largely by the political action of the Christian fundamentalists, who have managed to exempt themselves from the Bible's command to provide those very same necessities to the needy, through a loophole taken from the epistles which minimizes "salvation by works" and maximizes "salvation by faith alone". It's this huge glaring hypocrisy, meanness and selfishness which makes them so detestable. And of course the wealthy corporations have allied with them, so grateful to have a grassroots support for stripping away the protections of public assistance, with the expectations of lowering corporate taxes as the deficit declines, It's criminal by every principle that we purport to hold sacred. But this is a huge segment of the population, and they're dumb, naive as hell, and easily convinced of anything the Right Wing propaganda machine feeds them.
No, I mean "almost everything". Example - we are seeing a rapid spread of science in any academic/teachable subject you like. Geomorphology, astronomy, religion (kind of); biology, neuroscience and psychology (a little), management, language, technology (of course) and the nature of materials; hygiene and medicine. You can now learn about the chemistry of cooking, and professional cooks regard it s basic information: people have cooked for eons, never knowing much about chemistry. Science is, piece by piece, overhauling the sum of all knowledge. Maybe in another million years we will have a new paradigm.
Ah I see. I tend to agree that society is exposed to certain kind of technical facts never before considered necessary for general consumption. My opinion is that it's mostly very low stuff. But it's likely that the societies of the near future will have much higher technical skills in the future, since the kids being raised exposed to the internet will discover that just about every question they can ask has been asked and answered, that all kinds of technical information is at their fingertips. I recognize that this hinges on some new fad or technology that draws them away from facebook and twitter feed, and all things recreational.