Evading Responsibilty Through Mathematics

Today's Must-Read comes from the online chautaqua BigThink. (Visit it. Read it. Subscribe, before you get distracted by something trivial.) Today's BigThink reminds us (and we need reminding) that mathematics doesn't/shouldn't/cannot remove or diminish the necessity of ethical decisions.

Our biggest mistake is delegating our ethics and our humanity to logarithms, to mathematics. Does profit know right from wrong? It doesn't care, and we should. If we don't know any better than this we aren't human. If our elected officials and our bosses don't know any better than this they don't deserve to lead. Rationalization is something we were supposed to outgrow in childhood. It's embarrassing to see it's become part of how our society operates. It may kill us yet.