SUNY Geneseo Department of Computer Science

Theses

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Questions?

What exactly should essay look at?

• Incidents in “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” that involve cryptography/cryptanalysis and ethical issues, so that you can take and defend a position on what the ethically right way to handle that incident would have been (which might or might not be the way it’s handled in the story)
• For example
  • Slaney uses a secret code to, in modern terms, stalk Elsie.
  • Hilton and Holmes use cryptanalysis to uncover Elsie’s past, even though Hilton has promised not to pry into it.
  • Holmes lures Slaney into a trap by sending him an encrypted message, knowing that because it is encrypted, Slaney will believe it comes from Elsie. Is Holmes lying? Is he forging Elsie’s “signature”?

Joining the (Written) Conversation

They Say, I Say introduction

• Conversation - makes writing relevant
• Templates: good or bad?
  • High-level, organizational, roadmaps
  • But can also use literally as starting points for your ideas

They Say, I Say chapter 4

• 3 responses
  • Agree, but add something to conversation
  • Disagree, challenge their argument
  • Both, but this isn’t license to be indecisive
• In all cases, give argument for your view

What is this “thesis” thing?

• Thesis = core position behind essay
• e.g., agree, disagree, both

Applications to Ethics Essay

Who is the conversation with? What conversation is it?

• Reader (but don’t let your imagined reader become a straw man for a position no-one really holds)
• Yourself (could be a very interesting idea if you write well enough to take the reader along with you as your ideas evolve, but could also end up just seeming indecisive as you change positions)
• Ethicists (good way to conceive an essay in which you use situations from story as illustrations of strengths or weaknesses of certain ethical theories)
• Rest of class (i.e., continue the conversations we’ve been having over the past few days)
• Author (good way to conceive an essay in which you challenge or support the Victorian morality that implicitly but pretty strongly comes through the story)
• Contemporary conversation about secrecy and government cryptanalysis (good way to connect this essay to a large conversation ongoing today)

Next

Peer critiques of draft ethics essays

Bring 3 printed copies