MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics • Hacker News Board

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#21

Post by valuearb » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

DamnYuppie wrote: post #16

valuearb wrote: post #6

They should have stuck to attacking MBS, and brought up the fact that the 9/11 hijackers had direct support from Saudi diplomatic personnel. Attacking Apple for providing well above market pay for jobs that rescue chinese laborers from brutal and dangerous rural farm jobs just makes the writer sound entitled.

Can you please provide more context from the "brutal and dangerous rural farm jobs"? I am aware agriculture production in China is very different then here but even at its most labor intensive times it is not something that I would have considered to be "dangerous".

Everything is relative but it’s much more dangerous than assembling iPhones. And it is one of the reasons why whenever Foxcon is hiring the applicant lines are so long.

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#22

Post by megaman22 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 9:55 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #18

omegaworks wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like any for-profit entity, growth is one of its primary objectives. Stagnation is death. It's certainly not helped that our government has taken aim directly at universities with sizable endowments[1]. The recent tax bill hits hard and has directly impacted MIT's ability to provide financial aid and pursue humanitarian research[2]. 1. https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2018/01/16/tax-college-... 2. http://news.mit…

A 1.4% tax on endowment income is consider being hard hit?

If they invested it at all wisely, they should have made at least 5% over the past year.

When I was at Dartmouth during the great recession a decade ago, they were gloating that they were nevertheless still making gains on the endowment, as the rest of the world crashed.

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#23

Post by return0 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:04 PM UTC

temporama wrote: post #7

Mbs is not trying to make himself look like a positive transformative figure, he actually is one. The war in Yemen is equally the fault of Saudi Arabia and Iran but I don't hear anyone calling for sanctions on Iran. I am astounded that such ignorance could come from one of the worlds pillars of higher education. Consolidation of power such as that recently performed by mbs is routine and it was done in a very humane…

From what i get from american media, they like MBS including the liberal ones (perhaps even more), and they certainly help to paint a positive picture of him as a "radical innovator" of his country, when he brings the lowest of the low hanging fruit such as giving women the right to drive.

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#24

Post by prepend » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #4

A lot of righteous, eloquent fury here. I had nearly forgotten about the foxconn suicides, and now that I think about it I don't remember anything really happening except nets being put up. Louis CK (RIP our opinion of him, but still) put it pretty well once, something along the lines of "slavery built everything we love. We just throw human death and suffering at a thing until it's done. There's no end to what you c…

Like most quotes from comedians that sound smart, he’s totally wrong. Unless you consider all existence is suffering or something or make the definition of suffering so broad as to make the quote pointless.

Just a few examples of great things accomplished without great human suffering or slavery- space race, Internet, Inca Trail, Bilbao Museum.

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#25

Post by prepend » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:19 PM UTC

I just figured MIT was making “easy” ethical statements. In general the examples that MIT spoke out about had no opposing parties, had no impact to MIT, and no repercussions. So MIT didn’t really have to care or make a sacrifice to speak out for Dreamers or against Charlottesville and whatnot.

But for anything that requires sacrifice like MBS not giving an endowment, they suck it up. This is what sucks as wishy washy populism as it doesn’t reflect any insight into an orginizarion’s leadership’s values.

MIT is likely concerned with increasing its power. Thus is part of the establishment. Doing lots of great things, but part of the establishment.

Thus their total cop out over Aaron Schwartz back to when they didn’t admit their first black professor until 1956 (http://diverseeducation.com/article/7136/).

There’s a really popular and well respected engineering school that has a big problem with sexual assault. They issue statements and sponsor marches and stuff. But drag their feet on any actions like removing organizations that frequently have members commit sexual assault.

I just consider most of the statements from universities PR and virtue signaling unless it’s acompanied with allocation of resources.

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#26

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:22 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #4

A lot of righteous, eloquent fury here. I had nearly forgotten about the foxconn suicides, and now that I think about it I don't remember anything really happening except nets being put up. Louis CK (RIP our opinion of him, but still) put it pretty well once, something along the lines of "slavery built everything we love. We just throw human death and suffering at a thing until it's done. There's no end to what you c…

Just look at all the beautiful castles and churches in Europe. They were mostly built on the backs of peasants. Or all the generals we revere who sent thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who had not much to gain from the war to their deaths.

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#27

Post by gumby » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

Where do they think Lincoln came from anyway? MITRE, Lincoln and Draper were ways to shift classified research off campus in the wake of MIT's involvement in the Viet Nam war (which was far more than the crimes of Walt Rostow).

MIT has been first and foremost a government research lab since Conant (an MIT grad) was FDR's wartime science advisor and reformulated the institute (just compare the small size of the student body vs overall research staff, or consider that education brings in only 14% of the institute's revenue). Your education is essentially subsidized by the Pentagon.

The 1970s reforms shuffled the pieces around the board but didn't make a substantive change (they did improve academic freedom, though). Through the 1990s MIT was really more policy rather than corporate focused but now there is more private sector involvement can you really say it's any better?

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#28

Post by saagarjha » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:35 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #24

komali2 wrote: post #4

A lot of righteous, eloquent fury here. I had nearly forgotten about the foxconn suicides, and now that I think about it I don't remember anything really happening except nets being put up. Louis CK (RIP our opinion of him, but still) put it pretty well once, something along the lines of "slavery built everything we love. We just throw human death and suffering at a thing until it's done. There's no end to what you c…

Like most quotes from comedians that sound smart, he’s totally wrong. Unless you consider all existence is suffering or something or make the definition of suffering so broad as to make the quote pointless. Just a few examples of great things accomplished without great human suffering or slavery- space race, Internet, Inca Trail, Bilbao Museum.

> space race

This was literally the result of the Cold War.

> Internet

Partially the same as above, also, there's no denying that they're isn't any suffering because of the Internet.

> Inca Trail, Biblao Museum

These mostly came about because of mechanization or better technology…

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#29

Post by fatjokes » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

If it makes MIT feel better, I don't think "ethics" when I think of MIT. I think technological leadership and excellence, but definitely not ethics. For starters, they have plenty of collaborations with the military (e.g., MIT Lincoln Labs; not saying that can't be ethical... but it usually means someone's going to die). Nothing to be ashamed of. Somebody's gotta do it...

Re: MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics

#30

Post by rflrob » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #5

germinalphrase wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does MIT really need to "hunt for funding"? My impression is that their endowment is enormous.

A huge amount of the money in big endowments comes from various unsavory characters. The names of buildings at famous universities are a Who’s Who of famous fortunes built on slavery, war profiteering, drug running, child labor, wage theft and other worker abuse, large-scale environmental destruction, bribes and kickbacks, fraud, outright theft, etc. The Saudis are a particularly unsavory monarchy (torture, arbitrary…

The Saudi money is different in that the university administration today is seeking it out, as opposed to money from historical donors, which the current administration already has. Which is not to say that historical blood money, whether the direct result of (for instance) slave sales [1], or laundered as philanthropy from robber barons is ethically free and clear; rather, if your institution has long been engaged in taking that money, the very least you can do is stop taking it now.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-...