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

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

#41

Post by tclancy »

valuearb wrote: post #21
DamnYuppie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can we get a citation for these claims? Otherwise it feels a lot like something one says while rocking themselves to sleep at night. The whole thesis of "Sapiens" is exactly the opposite of this, that "progress" has been mainly a way of making life harder. The idea rural farming is somehow more dangerous than moving to a city and working long hours in a factory seems worthy of some numbers. If you basically learn, "Don't stick your face in the thresher" I feel like farming would be fairly low danger.

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

#42

Post by user15128 »

fatjokes wrote: post #29

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...

as long as it is not you who is dying?

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

#43

Post by darawk »

fatjokes wrote: post #29

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...

What's unethical about collaborating with the military? We don't exist in a vacuum. American military hegemony has been an extremely powerful stabilizing force, post-WWII. This idea that it is unethical to build weapons is profoundly wrong, short sighted, and morally selfish.

Not to overly pick on your comment, since you did say that it can be ethical, of course. But i've seen this sentiment that military work is unethical echo'd a bunch of times here lately, and I think it's an incredibly naive perspective.

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

#44

Post by goldenkey »

hueving wrote: post #33
saagarjha wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The quote in question is "slavery built everything we love". Explain how slavery built the Internet or triggered the space race.

Sorry to dissapoint but see below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#Slave_labor

"More people died building the V-2 rockets than were killed by it as a weapon"

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#NASA_career

"American authorities then chose to use von Braun and his German team's experience with missiles to create an orbital launch vehicle. Wernher von Braun had such an idea originally proposed in 1954, but it was denied at the time.[60]"

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

#45

Post by deviationblue »

fatjokes wrote: post #29

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...

>If it makes MIT feel better, I don't think "ethics" when I think of MIT.

You and every Tom, Dick and Harry. And that's okay why?

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

#46

Post by tempagain567i »

ascorbic wrote: post #10
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…

> I don't hear anyone calling for sanctions on Iran You're not listening very hard then.

Among liberal circles like hn and MIT,Jesus Christ dude. But appealing to you people is useless because my polite and correct comment gets flagged, flagged for nothing more than offending someone. Iran's influence is overblown? Are you serious? Where are rebels getting their supplies? If Iranian support ceased completely the resistance would dry up and the whole thing would grind to a total and complete stop. Same more or less for saudi Arabia. Iran has committed directly and indirectly heinous terrorist crimes that match or exceed the acts commuted by Saudi/us. This is basically a war between two countries and as has always been true, trying to reduce the thing into a framework of good and evil or right and wrong is a fools errand and an intellectual molestation of the truth.

In actual fact mbs is a force for reform. He is perusing reform both because it is plainly in the best interest of his empire and because this is a trend that goes all the way to the beginning with for example the introduction of television to the masses despite huge resistance from religious bodies. Anyone who claims to favor reform and simultaneously condemns mbs knows nothing about the history or international politics of Saudi Arabia. I have been watching mobs and his behaviour indicates very positive direction indeed. Do your homework. Astoundingly the people at MIT seem to have not done theirs.

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

#47

Post by dragonmum »

evanpw wrote: post #9
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…

Apparently ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides ), the suicide rate at Foxconn during that period was lower than the overall Chinese or US suicide rate.

> the suicide rate at Foxconn during that period was lower than the overall Chinese or US suicide rate.

Please allow me to change your opinion on this. The comparison being made there is the ( number of suicides at Foxconn / number of Foxconn employees ) vs number of suicides in China / population of China. At first glance, this looks like a valid comparison. But it is not. It is actually comparing apples to oranges. The real comparison is against number of employees who choose to commit suicide at their employers premise / number of employees. A useful way to paraphrase this is:

Lets say Google has 100,000 employees. How many Google employees commit suicide at the Googleplex per year? Not how many google employees commit suicide overall.

When phrased this way, it becomes clear that other companies have much lower suicide rates than Foxconn.

That's what is critical to compare. It turns out Foxconn's suicide rate is massively higher than equivalent Chinese employers and the inference is the alleged egregious mistreatment of Foxconn laborers by Foxconn is the cause.

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

#48

Post by robotresearcher »

mrgordon wrote: post #15
germinalphrase wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes the source of much of the enormous endowment is Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and private donations (see the new Koch building, for example). The major energy companies (e.g. Shell) are also big donors to the climate change research group which has no doubt tempered their publicly expressed views. So overall much of the funding is from less than ideal sources from an ethical point of view. It does…

Are you sure the DoE or DoD are contributing to MIT’s endowment? That seems unlikely to me. Those agencies award research contracts with statements of work on a cost plus overhead basis. That’s not at all the same as contributing to an endowment.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

dragonmum wrote: post #47
evanpw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides ), the suicide rate at Foxconn during that period was lower than the overall Chinese or US suicide rate.

> the suicide rate at Foxconn during that period was lower than the overall Chinese or US suicide rate. Please allow me to change your opinion on this. The comparison being made there is the ( number of suicides at Foxconn / number of Foxconn employees ) vs number of suicides in China / population of China. At first glance, this looks like a valid comparison. But it is not. It is actually comparing apples to oranges.…

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by knuththetruth »

darawk wrote: post #43
fatjokes wrote: post #29

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...

What's unethical about collaborating with the military? We don't exist in a vacuum. American military hegemony has been an extremely powerful stabilizing force, post-WWII. This idea that it is unethical to build weapons is profoundly wrong, short sighted, and morally selfish. Not to overly pick on your comment, since you did say that it can be ethical, of course. But i've seen this sentiment that military work is une…

I think as human consciousness, morality, and our understanding of history have evolved, the question we now ask is “Stability for whom?” Certainly not for Latin America during the Cold War, for example.

Those who oppose collaborating with the military do so because “America military hegemony” has been used for all kinds of horrors, including recent events like the Iraq War. There’s nothing naive about not wanting to be party to at least half a million civilian casualties and the destabilization of the Middle East.

You can make some Real Politik argument about the ends justifying the means, if that’s what you truly believe, but you’ll have to do so more explicitly and account for things like Vietnam and the Iraq War. The reductive abstraction of “stability” you pose know longer holds the same kind of sway it once did among most people.

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