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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

#71

Post by protomyth »

aarongough wrote: post #35
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".

Farming in general is a dangerous occupation, even in the USA where machinery tends to be reasonably modern and well guarded: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf I wasn't able to find a source but my understanding is that being a farmer is many times more dangerous on a percentage basis than being a police officer, and that's only counting fatal accidents. I would bet good money that the rate of disfiguring…

The farming industry is a bit dangerous but that includes things not on the farm. Grain Elevators can kill you pretty quick. There are reasons some big ag companies take safety so seriously that standing on an office chair is a fireable offense.

Also, being a police officer, overall, isn’t as deadly as people think. Specific areas are though.

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

#72

Post by brisance »

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.

And I don’t think Cook has shirked his responsibility and has come out repeatedly to state that they think it is a problem and they’re always working to improve it. That is why amongst the major tech companies they have published supplier responsibility reports regularly. https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/

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

#73

Post by fatjokes »

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…

That's exactly what I meant when I said it's nothing to be ashamed of, somebody's gotta do it. Just don't kid yourself that it makes you ethical. Sure, you could argue that you're "better than the other guy" or "they started it", but that's a pretty low bar. It just means you're both unethical.

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

#74

Post by jdietrich »

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.…

>The real comparison is against number of employees who choose to commit suicide at their employers premise / number of employees.

A very large proportion of Chinese factory workers (including a majority of Foxconn workers) live in company-owned dormitories located on or near the factory site. Most Chinese factory workers are internal migrants from poorer northern and central provinces. These workers generally prefer dormitory accommodation, because it allows them to save a larger proportion of their salary towards their future plans.

You would only be comparing like-with-like if Google provided on-site housing at the Googleplex to a majority of their workers.

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

#75

Post by hueving »

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.…

>Lets say Google has 100,000 employees. How many Google employees commit suicide at the Googleplex per year?

Google employees don't live at the Googleplex so that's not valid.

If you want to compare them to other companies you would either need to include suicide off campus of the other companies or exclude suicide off-shift at Foxconn.

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

#76

Post by hueving »

goldenkey wrote: post #44
hueving wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

Not slaves.

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

#77

Post by hueving »

gumby wrote: post #27

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 studen…

Same story with Stanford and SRI. Stanford admins didn't like the optics of supporting the military so that was split into the Stanford Research Institute one caltrain stop away and suddenly everything was fine.

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

#78

Post by Spooky23 »

tclancy wrote: post #41
valuearb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, "D…

I’d suggest that you perform even the most cursory level of research via Google.

In the United States, agriculture is one of the most dangerous occupational categories. Fatality rate is 7x higher than all workers in private industry, and injury rate is 40% higher than all workers. Additionally, exposure to farm chemicals results in long term health effects.

In China, safety standards are poor in agriculture and often unregulated, so no reliable statistics exist. That said, with reduced mechanization and poor working standards, injuries and deaths are likely far higher.

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

#79

Post by aaronblohowiak »

gpm wrote: post #64
lopmotr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apart from actual slavery with chains and guns, often the people suffering are suffering less doing the productive work than they would be otherwise because they do it by choice. So you could equally say "reducing human suffering has brought us all the things we love". Even when people die, they've taken a risk doing the dangerous job instead of whatever else which was worse. Anyone who drives to work is doing that -…

It's an interesting claim that they are suffering less because they are doing it by choice. I'm not sure if it's true. Doing it by choice creates all sorts of ill psychological effects. It means I have to convince myself to keep doing it, and as a result I'll try to convince myself of things like "it's fair" or "I like this" or so on. I think I might actually be happier as a slave than a wage slave doing the exact sa…

“Wage slavery” as it is often used is a bad term that takes away from the fact that there are more total people in slavery or forced labor than ever before in the history of the world. Chattel slavery is repugnant and debases all moral people. Working a shitty job for low pay and an asshole boss sucks but is a difference in kind, not degree.

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

#80

Post by TallGuyShort »

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…

I must have missed some intersection between pop culture and some political bubble. What happened to our opinion of Louis CK?
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