Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thetech.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 147 posts

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

#121

Post by fatjokes »

darawk wrote: post #91
fatjokes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I respectfully disagree. Consider a thought experiment: You have two groups of people. Group A is ethical (per your definition), well intentioned and smart. Group B is cruel, authoritarian and egotistical. Group A doesn't like to think about war, and certainly doesn't want to contribute to the machinery of war. Group B, on the other hand, delights in it. Group B loves building weapons and thinking about military stra…

In your scenario, Group A got dragged into the mud by Group B. If they wanted to stay ethical, they would've been "dominated". They chose strength and survival over staying "clean". Like I said before, it's fine, and I'd probably agree with it. It may even be the lesser of two evils. I need to reiterate that I'm not disagreeing with Group A's actions here to resist. I'm just saying accept the fact that you're probably trading your ethics for it.

I think the key difference between our points of view is how strictly we want to define "being ethical". I'm pretty strict about the definition. At the same time, I'm okay with being labeled unethical from time to time.

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

#122

Post by darawk »

fatjokes wrote: post #121
darawk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Consider a thought experiment: You have two groups of people. Group A is ethical (per your definition), well intentioned and smart. Group B is cruel, authoritarian and egotistical. Group A doesn't like to think about war, and certainly doesn't want to contribute to the machinery of war. Group B, on the other hand, delights in it. Group B loves building weapons and thinking about military stra…

In your scenario, Group A got dragged into the mud by Group B. If they wanted to stay ethical, they would've been "dominated". They chose strength and survival over staying "clean". Like I said before, it's fine, and I'd probably agree with it. It may even be the lesser of two evils. I need to reiterate that I'm not disagreeing with Group A's actions here to resist. I'm just saying accept the fact that you're probabl…

How are you defining ethics if not commensurate with the predictable consequences of your choices? If it is predictable that your choices will lead to more suffering and a worse-off world, how is that ethical?

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

#123

Post by darawk »

majewsky wrote: post #113
darawk wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree. Consider a thought experiment: You have two groups of people. Group A is ethical (per your definition), well intentioned and smart. Group B is cruel, authoritarian and egotistical. Group A doesn't like to think about war, and certainly doesn't want to contribute to the machinery of war. Group B, on the other hand, delights in it. Group B loves building weapons and thinking about military stra…

> Very quickly in this civilization, Group B will come to dominate Group A, and they will build a world in their own image - cruel and inhuman. You're skipping the important part of the argument here, and going directly from the premise to your desired outcome without arguing why that will happen. If what you describe were the unconditional outcome, how is it that our world is not gradually becoming more cruel and in…

> If what you describe were the unconditional outcome, how is it that our world is not gradually becoming more cruel and inhuman?

Because not everyone makes the same naive choice to bury their head in the sand and say "moral people don't build weapons". There is a long tradition of great scientists making the only moral choice and choosing to develop weapons for the powers they trusted the most. Those people made the extremely hard, but ultimately correct choice to build weapons of war for imperfect powers. They did so because they knew that if they didn't, someone else would. And that someone else might be building them for an even less ethical power.

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

#124

Post by [deleted] »

whatshisface wrote: post #84
fatjokes wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Combining unethical and necessary defeats the point of identifying some things as unethical: if you're going to do them anyways, why bother calling them wrong? The motivation behind bringing ethics into the workplace is that broader human interests are that engineers and other front-liners (operators, doctors, technicians, soldiers) should refuse to do things that are excessively bad. If you think they should just su…

[deleted]

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

#125

Post by erikpukinskis »

meri_dian wrote: post #54
prepend wrote: post #25

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…

"MIT is likely concerned with increasing its power. Thus is part of the establishment. Doing lots of great things, but part of the establishment." Almost all organized groups exist in order to increase their power/influence. Those who try to destroy centers of power without either redistributing power or accumulating it for themselves are destroyers, nothing more.

Isn’t redistributing power different from increasing ones own power though?

My goal is to redistribute power from people of my “kind” to people in my geography, roughly evenly. I think that’s fundamentally different from “increasing my own power” although I do admit it’s not wholly different.

I think your statement is just too reductive. There are corporations, federations, partnerships, syndicates, all of these organizations have vastly different power centralization properties.

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

#126

Post by s73v3r_ »

darawk wrote: post #100
s73v3r_ wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is also, "How is this going to be used, and is it necessary?" Designing weapons to defeat Hitler could easily be justified, cause Hitler. But designing weapons to, say, better fight the Iraq War? Furthering drone strike technology? Given that there was no need for that at all, I can't say that's ethical.

> Designing weapons to defeat Hitler could easily be justified, cause Hitler You can't just decide to make weapons when Hitler shows up. You need to be ready before Hitler shows up. > But designing weapons to, say, better fight the Iraq War? I'm no fan of the Iraq war. However, if we are going to fight the Iraq war, i'd certainly like us to have say, better targeted munitions, and I think Iraqi civilians would too. >…

"You're conflating the choice to go to war with the technology to facilitate that war. They are not the same thing. The choice to to war was a mistake. But once the choice has been made, ensuring that victory is swift and precise is absolutely ethical."

I disagree. Creating these weapons, especially things like drones which make it much, much easier to go to war, and removes the penalty of having your own citizens die in combat, conflates those two things. If it's easier to go to war, and your side doesn't have to suffer casualties, you will go to war more often. Thus, these things are unethical, as you are facilitating war.

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

#127

Post by s73v3r_ »

darawk wrote: post #117
mattmanser wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a ridiculous defence. If you make weapons, you are a killer. If there were really a hell, you would be going to it. Be you a blacksmith who crafts swords in the 10th century or a software developer who makes military drone software in the 21st. That you celebrate the use of drones, which save the life of one American at the expense of many innocent non-Americans, shows how utterly morally bankrupt your views…

It's like you didn't even read what I said. The world isn't a moral vacuum. You abdicating power does not mean that nobody has it. It means someone else does. If all of the 'good' people say "weapons and war are immoral", guess who is in control of all the weapons and war? It's really pretty easy to think through, and it's really pretty naive to bury your head in the sand.

We're not talking about abdicating power, here. The US already has that power. The US going to war doesn't give it more power, and not going to war in Iraq is not going to lessen it's power.

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

#128

Post by erikpukinskis »

jadedhacker wrote: post #34
jzl wrote: post #20

You don't even have to look as far as Saudi Arabia to raise similar questions. The Koch brothers are MIT graduates and huge donors. For a similar discussion of the ethics of MIT's acceptance of their money, see: https://www.quora.com/How-could-MIT-have-received-a-grant-fo...

I remember being shocked at walking down Kendall and seeing the cancer research building named the "Koch Institute". I'm glad the Kochs are doing things with their money other than attempting to overthrow democratic government and burn the world but my feeling is that MIT shouldn't help immunize them to criticism by burnishing their reputation.

“Greenwashing”. It’s a big business for non-profits.

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

#129

Post by mindslight »

darawk wrote: post #66
knuththetruth wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Talking about civilian deaths de-contextualized from the reality of the alternatives is exactly what I mean by 'naive'. The alternative to the Iraq War was not having the Iraq War, which by any sane account was the correct course of action. Half a million people didn’t half to die, but they did, because a lot of people embrace a kind of unquestioning idea of authority as “good,” to which you seem to subscribe. >And…

> The alternative to the Iraq War was not having the Iraq War, which by any sane account was the correct course of action. Half a million people didn’t half to die, but they did You'll get no disagreement from me there. Like I said, and you seem to want to ignore, the US has done bad things. The question isn't "has this entity ever done anything wrong", the question you have to answer is: from the pool of available o…

> the question you have to answer is: from the pool of available options, who's best?

This question is misleading, as the goal is never to pick the nicest tyrant and is certainly not to backstop their power. While USG is a stabilizing force in the world with regards to its peers that also have significant armaments, it also acts as a destabilizing force towards those it can assimilate with impunity.

It's not that designing or building weapons is wrong by itself. The problem is further advancing the offensive capabilities of the already-uncontested leader of the race - a leader which continually opts for routine use of those capabilities when it is easy. The infrastructure for remotely piloting drones halfway around the world isn't going to help defend in a mortal war against China, but it does make nicer day jobs for those roflstomping the latest economically-deviant backwater.

Coupled with the domestic political fuckery from the military-industrial-surveillance complex, the current answer is to just say no. If you want to build weapons, do so in the privacy of your own shed - you'll be better prepared to defend yourself when this overstretched empire collapses.

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

#130

Post by mrgordon »

robotresearcher wrote: post #48
mrgordon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"All research institutions get additional money tacked on to federal science and medical grants to help pay for general overhead. But federal rules allow institutions to deposit those payments into their general budgets, with no requirement they be used to directly support scientific endeavors."

"Universities and the federal government became partners in research after World War II. MIT was one of the biggest beneficiaries. The National Institutes of Health initially set the overhead reimbursement rate at 8 percent and it eventually rose to 20 percent for all universities. In 1965, Congress permitted schools to directly negotiate their rates with the federal government, setting ballooning rates on their course."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/03/17/harvard-m...

You are probably right that much of the money may technically not be part of the endowment but I'm not sure that the technicalities of what constitutes an endowment is very useful if they are still the main funder of the university.

If universities include up to 90% "overhead" that can be deposited into their general budgets with no requirement that it supports scientific endeavors then what do we really mean when we say the DoE / DoD don't contribute to the endowment? We mean they weren't "donations" basically? The article wasn't really about donations / endowment so other than using a slightly wrong word its not really relevant to the discussion anyway.

Furthermore more than half of MIT's R&D funds come from the government so this isn't exactly an edge case. Its the rule not the exception.

Post reply on HN