Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For? • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#281

Post by jiveturkey » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

mindgam3 wrote: post #249

[Reposting my comment shared on the earlier thread, I guess this one wasn’t marked as dupe] “In June, more than 100 students at Stanford, M.I.T. and other top colleges signed a pledge saying they would turn down job interviews with Google unless the company dropped its Project Maven contract. (Google said that month that it would not renew the contract once it expired.) “We are students opposed to the weaponization o…

I'm confused on both of your points.

1. How is this powerful, in the slightest? 100 students is less than a rounding error.

2. How are these students in any way brave?

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#282

Post by WalterSear » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #225

hasbroslasher wrote: post #210

It's true that ultimately there aren't a whole lot of morally "good" things you can do with your compsci degree at the moment. You can work in adtech or building corporate software, ecommerce, etc. to sell plastic trinkets to people and raise your company's stock price. Or you can do ML, which will probably hurt poor people in the near to mid term and probably contribute somewhat to the more Orwellian aspects of mode…

Doing the right thing — not what’s profitable or power enhancing — isn’t what business is about. In part that is because survival and solvency are quite difficult in the details; and in part that is because doing “good” requires a much richer concept of what you are doing than is required by being profitable and placating shareholders. It’s easier to get it wrong, harder to say when you’re done and can move resources…

> Those who would mix business and charitable, virtuous action are asking to be held accountable for neither while enjoying the rewards of both.

The problem isn't that people are expecting businesses to be charities. It's that survival and solvency make abuse of the commons a business necessity.

People want jobs that don't involve abusing the commons.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#283

Post by erobbins » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #187

I once produced an open source product while working for Berkeley Lab, which is a DoE lab operated by UC. It does non-classified work. One day we got a visit from a couple employees of Lawrence Livermore Labs (classified research) and my manager glanced at their badges- he said something about "Q" and smiled while asking what they worked on. They said "multiphysics combustion codes" and my manager looked at me and sa…

Look at the bright side.. accurate nuclear weapon simulations led to the end of live weapons testing.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#284

Post by sigstoat » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

hasbroslasher wrote: post #210

It's true that ultimately there aren't a whole lot of morally "good" things you can do with your compsci degree at the moment. You can work in adtech or building corporate software, ecommerce, etc. to sell plastic trinkets to people and raise your company's stock price. Or you can do ML, which will probably hurt poor people in the near to mid term and probably contribute somewhat to the more Orwellian aspects of mode…

> It's true that ultimately there aren't a whole lot of morally "good" things you can do with your compsci degree at the moment.

uhhh. your bubble is astonishing. or your standards for "good" are unattainable by anyone.

how about folks who work on CAD software? is that bad because it will be used to design plastic trinkets, or good because it'll design medical prosthetics?

(are the medical prosthetics good because they help people, or bad because they make someone money?)

if i write the software for a piece of test equipment for batteries, is that good because now people who buy consumer electronics are less likely to catch on fire? or bad because i helped the big company sell more plastic trinkets?

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#285

Post by kareemsabri » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:39 PM UTC

hasbroslasher wrote: post #243

kareemsabri wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. People take jobs for all sorts of reasons. They are answerable to their friends, family, community etc. If that were the case, why would people be resigning from Google over moral issues?

This person is saying is that our economic system incentivizes profit, not that it mandates it for every agent. So while a few relatively well-off, well-educated, and principled Googlers can quit over perceived injustice, many people either can't economically justify such a choice, don't know enough to know that there's a problem with their work, or simply don't care and take the money over morals. And furthermore, w…

No, they said our society and economic system incentivize profit over all else. Neither of those things are true.

Lots of people make principled decisions every single day. You think only rich engineers can afford to put morals over money, and everyone else is selling their soul for a paycheck? Where do you live?

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#286

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:39 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #262

coolaliasbro wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you believe to be the cause of that abject poverty?

A common response is "Capitalism". It's an easy, glib response. Unfortunately, it's not a good one, because abject poverty predates capitalism and exists without it. Another response is "deprivation". Unfortunately, this response is effectively an appeal to the definition of poverty. Since you asked what I believe, I don't believe there is a well-defined single cause of poverty.

A common response is "Capitalism". It's an easy, glib response. Unfortunately, it's not a good one

If anything, Capitalism has lifted 90% of the world's population out of poverty. It's a solution to absolute poverty, not a cause. It may, however, be a cause of relative poverty. But to paraphrase Winston Churchill, it's the worst system for eliminating poverty, after all the other ones we've ever tried.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#287

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:44 PM UTC

hasbroslasher wrote: post #230

acdanger wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exceedingly depressing and it's one of the reasons I can't stomach the Bay Area. It doesn't take long to notice serious manifestations of societal rot. And yet some of the brightest minds of our generation spend their best years trying to get people to spend more of their cognitive surplus on mindlessly staring at their device screen. I'm not at all saying this is tech's fault. I think the problem is much more s…

I completely agree. It's not tech's fault at all - tech companies prey on our basic neural hardware as much as fast-food companies do, as much as predatory banks do, and all for the same reason: to generate capital. Luckily, I think I'm starting to see more people waking up to smell the societal rot that tech has helped foster, and people are becoming more motivated to fight it. I'm just waiting to see if tech folks…

It's not tech's fault at all - tech companies prey on our basic neural hardware as much as fast-food companies do

Do you think tech can solve the problem of homeless addiction? There actually aren't that many homeless in the Bay Area.

There is only one problem with socialism. There is no check and balance on the amount of appropriation, which cannot be voluntary. Unchecked power eventually leads to oppression. Systems which you can't opt out of often lead to evil. (This may apply to Capitalism, but there it's somewhat ameliorated by creative destruction.)

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#288

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:45 PM UTC

hasbroslasher wrote: post #210

It's true that ultimately there aren't a whole lot of morally "good" things you can do with your compsci degree at the moment. You can work in adtech or building corporate software, ecommerce, etc. to sell plastic trinkets to people and raise your company's stock price. Or you can do ML, which will probably hurt poor people in the near to mid term and probably contribute somewhat to the more Orwellian aspects of mode…

So, I run a bunch of websites on a platform provided for free provided by that Evil Overlord Google and I make a few bucks that way, which matters to me because I remain desperately poor, and I also disseminate useful info for free that way to needy people, such as homeless people.

BlogSpot is a robust platform and some of the folks who worked on it probably have compsci degrees.

I'm also curing the incurable, but most people don't believe that, so probably no point in trying to convince you that I may yet win a Nobel Prize in medicine someday, if people will ever stop calling me crazy and take me seriously.

Don't mind me. I'm just cranky cuz reasons.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#289

Post by mindgam3 » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:46 PM UTC

jiveturkey wrote: post #281

mindgam3 wrote: post #249

[Reposting my comment shared on the earlier thread, I guess this one wasn’t marked as dupe] “In June, more than 100 students at Stanford, M.I.T. and other top colleges signed a pledge saying they would turn down job interviews with Google unless the company dropped its Project Maven contract. (Google said that month that it would not renew the contract once it expired.) “We are students opposed to the weaponization o…

I'm confused on both of your points. 1. How is this powerful, in the slightest? 100 students is less than a rounding error. 2. How are these students in any way brave?

1. Powerful in terms of impact. Google discontinued the project, no doubt due in some part to the protest.

2. Brave in turning down lucrative job offers for moral reasons. Many, many engineers currently work at Big Tech co’s with similar doubts and fears. But to risk your salary and job security on ethical grounds, that’s what I call brave.

Re: Tech Workers Now Want to Know: What Are We Building This For?

#290

Post by mindgam3 » Mon, Oct 08, 2018, 10:47 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #273

mindgam3 wrote: post #249

[Reposting my comment shared on the earlier thread, I guess this one wasn’t marked as dupe] “In June, more than 100 students at Stanford, M.I.T. and other top colleges signed a pledge saying they would turn down job interviews with Google unless the company dropped its Project Maven contract. (Google said that month that it would not renew the contract once it expired.) “We are students opposed to the weaponization o…

Knees is overselling it.

Yeah, I’m probably being a little dramatic. They didn’t cripple GOOG or their business model. But still, getting Google to back down on a significant product direction is noteworthy.