91–100 of 225 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a Canadian coder ... and my first thought, reading your comment, was, "We do?"
I think Canada has had a professional, and pretty serious, association of engineers (in the traditional sense) for a long, long time. Maybe the software thing is a spin-off of that.
I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…
While it's true that getting "up and running" with a simple project is only a matter of getting a working laptop and internet connection (and a bootcamp if one is available to you), getting into the position where you could build (or not build) a system capable of broadly violating human rights on behalf of an oppressive government is not an opportunity most workers have. If you're interested in the sort of union tha…
Given how often the interests of various workers can and do conflict, this strikes me as an idea possessed of a wonderful opportunity to come into greater alignment with reality. As are those who advocate it.
I always ask would-be tech union organizers the same question: what's in it for me? Rarely do I get good answers back.
Unions aren't about moralizing. They're about self-interest. Show me that you're going to advance mine, and we can talk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy to criticize someone when you're not the doing the work. The world was a lot more racist a few centuries ago, so considering what they had to work with, the founding fathers did well. The alternative is that there still would have been civil war, and slavery could have continued to this day.
This counterfactual would be more convincing if the UK did not ban slavery before the US did, and did not need a civil war to do it. And it is just as easy to praise someone when you're not the one they're hurting.
I've long thought that tech needs like.. a guild or trade union, or a professional association of some kind. The problem though, is that it's so easy to get into, so there's no easy way to "police" ourselves, because tech has been democratized so well-- Anyone can do a code boot-camp and be up and running within weeks. Not that that's a bad thing, it just makes it harder to hold developers to a code of ethics or anyt…
This article is premised on the idea that basically everything the Chinese government does is unethical, which is debatable. For one, the Chinese government is largely supported by its population. There might actually be engineers working on Dragonfly who do not believe the project is unethical. It's not that black and white...
How would one know if the Chinese government was supported by the population or not, given that anyone expressing a contrary opinion is likely to be a thorn in the eye that is China's surveillance state?
I do worry that people like me just staying out of these places leads to an echo chamber, and change from within is great. I wonder whether my individual impact on social good is greater trying to be moral at a moral company, or trying to be moral at an immoral company.
Luckily I don't have to twist my logic around to justify staying and vesting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This counterfactual would be more convincing if the UK did not ban slavery before the US did, and did not need a civil war to do it. And it is just as easy to praise someone when you're not the one they're hurting.
Even if the Great British Empire was "better" than the early US (I'm sure some of their former colonies would say otherwise), it bears no relevance to the discussion of whether the American Constitution was a success or failure. The US isn't Great Britain, so it can't be compared as such. I also don't understand why you would hold the founding fathers responsible for things that happened several decades in the future…
The Constitutional explicit protections for both slavery and the slave trade were written in by the framers, they did not occur several decades later. The concrete divergence between UK and US policy on slavery began no later than the UK 1807 ban on the slave trade, which was less than two decades after the adoption of the Constitution while the framers were still politically active in many cases (Jefferson was President, for instance).
I think this is s bit naive. Americans and EU citizens could conceivably follow some protocol such that what they produce will not go against certain principles (if we even presume no such thing as dual use tech), but that would do little to stifle and control developers outside this sphere. Vladimir, Jinping, Jeong-Un, Narendra, etc., aren’t about to handicap themselves and have some realization, oh, you know what g…
At least they won't be handed solutions to make their dictatorship more effective and harder to avoid. Much less to combat.
In some companies, the culture is also that of being oblivious (or acting oblivious) to the harm caused by the work. Facebook is the best example of this. Has there been any conscientious objector in that company? People like the WhatsApp and Instagram founders, who grew a conscience after getting billions in their pockets, don't count (even if one or two left some money on the table when quitting).
Money tells many a true tale of what goes in in people's minds.
The article, sadly, does not mention Facebook and all the surveillance that it enables and grows, along with oppressing people by forcing them to use "real names".