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The tech sec­tor might be evil

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Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#141

Post by nf05papsjfVbc »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #115
tanilama wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. If they are just writing regular code for some subsystems' subsytem, why is that evil? TBH, calling out a person to quit just because one don't agree his/her employer's deeds before having a full understanding whether that person is directly involved or not, tells quite a lot about one's hubris.

> If they are just writing regular code for some subsystems' subsytem, why is that evil? Why should it be relevant whether you are "writing regular code for some subsystems' subsytem"? Shouldn't the relevant question be whether your contribution is "net evil" or "net good"? How would you suggest we defend against an institution dividing the work to build some hypothetical ultimate evil into thousands of "regular smal…

Not everyone draws the line at the same spot. Everyone's constraints in life are different.

Also, talking from a position of "I know I am right. Why are you not thinking the same way as me?" is generally not effective at getting other people to see things from your perspective.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#143

Post by indigochill »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #100
tallanvor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My response to you would be the following: 1. Working for a company doesn't mean you agree with everything they do. 2. Just because some of the work you do is used by someone else for something you don't agree with doesn't mean that you're evil by default. 3. Try to find a tool that can't be used for "evil". Seriously, I doubt you can find a single thing, whether a device or an application that can't both do good and…

> And at the end of the day, your friends have their own moral codes, just like you do. If they feel that the work they do fits their code, then that's their decision. That's either vacuous or bullshit. If you mean that they do in fact decide what they do ... well, yeah? But that does not say anything about whether they should be doing it, nor whether I should agree with it, nor even whether I should try and do somet…

>If your moral code says that you should kill witches, that does not justify anything at all.

Although I agree, I think it's worth asking "why not?" to introspect our own position. I'll take a stab at it from my perspective.

We might say it doesn't justify anything because we have some moral code that we think everyone should abide by, and part of that might be "Don't go around killing people". Some people turn some parts of the collective moral code into laws so they can be tangibly enforced.

But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population? In other places and times laws might say, for instance, that to combat overpopulation we need to euthanize those under a certain threshold of contribution.

To fight this, we either need to come to terms with the idea that morals and laws are just a matter of personal taste, in which case there's nothing really justifying our own position either and we're just fighting for our personal preference, or we need some higher authority beyond ourselves/consensus/law that justifies our "don't kill people" position and condemns their "euthanize the parasites" position.

To me, morality seems to fall prey to Tarski's undefinability theorem. There can be no definition of moral truth within the system of morality. We need some external system to define moral truth.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#144

Post by indigochill »

Something I've been thinking lately and may as well ask here: is there a resource for finding tech positions exclusively with socially/morally net positive organizations?

It seems most of the tech job ads I browse through seem to be mostly companies chasing the money rather than focusing on trying to make a net positive social impact.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#145

Post by quuquuquu »

indigochill wrote: post #144

Something I've been thinking lately and may as well ask here: is there a resource for finding tech positions exclusively with socially/morally net positive organizations? It seems most of the tech job ads I browse through seem to be mostly companies chasing the money rather than focusing on trying to make a net positive social impact.

I would suggest Angel List to at the very least narrow your search, and then manually inspect the companies that come close to what you are looking for :)

You will find that they are few and far between ahah

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#146

Post by mkrum »

indigochill wrote: post #144

Something I've been thinking lately and may as well ask here: is there a resource for finding tech positions exclusively with socially/morally net positive organizations? It seems most of the tech job ads I browse through seem to be mostly companies chasing the money rather than focusing on trying to make a net positive social impact.

Who gets to decide whats "socially/morally net positive"? Every company thinks they're "socially/morally net positive", which at best happens by accident. If you want to help people, join a non-profit, don't buy into some company's PR. Companies chase money, thats the point of a company.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#147

Post by outoftacos »

davedx wrote: post #2

Good summary of the current political climate around the tech sector. To be honest, this has been a long time coming -- I've been reading pieces with disdain for "Silicon Valley technocrats" for a while now. It is picking up pace now, though... and the EU has already fired quite a few shots. "I left out Twit­ter be­cause it’s not ac­tu­al­ly a com­pa­ny, it’s a dys­func­tion­al non-profit that ac­ci­den­tal­ly pro­vi…

The other angle which I haven't seen much written about yet (hint hint aspiring journalists) is I personally know a good number of the mid and high level employees at these companies, and they are becoming increasingly disillusioned by the day. They just don't want to be a part of this bullshit system anymore. Especially at Google and Facebook, they seem to be more authoritarian than some toppled dictatorships of the past century.

Fortunately it's a great time for radical career shifts, especially if you always wanted to be an artist.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#148

Post by outoftacos »

theoh wrote: post #104
davedx wrote: post #2

Good summary of the current political climate around the tech sector. To be honest, this has been a long time coming -- I've been reading pieces with disdain for "Silicon Valley technocrats" for a while now. It is picking up pace now, though... and the EU has already fired quite a few shots. "I left out Twit­ter be­cause it’s not ac­tu­al­ly a com­pa­ny, it’s a dys­func­tion­al non-profit that ac­ci­den­tal­ly pro­vi…

As far as that Twitter comment goes: I've always found Bray to be a bit too pleased with himself and not as clever as he would like to think he is. In that context, it's not a humorous bit of side eye but a tedious manifestation of his superiority complex.

He's also 100% correct, Twitter should be de-listed and treated as a utility. It's too much of a public good to get gobbled up by Google or whoever.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#149

Post by mrtksn »

ForHackernews wrote: post #127
mrtksn wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a company is not making money but there are lots of people trying to keep it around it probably means that the company is making money for these people but it's not reflected to the books directly or the payment is due for later time. It's bit of like building roads that on the books may look like unprofitable venture but the utility they provide makes possible for other businesses to flourish so the roads are kep…

> Do we really want to see Twitter gone? Yes. As soon as possible, please.

why?

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#150

Post by dragonwriter »

indigochill wrote: post #144

Something I've been thinking lately and may as well ask here: is there a resource for finding tech positions exclusively with socially/morally net positive organizations? It seems most of the tech job ads I browse through seem to be mostly companies chasing the money rather than focusing on trying to make a net positive social impact.

> Something I've been thinking lately and may as well ask here: is there a resource for finding tech positions exclusively with socially/morally net positive organizations?

Views on morality differ, and there is no universally accepted method of assessing or aggregating utility, so this is not a thing that can be done objectively. Such a thing, were it to exist, would be highly subjective.

> It seems most of the tech job ads I browse through seem to be mostly companies chasing the money rather than focusing on trying to make a net positive social impact.

Welcome to capitalism. That said, there are jobs at public benefit corps, charitable nonprofits, and governments, which in principle are about social benefit by some standard instead of (or in addition to, in the first case) profit.

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