Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#141

Post by donarb » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 2:12 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #75

Aunche wrote: post #47

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.

The UK may have banned slavery early on, but the US was the first of many British colonies to gain independence, something which took a few hundred years for the UK to relinquish world-wide. Colonization was a milder form of slavery, but oppressive none the less.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#142

Post by username90 » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 2:14 AM UTC

povertyworld wrote: post #109

mfoy_ wrote: post #3

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…

Why put this on programmers? The guy making the decision to make Dragonfly is a Stanford MBA with a materials background. It's not some working class kid who made it through a Javascript bootcamp that is making decisions about the direction of future Google products. So, why don't we let the MBAs be the ones to form an ethical organization to police themselves.

I feel that many MBA's treat immoral behavior as just PR debt.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#143

Post by swiley » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 2:22 AM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #135

ABCLAW wrote: post #27

I think the imposition of this burden on engineers is the result of our belief that our legislators are too incompetent or unwilling to act in the fact of clear moral hazards. Tech has a very strong history of conscientious objectors. They're not the problem. Other institutions need to do their part.

I wrote a response to an email today, someone had sent me two ethics position papers. I pigeon-holed my own response after I wrote "it's time policy makers start assuming responsibility for understanding more logic than just policy logic. Math must be part of their domain expertise". Mainly I shelved my response because I doubt the policy people on the thread would have taken that very well. But the truth is looming…

Isn't that what the legally so called "experts" are for?

Having technology that's too complex for most people to handle hasn't been a new thing for at least a couple centuries.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#144

Post by austincheney » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 2:28 AM UTC

mfoy_ wrote: post #3

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…

Tech needs licensing with an ethics clause for much more than moral hazards and conspiracy theory potential.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#145

Post by csallen » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 2:32 AM UTC

username90 wrote: post #142

povertyworld wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why put this on programmers? The guy making the decision to make Dragonfly is a Stanford MBA with a materials background. It's not some working class kid who made it through a Javascript bootcamp that is making decisions about the direction of future Google products. So, why don't we let the MBAs be the ones to form an ethical organization to police themselves.

I feel that many MBA's treat immoral behavior as just PR debt.

It's not like programmers are some different moral class. "Many of X are immoral" applies to almost all X.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#146

Post by phs318u » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 2:47 AM UTC

Perhaps one day, we'll see lists like this [0] for companies that helped the Chinese government detain entire ethnic populations, or for those that provided assistance to the Turkish regime during its purges and disappearances of opponents, or those that facilitated states, such as Russia, to politically interfere in the democratic functioning of their rivals, and the extra-judicial killing of their opponents.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#147

Post by ABCLAW » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 3:05 AM UTC

mspecter wrote: post #136

zwkrt wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Insured" can be interpreted very broadly; moral hazard is whenever the negative outcomes of a risky decision are directed away from oneself. A CEO considering the option of a layoff is a moral hazard as she will make her board happy at the expense of her employees. Either way she has nothing to lose.

>"Insured" can be interpreted very broadly; moral hazard is whenever the negative outcomes of a risky decision are directed away from oneself. Nope! That's called an externality. A moral hazard is a type of externality, but is very focused on a particular set of instances in the definition I provided.

My comment used the term in the exact manner described by the comment you're replying to, to describe a state of affairs whereby incentives are systemically perverse because risk is not properly allocated.

A recent review I looked through indicates that the term has been historically used for different purposes in economics, insurance and probability literature. If the language of externalities is easier to understand for you, feel free to mentally substitute it in.

I could have couched the comment in the language of externalities and made a similar point, but it would lose the rhetorical flourish of hinting that legislatures themselves discount risk associated with their actions (or lack thereof).

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#148

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 3:12 AM UTC

username90 wrote: post #142

povertyworld wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why put this on programmers? The guy making the decision to make Dragonfly is a Stanford MBA with a materials background. It's not some working class kid who made it through a Javascript bootcamp that is making decisions about the direction of future Google products. So, why don't we let the MBAs be the ones to form an ethical organization to police themselves.

I feel that many MBA's treat immoral behavior as just PR debt.

[deleted]

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#149

Post by seppin » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #27

I think the imposition of this burden on engineers is the result of our belief that our legislators are too incompetent or unwilling to act in the fact of clear moral hazards. Tech has a very strong history of conscientious objectors. They're not the problem. Other institutions need to do their part.

Yes why jeopardize the bags of money everyone makes for democracy, etc.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#150

Post by seppin » Wed, Apr 24, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #100

Compensation, including perks, is usually very good in tech in comparison to many other industries. Most people rationalize and convince themselves that they're not really doing bad things, and that it's someone else who's the problem. 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 conscienti…

> Has there been any conscientious objector in that company?

No it's a cult. They wouldn't hire you unless you drank the koolaid.