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Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#151

Post by seppin »

stendinator wrote: post #83
olalonde wrote: post #49

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?

> How would one know if the Chinese government was supported by the population or not

Or given the fact that any attempt to gather opinion about the communist party on the ground would instantly land you in jail, this is an impossible statement if anything.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#153

Post by spunker540 »

ArtDev wrote: post #108

Coding is a craft. I wouldn't work on something I had moral issues with. There are grey areas for sure, but for me, work for the defense industry or a local gun shop.. nope.. go find someone else. There will always be someone that doesn't have any moral compass about their work or income. That person is simply not me.

Do you feel defense contractors should go out of business and that the work they do is immoral? Or is it just not for you?

I don’t know what country you’re from but would you prefer you had no military or weapons or defense? Like it or not there will always be other countries with weapons and they may not always be friendly towards you or your interests.

I wouldn’t want my work to have anything to do with killing people either, but I also think the defense industry (while unfortunate) is probably here to stay, for good reasons too.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#154

Post by ABCLAW »

swiley wrote: post #143
killjoywashere wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Experts are a nice resource to have, but they're not a cure-all.

Not all of our legislature's representatives have systemically good incentives. Regardless of their ability to understand complexity, complexity offers them the ability to obfuscate. Ignoring any bad faith or corruption, though, our legislatures are also a limited compute resource.

If the complexity of modern society rises by orders of magnitude, the tools legislatures previously used to tackle complexity may not scale to the new challenges, or may simply be too slow to address the issues while they are relevant.

One of my first areas of research was mapping legislature throughput to variations in rates of technological change. It appears most western governments addressed social issues arising out of the industrial revolution, for instance, exceptionally slowly. To summarize a few years of reading in the library stacks: the relationship between social complexity and quality of governance is not well understood.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#155

Post by rorykoehler »

robertAngst wrote: post #139
ohyes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assume that a hypothetical future government that you find yourself living under is not good. Assume furthermore that a future hypothetical company is equally not good and the two collude to do not good things together. Now assume you’re motivated to do something about it. Sucks for you, they have already predicted that and cleansed you because they know everything you’ve ever read and it was a high probability that…

Isnt the government the problem? Why punish google?

This is about potential for abuse not whether the abuser is a public or private entity.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#156

Post by [deleted] »

mspecter wrote: post #103
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.

A moral hazard happens when an entity is somehow insured against something (e.g. health insurance), so is rationally more likely to behave in some "bad" way (e.g. driving recklessly). I'm not seeing how this a moral hazard, do you just mean "immoral"?

[deleted]

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#157

Post by closeparen »

ohyes wrote: post #122
robertAngst wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the problem again? You used google while signed in and now the world knows you like barbies? Serious question, because I do not feel violated.

Assume that a hypothetical future government that you find yourself living under is not good. Assume furthermore that a future hypothetical company is equally not good and the two collude to do not good things together. Now assume you’re motivated to do something about it. Sucks for you, they have already predicted that and cleansed you because they know everything you’ve ever read and it was a high probability that…

Does increased government authority over the tech industry make abusive access to its data and eyeballs less likely, or more likely? How would such a collaboration start? My money's on "It sure would be a shame if we audited the shit out of your infrastructure and hit you with everything we can find in the 500,000 page rulebook... or you could do me this one favor."

Doing something about a bad government is called terrorism. Rooting out such people before they act is called preventing radicalization, stemming the flow of hatred and bigotry (the #1 talking point in calls to regulate tech).

Knowing what buttons to press to influence populations to act a certain way is called called campaigning. Belief in democracy is exactly equal to belief that whoever is best at that each election cycle should have the most power.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#159

Post by lern_too_spel »

robertAngst wrote: post #113
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.

What is the problem again? You used google while signed in and now the world knows you like barbies? Serious question, because I do not feel violated.

As the article repeatedly states, the problem is Dragonfly, things like Cisco's and Yahoo's famous lawsuits, and Apple's handing over of iCloud keys. Nobody is conscientiously objecting to your scenario.

Re: Tech Needs More Conscientious Objectors

#160

Post by lern_too_spel »

olalonde wrote: post #96
stendinator wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's quite apparent to anyone who has lived there for a while and talked to people. Some large scale anonymous surveys done by not particularly sympathetic outsiders also confirm it (e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/0... ).

That's what happens when the party controls information to paint a very specific picture. You'll find that anonymous surveys in DPRK will also show that most support the Kim regime.
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