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The Haskell Elephant in the Room

stephendiehl.com

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Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#151

Post by dimitrios1 »

gmfawcett wrote: post #103
dimitrios1 wrote: post #88

If you have ethical concerns with this, but still love FP, just come over to OCaml. You get 80-90% of what you love about Haskell, and there is an established industry in many sectors. Big players here like Ahrefs, Jane Street, and, of course, Messanger and Facebook.

Tezos uses Ocaml; doesn't the same argument apply? (I don't agree with the argument, personally, and I'm a big fan of Ocaml... I just don't see how it deserves an "ethical concern" exception here.)

I am ignorant of the primary users of Tezos, but I imagine given it's low value relative to other coins, it isn't the prime target for black market deals, money launderers, and other criminals.

I love Tezos, personally, and think it's one of the more technically superior blockchains, and can see it having a better chance than other stable coins of having broad applicability to more than one or two industries.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#152

Post by UncleOxidant »

nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

> C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C!

Let's definitely stop using C in weapons control systems.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#153

Post by dimitrios1 »

wmf wrote: post #129
gmfawcett wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tezos uses Ocaml; doesn't the same argument apply? (I don't agree with the argument, personally, and I'm a big fan of Ocaml... I just don't see how it deserves an "ethical concern" exception here.)

The question would be what fraction of the OCaml community is paid by Tezos. If it's over half you may have a problem.

And the answer is, no where near half, maybe close to a couple percentage points, if that.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#154

Post by tharne »

I think that fact that Haskell is being used in this way is a great thing for the language.

Criminals and criminal enterprises operate in a high pressure, high-stakes environment. If criminals are using a tool for something it typically means that tool works and works well. That's why those pictures you see in the news of terrorists in Afghanistan always show a bunch of guys in the back of Toyota pickup with a 50 cal mounted on it. Toyota makes a great vehicle that does the job. I'm sure Toyota is not thrilled about the association, but it speaks to the build quality of their vehicles.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#155

Post by fwip »

nine_k wrote: post #101
ajuc wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM helped with Holocaust. It also invented PC.

Werner von Braun bombed London with V-2s during WWII and was a Nazi party member above the rank-and-file level. Werner von Braun has lead the US space program to launching humans to LEO, and then to the Moon. Again, technology is morally oblivious. A sword that only serves a noble aim is strictly the stuff of fairy tales, and is not implementable in the real world (no, not even with an AGI, since humans are a reasona…

Technology is not inherently morally oblivious.

Some technology has only one purpose, and is used only for immoral acts. An example of this would be any device invented for torture.

While those examples are uncommon, more technology is built expressly for evil acts, even if it has the capacity for good. If you are distributing plans and technology to make "dirty bombs" - devices intended to disperse lethal amounts of radiation - it's impossible for a reasonable person to believe that it is not intended to murder people via radiation. Furthermore, in the context of today's world, you know that the most likely users of such a device would be terrorist organizations who will target innocent civilians.

An even greater percentage of technology is developed to support people doing evil acts. If you provide software or hardware to people doing evil acts (in this case, the Holocaust), you are giving them material aid. The software written to tabulate Jewish residents in Germany was developed for the Nazi party. Technical support and sales continued well after Nazi Germany had invaded Poland.

The fact that a man (or company) enriched himself by doing both bad and good things does not mean that his actions were morally neutral. Most people alive have done both bad and good things.

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#156

Post by nine_k »

xg15 wrote: post #107
nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

Nope. This is a call to the Haskell developer community to stop cooperation with crypto projects, not a general call to stop using Haskell. I.e., it's a call to the knife makers to stop making their knifes to the specs of mob bosses, not a call to ban knifes. There are plenty of precedents for this kind of action, e.g. pharmaceutical companies refusing to supply chemicals for executions. (If were already going all li…

This sounds quite reasonable! But if all a knife needs is a sharp blade, there's little to be done in the way of limiting its specific uses.

Also, do cryptocurrency bosses ask the community to shape Haskell in the way suitable for them, e.g. in the core libraries or extensions? Or do they just produce libraries for their own use?

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#157

Post by twic »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #88

If you have ethical concerns with this, but still love FP, just come over to OCaml. You get 80-90% of what you love about Haskell, and there is an established industry in many sectors. Big players here like Ahrefs, Jane Street, and, of course, Messanger and Facebook.

If you have ethical concerns, adopt the language used by an SEO consultancy, a hedge fund, and Facebook?

(i know Jane Street isn't actually a hedge fund, but how many people here know what a prop shop is?)

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#158

Post by shpongled »

nine_k wrote: post #86

I think this is a rather strange way of thinking. Fortran has been extensively used for nuclear weapons development. Let's stay away from Fortran! C was and is widely used in weapons control systems. Let's stop using C! Computers themselves were initially designed for artillery fire control, with an explicit intention of killing people. Let's not touch the technology with such a foul pedigree. This can be continued a…

I consider Stephen to be an extremist when it comes to stuff like this. I follow him on twitter, and he frequently tweets things like:

"More programmers should have the moral fortitude to stand up to the Facebook employees in their communities. This is not a socially acceptable career. Facebook employees have chosen to turn their skills on poisoning the very communities that gave them opportunities to thrive." [0]

"Palantir and Facebook are the largest employers of Rust engineers in the world. Rust Community: What exactly is the point of all of your long codes of conduct and community guidelines if the primary use for your language is the creation of a nightmare surveillance state?" [1]

[0]: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1288532583530323970

[1]: https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1288106450707873794

Re: The Haskell Elephant in the Room

#159

Post by rstarast »

kreetx wrote: post #113

Although I think this article is informative about pointing out the crypto connection (there sure are many well known haskell devs related to crypto, to Cardano specifically), but I think it's way too negative. There are scams in cryptocurrencies, sure, but do some of them have real value? I think they do. But perhaps somebody knows the answer to these questions instead: - is Cardano itself a scam? (= are the people…

You made me look up the IOHK (Cardano developers) team page again, it's hilarious: https://iohk.io/en/team/
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