171–180 of 225 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If I don't do such bad thing somebody else will" is an obvious logical fallacy.
So you’re saying the export control policies with regard to encryption were good. Interesting.
Tech needs fewer conscientious objectors, not more. These people rarely know anything about what they're protesting, and resort fearmongering and populism to get what they want without even attempting to resolve things civilly. The most recent example is Google's AI ethics council debacle. Activist employees were so stubborn that they can't won't even let people have a discussion about AI ethics because one of them h…
Worst kind of defeatism.
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.
Without values there is no good or evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.
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.
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 imagine that even if tech has a strong history of conscientious objectors, you could argue the industry needs more because: * Tech is incredibly, incredibly important and powerful, in its implications and effects on politics, society, geopolitics, everything * It seems plausible there's far more going on than anyone knows about
Tech has had many conscientious objectors, I've watched them come and go over the decades. Most of them drive trucks now. A few lucky ones became artists or writers, but mostly a lot of bad outcomes. One of these failed truck drivers even makes deliveries to the house of the person who forced him out sometimes, a fact which he loves laughing about.
>> the person who forced him out Worth noting that probably everyone here has seen something like this happen. Not sure if it is specific to tech, but some of the egos and pathologies are extreme.
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> Half the authors of the American Constitution thought that slavery should be legal, but they managed draft the foundation of modern day democracy anyways. This is a story of democracy happening in spite of the founding fathers, not because of the founding fathers. It was, as you may know, a long (multiple centuries) and bloody (a pretty big war, plus lots of extrajudicial lynchings etc.) road from what they drafted…
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.
Also, it just make sense to keep history accurate. There were people both opposed to slavery and those for slavery. Some founding fathers had financial interest in keeping slavery and making it. The people who were opposing it were disadvantaged in competition for power.
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.
You might trust your government enough to be okay with this, but don't forget that government is made up of humans, with there own personal whims and idiocricies. Do you really want to live in a world where people around you might have power to completely end you? Will you be able to speak freely in such a world?
This level of power is a very new thing, and the people on higher order (wrongly) think that it's all good and they can keep going about there business as before.
Something has to change.
It’s a different world from 30 and 70 years ago.
70 years ago nearly all R&D spent was specifically military in nature. So it was pretty clear from the point of hire that you were(or weren’t working on military or related(surveillance) projects.
30 years ago military and commercial R&D hit parity and it was still quite easy to known going into an employment contract what side of the fence one was on.
Today, almost all R&D is commercial in nature, but with vast duel use military/surveillance potential.
So it’s much more convoluted and nebulous to delineate project output, perhaps a major contributing factor to recent decisions and actions.
Combined with the long standing low supply, high demand for talent enhancing leverage.
I agree that tech talent conscience is critical.
I only hope we see the same from Chinese software engineers working at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, etc.
I wonder if the future will see a convoluted analog to the Manhattan Project, the Rosenbergs, and apex talent migration out of 1930’s fascist countries.