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The tech sec­tor might be evil

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Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#191

Post by namandixit »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #9
jbkrule wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is every single job at those companies really making the world worse in a way that other jobs aren't? How about all the technologies and research that have come out of specific teams' work?

I don't know how to respond to this. If you're a software engineer with a typical role at {insert "evil" company here} who is just trying to do the best in their role, are you making the world a better or a worse place? It's not like they're making the product decisions (and that's what I've been telling myself -- they're not the ones making the decisions; they're just implementing them), but it's also not like they…

As Lord Varys convinced himself- "I am not the one doing it."

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#192

Post by ashark »

dalbasal wrote: post #189
ashark wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So... data science is evil and the only way to stop it is a total ban numbers. Nah. Banning collecting, storing, and exploiting data on people for any but a small set of very narrow purposes would do the trick.

”Small set of very narrow purposes ” or even “data” are too difficult to define legally. There’ll be loopholes to exploit. Better safe than sorry. No numbers. No nerds. No evil.

> ”Small set of very narrow purposes” or even “data” are too difficult to define legally. There’ll be loopholes to exploit.

Eh, not really. I don't see how you can maintain this position without concluding that laws aren't possible at all. And laws aren't code. Judges can and do smack people down for being too "clever" in how they interpret them. The 5-year-old's "I'm not touching you!" defense generally doesn't work.

Frankly I can't tell if you're actually advocating such a ban on "numbers" or trying to reductio any notions of regulation of data collection and use to death. If the latter, I think you'll need to try harder. I find it fairly easy to imagine laws that'd make collecting people's data something most businesses try to avoid unless they absolutely must have it to operate, and in the latter case severely restricts the kinds of commerce they can engage in while holding said data.

If skirting regulations that happens to involve words that are intended to mean things (so, all regulations) were so trivial companies wouldn't be so concerned about them, I think. Fact is lots of regulations are inconvenient to them, and involve terms no less inherently ambiguous than the ones you called out, which are nevertheless refined and defined to sufficient precision to be effective.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#193

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

nf05papsjfVbc wrote: post #190
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everyone draws the line at the same spot. Which is correct, but not a justification? > Everyone's constraints in life are different. In which case those constraints might be the justification, not simply the fact that their contribution is a small contribution, wouldn't it? > 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…

The use of the word 'justification' tells me that you have already judged the actions and are looking for people to explain them. This ties into the last point I was trying to make. From this, it appears (to me) unlikely that our conversation will lead to us being in agreement: we see the world quite differently. EDIT: Since you brought up the subject of what I could suggest, I'd like to add this: I'd just talk to pe…

> The use of the word 'justification' tells me that you have already judged the actions and are looking for people to explain them.

Well, how else could things possibly work? Without any judgement on my part, I couldn't even know whether there is even anything I don't understand or that I disagree about, and what could I possibly expect other than that people explain their position to me?

> From this, it appears (to me) unlikely that our conversation will lead to us being in agreement: we see the world quite differently.

Which seems like a weird reason to me?! Aren't you essentially saying "we probably won't be in agreement because we are not in agreement"?!

> Since you brought up the subject of what I could suggest, I'd like to add this: I'd just talk to people and see what they think: not in terms of "explain your actions" but in terms of "help me understand".

Which are essentially synonyms? I mean, I can see that wording can make a difference in how people react, but I fail to see the fundamental difference between "explaining" and "helping to understand"?!

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#194

Post by kybernetikos »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #4

What sucks is I can't just tell my friends "you're working for an evil company -- just look at {insert 5 evil things they did in the past couple years}". It sucks even more that these are some of the kindest and most caring people I know, with better moral character than myself -- I almost feel they somehow got brainwashed into their jobs. But who would enjoy hearing that? At best they would ignore it; at worst you'd…

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

- Upton Sinclair

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#195

Post by kybernetikos »

indigochill wrote: post #143
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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?

I believe that you can strongly believe that witches should be killed and also know that you shouldn't do it, without having to subscribe to some universalising authority that tells you what to believe.

Generally speaking, people should act on their strong beliefs, but they need to do so aware of the fact that any one of their strong beliefs could be wrong. When it comes to something as serious and permanent as killing, then you should know that even a small chance of your strong belief being wrong is unacceptable and strong belief is therefore not a sufficient reason to do such a thing.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#196

Post by kybernetikos »

tanilama wrote: post #108
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which justifies doing evil or letting people do evil how exactly?

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.

I once asked a guy who worked on control systems for missiles what he thought about the ethics of it. He looked confused and said 'I've never really thought about it until now'. We left it at that, but I consider it a win.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#197

Post by nf05papsjfVbc »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #193
nf05papsjfVbc wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of the word 'justification' tells me that you have already judged the actions and are looking for people to explain them. This ties into the last point I was trying to make. From this, it appears (to me) unlikely that our conversation will lead to us being in agreement: we see the world quite differently. EDIT: Since you brought up the subject of what I could suggest, I'd like to add this: I'd just talk to pe…

> The use of the word 'justification' tells me that you have already judged the actions and are looking for people to explain them. Well, how else could things possibly work? Without any judgement on my part, I couldn't even know whether there is even anything I don't understand or that I disagree about, and what could I possibly expect other than that people explain their position to me? > From this, it appears (to…

As for why I think we can't come to an agreement, it's not because we are already in disagreement but because I believe (from this tiny conversation) that our views on things are so far apart that it's hard to bridge that gap in this medium and in a short period of time.

As for the last part, I'd like you to consider why people react differently to those wordings.

I've also observed that the wording doesn't matter if only the wording has changed but the attitude hasn't.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#198

Post by ForHackernews »

mrtksn wrote: post #149
ForHackernews wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

why?

It exemplifies and exacerbates all the worst aspects of the internet: clickbaiting, irrelevant oversharing, uninformed commentary, reactionary groupthink, mob harassment, inaccurate and deliberately misleading news, etc.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#199

Post by ionised »

taway_1212 wrote: post #95
ionised wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The allied powers collectively decided that I was just following orders was not a credible defence of anything during the Nuremberg trials.

I kind of see their point - under this defense, the only person you could really convict would be Hitler (everybody else was following orders). I'm guessing the logic here is that if you were for example a commander a Nazi death squad that was doing mass murders of Jews in Eastern Poland, then yeah, you were following orders, but you could have also asked to be transferred to something else. I'm not sure this logic w…

I think the logic during the trials was that even if disobeying orders meant punishment such as torture or death, that was preferable to committing the crimes for which they were standing trial.

As in, your potential death or suffering at the hands of your superiors is also not a credible defence for what you did.

That obviously makes a lot more sense in the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity though.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#200

Post by dalbasal »

ashark wrote: post #192
dalbasal wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”Small set of very narrow purposes ” or even “data” are too difficult to define legally. There’ll be loopholes to exploit. Better safe than sorry. No numbers. No nerds. No evil.

> ”Small set of very narrow purposes” or even “data” are too difficult to define legally. There’ll be loopholes to exploit. Eh, not really. I don't see how you can maintain this position without concluding that laws aren't possible at all. And laws aren't code. Judges can and do smack people down for being too "clever" in how they interpret them. The 5-year-old's "I'm not touching you!" defense generally doesn't work…

>>I can't tell if you're actually advocating...

I'm just being silly, mostly. I don't the answers.

I have been involved with legislation a little though, and quite a lot with “regulations” (in the regulated industries sense).

The 5 year old defence holds water in a surprising number of cases. The problem of definitions in law is real, and kind of reminiscent of the problem of specifications in software.

For example, defining “allowable uses” is tricky because determining intent is (notoriously) tricky in law.

Legislation is a tool. It has lots of hangups, a legacy from thousands of years of history. It’s not always the best tool for the job. I’m not an anarchist, I just feel we’re get more milage from better browser behaviour and defaults than laws in this particular instance.

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