31–40 of 233 posts
best sentence (slightly reformatted): "Twitter is not actually a company, it’s a dysfunctional non-profit that accidentally provides a valuable service."
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Well, that sort of begs the question: Why did you feel you could do anything in the first place? It sounds like a dopey question, but it's at the root of a lot of these feelings. I used to feel similarly to you: a general sense of malaise, a discomfort with the world, a plan for doing something concrete to change it. But everyone has limited ambition. If you don't focus it like a laser, you won't get anything done. T…
> Well, that sort of begs the question: Why did you feel you could do anything in the first place? I don't know if I can... that's why I'm asking if I can. If feeling hopeless is the best I can do then so be it, but I'm thinking maybe people have had better success.
Now I'm a privacy fanatic. And my goals are far less grand. I get that most people have little privacy anymore. And I get that there's little hope for them. So I focus on raising awareness, writing how-to guides, etc.
That's not exactly "feeling hopeless". It's more like being realistic.
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…
1. Working for a company doesn't mean you agree with everything they do. 2. Just because some of the work you do is used by someone else for something you don't agree with doesn't mean that you're evil by default. 3. Try to find a tool that can't be used for "evil". Seriously, I doubt you can find a single thing, whether a device or an application that can't both do good and bad. Should your friends refuse to create anything because it might be put to a use they don't agree with? 4. How do you know they haven't stopped things that you would have considered even worse? Pretty much any job is going to have stuff that you can't talk about, whether for IP, legal, or other reasons.
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.
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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…
What is the level of culpability for a foot soldier in the army of an evil dictator? What is the level if they committed no atrocities? How about if they were an active participant? How about if they were zealous and inspired new levels of atrocious behavior? I don't have an answer and those are rhetorical questions. The point I'm laboring to make is that there are varied levels of culpability. There are also varied…
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…
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?
Is it making the World a better place? I don't think so. Is it making it a worse place? Only for other developers :)
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What is the level of culpability for a foot soldier in the army of an evil dictator? What is the level if they committed no atrocities? How about if they were an active participant? How about if they were zealous and inspired new levels of atrocious behavior? I don't have an answer and those are rhetorical questions. The point I'm laboring to make is that there are varied levels of culpability. There are also varied…
Soldiers typically have a duty to refuse immoral orders.
I know what you're saying, but that's why I listed all those example questions. I listed them to show there are various levels of culpability and various levels of evil.
Where you draw the line is a personal thing and I'm not qualified to suggest where you draw it on an individual level.
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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?
Most of the research coming out of SV tech companies nowadays is yet annother chat platform, and reimplementing broken C code in broken JavaScript code. Is it making the World a better place? I don't think so. Is it making it a worse place? Only for other developers :)
I don't think so, there is a lot of stuff happening in a place that called SV. Maybe you are referring to the cool startup bunch?
Not to mention the many (ex) friends working for "defense" contractors. Ex because I really can't be friends with them any longer. Evil quotes deployed because calling it defense is a farce considering what the systems they are developing are used for.