61–70 of 251 posts
Why do they not have a remote work option?
Some of the USDS agency teams do have a remote work option. For example, the Defense Digital Service operates out of the Pentagon, but they have remote folks in Boston, New York, and Colorado.
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We have a volunteer corps. For a lot of people, the military is one of the best job options as it also offers paid education via the G.I. Bill.
> For a lot of people, the military is one of the best job options How do you weigh that against the risk of injury, death, or PTSD, as well as the civlian casualties of US wars? To be specific - do you believe Iraq Body Count or the Lancet surveys, and how many civilians would have to have been killed in the second Iraq war for you to think it would be a net ethical negative to make it easier to enlist?
In the U.S., the decision to go to war is made by civilians: the President and (ideally) Congress. Below the President, the top military decision-maker/administrator -- Secretary of Defense -- is also a civilian. All the people in the country could sign up and join the military and yet have no authority to actually go to war.
But I'm not naive: the decision to go to war is made easier when the commander-in-chief has a capable and willing army to command. I teach a programming class and I like to talk about "real world" algorithms, such as the Vietnam War draft and lottery [0], a tragicomical example of how hard it is to generate random numbers. But the algorithmic thinking is not just the details of the lottery, but why the lottery was the needed algorithm in the first place. The answer: because not enough people want to volunteer for war. And random selection seems to be the only way to raise an army without angering the citizenry.
Now that we have a volunteer army, there are new algorithms in play. Such as where to focus recruitment efforts based on demographic makeup of people who currently volunteer. This is all to say that as bad as the draft was, a volunteer army doesn't make things hunky dory. And why should we settle for anything less than the quip, "What if they gave a war and nobody came"?
So yeah, I see the rationale for not making the military easy to join. OTOH, I still think that the prospect of war -- and the use of military force in matters of diplomacy -- is a reality we have to live in. Making the military more smoothly administered does not necessarily correlate with an increase in horrors of war. If the military attracts good people, then that means there is the chance of having good people in the chain of command.
To go off on a tangent, better military technology hasn't always resulted in more war. The atomic bomb was used to wreak horror; on the other hand, the prospect of nuclear war seems to have stifled the kind of "great" wars we've had since Hiroshima.
So to answer your question: I think it's too simplistic to think of a better military as being a net negative, if we accept the realities of the current world.
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> One of the USDS project selection criteria is that we prioritize work that based on what will do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the greatest need The USDS is a taxpayer-funded public entity. The "greatest good..." is determined by the law, written by our duly elected representatives. You don't get to serve the public and selectively reject the law. If the Congress passes a law you disagree w…
> you must follow it or resign--those are the only options, per your civil service oath. Those aren't your only options. Your other options are to stay in and leak information. Stay in and try to damage the project etc... I don't know what I'd do if I were in the position to damage, delay, or stop something as blatantly unconstitutional as a Muslim registration database, but I hope that I'd be able to muster to the c…
Let me know if folks have any questions, but I left Google on Dec. 31, 2016.
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As the asker, I will say I'm opposed to the registry, and I disagree a bit with your notion on strategy. I see what you're saying. But I think it's important to establish a norm in our communities now (perhaps like http://neveragain.tech/ ), rather than being silent and hoping that we will have "sleepers" in the right positions that can stop it later on.
Given that no "Muslim Registry" has ever been proposed or supported by anyone it is not the most pressing question.
A person who has put so much effort into just hinting he'd like one[0] while making sure he can also claim not to want one is just a scumbag, not someone who has never proposed or supported one.
It's like saying "I don't really think all blue people are liars" and giving a big wink to your audience at the same time, then claiming to not be a racist.
Are supporters of someone like that suckers or just being dishonest about their own intentions?
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-fix/wp/2016/...
Howdy Matt - will you build a Muslim registry if Trump orders it or Congress passes it?
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The registry was already there under Obama: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article... Also, it would be silly to assume that we didn't have a database of "country from" for immigrants or visitors. "Muslim" is not a country, it's a religion, so you'd need some serious behavior profiling for that -- probably FB/Google are ones you should be after. (Disclaimer: am immigrant, am minority.)
CBP/ICE already collects retinal scans and fingerprints of people with visas from many countries. Plus there's the FBI face recognition database.
However, no religion attribution there.
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> For a lot of people, the military is one of the best job options How do you weigh that against the risk of injury, death, or PTSD, as well as the civlian casualties of US wars? To be specific - do you believe Iraq Body Count or the Lancet surveys, and how many civilians would have to have been killed in the second Iraq war for you to think it would be a net ethical negative to make it easier to enlist?
That's a question that has no easy answer. In the U.S., the decision to go to war is made by civilians: the President and (ideally) Congress. Below the President, the top military decision-maker/administrator -- Secretary of Defense -- is also a civilian. All the people in the country could sign up and join the military and yet have no authority to actually go to war. But I'm not naive: the decision to go to war is m…
Certainly making enlistment harder will decrease the number of troops (absent a draft) which has a non-zero probability of decreasing military adventurism, yes?
Discouraging a single enlistment seems to me like it has the same order-of-magnitude impact as casting a single vote.
> If the military attracts good people, then that means there is the chance of having good people in the chain of command.
How does making enlistment easier increase the percentage of volunteers that are good people?
> I think it's too simplistic to think of a better military as being a net negative
Do you think more recruits means a "better" military?
Pretty easy thing to say when you already have millions in your bank account.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the USDS project selection criteria is that we prioritize work that based on what will do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the greatest need. I do not believe a Muslim Registry does any good for anyone. Being involved in building one would require formally changing our values which would be visible to everyone in USDS. Disclaimer: personal opinion, I am currently serving on a USDS team, m…
> One of the USDS project selection criteria is that we prioritize work that based on what will do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the greatest need The USDS is a taxpayer-funded public entity. The "greatest good..." is determined by the law, written by our duly elected representatives. You don't get to serve the public and selectively reject the law. If the Congress passes a law you disagree w…