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The tech sec­tor might be evil

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Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#61

Post by kelnos »

throwaway613834 wrote: post #51
tallanvor wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My response to you would be the following: 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…

My replies would be the following: 1. Right, I realize this. That's one part of why they're still my friends! 2. I never said my friends are evil because of this. I in fact said quite the opposite. 3. The question is not whether something can be used for "evil", but whether it is . If it is, ideally people shouldn't be contributing to it. 4. I have no idea. I'm also not sure how this comes into play.

> 3. The question is not whether something can be used for "evil", but whether it is. If it is, ideally people shouldn't be contributing to it.

This is difficult, though. If a thing is used for evil, but also for good, where do you draw the line and say the bad is outweighing the good and the thing has to go?

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#62

Post by mbrock »

KGIII wrote: post #23
throwaway613834 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems to me that the basically religious concept of "evil" causes a lot of confusion.

What Google, Facebook, and Amazon are is primarily extremely powerful.

The U.S. government, say, does a lot of nasty, undesirable things; it also does a lot of benevolent, desirable things.

Working in these institutions means, to varying degrees, aligning yourself with the motives of extremely powerful entities.

But of course it also means potentially influencing that power in a way that you and your peers would recognize as benevolent.

Neither Google, Facebook, nor Amazon have core missions that are obviously bad, i.e., they are not directly opposed to a free society, they are not fundamentally violent, they are basically not the Nazi Party.

But they do share a core mission that is enormously expansive, kind of like the East India companies. Operationally, they are very likely to use some foul tactics in order to grow and compete.

As long as we have the global kind of capitalism where for-profit corporations grow into hyperobjects, it seems like we will have a top layer of quasi-monopolies using information technology and capital accumulation to dominate.

And according to the ideology, you can't really stop that without violating the principles of liberty. Basically to prevent such formations you need a powerful state, and that state will itself be such a formation, except with elections (hopefully, and maybe only nominally).

You might even need a global state-like entity, right?

If we use the word evil to describe Google, Facebook, and Amazon, I think we should rather say that the structure of capitalism is evil, and that'll get you into trouble.

Especially because this is a forum topically and structurally centered on the very impulse to launch exponentially growing IT firms.

This site is a promotional and educational wing of Y Combinator, which in its essence desires to be a recursively powerful generator of new mega-corporations, structurally bound to the multiplication of accumulated capital.

So, umm, yeah.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#63

Post by apersona »

elefanten wrote: post #20

Regulation and oversight is good. Continually reevaluating whether these companies are being good stewards of the information they hold is also good. But I worry more about a heavy-handed overreaction than the present course we're on. In many ways it could be more dangerous to cripple or break up these companies: Fragmenting that data among smaller entities with weaker security is bad. Letting the vacuum (probably) b…

very much this. I think the how people view companies as a whole as "evil" is alarming. Technology is neutral, and companies make the world better and worse.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#64

Post by mbrock »

murderfs wrote: post #52
geomark wrote: post #21

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.

Well, given the effectiveness that most defense contractors seem to display, they might be doing a humanitarian service. If the government is going to spend that money regardless, it's probably better that it goes into planes that can't fly and boats that dissolve in water than actually effective projects.

Sabotage is a venerable tradition, but I basically don't think it's better for anyone to be murdered by a knife that's rusty.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#65

Post by kelnos »

microtonal wrote: post #26
throwaway613834 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I know. But it's also true that if they tried to do the opposite of what they were told (or if they just refused) then they'd get fired. So what do you do?

Just stop pretending that working at {Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...} is the highest goal that a tech person can strife for. A see a lot of students who seem to have that as their goal in life. Also, we have to be honest with ourselves. While we (as a community) were hating Microsoft, we made Google our tech darling. Now they are ethically probably as rotten as Microsoft were in the early ~2000s. We should stop puttin…

This is the thing I don't get. While certainly Google, Facebook, and Amazon are working on a lot of interesting problems, they're also big behemoths and your individual contribution isn't going to be all that noticeable.

At this point in my career I could likely get a job at any of the three of them if I wanted to and worked at it, but I'm not really sure I want to. I'd rather work at a smaller company where what I do every day actually matters as to whether or not the company will succeed or fail.

I guess that's just my preference, though; perhaps people like at G/F/A because they get to work on interesting projects without the stress associated with their output being a make-or-break for the company. And there's certainly more job security at a larger company than one that could more easily slip into hard times.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#67

Post by mbrock »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #25

"...But these days, it seems like ev­ery oth­er day I read a chill­ing anti-tech rant, usu­al­ly writ­ten by some­one smart, ar­tic­u­late, and (like me) left­ist..." There's an extremely interesting thing going on. Observing the mess tech has made does not seem to be related to political affiliation. I know people on the left, right, and center that are all beginning to realize that we're creating a dystopian future…

I'm curious about your thoughts on reconciling libertarian ideals with the desire to limit the power of corporations.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#68

Post by apersona »

kodfodrasz wrote: post #58
tanilama wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. 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?

Indeed I do, but also many other unnecessary innovations came out of SV, as well as some interesting Research, which end up used for solving problems which don't exist.

What's wrong with unnecessary innovations? There were lots of inventions/discoveries that didn't solve any existing problem during their time of discovery.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#69

Post by kelnos »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #22
throwaway613834 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I know. But it's also true that if they tried to do the opposite of what they were told (or if they just refused) then they'd get fired. So what do you do?

The most productive thing: Voice dissent. Ensure the higher-ups have thought through their position and the consequences. Assume they know things you don't. Ultimately, follow the order. Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

You need to draw the line somewhere, though.

As an extreme example, if a company I worked at decided that they were going to murder someone, I would certainly voice my dissent. If they decided to continue to go through with it, I'd quit.

Sure, that's a bit hyperbolic, but consider companies like Palantir that work on things that actively erode citizen privacy. I'd never work at a company like that, and if my employer suddenly shifted gears to work on things like that, I'd quit.

"Following orders" is for the military... and even then I would hope someone in the armed forces would refuse to comply with an unlawful or otherwise morally horrible order.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#70

Post by apersona »

geomark wrote: post #21

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.

You can't deny that lots of innovations came from defense research. APARNET came from the DoD. I personally wouldn't want to work in defense, but I wouldn't disrepect people working in there either.
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