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The tech sec­tor might be evil

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Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#91

Post by Vinnl »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #16
throwaway613834 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nothing is exactly what I've been doing so far. I'm just wondering if that's really the best I can do.

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…

I think it's important to focus on a goal you really care about, but at the same time: be open to other people who've chosen other goals, trust them that they're doing the right thing, and if you can help them with little effort, help them.

If you're focusing on fixing one thing, but you can't get anyone to follow you, you're not going to accomplish anything. Doing the small and low-effort things that, together with other people doing the same, also improve the world - that's really underrated, in my opinion.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#92

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

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 sucks even more that these are some of the kindest and most caring people I know, with better moral character than myself

Evidently not? I'd really be curious how you come to that conclusion, when they apparently don't have the first clue as to how to recognize evil, nor do they seem to care? Are you sure that that's not just the image they promote of themselves, rather than an actual assessment of their behaviour?

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#93

Post by DanielBMarkham »

mbrock wrote: post #90
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarianism gives me a philosophical foundation to reason about political issues that is outside the usual partisan structure. It's also an ideal , not a club of people wanting to gain, hold, and exert power. So you never reach a perfect world. If you want to be a libertarian, you'd better be prepared to compromise. With everybody. Both of these attributes differ us from most political folks. I will continue to us…

That's exactly my assumption, and it's one of my standing questions for people I encounter who align themselves with libertarianism, and I'm always genuinely curious. It's because I find it a very interesting and difficult question how to approach the danger of individual liberty leading, through a sequence of steps none of which is by itself illiberal, leads to the establishment of large and powerful corporations th…

"The distinction between state power and private power seems essential to libertarian ideology..."

Yes, in the ideal world (hence all of the preferencing I went through). But that's not the case with the big internet players. It's a spectrum. I'd feel completely differently about the local lemonade stand.

Systems gain cruft over time. I'd make the same argument about governments. A lot of them start off great, but through a series of logical and altruistic measures, never wanting to harm folks or create a dystopia -- end up doing so. I think the saddest thing about both the monopoly and big government discussions is that in many cases, there are no bad guys. There's just organizational drift over time.

Doesn't make it any better -- and in fact understanding can be really tough for a lot of folks. But if we really want to fix things we need to be honest with ourselves about both where we are and how we got here. Sloganeering and partisanship are not conducive to fixing things.

ADD: Good point about the EIC. When libertarians talk about the free market, whether they realize/admit it or not, it's small-scale markets, people trading apples 2-for-a-dollar. Humans are natural traders. The minute a person gets really good at trading, he automatically wants to start creating structures to protect both the traders and his own interests. He conflates the two. The system to "protect" people? That's government. It's impossible to have a government without people trading something for something inside of it, and based on the items traded and the number of players, the government corrupts more or less quickly.

I like libertarianism because it's an ideal. We'll never create a world market of people selling apples 2-for-a-dollar, and that's okay. I still have the tools to reason about GE or Facebook. There is a distinction between private and state power, and it's important. But they become mixed together at extremely small scales -- much more so at larger ones. You don't get to be a Toyota without a government somewhere covering your back. With the internet companies, we are watching in real time how starting off on your own with a great product people love quickly leads to either becoming deeply entangled in governments or losing your market share.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#94

Post by dredmorbius »

Bray's piece is largely notable for the fact that he's calling attention to this trend -- it's something which you should be paying attention to, if you're in tech, or if you're one of its critics. (And quite possibly both.) But there isn't any analysis as such.

I'd like to suggest a possible thread tying numerous elements of this together:

1. Technology companies tend to become monopolies.

2. Tech companies tend to become power centers.

3. Monopolies are associated with economic rents -- returns above the ordinary economic costs of production. (Contrast commodities or wages, or even more so, public goods.)

I've been putting thought into just what technology is, or more specifically, what mechanisms technology operates through. Among those are network and control systems (I'm still trying to decide if that's one element or two). Networks are any set of differentiated nodes connected by some relationship and flows (energy, material, information, forces, some mix of the above).

Networks may be physical (transport, communications), logical (webs of knowledge, marketing networks), or a mix of the two. Various network and dendritic structures include cities, roads, rivers, shipping routes, and the like.

Because of scaling effects, absent other considerations (and these do exist), a larger network typically has the advantage over a smaller one, and very often tremendously much so. In particular, by both providing low price options and controlling access to critical resources (or paths or nodes), network structures can exert considerable power.

That is: networks (physical or logical) are monopolies, and provide economic rents, through the mechanism of power and manipulation.

And this seems to be fundamental and intrinsic.

(I'm still developing the model. I'm interested in constructive challenges. More discussion: https://redd.it/71i231)

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#95

Post by taway_1212 »

ionised wrote: post #83
taway_1212 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A duty to whom? In most armies and wars, insisting to refuse an order, moral or not, will get you in front of a firing squad (or, if it's a really civilized army, in jail).

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 would hold for Soviet genocides though (not that they were tried at Nuremberg), as I suspect a hint of hestitation from say NKWD commander would probably result in him being promptly sent to Gulag to die. During Stalin's rule, pretty much everybody was operating with a gun to their heads at all times.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#96

Post by dageshi »

I'm really struggling to put into words how much this recent "moral" crusade against Facebook/Google/Amazon has begun to irritate me. My gut feeling is that unable to do anything about Trumps election victory all those enraged by his win are now turning their ire against companies that tangentially might have helped to get him elected.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#97

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

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…

> Is Google evil? Maybe, but they've made mountains of information easily discoverable at no direct financial costs to the end user. Is Facebook evil? Maybe, but they've enabled broad communication with family and friends you might never have had the means to maintain on your own. Is Microsoft evil? Maybe, but they've done more to make the personal computer ubiquitous than any other company.

Or have they?

Just because a monopoly provides a useful service, doesn't mean that without that monopoly we wouldn't have that useful service, in which case their net contribution to society would not actually be that service, but just their monopoly power over the service, which is not exactly a net positive.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#98

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

KGIII wrote: post #38
mirimir wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soldiers typically have a duty to refuse immoral orders.

And what if the soldier was never given immoral orders but was a simple cook who fed those who carried out the 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.

Really, the important question is: What realistic chance did they have to not contribute without killing themselves? I guess one can argue about whether people should also be required to kill themselves to prevent evil, but that certainly is a good minimum.

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#99

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

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.

> Once it's their call, you're absolved of any responsibility. Both morally and in every meaningful sense.

WTF? There are still people who haven't grasped that that is basically the recipe for all man-made humanitarian catastophes in human history?

Re: The tech sec­tor might be evil

#100

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

tallanvor wrote: post #35
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…

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…

> 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 something to prevent it.

On the other hand, if you mean that it's acceptable because it is compatible with their own moral codes ... now, that's some dangerous bullshit. If your moral code says that you should kill witches, that does not justify anything at all.

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