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Meh, this is just ridiculous moral posturing. Which laws are scared and which aren't? Are you telling me that you never violated copyright, or say helped a fr

Meh, this is just ridiculous moral posturing. Which laws are scared and which aren't? Are you telling me that you never violated copyright, or say helped a friend install torrenting software ("technically clueless people who will attempt to use you and your skills as tools to commit some crime"). "Just say no" was the famous anti-drug slogan, we all know how that War On Drugs attitude ended up afflicting american society. Finally even Supreme Court justices find this type of hard-line attitude ridiculous. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/us/politics/supreme-court-naturalization.html?_r=0&mtrref=t.co&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&gwh=5EB6517587B933A83FACF0BCCB8DCC6A&gwt=pay https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/us/politics/supreme-court...

adrianmonk 9y ago
Even if you don't think 100% of laws are sacred, you can still draw a dividing line somewhere. A rational, consistent dividing line. Anyway, the guy made it clear he had ethical problems with it because he could see how it was unfair to whoever ended up buying the car. So he wasn't avoiding it just because it was illegal.
- yannyu 9y ago
  Can you? I'm not sure most people are as consistent with their views on what laws are "good" or "bad" as you might think. Most people tend to judge the morality of their actions by intent, and judge the morality of others' actions by consequence, and thus form a picture of "I am more moral than most people". I'm sure that a deep analysis of pretty much anyone's morality will show a few logical inconsistencies.
  - foreigner 9y ago
    > Most people tend to judge the morality of their actions by intent, and judge the morality of others' actions by consequence, and thus form a picture of "I am more moral than most people". Wow that really moved me.
- aub3bhat 9y ago
  He is making a simple cost-benefit trade-off that everyone including criminals routinely do. The only difference is he pontificating and posing as a saint who made some great sacrifice.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    I'm afraid I don't read the same tone into this piece of writing as you do. It doesn't seem to be particularly holier-than-thou.
madez 9y ago
There is a difference between law on one side and ethical rules on the other side. Some people disagree with some law and consider it a result of unjust lobbying or outright corruption. Then, breaking that law is not something I would consider unethical.
CrystalLangUser 9y ago
It's not unreasonable to not care about torrents and deeply care about software that takes away people's privacy. It is possible to draw ethical lines, like not building surveillance tools.
- problems 9y ago
  Sometimes surveillance tools are really interesting to build though. I made a tool that injects into the winlogon session and keylogs it, so you can steal passwords before the user ever logs in. For one reason or another I'm deeply motivated by a little malice in ways that I'm just not most of the time. Maybe I'm just a bad person.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    The point is to at least think about consequences and whether those consequences are ok to you, and say no if they cross your lines. It is one thing to convince you to be totally ethical, but quite another to convince you to say no to jobs you find unethical because you fail to think through the consequences or ask the right questions, or because you don't dare say no. Here's an example I ran into a while back: My boss at the time came to me and asked me to "resurrect" an old database for a former client. In itself this wasn't so odd - said client had been "leaving" for over a year and kept asking us to keep data around so we could spin things back up, and paid handsomely for it. But I asked what they needed it for anyway. And then it turned out my boss wasn't asking for it for the old client, but for our new corporate overlords, who he wanted to hand their customer data to in order to pass to their sales team. Said sales would not compete with the old client, but still, 1) this was their data that we only kept around due to a request to keep it for a while longer as a contingency, 2) EU data protection regulations don't allow handing of personally identifiable inforation to a third party without consent. So I told him no. He argued that it was our data because we hosted it, and I told him it doesn't work like that and that it would almost certainly be both a contract breach and a breach of privacy laws we were bound by. He let it go. The point is in this case it was way over the line for me personally, and over line legally, but I only found out because I ask about motivations if people ask me to do something unusual. Sometimes that isn't enough to prevent unethical stuff either, but it's a very simple habit and the above is just one of many things I've refused because I asked what it was for before handing over data. For someone else the ethical lines would perhaps be different, but it's at least worth taking measures to ensure nobody makes you take part in something like this without it being a conscious choice.
usefulcat 9y ago
I didn't perceive it that way at all. I read more as "For the sake of your own self interest, use some common sense and think things through before engaging in illegal activity".
gnode 9y ago
I don't think the author was saying don't do anything wrong / unlawful, but rather don't do anything that you feel is wrong if you don't want to. I.e. don't let others pressure you into it, and lie to them to get out of it if that's what you need to do.
- problems 9y ago
  Isn't that incredibly obvious though? I thought the author was sort of trying to push back against our instinct to be interested in problems - which I don't agree with. I'll gladly break the law for an interesting enough problem, I reverse engineer stuff and break copyright law while doing so all the time.
  - gnode 9y ago
    It may be obvious, but plenty of people do it. Whether it's odometer fraud like in the article, or taking up smoking because your friends are doing it, plenty of people are pressured into things they feel they shouldn't do. The author found it difficult to say no, in part because they were family. I think something which makes such situations difficult, is that the other party, having decided to commit crimes, take drugs, invest in a pyramid scheme, etc. has decided that the risk is acceptable to them (survivor bias probably comes into play here), and it can be difficult for them to empathise with someone who doesn't feel the same way.
gthtjtkt 9y ago
> Meh, this is just ridiculous moral posturing. Got the same feeling. Couldn't help but think it was mostly an opportunity for the author to brag about his l33t h4x0r skillz as a kid. "Look at me, I was in the newspaper when I was younger! Oh and you shouldn't do bad things... duh!" The reason good people do bad things is because it's not always that easy to 'just say no'. What if your boss is pressuring you to do something unethical and you can't afford to say no? Have we forgotten about all those people at Wells Fargo already? The funniest part is that it sounds like he wasn't capable of doing what his uncle requested (otherwise I'm sure he would've jumped at the opportunity to impress us with an explanation of how it could've been done). So he wasn't even lying. "My uncle asked me to do something unethical but I couldn't do it, so I didn't. Please clap."
- wand3r 9y ago
  I didn't read it that way. I think he mentioned it as an explanation of how his uncle got in touch and why.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
"The holocaust was legal, slavery was legal, segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics you'll end up disappointed."

adrianmonk 9y ago

Even if you don't think 100% of laws are sacred, you can still draw a dividing line somewhere. A rational, consistent dividing line. Anyway, the guy made it clear he had ethical problems with it because he could see how it was unfair to whoever ended up buying the car. So he wasn't avoiding it just because it was illegal.

yannyu 9y ago
Can you? I'm not sure most people are as consistent with their views on what laws are "good" or "bad" as you might think. Most people tend to judge the morality of their actions by intent, and judge the morality of others' actions by consequence, and thus form a picture of "I am more moral than most people". I'm sure that a deep analysis of pretty much anyone's morality will show a few logical inconsistencies.
- foreigner 9y ago
  > Most people tend to judge the morality of their actions by intent, and judge the morality of others' actions by consequence, and thus form a picture of "I am more moral than most people". Wow that really moved me.
aub3bhat 9y ago
He is making a simple cost-benefit trade-off that everyone including criminals routinely do. The only difference is he pontificating and posing as a saint who made some great sacrifice.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  I'm afraid I don't read the same tone into this piece of writing as you do. It doesn't seem to be particularly holier-than-thou.

madez 9y ago

There is a difference between law on one side and ethical rules on the other side. Some people disagree with some law and consider it a result of unjust lobbying or outright corruption. Then, breaking that law is not something I would consider unethical.

CrystalLangUser 9y ago

It's not unreasonable to not care about torrents and deeply care about software that takes away people's privacy. It is possible to draw ethical lines, like not building surveillance tools.

problems 9y ago
Sometimes surveillance tools are really interesting to build though. I made a tool that injects into the winlogon session and keylogs it, so you can steal passwords before the user ever logs in. For one reason or another I'm deeply motivated by a little malice in ways that I'm just not most of the time. Maybe I'm just a bad person.
- vidarh 9y ago
  The point is to at least think about consequences and whether those consequences are ok to you, and say no if they cross your lines. It is one thing to convince you to be totally ethical, but quite another to convince you to say no to jobs you find unethical because you fail to think through the consequences or ask the right questions, or because you don't dare say no. Here's an example I ran into a while back: My boss at the time came to me and asked me to "resurrect" an old database for a former client. In itself this wasn't so odd - said client had been "leaving" for over a year and kept asking us to keep data around so we could spin things back up, and paid handsomely for it. But I asked what they needed it for anyway. And then it turned out my boss wasn't asking for it for the old client, but for our new corporate overlords, who he wanted to hand their customer data to in order to pass to their sales team. Said sales would not compete with the old client, but still, 1) this was their data that we only kept around due to a request to keep it for a while longer as a contingency, 2) EU data protection regulations don't allow handing of personally identifiable inforation to a third party without consent. So I told him no. He argued that it was our data because we hosted it, and I told him it doesn't work like that and that it would almost certainly be both a contract breach and a breach of privacy laws we were bound by. He let it go. The point is in this case it was way over the line for me personally, and over line legally, but I only found out because I ask about motivations if people ask me to do something unusual. Sometimes that isn't enough to prevent unethical stuff either, but it's a very simple habit and the above is just one of many things I've refused because I asked what it was for before handing over data. For someone else the ethical lines would perhaps be different, but it's at least worth taking measures to ensure nobody makes you take part in something like this without it being a conscious choice.

usefulcat 9y ago

I didn't perceive it that way at all. I read more as "For the sake of your own self interest, use some common sense and think things through before engaging in illegal activity".

gnode 9y ago

I don't think the author was saying don't do anything wrong / unlawful, but rather don't do anything that you feel is wrong if you don't want to. I.e. don't let others pressure you into it, and lie to them to get out of it if that's what you need to do.

problems 9y ago
Isn't that incredibly obvious though? I thought the author was sort of trying to push back against our instinct to be interested in problems - which I don't agree with. I'll gladly break the law for an interesting enough problem, I reverse engineer stuff and break copyright law while doing so all the time.
- gnode 9y ago
  It may be obvious, but plenty of people do it. Whether it's odometer fraud like in the article, or taking up smoking because your friends are doing it, plenty of people are pressured into things they feel they shouldn't do. The author found it difficult to say no, in part because they were family. I think something which makes such situations difficult, is that the other party, having decided to commit crimes, take drugs, invest in a pyramid scheme, etc. has decided that the risk is acceptable to them (survivor bias probably comes into play here), and it can be difficult for them to empathise with someone who doesn't feel the same way.

gthtjtkt 9y ago

> Meh, this is just ridiculous moral posturing. Got the same feeling. Couldn't help but think it was mostly an opportunity for the author to brag about his l33t h4x0r skillz as a kid. "Look at me, I was in the newspaper when I was younger! Oh and you shouldn't do bad things... duh!" The reason good people do bad things is because it's not always that easy to 'just say no'. What if your boss is pressuring you to do something unethical and you can't afford to say no? Have we forgotten about all those people at Wells Fargo already? The funniest part is that it sounds like he wasn't capable of doing what his uncle requested (otherwise I'm sure he would've jumped at the opportunity to impress us with an explanation of how it could've been done). So he wasn't even lying. "My uncle asked me to do something unethical but I couldn't do it, so I didn't. Please clap."

wand3r 9y ago
I didn't read it that way. I think he mentioned it as an explanation of how his uncle got in touch and why.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

"The holocaust was legal, slavery was legal, segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics you'll end up disappointed."