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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

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 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.

throwaway613834 9y ago
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.
- kelnos 9y ago
  > 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?
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    > 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? That's secondary to the question I'm asking. The question I'm asking is how to even bring up the topic in the first place. If I can get that far I think I've already done pretty well.
    - d_theorist 9y ago
      My advice would be to start by ditching the word 'evil'. It's ambiguous, and has religious connotations that probably only serve to confuse rather than clarify. Try describing your issues with these companies in more precise terms.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> 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.
- indigochill 9y ago
  >If your moral code says that you should kill witches, that does not justify anything at all. Although I agree, I think it's worth asking "why not?" to introspect our own position. I'll take a stab at it from my perspective. We might say it doesn't justify anything because we have some moral code that we think everyone should abide by, and part of that might be "Don't go around killing people". Some people turn some parts of the collective moral code into laws so they can be tangibly enforced. But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population? In other places and times laws might say, for instance, that to combat overpopulation we need to euthanize those under a certain threshold of contribution. To fight this, we either need to come to terms with the idea that morals and laws are just a matter of personal taste, in which case there's nothing really justifying our own position either and we're just fighting for our personal preference, or we need some higher authority beyond ourselves/consensus/law that justifies our "don't kill people" position and condemns their "euthanize the parasites" position. To me, morality seems to fall prey to Tarski's undefinability theorem. There can be no definition of moral truth within the system of morality. We need some external system to define moral truth.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > Although I agree, I think it's worth asking "why not?" to introspect our own position. Well, sure, nothing wrong with asking the question, though the direct answer is pretty trivial: Because justification is by definition about reducing one claim to another (set of) claim(s), while "my moral code says I should kill witches" is simply a synonym for "I think I should kill witches", and as such just structurally is not a justification at all (as opposed to a bad or insufficient justification) when the question is "Why do you think you should kill witches?" because it just rephrases the same claim in different words. > But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population? That question doesn't really make sense to me. What does "absolute wrong" even mean? That seems like an undefined term to me. And why would this standard of an "absolute wrong" be something that we would have any use for? > In other places and times laws might say, for instance, that to combat overpopulation we need to euthanize those under a certain threshold of contribution. So?! > To fight this, we either need to come to terms with the idea that morals and laws are just a matter of personal taste, in which case there's nothing really justifying our own position either and we're just fighting for our personal preference That's both false and kindof self-contradictory. A major part of justification is exactly about convincing other people, or you could say "fighting for our personal preference". In that regard, exactly that which convinces other people is the justification. Another component of justification is about self-consistency and consistency with knowledge about the external world: Independently from trying to convince other people, you can try and find ways to falsify your moral claims, either by trying to find contradicting evidence in the external world, or by trying to identify internal inconsistencies within your moral framework. If you don't find any inconsistencies, that is a tentative justification for yourself. > or we need some higher authority beyond ourselves/consensus/law that justifies our "don't kill people" position and condemns their "euthanize the parasites" position. How would that solve anything? You just have pushed back the problem of justification to the question of why this particular authority should be the one to use as the standard, haven't you? I don't see how that would possibly be an alternative?! > There can be no definition of moral truth within the system of morality. We need some external system to define moral truth. That seems like a category mistake to me?! Why is moral truth something that needs to be defined, let alone defined within itself, rather than just something that needs to be discovered, and formulated as tentative conclusions subject to revision, as all empirical discovery is?

throwaway613834 9y ago

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.

kelnos 9y ago
> 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?
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > 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? That's secondary to the question I'm asking. The question I'm asking is how to even bring up the topic in the first place. If I can get that far I think I've already done pretty well.
  - d_theorist 9y ago
    My advice would be to start by ditching the word 'evil'. It's ambiguous, and has religious connotations that probably only serve to confuse rather than clarify. Try describing your issues with these companies in more precise terms.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago

> 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.

indigochill 9y ago
>If your moral code says that you should kill witches, that does not justify anything at all. Although I agree, I think it's worth asking "why not?" to introspect our own position. I'll take a stab at it from my perspective. We might say it doesn't justify anything because we have some moral code that we think everyone should abide by, and part of that might be "Don't go around killing people". Some people turn some parts of the collective moral code into laws so they can be tangibly enforced. But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population? In other places and times laws might say, for instance, that to combat overpopulation we need to euthanize those under a certain threshold of contribution. To fight this, we either need to come to terms with the idea that morals and laws are just a matter of personal taste, in which case there's nothing really justifying our own position either and we're just fighting for our personal preference, or we need some higher authority beyond ourselves/consensus/law that justifies our "don't kill people" position and condemns their "euthanize the parasites" position. To me, morality seems to fall prey to Tarski's undefinability theorem. There can be no definition of moral truth within the system of morality. We need some external system to define moral truth.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > Although I agree, I think it's worth asking "why not?" to introspect our own position. Well, sure, nothing wrong with asking the question, though the direct answer is pretty trivial: Because justification is by definition about reducing one claim to another (set of) claim(s), while "my moral code says I should kill witches" is simply a synonym for "I think I should kill witches", and as such just structurally is not a justification at all (as opposed to a bad or insufficient justification) when the question is "Why do you think you should kill witches?" because it just rephrases the same claim in different words. > But at a level above law, what is the authority that determines that killing people is absolutely wrong and not just personally repugnant to the majority of the world's population? That question doesn't really make sense to me. What does "absolute wrong" even mean? That seems like an undefined term to me. And why would this standard of an "absolute wrong" be something that we would have any use for? > In other places and times laws might say, for instance, that to combat overpopulation we need to euthanize those under a certain threshold of contribution. So?! > To fight this, we either need to come to terms with the idea that morals and laws are just a matter of personal taste, in which case there's nothing really justifying our own position either and we're just fighting for our personal preference That's both false and kindof self-contradictory. A major part of justification is exactly about convincing other people, or you could say "fighting for our personal preference". In that regard, exactly that which convinces other people is the justification. Another component of justification is about self-consistency and consistency with knowledge about the external world: Independently from trying to convince other people, you can try and find ways to falsify your moral claims, either by trying to find contradicting evidence in the external world, or by trying to identify internal inconsistencies within your moral framework. If you don't find any inconsistencies, that is a tentative justification for yourself. > or we need some higher authority beyond ourselves/consensus/law that justifies our "don't kill people" position and condemns their "euthanize the parasites" position. How would that solve anything? You just have pushed back the problem of justification to the question of why this particular authority should be the one to use as the standard, haven't you? I don't see how that would possibly be an alternative?! > There can be no definition of moral truth within the system of morality. We need some external system to define moral truth. That seems like a category mistake to me?! Why is moral truth something that needs to be defined, let alone defined within itself, rather than just something that needs to be discovered, and formulated as tentative conclusions subject to revision, as all empirical discovery is?