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> So, I guess that makes me complicit in all this too. No, that makes the salespeople, and your bosses at that communications company, complicit. We're just as

> So, I guess that makes me complicit in all this too. No, that makes the salespeople, and your bosses at that communications company, complicit. We're just as neutral and tool-like as the computers we program.

thomasfortes 9y ago
This argument is dangerous. You can extend that to any point of the chain, salespeople can be considered as just neutral and tool like as programmers and the blame shifted up ad infinitum. While I don't think that he was complicit in this case (maybe the thought that what he was doing could have bad repercussions never went through his head, I don't know...), if you know that you're writing a program that will be used to calculate a way to kill the biggest number of people in a terrorist attack, would you still claim that you're not complicit because your boss that is paying you are the one complicit? If you don't know what are the uses of the program, I think that you can claim that, but if you know, definitely you're being complicit, even if you're being paid or working under orders (and not under duress).
- mmirate 9y ago
  If the program's user-to-be is a customer instead of someone in the same company? Sure. I would also gladly write a program used to calculate a way to kill the biggest number of terrorists in a missile strike, and that has much less potential to be illegal (thus monumentally costly, and thus wholly counterproductive ... but again that's the businesspeople's concern). And your argument is dangerous, by ignoring the ultimate authority+responsibility of any company's leadership and investors.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  I would point out the difference in someone who simply creates a tool, and a salesperson who, perhaps, knowingly lies, stretches the truth, hides inconvenient truth, and otherwise uses unethical means to promote something they know is wrong. There is also a very steep scale of diminishing complicity. Is the accountant that works at the electric company which provides electricity to the office building where the sketchy sales guys plot to sell their unhealthy products also complicit (assuming he knows what goes on there)?
mnm1 9y ago
"We're just as neutral and tool-like as the guns we shoot," was every Nazi's defense after WWII and it's not acceptable morally or legally. In no way does it defend immoral actions.
- mmirate 9y ago
  Our tools are computers not MP40s. For our tools to be as dangerous as Godwin's MP40s, someone else must connect an MP40 to a computer. And that person is the root of responsibility.
  - mnm1 9y ago
    I thought the tools were the programmers. Which one is it? Programmers are much more dangerous than any gun and using the "it was just my job" cop out to excuse atrocities like killing people is still immoral, regardless of what tools the people who do so use. People aren't tools. No person is a tool, period. That's the point of my original reply. You can't excuse atrocities by saying people are tools and therefore not responsible for their actions. You also can't excuse atrocities by claiming people were just following orders. People are moral agents except in very extreme circumstances (such as lack of mental capacity, which the law does deal with). Programmers that helped big pharma ruin thousands upon thousands of lives are most certainly partially responsible for their immoral actions (working for big pharma) just like the Nazis who ran the concentration camps were partially responsible for the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt tackles this subject in "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil."

thomasfortes 9y ago

This argument is dangerous. You can extend that to any point of the chain, salespeople can be considered as just neutral and tool like as programmers and the blame shifted up ad infinitum. While I don't think that he was complicit in this case (maybe the thought that what he was doing could have bad repercussions never went through his head, I don't know...), if you know that you're writing a program that will be used to calculate a way to kill the biggest number of people in a terrorist attack, would you still claim that you're not complicit because your boss that is paying you are the one complicit? If you don't know what are the uses of the program, I think that you can claim that, but if you know, definitely you're being complicit, even if you're being paid or working under orders (and not under duress).

mmirate 9y ago
If the program's user-to-be is a customer instead of someone in the same company? Sure. I would also gladly write a program used to calculate a way to kill the biggest number of terrorists in a missile strike, and that has much less potential to be illegal (thus monumentally costly, and thus wholly counterproductive ... but again that's the businesspeople's concern). And your argument is dangerous, by ignoring the ultimate authority+responsibility of any company's leadership and investors.
jjeaff 9y ago
I would point out the difference in someone who simply creates a tool, and a salesperson who, perhaps, knowingly lies, stretches the truth, hides inconvenient truth, and otherwise uses unethical means to promote something they know is wrong. There is also a very steep scale of diminishing complicity. Is the accountant that works at the electric company which provides electricity to the office building where the sketchy sales guys plot to sell their unhealthy products also complicit (assuming he knows what goes on there)?

mnm1 9y ago

"We're just as neutral and tool-like as the guns we shoot," was every Nazi's defense after WWII and it's not acceptable morally or legally. In no way does it defend immoral actions.

mmirate 9y ago
Our tools are computers not MP40s. For our tools to be as dangerous as Godwin's MP40s, someone else must connect an MP40 to a computer. And that person is the root of responsibility.
- mnm1 9y ago
  I thought the tools were the programmers. Which one is it? Programmers are much more dangerous than any gun and using the "it was just my job" cop out to excuse atrocities like killing people is still immoral, regardless of what tools the people who do so use. People aren't tools. No person is a tool, period. That's the point of my original reply. You can't excuse atrocities by saying people are tools and therefore not responsible for their actions. You also can't excuse atrocities by claiming people were just following orders. People are moral agents except in very extreme circumstances (such as lack of mental capacity, which the law does deal with). Programmers that helped big pharma ruin thousands upon thousands of lives are most certainly partially responsible for their immoral actions (working for big pharma) just like the Nazis who ran the concentration camps were partially responsible for the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt tackles this subject in "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil."