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It's fun imagining this attitude applied to the Space Race. >So we go to space. >That can be bad if they say accidents happen. Maybe three of our guys die on

It's fun imagining this attitude applied to the Space Race. >So we go to space. >That can be bad if they say accidents happen. Maybe three of our guys die on the launchpad. Maybe a spacecraft is lost on recovery. >And we still go to space. >The ugly truth is that we believe in going to space so deeply that anything that allows us to go to space more is de facto good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. >That's why all the work we do in space-going is justified. All the pure oxygen environments. All the hatch designs that can only be opened from the outside. All the ad hoc procedures and cheap wiring. The work we will likely have to do on the Moon some day. All of it.

jadedhacker 9y ago
For what it's worth, the space race was something most people accepted as something worth doing, the astronauts knew every operational detail of their spacecrafts and volunteered, and a small number of people were affected. By contrast, not everyone accepts the FB mission as bluntly stated, few except a fraction of technical people understand what FB is doing and how it works and are capable of informed consent, and 2B people are affected. The Moon isn't populated, China is and their people might have an opinion about being colonized by FB industrialists, either for or against.
elijej 9y ago
While a neat thought, I would argue that the space race had a positive value, while Facebook has more of a negative value than positive one. I think that the memo is flawed because they're pretending that what they're doing is for the greater good, instead of what they're really doing it for, profit.
ploika 9y ago
Facebook is a for-profit venture so that analogy doesn't really work for me. A closer analogy would be an investment circulating a memo saying that their questionable AML practices are actually no big deal because they really believe in facilitating seamless transfers of money, or VW talking about how their quest for the ultimate driving experience means staff should just get over the ethics of the unrealistic emissions testing on diesel cars. If people die then so be it, we've got numbers to worry about.
arcbyte 9y ago
Your last line lost me. You're putting your own negative connotations in a way that totally recharacterizes reality, both for the space race and for Facebook's actions.

jadedhacker 9y ago

For what it's worth, the space race was something most people accepted as something worth doing, the astronauts knew every operational detail of their spacecrafts and volunteered, and a small number of people were affected. By contrast, not everyone accepts the FB mission as bluntly stated, few except a fraction of technical people understand what FB is doing and how it works and are capable of informed consent, and 2B people are affected. The Moon isn't populated, China is and their people might have an opinion about being colonized by FB industrialists, either for or against.

elijej 9y ago

While a neat thought, I would argue that the space race had a positive value, while Facebook has more of a negative value than positive one. I think that the memo is flawed because they're pretending that what they're doing is for the greater good, instead of what they're really doing it for, profit.

ploika 9y ago

Facebook is a for-profit venture so that analogy doesn't really work for me. A closer analogy would be an investment circulating a memo saying that their questionable AML practices are actually no big deal because they really believe in facilitating seamless transfers of money, or VW talking about how their quest for the ultimate driving experience means staff should just get over the ethics of the unrealistic emissions testing on diesel cars. If people die then so be it, we've got numbers to worry about.

arcbyte 9y ago

Your last line lost me. You're putting your own negative connotations in a way that totally recharacterizes reality, both for the space race and for Facebook's actions.