7 ms·

Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a

Exactly. And I doubt it's a mass exodus either. If you read "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the author clearly states that when making the bomb, they had a lot of fun. Lots of budgets. Only smart people. Working on the coolest projects. He even plays with the censorship and security practices. They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it: they need to end the war, and that's it. They really said "oh we fucked up" once the bomb exploded. And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities. While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. And they have a very arrogant culture. Somehow I doubt FB is going to bleed talent anytime soon.

teachrdan 9y ago
That's not exactly my recollection from the book. I believe they thought closely about how the bomb was needed to end the war in Europe as quickly as possible. What they failed to do was reevaluate the project after the Allies won the war in Europe. It was after Hiroshima they said, "oh, we fucked up." (to parapahrase)
- r00fus 9y ago
  Exactly. There is no war/enemy here. Only ideals, whose ethics are now openly questioned. I think the public discussion probably hits FB most in hiring - I mean, if I were doing an interview there I'd at least ask the question and see how they responded (maybe negotiation point on what I'd be working on or increased comp).
- IAmEveryone 9y ago
  “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” —- J. Robert Oppenheimer, after watching the first test
  - ballooney 9y ago
    "Sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it." -- J. von Neumann, about Oppenheimer
    - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
      Doubleplusgood, speaking as a bit of a quotation hound who hadn't come across that one. There's a whiff of La Rochefoucauld to it, too.
raverbashing 9y ago
The bomb was initially built against the Nazis, and with the understanding that they would be building something similar. Japan came later. Also the group was sequestered to a remote lab (Los Alamos?) and working under strong secrecy. You either try to keep a good atmosphere or you go crazy.
- sametmax 9y ago
  If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later. But they didn't think about that. They don't mention that they thought that they were working on something that could literally end humanity. And the thing is, we didn't even use the bomb to win against the Nazi. That the bomb was a good decision or not is a hard debate that I still think about sometime. But there was not that much debate reported from the people building it.
  - tzakrajs 9y ago
    Smart people can be really dumb.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    Oppenheimer recalling the Trinity test: It brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I'm sure those scientists thought about it and discussed it among themselves, but they were in a super top secret lab in the middle of nowhere. Not much opportunity to leave an historical record of what they thought (letters highly censored, etc).
    - sametmax 9y ago
      The Feynman biography cover in length the what happened, but it doesn't mention much debate about this.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    > If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later. Yes, however the point is moot if your adversary hits you with it before you are finished. Pacifists get shot first.
deciplex 9y ago
> While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. In fact Feynman's IQ was merely "above average" according to Feynman himself, who got a look at his score after taking the test in school. But if you're using "IQ" as a proxy for actual, you know, intelligence then yeah, I agree :-)
- sametmax 9y ago
  Just a figure of speach of course. Feyman doesn't use "fucked up" either :)
bagacrap 9y ago
So maybe the Cambridge Analytica hullabaloo is the equivalent of the bomb going off?
- barkingcat 9y ago
  No electing trump was the bomb going off.
  - InitialLastName 9y ago
    Cambridge Analytica was more of a "oh, WE made that bomb?"
  - sudoke 9y ago
    You obviously didn't have relatives killed from the actual bombs. How about you try to be a bit more sensitive before you compare a democratically election that you didn't like the outcome of with hundreds of thousands of people getting killed in an afternoon in august...
alxlaz 9y ago
Feynman's own country, though, was at war; when he was recruited into the team that would eventually work on the Manhattan project, the Pearl Harbour attack had already taken place and irrevocably wounded and scarred the American public consciousness. Many other members of the Manhattan project were from countries or communities that had suffered tremendously at the hands of the Axis' power. War in Europe had been raging for more than two years. Fun or no fun, you can find motivation for working on weapons in a lot of things: the next Pearl Harbour attack could be against your home town, the next ones to be sent to labour camps back at home could be your only surviving relatives, the next casualties of war could be your high school friends. Barring a couple of teams that work on interesting projects, Facebook has little other than money and reputation to throw at people. The former isn't that hard to find in our field, though, and the latter is kindda fickly. Facebook may well keep its talent pool constant, but largely by having people for whom the latter (or, more generally, what they work on and what impact it has) is important replaced by people for whom it is not. Fortunately (for most of us, at least), the kind of talent that money, disregard for ethics and public doublespeak attracts is pretty self-destructive in the long run.
- sametmax 9y ago
  You can replace facebook with google, apple, ms or amazon and you have the same picture though. And they got the best projects and the most money. Yet when I said to my relatives, 5 years ago, that I refused an interview from google and facebook, they questioned my sanity. I don't pretend to have the moral high ground here, as i made enought bad things in my life, but this kind of pondering work opportunities doesn't happen enough imo.
  - alxlaz 9y ago
    > And they got the best projects and the most money. I think what they don't have is their CEO testifying in front of the Congress after building a platform whose hunger for money made it an exceptional weapon against society. Smart, young people start avoiding companies only after public perception turns against them. Facebook is closer to that than Amazon or even Google.
  - 9y ago
qaq 9y ago
Well people might be valuing stock price risks and not making decision based on ethical concerns.
neves 9y ago
Don't forget that a lot of them were refugees in need of a good job to sustain their family.
mrec 9y ago
> And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities. Do you think "very positive personalities" were a plus in this case? Obviously you don't want homicidal sociopaths on the team, but someone whose first thought was "What's the worst possible thing that could happen here?" might have come in handy.
- bronson 9y ago
  The worst possible thing that could happen here was the Germans create the bomb first.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    But we didn't use the bomb to win against the nazi. And saying having the bomb is the only way to counter the enemy building one is excluding the search of any other possible solution.
alasdair_ 9y ago
>While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. Feynman is semi-famous for testing at a much lower IQ than most people assume. (He scored 125 on his test at school). See: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201112/polymath-physicist-richard-feynmans-low-iq-and-finding-another https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next-ein...
- luckydude 9y ago
  Unless I'm mistaken, I tested out at 140 a long time ago. There is no friggin way I'm remotely as intelligent as Feynman was so there goes any faith in IQ tests being meaningful. Most of the people who have worked for me are demonstrably smarter than me and none of them are close to Feynman. Smart people but not at his level IMO. RIP IQ tests :)
  - droidist2 9y ago
    Doesn't it depend a lot on what age you take the test though? Like I was very smart for my age as a child and I tested very high. Later in life I'm probably not much higher than my peers.
    - mmrezaie 9y ago
      I think the whole point of IQ test is being stable independent of age.
      - droidist2 9y ago
        Originally though IQ was calculated by dividing by age, now it's calculated by comparing with those in the same age group. So any random child outscoring a famous scientist doesn't seem to be that significant.
      - JoshMnem 9y ago
        It seems like a goal of IQ is to assign a single, unchanging score to someone's cognitive ability, but it is a severely flawed concept. The test should not be called "intelligence quotient" but something like "cognitive battery" instead. You don't have an IQ. It's a test that you take that can provide some useful information, but it isn't a fixed score, and "intelligence" (a word that is too ambiguous to use without careful definition) can't be reduced to a single number.
pmoriarty 9y ago
Contrast Feynman's attitude to that of Wolfgang Pauli, who refused to work on the Manhattan Project, saying "it's not the business of science to engineer mass destruction." There have been plenty of other highly intelligent people who acted ethically, often at great danger to themselves, rejecting many financial and social incentives to act unethically.
- rytor718 9y ago
  This. We rarely realize that we idolize the wrong historical actors which contributes to our inaccurate evaluation of their deeds. In this case, pointing out Feynman or any other "brilliant minds" behind horrific events and technologies fails to acknowledge that they had detractors in during their time who pointed out these things to them. And they ignored them. I usually try to keep that in mind now. In the back of my mind I'm saying "they knew, someone told them" and lo and behold, if I go looking for said detractors I can usually find them in spades. I'm not defending or excusing anyone. Just pointing out that its unlikely these employees were unaware. But it just doesn't seem likely.
justin66 9y ago
> They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it Feynman was only speaking for himself there. It's been 25 years since I read that book but I thought he described some of the efforts by Einstein, et al. to prevent the bomb from being used.

teachrdan 9y ago

That's not exactly my recollection from the book. I believe they thought closely about how the bomb was needed to end the war in Europe as quickly as possible. What they failed to do was reevaluate the project after the Allies won the war in Europe. It was after Hiroshima they said, "oh, we fucked up." (to parapahrase)

r00fus 9y ago
Exactly. There is no war/enemy here. Only ideals, whose ethics are now openly questioned. I think the public discussion probably hits FB most in hiring - I mean, if I were doing an interview there I'd at least ask the question and see how they responded (maybe negotiation point on what I'd be working on or increased comp).
IAmEveryone 9y ago
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” —- J. Robert Oppenheimer, after watching the first test
- ballooney 9y ago
  "Sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it." -- J. von Neumann, about Oppenheimer
  - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
    Doubleplusgood, speaking as a bit of a quotation hound who hadn't come across that one. There's a whiff of La Rochefoucauld to it, too.

raverbashing 9y ago

The bomb was initially built against the Nazis, and with the understanding that they would be building something similar. Japan came later. Also the group was sequestered to a remote lab (Los Alamos?) and working under strong secrecy. You either try to keep a good atmosphere or you go crazy.

sametmax 9y ago
If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later. But they didn't think about that. They don't mention that they thought that they were working on something that could literally end humanity. And the thing is, we didn't even use the bomb to win against the Nazi. That the bomb was a good decision or not is a hard debate that I still think about sometime. But there was not that much debate reported from the people building it.
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  Smart people can be really dumb.
- njarboe 9y ago
  Oppenheimer recalling the Trinity test: It brought to mind words from the Bhagavad Gita: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I'm sure those scientists thought about it and discussed it among themselves, but they were in a super top secret lab in the middle of nowhere. Not much opportunity to leave an historical record of what they thought (letters highly censored, etc).
  - sametmax 9y ago
    The Feynman biography cover in length the what happened, but it doesn't mention much debate about this.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  > If you are capable of building the most powerful weapon on earth, you are capable of guessing it will be used on something else than your current designated target, later. Yes, however the point is moot if your adversary hits you with it before you are finished. Pacifists get shot first.

deciplex 9y ago

> While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. In fact Feynman's IQ was merely "above average" according to Feynman himself, who got a look at his score after taking the test in school. But if you're using "IQ" as a proxy for actual, you know, intelligence then yeah, I agree :-)

sametmax 9y ago
Just a figure of speach of course. Feyman doesn't use "fucked up" either :)

bagacrap 9y ago

So maybe the Cambridge Analytica hullabaloo is the equivalent of the bomb going off?

barkingcat 9y ago
No electing trump was the bomb going off.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  Cambridge Analytica was more of a "oh, WE made that bomb?"
- sudoke 9y ago
  You obviously didn't have relatives killed from the actual bombs. How about you try to be a bit more sensitive before you compare a democratically election that you didn't like the outcome of with hundreds of thousands of people getting killed in an afternoon in august...

alxlaz 9y ago

Feynman's own country, though, was at war; when he was recruited into the team that would eventually work on the Manhattan project, the Pearl Harbour attack had already taken place and irrevocably wounded and scarred the American public consciousness. Many other members of the Manhattan project were from countries or communities that had suffered tremendously at the hands of the Axis' power. War in Europe had been raging for more than two years. Fun or no fun, you can find motivation for working on weapons in a lot of things: the next Pearl Harbour attack could be against your home town, the next ones to be sent to labour camps back at home could be your only surviving relatives, the next casualties of war could be your high school friends. Barring a couple of teams that work on interesting projects, Facebook has little other than money and reputation to throw at people. The former isn't that hard to find in our field, though, and the latter is kindda fickly. Facebook may well keep its talent pool constant, but largely by having people for whom the latter (or, more generally, what they work on and what impact it has) is important replaced by people for whom it is not. Fortunately (for most of us, at least), the kind of talent that money, disregard for ethics and public doublespeak attracts is pretty self-destructive in the long run.

sametmax 9y ago
You can replace facebook with google, apple, ms or amazon and you have the same picture though. And they got the best projects and the most money. Yet when I said to my relatives, 5 years ago, that I refused an interview from google and facebook, they questioned my sanity. I don't pretend to have the moral high ground here, as i made enought bad things in my life, but this kind of pondering work opportunities doesn't happen enough imo.
- alxlaz 9y ago
  > And they got the best projects and the most money. I think what they don't have is their CEO testifying in front of the Congress after building a platform whose hunger for money made it an exceptional weapon against society. Smart, young people start avoiding companies only after public perception turns against them. Facebook is closer to that than Amazon or even Google.
- 9y ago

qaq 9y ago

Well people might be valuing stock price risks and not making decision based on ethical concerns.

neves 9y ago

Don't forget that a lot of them were refugees in need of a good job to sustain their family.

mrec 9y ago

> And we are talking about brilliant minds with very positive personalities. Do you think "very positive personalities" were a plus in this case? Obviously you don't want homicidal sociopaths on the team, but someone whose first thought was "What's the worst possible thing that could happen here?" might have come in handy.

bronson 9y ago
The worst possible thing that could happen here was the Germans create the bomb first.
- sametmax 9y ago
  But we didn't use the bomb to win against the nazi. And saying having the bomb is the only way to counter the enemy building one is excluding the search of any other possible solution.

alasdair_ 9y ago

>While skilled, I doubt than more than a small fraction of FB work force is close to Feynman's IQ. Feynman is semi-famous for testing at a much lower IQ than most people assume. (He scored 125 on his test at school). See: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next-einstein/201112/polymath-physicist-richard-feynmans-low-iq-and-finding-another https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-the-next-ein...

luckydude 9y ago
Unless I'm mistaken, I tested out at 140 a long time ago. There is no friggin way I'm remotely as intelligent as Feynman was so there goes any faith in IQ tests being meaningful. Most of the people who have worked for me are demonstrably smarter than me and none of them are close to Feynman. Smart people but not at his level IMO. RIP IQ tests :)
- droidist2 9y ago
  Doesn't it depend a lot on what age you take the test though? Like I was very smart for my age as a child and I tested very high. Later in life I'm probably not much higher than my peers.
  - mmrezaie 9y ago
    I think the whole point of IQ test is being stable independent of age.
    - droidist2 9y ago
      Originally though IQ was calculated by dividing by age, now it's calculated by comparing with those in the same age group. So any random child outscoring a famous scientist doesn't seem to be that significant.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      It seems like a goal of IQ is to assign a single, unchanging score to someone's cognitive ability, but it is a severely flawed concept. The test should not be called "intelligence quotient" but something like "cognitive battery" instead. You don't have an IQ. It's a test that you take that can provide some useful information, but it isn't a fixed score, and "intelligence" (a word that is too ambiguous to use without careful definition) can't be reduced to a single number.

pmoriarty 9y ago

Contrast Feynman's attitude to that of Wolfgang Pauli, who refused to work on the Manhattan Project, saying "it's not the business of science to engineer mass destruction." There have been plenty of other highly intelligent people who acted ethically, often at great danger to themselves, rejecting many financial and social incentives to act unethically.

rytor718 9y ago
This. We rarely realize that we idolize the wrong historical actors which contributes to our inaccurate evaluation of their deeds. In this case, pointing out Feynman or any other "brilliant minds" behind horrific events and technologies fails to acknowledge that they had detractors in during their time who pointed out these things to them. And they ignored them. I usually try to keep that in mind now. In the back of my mind I'm saying "they knew, someone told them" and lo and behold, if I go looking for said detractors I can usually find them in spades. I'm not defending or excusing anyone. Just pointing out that its unlikely these employees were unaware. But it just doesn't seem likely.

justin66 9y ago

> They never really thought too hard about the ethic part of it Feynman was only speaking for himself there. It's been 25 years since I read that book but I thought he described some of the efforts by Einstein, et al. to prevent the bomb from being used.