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On the one side we want freedom of speech inside organizations so that they can discuss ideas like this. On the other side it's dangerous if an idea like this l

On the one side we want freedom of speech inside organizations so that they can discuss ideas like this. On the other side it's dangerous if an idea like this leaks because it presumably shows how evil Google is. Now imagine a leaker inside your own brain. Every thought you may have could be displayed on the front page of The Verge or whatever. "Peter's internal thoughts hint he may be a pedophile". I prefer Google having these internal discussions of highly disturbing concepts vs not having them. "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

frockington 8y ago
But it is so much easier to jump to hatred and call them Nazi scum. Much harder to accept uncomfortable converstaions with conflicting ideas happen
- mark_edward 8y ago
  It's actually pretty easy to accept that these conversations happen. I do. The thing is, in conversations, people claim to hold and/or appear to hold certain views and beliefs. Other people become aware of them (somehow), and make judgements. That first part is basically universal human nature, and I think it's basically a necessity and right. The variety and possible problem comes in whether and how people express these judgements. I don't think the specific act of writing or speaking your opinion about someone's beliefs and opinions is ever wrong. You can do other bad things, like incite to violence or fraud but those are separate things
  - frockington 8y ago
    I agree with you completely, I meant for my comment to be sarcastic but forgot the /s. I think a large part of why people seem to fear free speech now is because they see people in the media and on tv get enraged about others beliefs and begin to think that it is the social norm to get outraged
pjc50 8y ago
> freedom of speech inside organizations so that they can discuss ideas like this What does that actually mean in practice? "We're going to float this idea which we all think is unethical, but without actually labelling it as unethical in the presentation?" (The strange thing seems to be a software engineering organisation that thinks of things without immediately coming up with dozens of examples of how this could go wrong!)
- fixermark 8y ago
  Keep in mind that we're seeing a leak taken out of its context. We have no idea whether the "immediately coming up with" was one location over and not leaked. (... which leads me personally to ask the question: what was the intent of the leaker here? ;) ).
- cmiles74 8y ago
  On the contrary, the earnestness of the presentation implies that they believe it _is_ the ethical thing to do. That is a part of what struck me as creepy about the whole thing.
- Willamin 8y ago
  Directly from the article, it seems that they are well aware that it's not going to be the most popular idea. > When reached for comment on The Selfish Ledger, an X spokesperson provided the following statement to The Verge: >> “We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be. This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It’s not related to any current or future products.”
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
Can you describe in what way you believe this program to be evil?
- chillingeffect 8y ago
  It's a building block for a command-side society. Just take a look at another article on the HN home page: https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b The Chinese are rounding up Muslims by the thousand and re-training them out of their culture. Do you want people behind desks thousands of miles away from you manipulating your culture with computer aids? My data is mine, not the fodder for a corporation. The U.S. is about freedom. Want to create your own cult? Sure, find some land and do it. But I don't want to be involved in efforts to command-side my life. I don't trust google's corporate values for driving my life. I don't trust advertisers and election-riggers using psychological monitoring to influence consumption and voting choices. They haven't demonstrated they have our best interests in mind - or that they can be disentangled from evil foreign powers. This video talks about synthesizing objects of desire based on intimate details of peoples' lives, throughout their lives. Then anticipating the decisions they make throughout their life. I don't want a server room full of computers figuring out how to make me comply with google's corporate values. This video even admits explicitly that "the notion of a global good is is problematic," so it weasels to creating optimal health. In fact, the keys to optimal health are already widely-known: eating well and getting exercise. Society's problem is that we have overwhelming advertising influences using scientific techniques to push us away from what we already know. We need distance from this asymmetric power relationship, not deep learning to enhance it.
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    Seems like a false distinction in that Google doesn't have coercive power the same way the Chinese state does. Rather, the video is showing what is clearly an opt-in system to use data to guide a user toward some goal of theirs - in the example's case of "health." Which in theory would then expand into all areas of life so that someone could optimize their decisions with data. Do you make the claim that it is impossible to align a user's goals with a company's goals?
gnode 8y ago
> your right to say it. I think what's more relevant is the right not to say something publicly, and by extension the right to have thoughts free of external judgement and consequence.
- falcolas 8y ago
  Exactly. Just as Google (and everyone in it) has the right to express their thoughts freely, I have the exact same right to be express my thoughts about their speech.
blattimwind 8y ago
This Mitchell & Webb sketch may serve illustrative and/or informative purposes related to the topic at hand (may contain moving pictures and British accents): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg
- gnode 8y ago
  Links are great, but please provide some explanation in future (or edit in one now), people generally don't like surprise links.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    Done!
godelski 8y ago
> Now imagine a leaker inside your own brain. But it isn't like that at all. We don't judge people on their internal thoughts because they are fleeting and can even be random. But we do judge when someone distills those thoughts and starts opening their mouth or acting on them. There was a well produced video and concept. This took quite some time. This was not a fleeting discussion just an interesting idea. This was distilled. It isn't so much a leaker in your mind, but someone leaking what you gave a presentation on.
- EliRivers 8y ago
  We don't judge people on their internal thoughts because they are fleeting and can even be random. I disagree. I think we don't judge people on their internal thoughts because we can't see those internal thoughts. If they became visible, people would start judging each other on them.
- wffurr 8y ago
  Motive is a relevant consideration in legal cases, in addition to speech and action. So no, we do in fact literally judge people in their internal thoughts.
  - godelski 8y ago
    But as you are pointing out, they took action on that thought. It was more than just fleeting.
    - sangnoir 8y ago
      > But as you are pointing out, they took action on that thought They didn't take action if I correctly understood the allegory. If an organisation is a person (my friend...), then individual workers are like neurons/brain regions. This internal video is analogous to a thought that may or may not be acted out by creating a product that impacts other people outside of the org. I agree that the idea is dystopian, but the article was a little over the top with the scaremongering.
walterbell 8y ago
This would be a good time to share internal free speech discussions of “highly non-disturbing concepts”.
gcb0 8y ago
kinda off. this could have been discussed just fine, but instead they got 5 phds for a few months and then a video editing team to make a cheesy slideshow of why Peter might be a pedophile. there's some tangible difference that you can't defend with your brain reading generalization.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vertexFarm 8y ago
This is such a massive straw man. We're not concerned with their right to distribute memos internally. We're concerned with their ability to almost unilaterally direct the progress of civilizations.
otakucode 8y ago
Discussion is fine. It's only when it turns to action that there are issues. At least, that is my view. The problem is, Google acts. And its leaders publish books announcing their intent to act. And it's exactly in line with The Selfish Ledger. That suggests strongly that this has not been a discussion which was had and then decided against through good reasoning and a glance at the history of the tragedies that have come from every attempt at large-scale social engineering.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

frockington 8y ago

But it is so much easier to jump to hatred and call them Nazi scum. Much harder to accept uncomfortable converstaions with conflicting ideas happen

mark_edward 8y ago
It's actually pretty easy to accept that these conversations happen. I do. The thing is, in conversations, people claim to hold and/or appear to hold certain views and beliefs. Other people become aware of them (somehow), and make judgements. That first part is basically universal human nature, and I think it's basically a necessity and right. The variety and possible problem comes in whether and how people express these judgements. I don't think the specific act of writing or speaking your opinion about someone's beliefs and opinions is ever wrong. You can do other bad things, like incite to violence or fraud but those are separate things
- frockington 8y ago
  I agree with you completely, I meant for my comment to be sarcastic but forgot the /s. I think a large part of why people seem to fear free speech now is because they see people in the media and on tv get enraged about others beliefs and begin to think that it is the social norm to get outraged

pjc50 8y ago

> freedom of speech inside organizations so that they can discuss ideas like this What does that actually mean in practice? "We're going to float this idea which we all think is unethical, but without actually labelling it as unethical in the presentation?" (The strange thing seems to be a software engineering organisation that thinks of things without immediately coming up with dozens of examples of how this could go wrong!)

fixermark 8y ago
Keep in mind that we're seeing a leak taken out of its context. We have no idea whether the "immediately coming up with" was one location over and not leaked. (... which leads me personally to ask the question: what was the intent of the leaker here? ;) ).
cmiles74 8y ago
On the contrary, the earnestness of the presentation implies that they believe it _is_ the ethical thing to do. That is a part of what struck me as creepy about the whole thing.
Willamin 8y ago
Directly from the article, it seems that they are well aware that it's not going to be the most popular idea. > When reached for comment on The Selfish Ledger, an X spokesperson provided the following statement to The Verge: >> “We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be. This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It’s not related to any current or future products.”

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

Can you describe in what way you believe this program to be evil?

chillingeffect 8y ago
It's a building block for a command-side society. Just take a look at another article on the HN home page: https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b The Chinese are rounding up Muslims by the thousand and re-training them out of their culture. Do you want people behind desks thousands of miles away from you manipulating your culture with computer aids? My data is mine, not the fodder for a corporation. The U.S. is about freedom. Want to create your own cult? Sure, find some land and do it. But I don't want to be involved in efforts to command-side my life. I don't trust google's corporate values for driving my life. I don't trust advertisers and election-riggers using psychological monitoring to influence consumption and voting choices. They haven't demonstrated they have our best interests in mind - or that they can be disentangled from evil foreign powers. This video talks about synthesizing objects of desire based on intimate details of peoples' lives, throughout their lives. Then anticipating the decisions they make throughout their life. I don't want a server room full of computers figuring out how to make me comply with google's corporate values. This video even admits explicitly that "the notion of a global good is is problematic," so it weasels to creating optimal health. In fact, the keys to optimal health are already widely-known: eating well and getting exercise. Society's problem is that we have overwhelming advertising influences using scientific techniques to push us away from what we already know. We need distance from this asymmetric power relationship, not deep learning to enhance it.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  Seems like a false distinction in that Google doesn't have coercive power the same way the Chinese state does. Rather, the video is showing what is clearly an opt-in system to use data to guide a user toward some goal of theirs - in the example's case of "health." Which in theory would then expand into all areas of life so that someone could optimize their decisions with data. Do you make the claim that it is impossible to align a user's goals with a company's goals?

gnode 8y ago

> your right to say it. I think what's more relevant is the right not to say something publicly, and by extension the right to have thoughts free of external judgement and consequence.

falcolas 8y ago
Exactly. Just as Google (and everyone in it) has the right to express their thoughts freely, I have the exact same right to be express my thoughts about their speech.

blattimwind 8y ago

This Mitchell & Webb sketch may serve illustrative and/or informative purposes related to the topic at hand (may contain moving pictures and British accents): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

gnode 8y ago
Links are great, but please provide some explanation in future (or edit in one now), people generally don't like surprise links.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Done!

godelski 8y ago

> Now imagine a leaker inside your own brain. But it isn't like that at all. We don't judge people on their internal thoughts because they are fleeting and can even be random. But we do judge when someone distills those thoughts and starts opening their mouth or acting on them. There was a well produced video and concept. This took quite some time. This was not a fleeting discussion just an interesting idea. This was distilled. It isn't so much a leaker in your mind, but someone leaking what you gave a presentation on.

EliRivers 8y ago
We don't judge people on their internal thoughts because they are fleeting and can even be random. I disagree. I think we don't judge people on their internal thoughts because we can't see those internal thoughts. If they became visible, people would start judging each other on them.
wffurr 8y ago
Motive is a relevant consideration in legal cases, in addition to speech and action. So no, we do in fact literally judge people in their internal thoughts.
- godelski 8y ago
  But as you are pointing out, they took action on that thought. It was more than just fleeting.
  - sangnoir 8y ago
    > But as you are pointing out, they took action on that thought They didn't take action if I correctly understood the allegory. If an organisation is a person (my friend...), then individual workers are like neurons/brain regions. This internal video is analogous to a thought that may or may not be acted out by creating a product that impacts other people outside of the org. I agree that the idea is dystopian, but the article was a little over the top with the scaremongering.

walterbell 8y ago

This would be a good time to share internal free speech discussions of “highly non-disturbing concepts”.

gcb0 8y ago

kinda off. this could have been discussed just fine, but instead they got 5 phds for a few months and then a video editing team to make a cheesy slideshow of why Peter might be a pedophile. there's some tangible difference that you can't defend with your brain reading generalization.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

vertexFarm 8y ago

This is such a massive straw man. We're not concerned with their right to distribute memos internally. We're concerned with their ability to almost unilaterally direct the progress of civilizations.

otakucode 8y ago

Discussion is fine. It's only when it turns to action that there are issues. At least, that is my view. The problem is, Google acts. And its leaders publish books announcing their intent to act. And it's exactly in line with The Selfish Ledger. That suggests strongly that this has not been a discussion which was had and then decided against through good reasoning and a glance at the history of the tragedies that have come from every attempt at large-scale social engineering.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]