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I might’ve been unclear, I do think we could push for more enforced accountability in these cases. The parallel between narrow focus and mental disorder was me
by goblin89 8y ago
I might’ve been unclear, I do think we could push for more enforced accountability in these cases.
The parallel between narrow focus and mental disorder was meant to illustrate how attributing these outcomes to malice (which I sometimes see) is ineffective. If those actors play by the rules and are immune to ethics-based arguments, then maybe the rules are due to be updated.
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoThe comparison relies on an assumption that these corporate bad actors unwittingly "don't see the harm" that arises as a side effect of their laser focus on (non-maliciously) optimizing something else-- similar to how someone with a different behavioral orientation might unwittingly not register the effect of ignoring a common social convention. I'd say this claim needs a lot of supporting evidence before we should take it seriously. At the moment it's just a rhetorical device, and would almost certainly be used to mitigate blame aimed at corporate bad actors. So I'd say without some type of serious evidence of this unwitting laser focus, evidence of people genuinely "not seeing the harm" despite huge op-eds in major newspapers, outrage from tech communities, harrowing stories of data privacy issues, etc. etc., we really should not put any weight on this "non-malicious focus" interpretation. In other words, these are smart people. They knew full well what they were doing. Lobbying, PR, and attempting regulatory capture after the fact to launder their reputation and absolve blame are absolutely baked in as part of the strategy, until conclusively proven otherwise.