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> Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing Then don't act as if this is sufficient reasoning. Any one of these people or the entire department could

> Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing Then don't act as if this is sufficient reasoning. Any one of these people or the entire department could quit, and you and I both know it would be re-staffed inside of a month. > named for this scene from the children's movie. Which should be a strong hint as to it's merit in the real-world. You shouldn't have to look very deeply into our society to see where the problems of this mentality lay; in fact, whole other works of fiction and non-fiction alike have been created just to highlight this precise fact.

pg_bot 8y ago
If you knowingly engage or are an accessory to bad behavior, you are a bad person. Another person potentially replacing you does not absolve you of your actions. This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. A concept so simple that a child could understand it is fundamentally sound.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  > This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. Great. Unfortunately you're not the emperor of the United States and people will continue to take jobs that harm society. Seeing what happened to the Nazis tried in Nuremberg did exactly nothing to stop the same thing from happening in Indonesia, Rwanda, and other post-WWII mass killings. This is because people who do these things, don't actually think they're doing bad things. For example, in your original comment you're justifying a system where exploitation of labor, violation of privacy rights, and support for despotic regimes are permitted because it promotes a culture of innovation. By your standard I should hold you accountable for helping whitewash these practices by making them the responsibility of individual employees - who have little real power to influence their employer's decisions. However, you clearly don't see yourself as culpable because you're defending what you believe is a higher goal: innovation. Now consider that the people who choose to continue to work on these projects feel exactly the same way you do, except they justify their behaviour by some other ends: perhaps they need to support a family, or care for an elderly relative, or they're just demonstrating the idea of "permissionless innovation" with their own employment choices. And why not? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. > Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing, if you know it's wrong stop supporting it! Perhaps you should apply this to your own opinions before suggesting others apply it to their lives.

pg_bot 8y ago

If you knowingly engage or are an accessory to bad behavior, you are a bad person. Another person potentially replacing you does not absolve you of your actions. This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. A concept so simple that a child could understand it is fundamentally sound.

AlexandrB 8y ago
> This defense didn't work in Nuremberg, and it won't work with me. Great. Unfortunately you're not the emperor of the United States and people will continue to take jobs that harm society. Seeing what happened to the Nazis tried in Nuremberg did exactly nothing to stop the same thing from happening in Indonesia, Rwanda, and other post-WWII mass killings. This is because people who do these things, don't actually think they're doing bad things. For example, in your original comment you're justifying a system where exploitation of labor, violation of privacy rights, and support for despotic regimes are permitted because it promotes a culture of innovation. By your standard I should hold you accountable for helping whitewash these practices by making them the responsibility of individual employees - who have little real power to influence their employer's decisions. However, you clearly don't see yourself as culpable because you're defending what you believe is a higher goal: innovation. Now consider that the people who choose to continue to work on these projects feel exactly the same way you do, except they justify their behaviour by some other ends: perhaps they need to support a family, or care for an elderly relative, or they're just demonstrating the idea of "permissionless innovation" with their own employment choices. And why not? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. > Don't give me any bullshit excuses for continuing, if you know it's wrong stop supporting it! Perhaps you should apply this to your own opinions before suggesting others apply it to their lives.