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Near the beginning of my career (~15 years ago) I was working at an agency for a lottery operator that was allowed to start online gaming and buying tickets for

Near the beginning of my career (~15 years ago) I was working at an agency for a lottery operator that was allowed to start online gaming and buying tickets for the physical lottery online. They had a really great public mission about “responsible gaming” but during one meeting with some execs they let slip that it was all just a joke for them and they didn’t care as long as they got the ticket sales. It made me feel sick, and I started being a bit uncoorporative on the project until my manager switched me into another project. So I regret the time I worked in that, and also for being a bit of an asshole on the project instead of just telling my manager I had a problem with that client.

yboris 8y ago
There may be moral reasons in favor of accepting a job that requires unethical behavior so that you can perform it poorly, so as to sabotage the progress. An actual example is of Oskar Schindler (if I recall correctly) whose munition factories in Germany produced faulty munitions during World War II.
- cyphar 8y ago
  Oskar Schindler was a Nazi party member who owned an ammunitions factory and saved 1200 Jewish people in Nazi Germany (the movie Schindler's List was based on his life story), but I couldn't find any mention of him sabotaging his own wares. I would imagine this would've led to more suspicion on his factory, where he secretly employed many Jewish workers illegally.
  - sjcsjc 8y ago
    >> sabotaging his own wares The movie implies that he did so: "Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired... I'll be very unhappy." https://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Schindler's-List.html https://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Schindler's-List.html
    - abecedarius 8y ago
      It's a great movie, but I wouldn't depend on it alone for a fact like that. The Lives of Others, another serious and moving film, shows the protagonist solo-monitoring a dissident in order to not report the latter's dissidence. The Stasi required its spies to work in pairs to plug that specific vulnerability. This was crucial to the plot and gave people a false idea of what resistance to a then-modern tyranny is like. (Disclaimer: actual East German dissidents have approved of the movie, while I'm just a guy with an opinion.)
- alexis_fr 8y ago
  Oskar Schindler, from the movie The List of Schindler? He’s my idol, the guy rescues 1200 jews from the Holocaust, and still cries at the end (of the movie) because he could have sold his shoes and bribed one more assistant.
- hprotagonist 8y ago
  there’s very strong circumstantial evidence that heisenberg pulled a similar trick and slow-rolled the nazis into not developing a nuclear program. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/private-heisenberg-absent-bomb/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/private-heisenbe...
  - dTal 8y ago
    Alas - "This is exclusive content for subscribers only – subscribe at this low introductory rate for immediate access!"
    - umanwizard 8y ago
      What are you upset about? Journalists shouldn't be expected to work for free.
    - iaw 8y ago
      Parent comment is likely referring to some findings from Operation Epsilon in the Farm Hall transcripts. Googling those terms will get you the underlying details. I for one tend to agree with the conclusion that Heisenberg could have initiated a German Manhattan project had he desired.
    - hprotagonist 8y ago
      whoops. Try https://web.archive.org/web/20170212064533/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/private-heisenberg-absent-bomb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170212064533/https://www.nyboo... These letters potentially cast the standard history of the German bomb in a very different light, suggesting that Heisenberg and his colleagues found a silent way to make a moral decision, not that they were spared one.5 In the thirty years that remained to him, whenever Heisenberg was asked to explain the German “failure” to build a bomb, his answer was what he had written to Elisabeth in letters before, during, and just after the war—that he had stayed in Germany because it needed him, and he had been spared the difficult moral decision of whether to build a bomb by the impossible immensity of the task—exactly what you might expect to hear from a man who didn’t want to do it, and found a way to say no.
BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
Reminds me of ads I see when I watch Formula1 on UK Sky television, where a company uses the oxymoronic slogan "We bet responsibly, at Bet365!". It's amazing to see the length these companies will go through to present their product as just an innocent entertainment community where responsibility and morals are held in high esteem, and at the same time using every possible psychological trick in the book to hook their users.
- toyg 8y ago
  Bet365 owner Denise Coates was in the news just today[1] (although technically it's old news), for earning £265m only last year. That's a lot of "responsibility". [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/21/bet365-denise-coates-paid-herself-an-obscene-265m-in-2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/21/bet365-deni...

yboris 8y ago

There may be moral reasons in favor of accepting a job that requires unethical behavior so that you can perform it poorly, so as to sabotage the progress. An actual example is of Oskar Schindler (if I recall correctly) whose munition factories in Germany produced faulty munitions during World War II.

cyphar 8y ago
Oskar Schindler was a Nazi party member who owned an ammunitions factory and saved 1200 Jewish people in Nazi Germany (the movie Schindler's List was based on his life story), but I couldn't find any mention of him sabotaging his own wares. I would imagine this would've led to more suspicion on his factory, where he secretly employed many Jewish workers illegally.
- sjcsjc 8y ago
  >> sabotaging his own wares The movie implies that he did so: "Stern, if this factory ever produces a shell that can actually be fired... I'll be very unhappy." https://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Schindler's-List.html https://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Schindler's-List.html
  - abecedarius 8y ago
    It's a great movie, but I wouldn't depend on it alone for a fact like that. The Lives of Others, another serious and moving film, shows the protagonist solo-monitoring a dissident in order to not report the latter's dissidence. The Stasi required its spies to work in pairs to plug that specific vulnerability. This was crucial to the plot and gave people a false idea of what resistance to a then-modern tyranny is like. (Disclaimer: actual East German dissidents have approved of the movie, while I'm just a guy with an opinion.)
alexis_fr 8y ago
Oskar Schindler, from the movie The List of Schindler? He’s my idol, the guy rescues 1200 jews from the Holocaust, and still cries at the end (of the movie) because he could have sold his shoes and bribed one more assistant.
hprotagonist 8y ago
there’s very strong circumstantial evidence that heisenberg pulled a similar trick and slow-rolled the nazis into not developing a nuclear program. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/private-heisenberg-absent-bomb/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/private-heisenbe...
- dTal 8y ago
  Alas - "This is exclusive content for subscribers only – subscribe at this low introductory rate for immediate access!"
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    What are you upset about? Journalists shouldn't be expected to work for free.
  - iaw 8y ago
    Parent comment is likely referring to some findings from Operation Epsilon in the Farm Hall transcripts. Googling those terms will get you the underlying details. I for one tend to agree with the conclusion that Heisenberg could have initiated a German Manhattan project had he desired.
  - hprotagonist 8y ago
    whoops. Try https://web.archive.org/web/20170212064533/https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/private-heisenberg-absent-bomb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170212064533/https://www.nyboo... These letters potentially cast the standard history of the German bomb in a very different light, suggesting that Heisenberg and his colleagues found a silent way to make a moral decision, not that they were spared one.5 In the thirty years that remained to him, whenever Heisenberg was asked to explain the German “failure” to build a bomb, his answer was what he had written to Elisabeth in letters before, during, and just after the war—that he had stayed in Germany because it needed him, and he had been spared the difficult moral decision of whether to build a bomb by the impossible immensity of the task—exactly what you might expect to hear from a man who didn’t want to do it, and found a way to say no.

BurnGpuBurn 8y ago

Reminds me of ads I see when I watch Formula1 on UK Sky television, where a company uses the oxymoronic slogan "We bet responsibly, at Bet365!". It's amazing to see the length these companies will go through to present their product as just an innocent entertainment community where responsibility and morals are held in high esteem, and at the same time using every possible psychological trick in the book to hook their users.

toyg 8y ago
Bet365 owner Denise Coates was in the news just today[1] (although technically it's old news), for earning £265m only last year. That's a lot of "responsibility". [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/21/bet365-denise-coates-paid-herself-an-obscene-265m-in-2017 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/21/bet365-deni...