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This is a false dicothomy The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once: - businesses should have a moral p

by rtpg 7y ago

This is a false dicothomy The actual (IMO correct) position most of these people share is the following two points at once: - businesses should have a moral position, since businesses are just a set of people - that moral position should be right! This isn’t rocket science! Stuff like “don’t support a business doing bad stuff” and “support businesses doing good stuff” is just really basic consumer activism. There’s no need to go deep in metaphysics. It’s literally just “support good things, don’t support bad things”

malvosenior 7y ago
Many, many people feel that enforcing existing immigration laws is morally right and a "good thing". I think defining what is morally right is harder than rocket science and literally impossible in some cases.
- rtpg 7y ago
  others think the laws are fundamentally unjust. Even others (a plurality I think) don't have strong feelings on the laws, but know one of the following: - the executive has selective enforcement rights - (at the time) congress + the WH could change laws! - the laws were written with an understanding of selective enforcement and so rightly recognized that this was a bad thing that could be made right. There is an n-sided die about how people see this problem, and people acted in accordance to it. And yeah, it means that some sides don't believe in the legitimacy of other sides. They're incompatible after all. Besides, it's not the point. The point of the game isn't to make a set of meta-rules for defining what is morally right. It's for, on a case-by-case basis, to say "this thing is good/bad" and then act on that. I don't need to be able to answer every moral hypothetical to be able to say that _this one specific thing is bad_. To bring it back to HN, it's a P=/=NP problem. I can say one thing is good/bad without providing the full strategy for determining every thing. And then we work from there.
  - malvosenior 7y ago
    I think your entire argument would make a lot more sense if you replaced “right” with “what I think is right”. Your position is just one side of the dice (as you say).
- geofft 7y ago
  That's fine, that doesn't change anything. If GitHub and their employees disagree so strongly on right and wrong that one side believes doing X is immoral and the other believes not doing X is immoral, GitHub can either attempt to convince their employees that they are in fact right, or let them leave. (If GitHub does not believe they have a moral obligation to sell to ICE, they can drop the contract and keep their employees. It's a very small contract, less than one engineer's salary, and they committed to donating that money anyway. So I'm assuming that GitHub feels a moral or equivalently strong obligation to keep the contract, possibly of the form of feeling an obligation not to let employees influence moral direction. If not, this is just a story of bad business sense.)
Sophistifunk 7y ago
> - that moral position should be right You do realise that what this actually means is "this person agrees with me"
- rtpg 7y ago
  How is this a problem? Like.... seriously. This is the whole point of everything. If you believe strongly in a thing, then you should fight for it. And other people in society will judge you for it (rightly so!) So yeah, you decide that you care enough about "sanctity of marriage" so you decide to not sell cakes. So everyone who disagrees with you boycotts your business. Others believe that sexual orientation is such an important thing that they make it illegal for you to do this! This is how stuff happens! There isn't some sort of rules-based pre-judgement for this sort of stuff. It gets played out over time. And you're responsible for your decisions in this front.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > How is this a problem? Like.... seriously. It's a colossal problem because it is an authoritarian stance hidden behind incoherent arguments of morality. There is no morality or ethics. There is only pushy people trying to strong-arm everyone around to comply with their personal world view under the threat of being cut off from a product/service.
  - leftyted 7y ago
    You envision society as a battleground for various moral perspectives. I think there's some truth to that. But are there any ground rules? If so, what are they? Are you giving me license to firebomb ICE facilities because I "believe strongly" that ICE is evil? Or is the law a red line that no one can cross? If so, what about "bad laws"? What about civil disobedience? Another perspective on this is that, for a society to function, people need to be able to agree to disagree about most things. This means that we are all morally compromised and we all must be morally compromised in order to live together. A society in which everyone follows their own moral impulses is a society that will not function. I find myself wavering between these two perspectives (the first being yours). I don't mind people protesting. But how about blocking roads? How about vandalizing your ideological opponent's office? How about smashing windows? How about preventing your ideological opponents from speaking? It seems to me that your perspective minimizes the danger here. There's no guarantee that things will just work out. We might reach a level of polarization after which we simply won't be able to cooperate.
manigandham 7y ago
The whole point of morality is that it is subjective. You can not determine what is right as a rule.
- istjohn 7y ago
  That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it.
  - throw_m239339 7y ago
    > That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it. "evil" is exactly what religious people called homosexuality for centuries, which is ironic considering your statement. Morality is purely an opinion, just like religion.
    - istjohn 7y ago
      A: "Genocide is evil." B: "That's just, like, your opinion, man."
      - Ygg2 7y ago
        Looks at US, Russia, China, Turkey, etc. Yeah, good thing everyone can agree on A), right?
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > taking a stand against evil when we see it. Except that "evil" is just a loaded word that tries to pin an absolute take on morality on a personal opinion. There are people who take stances against evil by persecuting others based on religion, gender, race, and even political leanings, and they feel so strongly about the morality of their positions that they feel that even extreme violence is justified.
  - manigandham 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Thorentis 7y ago
This is not a false dichotomy at all. Businesses should have a moral position, sure. That moral position should be right? According to who? The business itself? Then that second point is redundant. Everybody thinks their moral position is right, that's what morals are. It's a tautology otherwise. GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. Replace Github with bakery refusing to serve same-sex couples. Bakery thinks they're right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. You only think it's a false dichotomy because you personally disagree with the bakery and (presumably?) agree with Github. By saying "the moral position should be right", is you simply saying "and they should agree with me otherwise they are wrong".
- sascha_sl 7y ago
  To draw a parallel between an organization that runs concentration camps (in a similar state to early nazi camps before they were extermination camps, nuance please) and one that refuses to provide services based on an anarchic justification for bigotry is either truly vile or exceedingly cynic.
  - Thorentis 7y ago
    You can disagree with somebody's set of morals all you like. You can draw analogies to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, whoever. But: why should a private business only be allowed to choose its clients, if their morality aligns with yours? EDIT: And the down votes begin the moment I don't agree with somebody's comparison to Hitler. Godwin's Law never fails to deliver.
    - slykat 7y ago
      What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers? If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the ACLU and other lobbyists fighting the good fight. Write your congressman. Call your congressman. VOTE! Campaign for the correct congressman. Code for your congressman. Push for policy that makes ICE employees (and all government employees) more accountable for human rights abuses. All of these actions will be more effective than campaigning for ICE, who will just migrate to a different cloud code review tool if the contract is cancelled (gitlab, bitbucket, or whomever else).

by rtpg 7y ago

malvosenior 7y ago

Many, many people feel that enforcing existing immigration laws is morally right and a "good thing". I think defining what is morally right is harder than rocket science and literally impossible in some cases.

rtpg 7y ago
others think the laws are fundamentally unjust. Even others (a plurality I think) don't have strong feelings on the laws, but know one of the following: - the executive has selective enforcement rights - (at the time) congress + the WH could change laws! - the laws were written with an understanding of selective enforcement and so rightly recognized that this was a bad thing that could be made right. There is an n-sided die about how people see this problem, and people acted in accordance to it. And yeah, it means that some sides don't believe in the legitimacy of other sides. They're incompatible after all. Besides, it's not the point. The point of the game isn't to make a set of meta-rules for defining what is morally right. It's for, on a case-by-case basis, to say "this thing is good/bad" and then act on that. I don't need to be able to answer every moral hypothetical to be able to say that _this one specific thing is bad_. To bring it back to HN, it's a P=/=NP problem. I can say one thing is good/bad without providing the full strategy for determining every thing. And then we work from there.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I think your entire argument would make a lot more sense if you replaced “right” with “what I think is right”. Your position is just one side of the dice (as you say).
geofft 7y ago
That's fine, that doesn't change anything. If GitHub and their employees disagree so strongly on right and wrong that one side believes doing X is immoral and the other believes not doing X is immoral, GitHub can either attempt to convince their employees that they are in fact right, or let them leave. (If GitHub does not believe they have a moral obligation to sell to ICE, they can drop the contract and keep their employees. It's a very small contract, less than one engineer's salary, and they committed to donating that money anyway. So I'm assuming that GitHub feels a moral or equivalently strong obligation to keep the contract, possibly of the form of feeling an obligation not to let employees influence moral direction. If not, this is just a story of bad business sense.)

Sophistifunk 7y ago

> - that moral position should be right You do realise that what this actually means is "this person agrees with me"

rtpg 7y ago
How is this a problem? Like.... seriously. This is the whole point of everything. If you believe strongly in a thing, then you should fight for it. And other people in society will judge you for it (rightly so!) So yeah, you decide that you care enough about "sanctity of marriage" so you decide to not sell cakes. So everyone who disagrees with you boycotts your business. Others believe that sexual orientation is such an important thing that they make it illegal for you to do this! This is how stuff happens! There isn't some sort of rules-based pre-judgement for this sort of stuff. It gets played out over time. And you're responsible for your decisions in this front.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > How is this a problem? Like.... seriously. It's a colossal problem because it is an authoritarian stance hidden behind incoherent arguments of morality. There is no morality or ethics. There is only pushy people trying to strong-arm everyone around to comply with their personal world view under the threat of being cut off from a product/service.
- leftyted 7y ago
  You envision society as a battleground for various moral perspectives. I think there's some truth to that. But are there any ground rules? If so, what are they? Are you giving me license to firebomb ICE facilities because I "believe strongly" that ICE is evil? Or is the law a red line that no one can cross? If so, what about "bad laws"? What about civil disobedience? Another perspective on this is that, for a society to function, people need to be able to agree to disagree about most things. This means that we are all morally compromised and we all must be morally compromised in order to live together. A society in which everyone follows their own moral impulses is a society that will not function. I find myself wavering between these two perspectives (the first being yours). I don't mind people protesting. But how about blocking roads? How about vandalizing your ideological opponent's office? How about smashing windows? How about preventing your ideological opponents from speaking? It seems to me that your perspective minimizes the danger here. There's no guarantee that things will just work out. We might reach a level of polarization after which we simply won't be able to cooperate.

manigandham 7y ago

The whole point of morality is that it is subjective. You can not determine what is right as a rule.

istjohn 7y ago
That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it.
- throw_m239339 7y ago
  > That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it. "evil" is exactly what religious people called homosexuality for centuries, which is ironic considering your statement. Morality is purely an opinion, just like religion.
  - istjohn 7y ago
    A: "Genocide is evil." B: "That's just, like, your opinion, man."
    - Ygg2 7y ago
      Looks at US, Russia, China, Turkey, etc. Yeah, good thing everyone can agree on A), right?
- rumanator 7y ago
  > taking a stand against evil when we see it. Except that "evil" is just a loaded word that tries to pin an absolute take on morality on a personal opinion. There are people who take stances against evil by persecuting others based on religion, gender, race, and even political leanings, and they feel so strongly about the morality of their positions that they feel that even extreme violence is justified.
- manigandham 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Thorentis 7y ago

This is not a false dichotomy at all. Businesses should have a moral position, sure. That moral position should be right? According to who? The business itself? Then that second point is redundant. Everybody thinks their moral position is right, that's what morals are. It's a tautology otherwise. GitHub employees think their moral position on ICE is right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. Replace Github with bakery refusing to serve same-sex couples. Bakery thinks they're right. Many disagree. But according to them that's fine, because they think they're right so should be able to boycott who they like. You only think it's a false dichotomy because you personally disagree with the bakery and (presumably?) agree with Github. By saying "the moral position should be right", is you simply saying "and they should agree with me otherwise they are wrong".

sascha_sl 7y ago
To draw a parallel between an organization that runs concentration camps (in a similar state to early nazi camps before they were extermination camps, nuance please) and one that refuses to provide services based on an anarchic justification for bigotry is either truly vile or exceedingly cynic.
- Thorentis 7y ago
  You can disagree with somebody's set of morals all you like. You can draw analogies to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, whoever. But: why should a private business only be allowed to choose its clients, if their morality aligns with yours? EDIT: And the down votes begin the moment I don't agree with somebody's comparison to Hitler. Godwin's Law never fails to deliver.
  - slykat 7y ago
    What bothers me the most is how myopic people are about this. Does anyone not see how dangerous it will be if we have the world's largest companies choosing to do business based on their internal moral grounds? Do we really want tech companies to have moral councils that vet customers? If you want to fix ICE, then by all means, attack the problem at its source! Take that well paid Github salary of yours and fund the ACLU and other lobbyists fighting the good fight. Write your congressman. Call your congressman. VOTE! Campaign for the correct congressman. Code for your congressman. Push for policy that makes ICE employees (and all government employees) more accountable for human rights abuses. All of these actions will be more effective than campaigning for ICE, who will just migrate to a different cloud code review tool if the contract is cancelled (gitlab, bitbucket, or whomever else).