3 ms·

'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds' -Robert Oppenheimer we did this to ourselves. we built these tools that are now at the disposal of people wit

'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds' -Robert Oppenheimer we did this to ourselves. we built these tools that are now at the disposal of people with malicious intentions. in another thread about surveillance of WFH employees everyone is aghast that managers would use such tools. again: we did this to ourselves. you can shift the blame any number of times around the loop of responsibilities it's not my fault it's my boss's fault -> it's not my fault it's the government's fault -> it's not my fault it's the constituency's fault -> it's not my fault it's the business's fault and so on. someone has to admit fault and break the loop. for my part this year i left a dod funded project even though the money was easy.

thephyber 6y ago
I don't think it's a reasonable comparison to make between WFH managers of consenting employment contracts and the national security apparatus which we didn't get to vote on or opt out of. The rationale for the Manhattan Project (the impetus for your quote by Oppenheimer) was that the US government thought that if we got the atomic bomb before our national enemies, we would be more virtuous in its usage. That is always the blind faith that US government workers, military, and contractors use to justify working on military/surveillance technology. Until all of those government workers stop deluding themselves into the "exceptionalism" fallacy, the technology used against Americans will continue to outpace our ability to protect against it or perhaps to even know about it.
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  i'm constantly so frustrated by the lack of imagination of people on this forum. employees of some company consented more or less just as much as we did - they consented by staying in the employ and we consented by voting/not voting/not emigrating. in fact we consented more because we at least had a say in representation. is that a silly argument? good i agree - those workers are just as aggrieved as we are in this case. >more virtuous in its usage we technologists are deluded in the exact same way. something along the lines of "our code doesn't hurt people who didn't deserve it/consent to it".
  - thephyber 6y ago
    > i'm constantly so frustrated by the lack of imagination of people on this forum It's not a lack of imagination. I simply don't agree with your framing of the options. To quit a job is fairly low friction for most employees (except where there is a high friction complication like a pension or a medical pre-existing condition). It doesn't even require changing companies -- just finding a better boss which doesn't feel the need to surveil their employees is a lower friction way to accomplish the same ends. To emigrate is fairly high friction -- it requires another country willing to accept the immigrant and usually requires physically moving and lots of time/money (I've heard the IRS demands 10 years of future income taxes for US citizens to give up American citizenship). I personally think the "love America or leave it" is an intellectually crippled argument -- America exports its bad drug / foreign policies around the world, so just leaving the country isn't enough to get away from the bad policies. You are being disingenuous when you speak about voting because in practice we get a small sliver of a say in electing a representative from one of two parties (if that many) and no guarantee that the people we vote for will vote the way they promise (if they even give us a straightforward promise). I don't disagree that "we" should take far more responsibility for the sad state of surveillance policy in the USA, but some of "we" are far more culpable in the current problems than others.
    - throwlaplace2 6y ago
      >To quit a job is fairly low friction for most employees Do you live in alternate reality where jobs grow on trees? Especially right now? How could you possibly genuinely claim that there's no friction to quitting a job right now when we're almost at historically high unemployment? You can't quit your job in a frictionless fashion when there isn't another one waiting for you! >To emigrate is fairly high friction -- it requires another country willing to accept the immigrant and usually requires physically moving and lots of time/money That bears such a close resemblance to what it's like to look for a job for almost everyone except FAANG employees that I don't understand how you fail to acknowledge the analogy that I was drawing. >You are being disingenuous when you speak about voting because in practice we get a small sliver of a say in electing a representative from one of two parties You're doing exactly the thing I alluded to: passing the buck To whom? History I guess. That's not the entirety of the rights that are afforded to you as a citizen of this country. You can organize, advocate, run for office yourself, etc. >but some of "we" are far more culpable in the current problems than others. Who? Who are they? Is there some class of actors that I forgot?
cle 6y ago
How will finding someone to blame make the problem any better? Finding fault isn’t useful here. Our mental energy is better spent finding ways to fix the process and/or technologies.
- Youssefbekour 6y ago
  welcom brand-new iPhone 11 Pro flagship phones Free: iPhone 11Pro Click this link to participate in the contest for free https://bit.ly/2yEjwxD https://bit.ly/2yEjwxD
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  Where did I say blame? I essentially said we should take responsibility for our part. So far I've seen many people say things like "it's not my problem I only do as I'm told" absolving themselves of the responsibility of doing anything to rectify the situation.
yowlingcat 6y ago
Your argument essentially boils down to "I'm frustrated. We need to do something! The only reason nothing changes is because of our mindset! If only we all made the same decision I made, we wouldn't have this problem!" But this kind of egalitarian desire, well intentioned as it is, should not be mistaken for an effective mechanism. It does not take very much comparison to see the night and day difference between a low level IC employee at the DoD or a subcontractor, and a high level military chief capable of making executive decisions for a $700B/year war machine. Nor does it take that much thinking to consider that for a lot of poor folks, the military is one of the few options remaining for them to be able to afford an education, a calling, a social circle, and a sense of structure and purpose in the modern world. If you want to more insightfully analyze what enables this Leviathan to perpetuate, perhaps you should take a look at the nonlinear systemic factors involved rather than reducing things to a naive linear sum of individual actions.

thephyber 6y ago

I don't think it's a reasonable comparison to make between WFH managers of consenting employment contracts and the national security apparatus which we didn't get to vote on or opt out of. The rationale for the Manhattan Project (the impetus for your quote by Oppenheimer) was that the US government thought that if we got the atomic bomb before our national enemies, we would be more virtuous in its usage. That is always the blind faith that US government workers, military, and contractors use to justify working on military/surveillance technology. Until all of those government workers stop deluding themselves into the "exceptionalism" fallacy, the technology used against Americans will continue to outpace our ability to protect against it or perhaps to even know about it.

throwlaplace 6y ago
i'm constantly so frustrated by the lack of imagination of people on this forum. employees of some company consented more or less just as much as we did - they consented by staying in the employ and we consented by voting/not voting/not emigrating. in fact we consented more because we at least had a say in representation. is that a silly argument? good i agree - those workers are just as aggrieved as we are in this case. >more virtuous in its usage we technologists are deluded in the exact same way. something along the lines of "our code doesn't hurt people who didn't deserve it/consent to it".
- thephyber 6y ago
  > i'm constantly so frustrated by the lack of imagination of people on this forum It's not a lack of imagination. I simply don't agree with your framing of the options. To quit a job is fairly low friction for most employees (except where there is a high friction complication like a pension or a medical pre-existing condition). It doesn't even require changing companies -- just finding a better boss which doesn't feel the need to surveil their employees is a lower friction way to accomplish the same ends. To emigrate is fairly high friction -- it requires another country willing to accept the immigrant and usually requires physically moving and lots of time/money (I've heard the IRS demands 10 years of future income taxes for US citizens to give up American citizenship). I personally think the "love America or leave it" is an intellectually crippled argument -- America exports its bad drug / foreign policies around the world, so just leaving the country isn't enough to get away from the bad policies. You are being disingenuous when you speak about voting because in practice we get a small sliver of a say in electing a representative from one of two parties (if that many) and no guarantee that the people we vote for will vote the way they promise (if they even give us a straightforward promise). I don't disagree that "we" should take far more responsibility for the sad state of surveillance policy in the USA, but some of "we" are far more culpable in the current problems than others.
  - throwlaplace2 6y ago
    >To quit a job is fairly low friction for most employees Do you live in alternate reality where jobs grow on trees? Especially right now? How could you possibly genuinely claim that there's no friction to quitting a job right now when we're almost at historically high unemployment? You can't quit your job in a frictionless fashion when there isn't another one waiting for you! >To emigrate is fairly high friction -- it requires another country willing to accept the immigrant and usually requires physically moving and lots of time/money That bears such a close resemblance to what it's like to look for a job for almost everyone except FAANG employees that I don't understand how you fail to acknowledge the analogy that I was drawing. >You are being disingenuous when you speak about voting because in practice we get a small sliver of a say in electing a representative from one of two parties You're doing exactly the thing I alluded to: passing the buck To whom? History I guess. That's not the entirety of the rights that are afforded to you as a citizen of this country. You can organize, advocate, run for office yourself, etc. >but some of "we" are far more culpable in the current problems than others. Who? Who are they? Is there some class of actors that I forgot?

cle 6y ago

How will finding someone to blame make the problem any better? Finding fault isn’t useful here. Our mental energy is better spent finding ways to fix the process and/or technologies.

Youssefbekour 6y ago
welcom brand-new iPhone 11 Pro flagship phones Free: iPhone 11Pro Click this link to participate in the contest for free https://bit.ly/2yEjwxD https://bit.ly/2yEjwxD
throwlaplace 6y ago
Where did I say blame? I essentially said we should take responsibility for our part. So far I've seen many people say things like "it's not my problem I only do as I'm told" absolving themselves of the responsibility of doing anything to rectify the situation.

yowlingcat 6y ago

Your argument essentially boils down to "I'm frustrated. We need to do something! The only reason nothing changes is because of our mindset! If only we all made the same decision I made, we wouldn't have this problem!" But this kind of egalitarian desire, well intentioned as it is, should not be mistaken for an effective mechanism. It does not take very much comparison to see the night and day difference between a low level IC employee at the DoD or a subcontractor, and a high level military chief capable of making executive decisions for a $700B/year war machine. Nor does it take that much thinking to consider that for a lot of poor folks, the military is one of the few options remaining for them to be able to afford an education, a calling, a social circle, and a sense of structure and purpose in the modern world. If you want to more insightfully analyze what enables this Leviathan to perpetuate, perhaps you should take a look at the nonlinear systemic factors involved rather than reducing things to a naive linear sum of individual actions.