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It's not about your feelings. If you facilitate their efforts, no matter how much you wish to disclaim responsibility, you have still facilitated their efforts.

It's not about your feelings. If you facilitate their efforts, no matter how much you wish to disclaim responsibility, you have still facilitated their efforts. Thus the binary. "Can't we just choose to ignore it" does not magically mean that when they trade their resources for yours in a deal that they like, you are somehow not helping them achieve their goals.

tomp 6y ago
It’s really not so black and white. By paying taxes you’re technically facilitating their efforts, so approximately everyone is complicit. This is a political problem that can only be solved politically (by voting) not by some tech companies doing small scale boycott
- bradlys 6y ago
  > This is a political problem that can only be solved politically (by voting) not by some tech companies doing small scale boycott Yet, big companies have had boycotts internally and that lead to the company changing its course. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/google-will-not-renew-a-controversial-pentagon-contract.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/google-will-not-renew-a-cont... And, yeah, sometimes the efforts only work for a short period but they still had an effect. Voting is nice but - most often - you don't get a real choice with voting. You choose one corrupt politician for another because more money == more speech. The uninformed masses who are more concerned with their own daily lives (divorce, family deaths, their children, etc.) are what are making large decisions for the rest of the informed. The cycle perpetuates.
  - AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
    The question isn't if you can actually cause Google or another big tech company to refuse to provide services, the question is if you can actually change the results with it. Project Maven continues, now run by Palantir. Google's refusal to continue the project did nothing but slow down the project by a few months. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-14/palantir-wins-new-pentagon-deal-with-111-million-from-the-army https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-14/palantir-... In fact, considering the goals of Project Maven (roughly making sure you're blowing up what and who you intend and avoiding collateral damage), if you consider Google a leader in AI, you could make the perverse argument that you're actually killing people by reducing the effectiveness and delaying the timeline of the program. I'm not saying I've researched this enough to say that this is a correct or even plausible argument, merely that it is possible.
    - singron 6y ago
      From my reading of available publications by the airforce on maven, the calculus was actually that they had a fixed threshold for risk, and being able to analyze more data would allow them to act in more cases with that same risk level. To probably oversimplify, if they were ok with 25% innocent causalities, increasing efficiency 100x would just let them kill 100x more often at the same ratio. Disclosure: ex-google
- AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
  > By paying taxes you’re technically facilitating their efforts, so approximately everyone is complicit You're only complicit if you pay taxes. Refuse to pay or reduce your income below the taxable threshold and you will no longer be complicit.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Still complicit because income tax is not the only federal tax.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  You have to pay taxes. You don't have to provide tech to the ICE. Politics is a lot more than just voting, especially when you have a two-party system that is vulnerable to ratcheting and deception.
  - throwawayriver 6y ago
    >You have to pay taxes. Not really, no. You don't have to make money. You're able to live a life free of income and taxes, live like a vagabond. You choose to earn enough income that you have to pay taxes on it. If you decide to get a job that pays you enough that you have to pay taxes, you're complicit.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      And if a suffice t amount of people were to decide to live as vagabonds, society would collapse, and you'd be complicit in the millions of deaths that would cause. No such conclusion if everyone stops selling software to ICE until they stop their grossly inhumane actions.
      - throwawayriver 6y ago
        You can live an agrarian sustenance lifestyle and society wouldn't collapse... That's what society was for thousands of years. Again, you choose to make a taxable income; you choose to pay taxes.
golemotron 6y ago
> It's not about your feelings. If you facilitate their efforts, no matter how much you wish to disclaim responsibility, you have still facilitated their efforts. Obeying the law is like that.
kortilla 6y ago
Remember that next time you use any form of transportation powered by fossil fuel. Remember that any time you support the marijuana market (legal or illegal) as a purchaser and indirectly add demand to the curve that feeds the cartels in Mexico.
- 3131s 6y ago
  > Remember that any time you support the marijuana market (legal or illegal) as a purchaser and indirectly add demand to the curve that feeds the cartels in Mexico. I hope you support drug legalization, otherwise this attitude is massively hypocritical. And please explain why buying legal marijuana supports the cartels? Are people buying Mexican brick weed from dispensaries now?
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Buying legal marijuana is the same as participating in any combined market. There are significant groups of people who buy both illegal and legal just because of previous connections or the inconvenience (driving across state lines to get the legal hookup). So if you buy legally, you are causing competition for the legal supply which can cause just enough shortage to push demand onto the illegal market. Until people refuse to smoke illegal marijuana en mass, the markets are effectively the same. > hope you support drug legalization, otherwise this attitude is massively hypocritical. This is completely orthogonal to legalization. As long as the cartels still get it into the country at a competitive price to local growers (legal or illegal), the cartels are being supported.
    - 3131s 6y ago
      > Until people refuse to smoke illegal marijuana en mass, the markets are effectively the same. Which will only happen when it's legalized, which is exactly my point.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        Even when it’s legalized, that won’t be enough unless it’s so cheap that the cartel literally can’t compete. With how heavily legal weed is taxed, a ton of people will be tempted to continue buying from their dealers.

tomp 6y ago

It’s really not so black and white. By paying taxes you’re technically facilitating their efforts, so approximately everyone is complicit. This is a political problem that can only be solved politically (by voting) not by some tech companies doing small scale boycott

bradlys 6y ago
> This is a political problem that can only be solved politically (by voting) not by some tech companies doing small scale boycott Yet, big companies have had boycotts internally and that lead to the company changing its course. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/google-will-not-renew-a-controversial-pentagon-contract.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/google-will-not-renew-a-cont... And, yeah, sometimes the efforts only work for a short period but they still had an effect. Voting is nice but - most often - you don't get a real choice with voting. You choose one corrupt politician for another because more money == more speech. The uninformed masses who are more concerned with their own daily lives (divorce, family deaths, their children, etc.) are what are making large decisions for the rest of the informed. The cycle perpetuates.
- AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
  The question isn't if you can actually cause Google or another big tech company to refuse to provide services, the question is if you can actually change the results with it. Project Maven continues, now run by Palantir. Google's refusal to continue the project did nothing but slow down the project by a few months. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-14/palantir-wins-new-pentagon-deal-with-111-million-from-the-army https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-14/palantir-... In fact, considering the goals of Project Maven (roughly making sure you're blowing up what and who you intend and avoiding collateral damage), if you consider Google a leader in AI, you could make the perverse argument that you're actually killing people by reducing the effectiveness and delaying the timeline of the program. I'm not saying I've researched this enough to say that this is a correct or even plausible argument, merely that it is possible.
  - singron 6y ago
    From my reading of available publications by the airforce on maven, the calculus was actually that they had a fixed threshold for risk, and being able to analyze more data would allow them to act in more cases with that same risk level. To probably oversimplify, if they were ok with 25% innocent causalities, increasing efficiency 100x would just let them kill 100x more often at the same ratio. Disclosure: ex-google
AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
> By paying taxes you’re technically facilitating their efforts, so approximately everyone is complicit You're only complicit if you pay taxes. Refuse to pay or reduce your income below the taxable threshold and you will no longer be complicit.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Still complicit because income tax is not the only federal tax.
sudosysgen 6y ago
You have to pay taxes. You don't have to provide tech to the ICE. Politics is a lot more than just voting, especially when you have a two-party system that is vulnerable to ratcheting and deception.
- throwawayriver 6y ago
  >You have to pay taxes. Not really, no. You don't have to make money. You're able to live a life free of income and taxes, live like a vagabond. You choose to earn enough income that you have to pay taxes on it. If you decide to get a job that pays you enough that you have to pay taxes, you're complicit.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    And if a suffice t amount of people were to decide to live as vagabonds, society would collapse, and you'd be complicit in the millions of deaths that would cause. No such conclusion if everyone stops selling software to ICE until they stop their grossly inhumane actions.
    - throwawayriver 6y ago
      You can live an agrarian sustenance lifestyle and society wouldn't collapse... That's what society was for thousands of years. Again, you choose to make a taxable income; you choose to pay taxes.

golemotron 6y ago

> It's not about your feelings. If you facilitate their efforts, no matter how much you wish to disclaim responsibility, you have still facilitated their efforts. Obeying the law is like that.

kortilla 6y ago

Remember that next time you use any form of transportation powered by fossil fuel. Remember that any time you support the marijuana market (legal or illegal) as a purchaser and indirectly add demand to the curve that feeds the cartels in Mexico.

3131s 6y ago
> Remember that any time you support the marijuana market (legal or illegal) as a purchaser and indirectly add demand to the curve that feeds the cartels in Mexico. I hope you support drug legalization, otherwise this attitude is massively hypocritical. And please explain why buying legal marijuana supports the cartels? Are people buying Mexican brick weed from dispensaries now?
- kortilla 6y ago
  Buying legal marijuana is the same as participating in any combined market. There are significant groups of people who buy both illegal and legal just because of previous connections or the inconvenience (driving across state lines to get the legal hookup). So if you buy legally, you are causing competition for the legal supply which can cause just enough shortage to push demand onto the illegal market. Until people refuse to smoke illegal marijuana en mass, the markets are effectively the same. > hope you support drug legalization, otherwise this attitude is massively hypocritical. This is completely orthogonal to legalization. As long as the cartels still get it into the country at a competitive price to local growers (legal or illegal), the cartels are being supported.
  - 3131s 6y ago
    > Until people refuse to smoke illegal marijuana en mass, the markets are effectively the same. Which will only happen when it's legalized, which is exactly my point.
    - kortilla 6y ago
      Even when it’s legalized, that won’t be enough unless it’s so cheap that the cartel literally can’t compete. With how heavily legal weed is taxed, a ton of people will be tempted to continue buying from their dealers.