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I get that opinions differ on how to handle situations like these, and I respect that disagreement, but I’m personally of the opinion that if you don’t like wha

I get that opinions differ on how to handle situations like these, and I respect that disagreement, but I’m personally of the opinion that if you don’t like what government does, vote to stop them from doing it. Don’t blame those that build the software they use. To me that makes every open source project a potential ethical minefield since they could all be getting used to do immoral acts without even knowing about it. As a concrete example, most of Palantir’s indexing and searching back when I was there was done using lucene. Should the lucene authors feel some moral conflict over this? If we’re shifting blame/responsibility down the tech stack why stop at the productized form? Why not the libraries? Why not the language? I understand that the case is different since Palantir is more purpose built for this type of work, but you have to admit the lines get blurry pretty quickly.

detaro 6y ago
More purpose build for this type of work and actively promoting doing it among governments, actively hampering the efforts to get to the point of vote to stop them from doing it or implementing alternative approaches.
lrvick 6y ago
I don't buy the "you can't blame anyone except the person that pulls the trigger" argument. That type of whataboutisim is at the heart of every major engineering effort of silicon valley and surveillance capitalisim that is used abusively on the masses. We can say no. We -must- say no. Making alcohol should be legal. Specifically selling it to a kid is not legal, because then you are specifically helping them commit a crime. Likewise I don't blame steel mills for producing steel that is later used in guns wielded by dictators on their own people. I sure do blame the people that sell the guns to said dictators with full knowledge of their likely use case though. We as engineers have an ethical responsibility if we make a nuke with full knowledge the buyer probably intends to drop it on a city. I once built a company that produced a very effective social data aggregator, classifier, and sentiment analysis engine with an easy search interface. It quickly identified sentiment trends across a dozen networks and could of been amazing for brand managers or stock traders. My investors decided they wanted to repurpose it for political propaganda and market it to a specific party. I could of said "well this is really cool tech, and I am making good money... Not my problem what they do with it". I thought that for a bit. I even helped build an MVP for political candidate tracking. It felt wrong, so I quit. I didn't help them replace me. The company ended and all my years of work and research with it. So be it. I don't always get it right, but looking back, -not- continuing that project remains one of the proudest choices of my life.
- prophesi 6y ago
  > "well this is really cool tech, and I am making good money... Not my problem what they do with it" Yep. I've got a feeling this is a sentiment shared among all of the engineers working on shady tech. I'd also add, "and even if I quit, someone will quickly take my place."
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Yea, I can’t stand this mentality. Like, dude, step back and look at the big picture once in a while! I was in a similar situation as the GP. I was hired to work on a software that technology-wise we’d all agree was ethically neutral. But if you looked at who all our customers were, and what they used it for, I’d guarantee many HN posters would have ethical concerns. I ended up quitting for a number of reasons, but the ethics of who our customer base was ranked pretty high in that decision.
- bhupy 6y ago
  > Making alcohol should be legal. Specifically selling it to a kid is not legal, because then you are specifically helping them commit a crime. This seems reasonable. > Likewise I don't blame steel mills for producing steel that is later used in guns wielded by dictators on their own people. So far, a steady train of thought > I sure do blame the people that sell the guns to said dictators with full knowledge of their likely use case though. This is a bit of a jump. Up to this point, you had a gradually growing line of argument, but then jumped straight to selling guns to dictators. There's a step right before, and that's manufacturing the gun itself — is that acceptable in your view? I think most people agree that selling guns to dictators is bad, but whether or not the gun should be manufactured at all, and sold to police and militaries of countries with republican governments is debatable. Palantir does not work with "dictators". At least according to their IPO S-1 filing, as a matter of policy they only work with US and her allies. Whether you think that NATO states constitute "dictators" is an orthogonal and controversial claim. If you agree that NATO defense agencies and local police departments don't constitute "dictators", then you would agree that what Palantir is doing here, per your analogy, is "making alcohol", but not "selling it to a kid".
sifar 6y ago
>> Don’t blame those that build the software they use. To me that makes every open source project a potential ethical minefield since they could all be getting used to do immoral acts without even knowing about it. This is a slippery argument. There is a difference in building a car that people can drive and one that is specifically to be used as a weapon.
- bhupy 6y ago
  > There is a difference in building a car that people can drive and one that is specifically to be used as a weapon. This sounds like an equally slippery argument: one whose premise is that weapons should never be built, and that there is no justified use for them. The unfortunate reality of the world is that we do have and require militaries with intelligence agencies. Based on the premise of your argument, the only non-slippery, internally consistent framework is that building weapons is universally and unambiguously bad.
  - sifar 6y ago
    The original argument was all open source projects were ethically immoral. I didn't say all weapons were evil. It is a matter of degree which becomes a matter of kind. There is a difference between a bow and an arrow, a semi automatic and the atom bomb. This is something I keep pondering over, for all the brilliant minds involved in the Manhattan project, did they ever think about the effects of what they created.
alasdair_ 6y ago
>I’m personally of the opinion that if you don’t like what government does, vote to stop them from doing it. When do we get to vote on the "no killing people based on shoddy intelligence" line item exactly? Hell, we don't even get to vote for who we want to be president (the electoral college does that and it's certainly not one person, one vote).

detaro 6y ago

More purpose build for this type of work and actively promoting doing it among governments, actively hampering the efforts to get to the point of vote to stop them from doing it or implementing alternative approaches.

lrvick 6y ago

I don't buy the "you can't blame anyone except the person that pulls the trigger" argument. That type of whataboutisim is at the heart of every major engineering effort of silicon valley and surveillance capitalisim that is used abusively on the masses. We can say no. We -must- say no. Making alcohol should be legal. Specifically selling it to a kid is not legal, because then you are specifically helping them commit a crime. Likewise I don't blame steel mills for producing steel that is later used in guns wielded by dictators on their own people. I sure do blame the people that sell the guns to said dictators with full knowledge of their likely use case though. We as engineers have an ethical responsibility if we make a nuke with full knowledge the buyer probably intends to drop it on a city. I once built a company that produced a very effective social data aggregator, classifier, and sentiment analysis engine with an easy search interface. It quickly identified sentiment trends across a dozen networks and could of been amazing for brand managers or stock traders. My investors decided they wanted to repurpose it for political propaganda and market it to a specific party. I could of said "well this is really cool tech, and I am making good money... Not my problem what they do with it". I thought that for a bit. I even helped build an MVP for political candidate tracking. It felt wrong, so I quit. I didn't help them replace me. The company ended and all my years of work and research with it. So be it. I don't always get it right, but looking back, -not- continuing that project remains one of the proudest choices of my life.

prophesi 6y ago
> "well this is really cool tech, and I am making good money... Not my problem what they do with it" Yep. I've got a feeling this is a sentiment shared among all of the engineers working on shady tech. I'd also add, "and even if I quit, someone will quickly take my place."
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Yea, I can’t stand this mentality. Like, dude, step back and look at the big picture once in a while! I was in a similar situation as the GP. I was hired to work on a software that technology-wise we’d all agree was ethically neutral. But if you looked at who all our customers were, and what they used it for, I’d guarantee many HN posters would have ethical concerns. I ended up quitting for a number of reasons, but the ethics of who our customer base was ranked pretty high in that decision.
bhupy 6y ago
> Making alcohol should be legal. Specifically selling it to a kid is not legal, because then you are specifically helping them commit a crime. This seems reasonable. > Likewise I don't blame steel mills for producing steel that is later used in guns wielded by dictators on their own people. So far, a steady train of thought > I sure do blame the people that sell the guns to said dictators with full knowledge of their likely use case though. This is a bit of a jump. Up to this point, you had a gradually growing line of argument, but then jumped straight to selling guns to dictators. There's a step right before, and that's manufacturing the gun itself — is that acceptable in your view? I think most people agree that selling guns to dictators is bad, but whether or not the gun should be manufactured at all, and sold to police and militaries of countries with republican governments is debatable. Palantir does not work with "dictators". At least according to their IPO S-1 filing, as a matter of policy they only work with US and her allies. Whether you think that NATO states constitute "dictators" is an orthogonal and controversial claim. If you agree that NATO defense agencies and local police departments don't constitute "dictators", then you would agree that what Palantir is doing here, per your analogy, is "making alcohol", but not "selling it to a kid".

sifar 6y ago

>> Don’t blame those that build the software they use. To me that makes every open source project a potential ethical minefield since they could all be getting used to do immoral acts without even knowing about it. This is a slippery argument. There is a difference in building a car that people can drive and one that is specifically to be used as a weapon.

bhupy 6y ago
> There is a difference in building a car that people can drive and one that is specifically to be used as a weapon. This sounds like an equally slippery argument: one whose premise is that weapons should never be built, and that there is no justified use for them. The unfortunate reality of the world is that we do have and require militaries with intelligence agencies. Based on the premise of your argument, the only non-slippery, internally consistent framework is that building weapons is universally and unambiguously bad.
- sifar 6y ago
  The original argument was all open source projects were ethically immoral. I didn't say all weapons were evil. It is a matter of degree which becomes a matter of kind. There is a difference between a bow and an arrow, a semi automatic and the atom bomb. This is something I keep pondering over, for all the brilliant minds involved in the Manhattan project, did they ever think about the effects of what they created.

alasdair_ 6y ago

>I’m personally of the opinion that if you don’t like what government does, vote to stop them from doing it. When do we get to vote on the "no killing people based on shoddy intelligence" line item exactly? Hell, we don't even get to vote for who we want to be president (the electoral college does that and it's certainly not one person, one vote).