5 ms·

>You cannot separate a work from the context in which it operates. Why not try?

Spivak 5y ago
Because then work just becomes a more boring riff on the Nuremberg defense. You can't just be like "I'm just paid to write code and so will completely ignore any and all ethical issues with what my company does with it." There's a reason the ACM code of ethics has "everyone is a stakeholder" and "avoid harm" as the top two overriding principles. I can understand arguments about keeping political issues unrelated to your work and working relationships out but you this isn't that.
- tester34 5y ago
  it's ok there's dont be evil
- macspoofing 5y ago
  >Because then work just becomes a more boring riff on the Nuremberg defense. Writing code to build Fuchsia OS does not involve great violations of morality and ethics that call out for something like the 'Nuremberg defense'. >I can understand arguments about keeping political issues unrelated to your work and working relationships out but you this isn't that. Where's the dividing line? Wasn't it Basecamp that had a large portion of their workforce quit because they couldn't be activists at work? Was that them mitigating the 'Nuremberg defense'? What about the recent issue with a principle of an elementary schools calling on parents to boycott Israel [1]. There are very few jobs in modern America that have these great ethical dilemmas. There are, however, plenty of people that are willing to engage in hyperbole and politicize every space they can. That's a much bigger problem. [1]https://nypost.com/2021/05/24/nyc-principal-apologizes-for-anti-israel-email-to-staff-amid-outrage/ https://nypost.com/2021/05/24/nyc-principal-apologizes-for-a...
  - Spivak 5y ago
    You’re doing exactly what you condemn in your post. I said a boring riff specifically because I wanted to highlight that there’s a huge magnitude difference while being able to use the most common term for the particular line of reasoning. You’re right, writing an OS for Google isn’t some world shaking ethical conundrum and it certainly wouldn’t be enough to turn down a FAANG salary and the experience for. But that doesn’t mean that the company’s corporate strategy for the product (i.e. the entire reason the project is funded) is suddenly irrelevant and you can wash your hands of it. If the business reason for pushing this OS is so that Google can have a desktop OS with lock-in to their services and have data collection at the deepest level like they do with Android then that doesn’t meet the bar for avoiding harm and that as engineers we ought to be empowered to push back or outright say no to to buildings things that hurt our users. Nothing about this has anything to do with Israel or Pizzagate, or Black Lives Matter. Politics encompasses far far more than the things you see on CNN. I’m not saying that people should be advocating for random political causes they care about in the workplace. I’m saying that people should be able to act politically for things that are literally their work. * Pushing for accessibility features being a requirement to ship is political. * Pushing for telemetry to be anonymized is political. * Pushing for ML datasets to include people with dark skin so they actually work is political. * Pushing for data collection being opt-in is political. * Refusing to build a product that interferes with EMT radio frequencies is political.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    > Writing code to build Fuchsia OS does not involve great violations of morality and ethics that call out for something like the 'Nuremberg defense'. Respectfully, while I don't think that Fuchsia warrants invoking the Nuremberg, I do think that it is highly likely to enable violations of morality and ethics down the line. The way I see Fuchsia, it's basically an effort to undermine the Linux kernel and switch it out for something with an MIT-style license. I see this as objectively immoral. Linux is the de-facto open source kernel for the majority of people, and the fact that the open source kernel uses GPL (which strongly prefers end user freedoms) is one of the few things that holds the tide of privacy violations, user disempowerment and proprietary tech capture of our infrastructure, institutions and societal conventions. A world without a strong GPL base is a morass that drags down useful developments. Quite frankly, I see no reason for Fuchsia to exist, and plenty of reasons why it shouldn't exist (not least because Google is in control). It should be boycotted. The society will be better off for it, though it may make a few billionaires cry.
lghh 5y ago
Because I have a conscience.
- macspoofing 5y ago
  A little hyperbolic, don't you think? If you're writing Fuchsia OS, then you don't a conscience?
  - lghh 5y ago
    That's clearly not what I said. I was responding directly to my parent comment which said we should try to separate a work from the context in which it operates. It was not a value statement on Fuchsia OS, anyone who worked on it, or anyone on Google. It was simply a statement on separating work from the context in which it operates.
    - macspoofing 5y ago
      >It was not a value statement on Fuchsia OS, anyone who worked on it, or anyone on Google. This thread is about Fuchsia OS - so you're separating your statement from the context in which it operates?
      - lghh 5y ago
        It's clear you're not engaging in good faith, I won't be continuing this conversation.
unionpivo 5y ago
"Because, I don't want for it to be good, because its Google, but it probably is." That's what I have going in my mind and it's going to color any of my opinions on it, no matter how how objective I try to be. So I think It's important to discuss this openly, so we know where we are at. Looks like there is a growing minority of tech people who distrust Google and I am among them.
- lacksconfidence 5y ago
  Minority? I feel like i can't read anything about google on HN without half the converstion being unrelated to the technology and strictly related to ads. The minority are the people that think "wow cool, another new shiny toy to investigate!".
  - unionpivo 5y ago
    HN is minority of tech people, and even on HN not everyone share same opinion, I doubt it's even 50%.
aeturnum 5y ago
Why would you choose to pretend you know less than you do? Things are made by people and each individual person has their own background, circumstances and ideas. The culture of Bell Labs abetted (but did not cause) Unix and the sharing of source code. The lack of pressure to generate profit within Bell allowed Unix to use an unusual licensing model, which led to it being widely available in universities. Context does not totalize - it allows and directs. Google has a business plan and a culture that promotes some things and prevents others. It's not a conspiracy - they're quite public about most of it. There are things that are possible at Google that are less possible elsewhere. We can, as participants and observers in culture, speculate about what is more possible and less possible in a Google OS project. To not do so would be blindfolding ourselves. If you want to talk about something "outside" of its cultural context (if such a thing is possible), you certainly can - but will your conversation partners set the same things outside the context? Better to be explicit than blindly implicit imo.

Because then work just becomes a more boring riff on the Nuremberg defense. You can't just be like "I'm just paid to write code and so will completely ignore any and all ethical issues with what my company does with it." There's a reason the ACM code of ethics has "everyone is a stakeholder" and "avoid harm" as the top two overriding principles. I can understand arguments about keeping political issues unrelated to your work and working relationships out but you this isn't that.

tester34 5y ago
it's ok there's dont be evil
macspoofing 5y ago
>Because then work just becomes a more boring riff on the Nuremberg defense. Writing code to build Fuchsia OS does not involve great violations of morality and ethics that call out for something like the 'Nuremberg defense'. >I can understand arguments about keeping political issues unrelated to your work and working relationships out but you this isn't that. Where's the dividing line? Wasn't it Basecamp that had a large portion of their workforce quit because they couldn't be activists at work? Was that them mitigating the 'Nuremberg defense'? What about the recent issue with a principle of an elementary schools calling on parents to boycott Israel [1]. There are very few jobs in modern America that have these great ethical dilemmas. There are, however, plenty of people that are willing to engage in hyperbole and politicize every space they can. That's a much bigger problem. [1]https://nypost.com/2021/05/24/nyc-principal-apologizes-for-anti-israel-email-to-staff-amid-outrage/ https://nypost.com/2021/05/24/nyc-principal-apologizes-for-a...
- Spivak 5y ago
  You’re doing exactly what you condemn in your post. I said a boring riff specifically because I wanted to highlight that there’s a huge magnitude difference while being able to use the most common term for the particular line of reasoning. You’re right, writing an OS for Google isn’t some world shaking ethical conundrum and it certainly wouldn’t be enough to turn down a FAANG salary and the experience for. But that doesn’t mean that the company’s corporate strategy for the product (i.e. the entire reason the project is funded) is suddenly irrelevant and you can wash your hands of it. If the business reason for pushing this OS is so that Google can have a desktop OS with lock-in to their services and have data collection at the deepest level like they do with Android then that doesn’t meet the bar for avoiding harm and that as engineers we ought to be empowered to push back or outright say no to to buildings things that hurt our users. Nothing about this has anything to do with Israel or Pizzagate, or Black Lives Matter. Politics encompasses far far more than the things you see on CNN. I’m not saying that people should be advocating for random political causes they care about in the workplace. I’m saying that people should be able to act politically for things that are literally their work. * Pushing for accessibility features being a requirement to ship is political. * Pushing for telemetry to be anonymized is political. * Pushing for ML datasets to include people with dark skin so they actually work is political. * Pushing for data collection being opt-in is political. * Refusing to build a product that interferes with EMT radio frequencies is political.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > Writing code to build Fuchsia OS does not involve great violations of morality and ethics that call out for something like the 'Nuremberg defense'. Respectfully, while I don't think that Fuchsia warrants invoking the Nuremberg, I do think that it is highly likely to enable violations of morality and ethics down the line. The way I see Fuchsia, it's basically an effort to undermine the Linux kernel and switch it out for something with an MIT-style license. I see this as objectively immoral. Linux is the de-facto open source kernel for the majority of people, and the fact that the open source kernel uses GPL (which strongly prefers end user freedoms) is one of the few things that holds the tide of privacy violations, user disempowerment and proprietary tech capture of our infrastructure, institutions and societal conventions. A world without a strong GPL base is a morass that drags down useful developments. Quite frankly, I see no reason for Fuchsia to exist, and plenty of reasons why it shouldn't exist (not least because Google is in control). It should be boycotted. The society will be better off for it, though it may make a few billionaires cry.

lghh 5y ago

Because I have a conscience.

macspoofing 5y ago
A little hyperbolic, don't you think? If you're writing Fuchsia OS, then you don't a conscience?
- lghh 5y ago
  That's clearly not what I said. I was responding directly to my parent comment which said we should try to separate a work from the context in which it operates. It was not a value statement on Fuchsia OS, anyone who worked on it, or anyone on Google. It was simply a statement on separating work from the context in which it operates.
  - macspoofing 5y ago
    >It was not a value statement on Fuchsia OS, anyone who worked on it, or anyone on Google. This thread is about Fuchsia OS - so you're separating your statement from the context in which it operates?
    - lghh 5y ago
      It's clear you're not engaging in good faith, I won't be continuing this conversation.

unionpivo 5y ago

"Because, I don't want for it to be good, because its Google, but it probably is." That's what I have going in my mind and it's going to color any of my opinions on it, no matter how how objective I try to be. So I think It's important to discuss this openly, so we know where we are at. Looks like there is a growing minority of tech people who distrust Google and I am among them.

lacksconfidence 5y ago
Minority? I feel like i can't read anything about google on HN without half the converstion being unrelated to the technology and strictly related to ads. The minority are the people that think "wow cool, another new shiny toy to investigate!".
- unionpivo 5y ago
  HN is minority of tech people, and even on HN not everyone share same opinion, I doubt it's even 50%.

aeturnum 5y ago

Why would you choose to pretend you know less than you do? Things are made by people and each individual person has their own background, circumstances and ideas. The culture of Bell Labs abetted (but did not cause) Unix and the sharing of source code. The lack of pressure to generate profit within Bell allowed Unix to use an unusual licensing model, which led to it being widely available in universities. Context does not totalize - it allows and directs. Google has a business plan and a culture that promotes some things and prevents others. It's not a conspiracy - they're quite public about most of it. There are things that are possible at Google that are less possible elsewhere. We can, as participants and observers in culture, speculate about what is more possible and less possible in a Google OS project. To not do so would be blindfolding ourselves. If you want to talk about something "outside" of its cultural context (if such a thing is possible), you certainly can - but will your conversation partners set the same things outside the context? Better to be explicit than blindly implicit imo.