4 ms·

I'm curious how a judge tosses this out. Do they just say "Look, the law has nothing to do with stopping evil, so stop asking us to try"?

thaumasiotes 5y ago
The law isn't unrelated to stopping evil, but it isn't able to determine what evil is. Whether an act is "evil" is a theological question, so to the extent plaintiffs are actually relying on the word "evil", separation of church and state will prevent the court from even considering their claims.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Whether an act is "evil" is a theological question Whether challenging an act is within the reasonable scope of a contractual obligation to report suspected evil is, however, not a theological question, and does not involve deciding the question of whether the act is, in fact, evil, whether or not that is a theological question (it is not, necessarily, it is a moral question.)
- carlivar 5y ago
  It's not theological. It is moral. Atheists have a moral code. So does a society.
  - Eelongate 5y ago
    > Atheists have a moral code. [Most?] atheists have moral codes. Yours is not necessarily mine. Sorry to be pedantic, but implications of atheist unity really bug me.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  You don't need theology to define evil, dictionary.com defines it as "morally wrong or bad".
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Evil is a personal concept, nobody thinks they themselves are evil outside of a few extremely rare exceptions that mostly involve severe mental illness. Good and evil would appear meaningless and arbitrary to a alien, a strange custom invented by a primitive people.
  - adventured 5y ago
    Why would one ever default to believing aliens are likely to be highly enlightened? It's as likely that they're just lucky with resources, location, timing. They might be savages that primarily jump forward in technology by constantly fighting wars amongst themselves. The aliens observing our supposed primitiveness are just the ones that came out on top in their latest civil war and went out exploring using the technology that the 14,000 years of war cultivated. Maybe they're the most obnoxious, spoiled, entitled assholes you could ever imagine. Luck rolled their way ten thousand times in a row and they act like it. There's absolutely no good reason to default to believing aliens are likely to be far more enlightened than we are.
    - lovemenot 5y ago
      >> There's absolutely no good reason to default to believing aliens are likely to be far more enlightened than we are. There's no good reason to imagine some civilisation has figured out how to cross the vast interstellar distances and then pop in to see us during their lifetime. Since we are already in the realm of pure fantasy, it doesn't alter the argument's validity to also assume these magical creatures are enlightened.
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      I don't assume they are enlightened, I assume they are just as random as us. They will eat children for dinner and speak entirely in curse words, and our customs will seem just as insane to them. If you go back a couple hundred years and talk to the people then I imagine you could achieve a similar effect. They were just as certain they were correct as we are, and they are just as wrong.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  The question is not if Google committed evil. The question is if the Google fired employees for telling Google it was comitting evil. This does not require any definition of evil nor any judgement on Google doing evil.
azekai 5y ago
Most law exists to punish lawbreaking, and courts enforce those laws; they do not directly legislate what is or is not evil. The laws reflect the mores of society, and courts are typically not called upon to make sweeping definitions of what those mores are.
sjtindell 5y ago
I would assume it would be about “don’t be evil” being such a broad, noncommittal statement.
akomtu 5y ago
The judge should quote Eliphas Levi on what evil is. IIRC, Levi argues that evil is about abandoning reason, for reason is what makes us different from animals.
- SeanLuke 5y ago
  Wait, what does reason mean precisely then? This sounds half-baked. Let's say I have the preverbial lever which kills someone but gives me a million dollars. Is it reasonable for me to increase my own utility by pressing the lever? Thus would Levi say it's not evil to do so?
  - addingnumbers 5y ago
    My beliefs aside for the sake of argument, one could claim the evil all falls to the person devising that contraption and issuing the reward for that decision.
    - SeanLuke 5y ago
      That seems to let one off the hook. Suppose that if person X dies you inherit his million-dollar wealth. We're out camping and you have the opportunity to do him in. So YOU'RE not evil in taking that opportunity: but rather, what, the campground is evil for making the opportunity happen, or the legal system is evil for permitting inheritance and not universal surveillance?
  - akomtu 5y ago
    Exactly. What you've described isn't evil. What would be evil is creating a society for those people where all truth is suppressed, all irrationality is praised, good deeds are punished and amoral behavior is rewarded. Basically, making that society as backwards as possible. And if in a few generations people there will embrace that order, because they don't know any better, and start descending into animalism, that would be an example of evil. In other words, evil operates at the soul level, so if you reject the idea of soul, you won't be able to come up with evil or good plans: all acts will be superficial.
- 5y ago
Minor49er 5y ago
The judge would say "what laws were specifically broken?" Then toss it out when the plaintiffs come up empty handed. If the case somehow did get through, they would have to justify how their own repeated violations of Google's data security policies, which led to their terminations, would put them in the right. They would have a hard time of showing that they themselves are clean of evil.
- carlivar 5y ago
  Laws don't have to be broken in a civil case.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Yes, they do. Criminal laws don't have to be broken, but criminal laws aren't the only kind of laws.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  This is a civil case, where the causes of action arise either from contractual violations or from private rights of action authorized by law. The counts alleged are "breach of contract", "promissory estoppel", "breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing" (all three of which are essentially saying "Google legally promised they wouldn't do something they did, and it hurt me"), defamation, and, uh, "termination in violation of public policy" (which is basically saying it violates employment discrimination laws, and is at best poorly drafted in the complaint). In this case, the tossing out would be along the lines of "the facts alleged in the complaint are, even if true, insufficient to let you bring this lawsuit" (or, more succinctly, "failure to state a claim [upon which relief can be granted]").
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  I'd be nice of the judge to censure the lawyers for wasting the court's time too.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

The law isn't unrelated to stopping evil, but it isn't able to determine what evil is. Whether an act is "evil" is a theological question, so to the extent plaintiffs are actually relying on the word "evil", separation of church and state will prevent the court from even considering their claims.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Whether an act is "evil" is a theological question Whether challenging an act is within the reasonable scope of a contractual obligation to report suspected evil is, however, not a theological question, and does not involve deciding the question of whether the act is, in fact, evil, whether or not that is a theological question (it is not, necessarily, it is a moral question.)
carlivar 5y ago
It's not theological. It is moral. Atheists have a moral code. So does a society.
- Eelongate 5y ago
  > Atheists have a moral code. [Most?] atheists have moral codes. Yours is not necessarily mine. Sorry to be pedantic, but implications of atheist unity really bug me.
jeremyjh 5y ago
You don't need theology to define evil, dictionary.com defines it as "morally wrong or bad".
willcipriano 5y ago
Evil is a personal concept, nobody thinks they themselves are evil outside of a few extremely rare exceptions that mostly involve severe mental illness. Good and evil would appear meaningless and arbitrary to a alien, a strange custom invented by a primitive people.
- adventured 5y ago
  Why would one ever default to believing aliens are likely to be highly enlightened? It's as likely that they're just lucky with resources, location, timing. They might be savages that primarily jump forward in technology by constantly fighting wars amongst themselves. The aliens observing our supposed primitiveness are just the ones that came out on top in their latest civil war and went out exploring using the technology that the 14,000 years of war cultivated. Maybe they're the most obnoxious, spoiled, entitled assholes you could ever imagine. Luck rolled their way ten thousand times in a row and they act like it. There's absolutely no good reason to default to believing aliens are likely to be far more enlightened than we are.
  - lovemenot 5y ago
    >> There's absolutely no good reason to default to believing aliens are likely to be far more enlightened than we are. There's no good reason to imagine some civilisation has figured out how to cross the vast interstellar distances and then pop in to see us during their lifetime. Since we are already in the realm of pure fantasy, it doesn't alter the argument's validity to also assume these magical creatures are enlightened.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    I don't assume they are enlightened, I assume they are just as random as us. They will eat children for dinner and speak entirely in curse words, and our customs will seem just as insane to them. If you go back a couple hundred years and talk to the people then I imagine you could achieve a similar effect. They were just as certain they were correct as we are, and they are just as wrong.
marcinzm 5y ago
The question is not if Google committed evil. The question is if the Google fired employees for telling Google it was comitting evil. This does not require any definition of evil nor any judgement on Google doing evil.

azekai 5y ago

Most law exists to punish lawbreaking, and courts enforce those laws; they do not directly legislate what is or is not evil. The laws reflect the mores of society, and courts are typically not called upon to make sweeping definitions of what those mores are.

sjtindell 5y ago

I would assume it would be about “don’t be evil” being such a broad, noncommittal statement.

akomtu 5y ago

The judge should quote Eliphas Levi on what evil is. IIRC, Levi argues that evil is about abandoning reason, for reason is what makes us different from animals.

SeanLuke 5y ago
Wait, what does reason mean precisely then? This sounds half-baked. Let's say I have the preverbial lever which kills someone but gives me a million dollars. Is it reasonable for me to increase my own utility by pressing the lever? Thus would Levi say it's not evil to do so?
- addingnumbers 5y ago
  My beliefs aside for the sake of argument, one could claim the evil all falls to the person devising that contraption and issuing the reward for that decision.
  - SeanLuke 5y ago
    That seems to let one off the hook. Suppose that if person X dies you inherit his million-dollar wealth. We're out camping and you have the opportunity to do him in. So YOU'RE not evil in taking that opportunity: but rather, what, the campground is evil for making the opportunity happen, or the legal system is evil for permitting inheritance and not universal surveillance?
- akomtu 5y ago
  Exactly. What you've described isn't evil. What would be evil is creating a society for those people where all truth is suppressed, all irrationality is praised, good deeds are punished and amoral behavior is rewarded. Basically, making that society as backwards as possible. And if in a few generations people there will embrace that order, because they don't know any better, and start descending into animalism, that would be an example of evil. In other words, evil operates at the soul level, so if you reject the idea of soul, you won't be able to come up with evil or good plans: all acts will be superficial.
5y ago

Minor49er 5y ago

The judge would say "what laws were specifically broken?" Then toss it out when the plaintiffs come up empty handed. If the case somehow did get through, they would have to justify how their own repeated violations of Google's data security policies, which led to their terminations, would put them in the right. They would have a hard time of showing that they themselves are clean of evil.

carlivar 5y ago
Laws don't have to be broken in a civil case.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Yes, they do. Criminal laws don't have to be broken, but criminal laws aren't the only kind of laws.
jcranmer 5y ago
This is a civil case, where the causes of action arise either from contractual violations or from private rights of action authorized by law. The counts alleged are "breach of contract", "promissory estoppel", "breach of implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing" (all three of which are essentially saying "Google legally promised they wouldn't do something they did, and it hurt me"), defamation, and, uh, "termination in violation of public policy" (which is basically saying it violates employment discrimination laws, and is at best poorly drafted in the complaint). In this case, the tossing out would be along the lines of "the facts alleged in the complaint are, even if true, insufficient to let you bring this lawsuit" (or, more succinctly, "failure to state a claim [upon which relief can be granted]").
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
I'd be nice of the judge to censure the lawyers for wasting the court's time too.