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What did you feel you would have lost? I can imagine answers, but I've never been in that situation. There are may be things I won't think of. This is why I'

by drdec 4y ago

What did you feel you would have lost? I can imagine answers, but I've never been in that situation. There are may be things I won't think of. This is why I'm asking - my first instinct is take the money so I'd like to fully understand the thinking of the opposite side. In any case thanks for replying.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago
After a certain amount of money to cover life expenses + recreation, additional money has diminishing returns. Once one reaches that point, leading a fulfilling life becomes the next highest priority. I would speculate the kind of person who joins an anti-abuse team would not find accepting hush-money about the lack of anti-abuse systems to be something they would find aligning with their vision of a fulfilling life.
- tayo42 4y ago
  But nothing really came out of it? It's like twitters reputation got ruined or there was some repurcusion for the company freely talking about it
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    This implies that the poster is the kind of person who doesn't find fulfillment in making choices that align with their ethics system unless the world also aligns with their ethics system. Like I said before, I don't think someone who would join an anti-abuse team follows this behavior pattern. Additionally, the belief in one's own moral choices and behavior is often one of the important steps in finding fulfillment in yourself. If your fulfillment is reliant on external validation, you will always be found wanting.
  - AshamedCaptain 4y ago
    What repercussion to expect? TFA is literally about Facebook doing the same thing, today. Don't see many pitchforks...
    - tayo42 4y ago
      Yeah that was my point, the thread was about being offered 40k to be quiet, but the thing I'm wondering is be quiet about what? Might as well take the 40k if there was nothing actually scandalous going on
- asiachick 4y ago
  What is that number for you? (and others) For me it's pretty dang high. Like on the order of 5-20 million USD in the bank. At some point I'm going to stop working. Rent and life expenses where I live currently are probably $100k a year (yes I could live on less or move, but that's part of the point). Let's say I stop working at 65 and I live to 85. That means I need at least 2 million dollars in the bank to keep spending $100k a year and it assumes I die at 85. If I happen to live to 95 or 105 I'd be S.O.L. Also add in escalting medical expenses, inflation, other issues and 5 million in the bank is IMO the minimum I'd need to feel I could discard other money and stop worrying about it. And that assumes I stop working at 65. If I was trying to stop earlier that would go up. I get at some I could theoretically live off the interest. My point is, at least for me > a certain amount of money to cover life expenses + recreation, additional money has diminishing returns. Is generally false. It's usually part of the "if you make $75k a year, more won't make you happier" but IMO that's not true because I'm screwed if that $75k a year stops. Also, source of that point is often misquoted. It says happiness doesn't increase with more money. But life satisfaction does increase forever with more money. Here's an article pointing out the original study did say satisfaction increased as well as a new study that says happiness increase too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/02/07/new-study-shows-that-more-money-buys-more-happiness/?sh=673fbd5970d5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/02/07/new-study... If I had even more money I'd angel invest. I think that would be pretty fulfilling. If I had even more money there's all kinds of projects I'd like to fund. I expect I'd be pretty proud to fund them.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    I never said more money doesn't make you happier. I said more money has diminishing returns, and other things become more important. Even you are only able to suggest things that bring you personal fulfillment as a way you can use more money. This actually supports my point that it makes sense for someone to decline money that doesn't bring them fulfillment if fulfillment is what they're going for.
    - asiachick 4y ago
      Maybe, but as someone that turned down $6 million because of my conscience (sold stock solely because I didn't like feeling guilty holding it and it's gone up 4x-6x since then), I could do a ton of good things for others if I had that $6 million. It's not like we're talking about killing babies. Where' talking about signing an NDA or in my case not being 100% on board with a company's behavior in ways that are arguably ambiguous. As an example, if I had New York Times stock and was upset at their hypocrosy of complaining about ad supported companies while themselves being an ad supported company. Whether ads on NYT are good or bad is an debatable point. The point being, nothing the company who's stock I was holding was unambigously evil. But I chose my conscience over arguably trivial issues. In this particular case I think it was a mistake. If the company had been truely evil (by my definition of evil) then I'd be more okay with my decision.
elliekelly 4y ago
Well they couldn’t have made that comment, for one.
wpietri 4y ago
There are two basic approaches to work. You can be a minion or a professional. If you're a minion, then you just build the volcano headquarters and the atomic missiles because, hey, it's your job. They don't pay you to think. Your job is to make your boss look good. You give 110% and think outside the box only when it's firmly inside the box of the primate dominance hierarchy you are embedded in. Professionals, though, explicitly recognize they are part of a society. They owe something to the client/employer, but also to the public and the profession. For example, read through the preamble here: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-code/ https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-c... I see myself as a professional. I sell my labor, not my ethics. So what I would have lost by selling my ability to speak out about a problem? My integrity. My independence. My freedom. $40k is a lot of money, but it wasn't worth 40 years of shutting up about anything Twitter would want me to keep quiet about.
- orzig 4y ago
  You are a legit hero. Our society focuses exclusively on contributions that involve some dramatic moment, and doesn’t recognize those who show up for what’s right every day. Thank you, seriously.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Kudos to you, and glad you took the time to speak about your thoughts here. It's good for people to have exposure to later career challenges... and especially options they might not consider.
- twistedfred87 4y ago
  This is so incredibly refreshing to see. I can't express just how much I appreciate and respect this.
- mellavora 4y ago
  Hero points. Thanks also for explicitly spelling out what it means to be a professional. (duty to profession and society as well as employer, written source, summary "sell my labor not my ethics")
- 4y ago
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
The freedom to talk about something you spent a significant part of your life on?
didibus 4y ago
It's interesting that people value free speech so much, yet seem to have no quarrel with being allowed to sell it away.
yamtaddle 4y ago
I suspect you're looking at it from either a nihilistic "let the world burn, I just want to get mine" perspective, or (probably more likely?) a perspective heavily influenced by consequentialist ethics ("is the good I can do by being able to talk about these things worth more, in a net-good-in-the-world kind of way, than $40K? I'm not sure enough that it is, to justify turning down the money"). Or maybe a blend of the two (most folks get a bit selfish and let their ethics slide at least some, when sufficiently-large dollar values start to get thrown around, after all) There are other perspectives, though. Here's a starting point for one of the big categories of thinking that might lead one to turn down $40K essentially just on principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics
- wpietri 4y ago
  Great points! For what it's worth, I'm at root a consequentialist, but see virtue framings as cognitively much more tractable given both the weird feedback loops of one's own psychology and the immense computational cost of trying to predict consequences over coming decades.

by drdec 4y ago

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

After a certain amount of money to cover life expenses + recreation, additional money has diminishing returns. Once one reaches that point, leading a fulfilling life becomes the next highest priority. I would speculate the kind of person who joins an anti-abuse team would not find accepting hush-money about the lack of anti-abuse systems to be something they would find aligning with their vision of a fulfilling life.

tayo42 4y ago
But nothing really came out of it? It's like twitters reputation got ruined or there was some repurcusion for the company freely talking about it
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  This implies that the poster is the kind of person who doesn't find fulfillment in making choices that align with their ethics system unless the world also aligns with their ethics system. Like I said before, I don't think someone who would join an anti-abuse team follows this behavior pattern. Additionally, the belief in one's own moral choices and behavior is often one of the important steps in finding fulfillment in yourself. If your fulfillment is reliant on external validation, you will always be found wanting.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  What repercussion to expect? TFA is literally about Facebook doing the same thing, today. Don't see many pitchforks...
  - tayo42 4y ago
    Yeah that was my point, the thread was about being offered 40k to be quiet, but the thing I'm wondering is be quiet about what? Might as well take the 40k if there was nothing actually scandalous going on
asiachick 4y ago
What is that number for you? (and others) For me it's pretty dang high. Like on the order of 5-20 million USD in the bank. At some point I'm going to stop working. Rent and life expenses where I live currently are probably $100k a year (yes I could live on less or move, but that's part of the point). Let's say I stop working at 65 and I live to 85. That means I need at least 2 million dollars in the bank to keep spending $100k a year and it assumes I die at 85. If I happen to live to 95 or 105 I'd be S.O.L. Also add in escalting medical expenses, inflation, other issues and 5 million in the bank is IMO the minimum I'd need to feel I could discard other money and stop worrying about it. And that assumes I stop working at 65. If I was trying to stop earlier that would go up. I get at some I could theoretically live off the interest. My point is, at least for me > a certain amount of money to cover life expenses + recreation, additional money has diminishing returns. Is generally false. It's usually part of the "if you make $75k a year, more won't make you happier" but IMO that's not true because I'm screwed if that $75k a year stops. Also, source of that point is often misquoted. It says happiness doesn't increase with more money. But life satisfaction does increase forever with more money. Here's an article pointing out the original study did say satisfaction increased as well as a new study that says happiness increase too. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/02/07/new-study-shows-that-more-money-buys-more-happiness/?sh=673fbd5970d5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/02/07/new-study... If I had even more money I'd angel invest. I think that would be pretty fulfilling. If I had even more money there's all kinds of projects I'd like to fund. I expect I'd be pretty proud to fund them.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I never said more money doesn't make you happier. I said more money has diminishing returns, and other things become more important. Even you are only able to suggest things that bring you personal fulfillment as a way you can use more money. This actually supports my point that it makes sense for someone to decline money that doesn't bring them fulfillment if fulfillment is what they're going for.
  - asiachick 4y ago
    Maybe, but as someone that turned down $6 million because of my conscience (sold stock solely because I didn't like feeling guilty holding it and it's gone up 4x-6x since then), I could do a ton of good things for others if I had that $6 million. It's not like we're talking about killing babies. Where' talking about signing an NDA or in my case not being 100% on board with a company's behavior in ways that are arguably ambiguous. As an example, if I had New York Times stock and was upset at their hypocrosy of complaining about ad supported companies while themselves being an ad supported company. Whether ads on NYT are good or bad is an debatable point. The point being, nothing the company who's stock I was holding was unambigously evil. But I chose my conscience over arguably trivial issues. In this particular case I think it was a mistake. If the company had been truely evil (by my definition of evil) then I'd be more okay with my decision.

elliekelly 4y ago

Well they couldn’t have made that comment, for one.

wpietri 4y ago

There are two basic approaches to work. You can be a minion or a professional. If you're a minion, then you just build the volcano headquarters and the atomic missiles because, hey, it's your job. They don't pay you to think. Your job is to make your boss look good. You give 110% and think outside the box only when it's firmly inside the box of the primate dominance hierarchy you are embedded in. Professionals, though, explicitly recognize they are part of a society. They owe something to the client/employer, but also to the public and the profession. For example, read through the preamble here: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-code/ https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-c... I see myself as a professional. I sell my labor, not my ethics. So what I would have lost by selling my ability to speak out about a problem? My integrity. My independence. My freedom. $40k is a lot of money, but it wasn't worth 40 years of shutting up about anything Twitter would want me to keep quiet about.

orzig 4y ago
You are a legit hero. Our society focuses exclusively on contributions that involve some dramatic moment, and doesn’t recognize those who show up for what’s right every day. Thank you, seriously.
ethbr0 4y ago
Kudos to you, and glad you took the time to speak about your thoughts here. It's good for people to have exposure to later career challenges... and especially options they might not consider.
twistedfred87 4y ago
This is so incredibly refreshing to see. I can't express just how much I appreciate and respect this.
mellavora 4y ago
Hero points. Thanks also for explicitly spelling out what it means to be a professional. (duty to profession and society as well as employer, written source, summary "sell my labor not my ethics")
4y ago

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago

The freedom to talk about something you spent a significant part of your life on?

didibus 4y ago

It's interesting that people value free speech so much, yet seem to have no quarrel with being allowed to sell it away.

yamtaddle 4y ago

I suspect you're looking at it from either a nihilistic "let the world burn, I just want to get mine" perspective, or (probably more likely?) a perspective heavily influenced by consequentialist ethics ("is the good I can do by being able to talk about these things worth more, in a net-good-in-the-world kind of way, than $40K? I'm not sure enough that it is, to justify turning down the money"). Or maybe a blend of the two (most folks get a bit selfish and let their ethics slide at least some, when sufficiently-large dollar values start to get thrown around, after all) There are other perspectives, though. Here's a starting point for one of the big categories of thinking that might lead one to turn down $40K essentially just on principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics

wpietri 4y ago
Great points! For what it's worth, I'm at root a consequentialist, but see virtue framings as cognitively much more tractable given both the weird feedback loops of one's own psychology and the immense computational cost of trying to predict consequences over coming decades.