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You’re speaking to the wrong audience. “Someone else would do it anyway” is how everyone here justifies doing unethical shit at FAANG and refusing to earn less

You’re speaking to the wrong audience. “Someone else would do it anyway” is how everyone here justifies doing unethical shit at FAANG and refusing to earn less than $300k/yr base because “that’s just the industry”. I have no respect for anyone that says this shit with a straight face.

KyeRussell 4y ago
It should also be said that anyone that makes this argument immediately loses their right to complain when governments need to step in and regulate.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jolmg 4y ago
  You're commenting even after someone has already provided a legitimate good use of this tech, and are the third person to write as if it were established that it's unethical to develop this tech. I never said that it's fine to do unethical things because others will do it anyway, and I wish you wouldn't imply that I did. From the get-go, it was an open discussion whether the development was good/bad/neutral, and my original comment was to clarify that jakelazaroff's comment probably misinterpreted what they quoted from the use of "must". My position is that development is not unethical. I'm not trying to justify this position because I don't think it needs to be. When I said "others will do it anyway", it's not a justification and my original comment wasn't even about my position on this. My comment was referring to the usefulness of stopping the implicit always-ethically-neutral development of a tech in order to stop the potential misuse of it. I'm saying that even if they stopped the development of this one repo, or a few, or all others implementing this tech, it'd be ineffective. This repo is just one bit of the tech. Most of the tech is in its dependencies. If someone wants it and has nefarious uses in mind, they don't really really need this repo for that.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > My position is that development is not unethical. I think this is where we disagree at heart. I don't think that development is an ethically neutral act, any more than any other human activity is ethically neutral.
    - jolmg 4y ago
      I see this as part of the expansion of knowledge. People conduct research to get a better understanding of the universe. Tech development is about our understanding of what we can do and how. People conducting studies and research can be unethical in the process, same as tech development, but I can't think of knowledge that would be unethical to expand in if the process is ethical. What understanding of the universe would be wrong to obtain if ethical means were available? If there's none, why is expanding our knowledge of what we can do and how any different?
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        I draw a distinction that you don't here. Development is not about the expansion of knowledge, it's about producing things. Science is about the expansion of knowledge. As a society, we very often conflate the two, but they're really very different things.
        jolmg 4y ago
        They're very intertwined. A paperclip factory produces things; they don't do tech development (shouldn't do much at least). Tech development is about pushing the edge. Science, obtaining more knowledge about the universe we have to work with, helps, but it's also about finding new applications for what we've already known. Tech development doesn't necessitate the production of things, even intangible ones. Technology development in the form of new optimization techniques in existing software for e.g. rendering 3d models or searching data faster or whatever is not producing things, but it's still tech development.
        4y ago

KyeRussell 4y ago

It should also be said that anyone that makes this argument immediately loses their right to complain when governments need to step in and regulate.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jolmg 4y ago
You're commenting even after someone has already provided a legitimate good use of this tech, and are the third person to write as if it were established that it's unethical to develop this tech. I never said that it's fine to do unethical things because others will do it anyway, and I wish you wouldn't imply that I did. From the get-go, it was an open discussion whether the development was good/bad/neutral, and my original comment was to clarify that jakelazaroff's comment probably misinterpreted what they quoted from the use of "must". My position is that development is not unethical. I'm not trying to justify this position because I don't think it needs to be. When I said "others will do it anyway", it's not a justification and my original comment wasn't even about my position on this. My comment was referring to the usefulness of stopping the implicit always-ethically-neutral development of a tech in order to stop the potential misuse of it. I'm saying that even if they stopped the development of this one repo, or a few, or all others implementing this tech, it'd be ineffective. This repo is just one bit of the tech. Most of the tech is in its dependencies. If someone wants it and has nefarious uses in mind, they don't really really need this repo for that.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > My position is that development is not unethical. I think this is where we disagree at heart. I don't think that development is an ethically neutral act, any more than any other human activity is ethically neutral.
  - jolmg 4y ago
    I see this as part of the expansion of knowledge. People conduct research to get a better understanding of the universe. Tech development is about our understanding of what we can do and how. People conducting studies and research can be unethical in the process, same as tech development, but I can't think of knowledge that would be unethical to expand in if the process is ethical. What understanding of the universe would be wrong to obtain if ethical means were available? If there's none, why is expanding our knowledge of what we can do and how any different?
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      I draw a distinction that you don't here. Development is not about the expansion of knowledge, it's about producing things. Science is about the expansion of knowledge. As a society, we very often conflate the two, but they're really very different things.
      - jolmg 4y ago
        They're very intertwined. A paperclip factory produces things; they don't do tech development (shouldn't do much at least). Tech development is about pushing the edge. Science, obtaining more knowledge about the universe we have to work with, helps, but it's also about finding new applications for what we've already known. Tech development doesn't necessitate the production of things, even intangible ones. Technology development in the form of new optimization techniques in existing software for e.g. rendering 3d models or searching data faster or whatever is not producing things, but it's still tech development.
        4y ago