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Many of us here on HN do the exact same thing.
by ravenstine 3y ago
Many of us here on HN do the exact same thing.
- AlexandrB 3y agoWhen the work you're doing is several layers of abstraction removed from its worst applications it's easy to rationalize. For the authoritarian leader, this is a huge advantage of specialization and "replaceable cog in the machine" style of job standardization - no one person is building enough of the "evil" thing to feel responsible for the result, and most of the workers are replaceable enough that the "if I don't do it, they'll just get someone else who will" rationalization is probably correct.
- JohnFen 3y ago> that the "if I don't do it, they'll just get someone else who will" rationalization is probably correct. That may be correct, but from an ethical point of view, it's completely bankrupt. People who justify doing things they know to be unethical on the basis that someone else will just do it anyway are, of course, being unethical even if they are correct. Even worse are those people who think others will do it anyway, so it's better if they themselves (obviously being good people) do it instead of those other, terrible people.