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> Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's how you end up with price-collusion-as-a-service for la

> Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's how you end up with price-collusion-as-a-service for landlords to price-gouge. When you don't define "the big questions", every evil can just be something naughty and you can explain it away by saying that the person has "the big questions" in mind, and not these small ones. Is anyone surprised that most startups that "just ignore the small things" also ignore the big ones once they are big? > Someone highly capable, adaptable, and with the fortitude and grit to grind toward success in a morally directional manner. What do you mean by "morally directional"? What do you call a person with the same abilities and traits but concern for ethics? Are they not a hacker?

toomuchtodo 2y ago
I would argue that your example of tech driven price collusion is unethical and a symptom of bad people implementing technology for bad purposes. By “morally directional” I mean fundamentally a good person. Ethics are mostly easy imho although there are edge cases that are tricky or aggressively debatable due to nuance.
- luckylion 2y ago
  I agree that it's unethical, my point was that it's easy to say that it is the price for innovation and in the end if the innovation is large enough, the unethical action is fine ("they solved world hunger and brought us world peace, and you complain about a little bit of initial price gouging?"), and who knows what good intention they might have (probably none, but it's good PR to pretend). Do you consider 'hacker' to be tied to some ethical concept? Makes it a difficult definition to work with because you and I will draw the line of "justified by the intentions" (e.g. invading privacy of 1, 100, 1m to draw attention to some big issue) in a different place, and on top of that a hacker will stop being a hacker when they overstep the line?
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    The below resources touch on some ethical considerations, but are certainly not all inclusive. It is, imho, a living concept and dynamic. Are there good or bad Hackers? Or Hackers (and how their brain operates) just humans who do good or bad things? Do you stop thinking and being such a way when you cross a line? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics https://archive.org/details/TheHackerEthicAndTheSpiritOfTheInformationAge https://archive.org/details/TheHackerEthicAndTheSpiritOfTheI...
    - luckylion 2y ago
      Yes, I'm aware of these, but to me that's not a requirement of being "a hacker" (not that I've ever heard anyone discuss whether someone is a hacker). I've always understood that to be more of a "with great power comes great responsibility" thing that suggests some ideas you can use to figure out your position on the moral value of something (but explicitly not as in "you must adopt this line of thinking or you're not one of us").

toomuchtodo 2y ago

I would argue that your example of tech driven price collusion is unethical and a symptom of bad people implementing technology for bad purposes. By “morally directional” I mean fundamentally a good person. Ethics are mostly easy imho although there are edge cases that are tricky or aggressively debatable due to nuance.

luckylion 2y ago
I agree that it's unethical, my point was that it's easy to say that it is the price for innovation and in the end if the innovation is large enough, the unethical action is fine ("they solved world hunger and brought us world peace, and you complain about a little bit of initial price gouging?"), and who knows what good intention they might have (probably none, but it's good PR to pretend). Do you consider 'hacker' to be tied to some ethical concept? Makes it a difficult definition to work with because you and I will draw the line of "justified by the intentions" (e.g. invading privacy of 1, 100, 1m to draw attention to some big issue) in a different place, and on top of that a hacker will stop being a hacker when they overstep the line?
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  The below resources touch on some ethical considerations, but are certainly not all inclusive. It is, imho, a living concept and dynamic. Are there good or bad Hackers? Or Hackers (and how their brain operates) just humans who do good or bad things? Do you stop thinking and being such a way when you cross a line? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics https://archive.org/details/TheHackerEthicAndTheSpiritOfTheInformationAge https://archive.org/details/TheHackerEthicAndTheSpiritOfTheI...
  - luckylion 2y ago
    Yes, I'm aware of these, but to me that's not a requirement of being "a hacker" (not that I've ever heard anyone discuss whether someone is a hacker). I've always understood that to be more of a "with great power comes great responsibility" thing that suggests some ideas you can use to figure out your position on the moral value of something (but explicitly not as in "you must adopt this line of thinking or you're not one of us").