20 ms·

> All of us must navigate the trade-off between “me” and “we.” A famous Talmudic quote states: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for mys

• equestria 2y ago
  That last part makes me a bit nervous. It's dangerously close to the EA belief that it's actually OK to be a ruthless exec for a tobacco company, because you can do good things with your money that you wouldn't be able to do if you quit the job. I don't think that's the point you're making, but it's good to be careful with that. You can do good after hours, but it doesn't absolve you from what you're doing 9-to-5. As to your first point: yes, but it's all relative. Most tech workers are "trying to get by" in their minds. Just look at the SFBA rents and the PG&E bills! And wait until you hear about their college loans... most people in the top 1% don't think about themselves as the top 1%. In the end, making good decisions often requires sacrifice, pretty much no matter how much you make. And we often find ways to rationalize why it's not the right time for that.
  • adamtaylor_13 2y ago
    But if you won’t be the big tabacco exec, someone else will. So I actually agree with the notion that being the big tabacco exec and doing good things with your money, plus helping steer things from the inside is a better proposition than becoming a baker and letting someone who has NO moral qualms with tabacco run the ship. It’s rarely as effective to push change from the outside as it is the inside.
    • Ar-Curunir 2y ago
      “If I don’t work with the Nazis, someone else will, so I should be a good Nazi”
      • marky1991 2y ago
        What would be the alternative in this hypothetical be? I'm not clear what the argument here really is.
        • kelseyfrog 2y ago
          Are there any social norms that allows immoral CEOs to exist? What incubates an immoral CEO?
          • labster 2y ago
            Honestly a better question would be if there are any social norms that allow for a moral CEO to exist? Pretty much all of our norms are tilted towards producing immoral executives.
      • lotsofpulp 2y ago
        Unless you are suggesting selling tobacco is as unethical as torturing and murdering people of different tribes for the sake of them being in different tribes, I do not see what your point could be. Should people simply never be able to sell or consume tobacco? Even if one’s consumption of tobacco does not negatively affect anyone else?
• femiagbabiaka 2y ago
  Morality is completely subjective. Prior to certain events in the last year I would’ve said that there were some objective standards like minimizing harm to children, but that’s out the window now, with most of Big Tech implicated. As a moderately less contentious example, Alex Karp argues fervently that it is immoral to not produce weapons of war for western countries and the U.S. in particular. Many people agree with him. Ultimately people justify their method of making a living in whichever way they choose, and tech workers are no different. History is the log of the winners and losers of the war between the adherents of different moral codes.
  • gruez 2y ago
    >Prior to certain events in the last year I would’ve said that there were some objective standards like minimizing harm to children, but that’s out the window now, with most of Big Tech implicated. You're saying as if it's indisputable that "Big Tech" was harming children, but we're nowhere close to that. At best, the current literature shows a very weak negative correlational relationship between social media use and mental health. That's certainly not enough to lambast "Big Tech" for failing to abide by "objective standards like minimizing harm to children". Moreover I question whether "objective standards like minimizing harm to children" existed to begin with, or we're just looking at the past with rose tinted glasses. During the industrial revolution kids worked in factories and mines. In the 20th century they were exposed to lead and particulate pollution. Even if you grant that "Big Tech" was harming kids in some way, I doubt they're doing it in some unprecedented way like you implied.
    • femiagbabiaka 2y ago
      I’m certainly going to get downvoted for this, but I’m referring to the use of computing resources for AI surveillance systems used in target selection in Gaza. That alongside the fact that Microsoft, Amazon, Google, NVIDIA etc. all vie for contracts with militaries domestic and global, implicates a large chunk of all tech workers in global strife.
  • the_af 2y ago
    > "It is immoral to not produce weapons of war for western countries and the US in particular" I cannot imagine that a substantial "many" people believe this. How does it work exactly? If you have any expertise even adjacent to weapons building (e.g. being a programmer) and you are not building weapons for the US due to a lack of effort (as opposed to failing the interview) you're doing something immoral? I don't think many would agree with this. I suppose his stance is somehow more nuanced? (I wouldn't agree with it either, but at least it would be slightly more reasonable).
• avmich 2y ago
  > The duty to align your professional life ethically scales with your ability to do so. I think this implies that we all should aim to have for everybody those abilities. That is, if somebody is unable, in this sense, to be ethical because he's just trying to get by, it's actually our problem - e.g. he sells cigarettes and that harms us. So we need to some extent work on the goal of everybody having abilities to live ethically.
  • plagiarist 2y ago
    There's a lot of beneficial things that might happen if we, as a society, worked at helping the Invisible Hand manifest. Especially if we also ceased putting so much effort into fighting it. One of the basic tenets of capitalism is that the exchanges are all voluntary. In practice they are quite clearly not.
    • int_19h 2y ago
      That's a basic tenet of the free market, not of capitalism. The two are not the same.
  • amelius 2y ago
    Yes, we could tax higher incomes until we've reached that goal.
    • mmooss 2y ago
      Tangentially, the solution would not be higher 'income tax', but higher capital gains tax. The confusion largely is that 'income tax' is really 'wage tax'. Income common wealthy people with lots of capital is return on their capital investment, which is exluded from that tax.
    • songqin 2y ago
      I can fill in the blanks in my head, but I doubt they are what you're thinking. Would you mind elaborating on the cause/effect you have in mind? It is difficult for me to imagine this in and of itself being successful. We would also need to solve the allocation of those collected funds, as in many countries it would likely go to welfare, defense, corruption, etc.
• abyssin 2y ago
  I made the choice to change my occupation for a more moral one. One issue is, you lose a lot of social credit doing so. It’s seen as a personal failure rather than a choice. It might also be that implicitly challenging their choices makes people uncomfortable. How do you meet people who take responsibility for their life design?
  • guerrilla 2y ago
    > One issue is, you lose a lot of social credit doing so. It’s seen as a personal failure rather than a choice. Hmmm, why?
    • aziaziazi 2y ago
      When someone share it's choice, listeners naturally relate and compare to their own choices. If someone is putting moral or ethic before money (a very common first criterion), the listeners that didn't will feel judged even if the orator didn't say anything about them. It's a natural but uncomfortable behavior triggering defensive mode, that can translate in judging back the one that try to do a good think. Vegans experience this often. Edit: the "ethical choicers" can reduce such behavior with a carefully controlled communication (if someone has more tips please share!): - Don't say "ethic" but "my ethics" - Keep concise, don't give details if not ask - Change subject as soon as you feel the listener is uncomfortable - Say ASAP that you're not trying to convince or change anyone
      • guerrilla 2y ago
        This doesn't seem at all to be what the GP was refering to in the part I quoted. How is it seen as a personal failure on their part?
        • aziaziazi 2y ago
          My bad, I missed the 'personal' part of 'personal failure'. I think my comment is pertinent regarding the first phrase you quoted.
• zugi 2y ago
  Most people want to judge others and rationalize their own behavior, while piling on to whatever views happen to be popular at the time. What's worse, working for Big Tobacco, or working for Big Tech, or working for the DEA and spending your days forcefully "civil forfeituring" innocent people's money without charges? The former are at least taking money from people who voluntarily surrender it in exchange for some service, with fairly good knowledge of what they're getting themselves into. While the latter are basically highway robbers. Yet society has chosen to popularize the first one as immoral, and is now working on villifying the second, with only scant mention of the third. I'm sure I'm guilty of selective outrage myself. If we're going to quote religious references, how about Christ admonishing those who point out the spec in their neighbor's eye, while ignoring the log in their own. More focus on one's own morality, and less on judging others, just might make the world a slightly better place.
  • andrepd 2y ago
    Highly highly disagree. It seems to me the opposite! People (incl. here) want to rationalise their behaviour by giving excuses — such as the very popular "but X is even worse and people don't complain about it" that you yourself are doing — for the fact that they work on in-ethical stuff, because the honest answer is simply "this pays cartloads of money, fuck you got mine", which is unpalatable to their own self-perception.
    • zugi 2y ago
      Sure, yet you're exemplifying the "judge others" stuff by calling what others do unethical, and judging without evidence that they only do it because of the money, and not because their moral world-view differs from yours. I guess we're all guilty.
  • kstrauser 2y ago
    It's at least plausible that someone at the DEA genuinely wants to make a nicer, safer world for themselves and their neighbors. Yes, the agency does the terrible things you mention, but it also gets some horrific stuff off the streets. (Think fentanyl and meth, not weed. I couldn't care less about that.) No one working for Big Tobacco thinks they're making the world better unless they're an idiot.
• ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I worked for almost 27 years, for a company that aligned with my personal morals. The pay was substantially less than what I could have made at less-circumspect outfits, and there was a nonzero amount of really annoying overhead, but I don't regret it, at all. I slept well at night, made good friends, never wrote any software that I regretted, learned heaps of stuff, and helped to develop and launch the careers of a few others. Mentioning that here, elicits scorn.
  • kstrauser 2y ago
    Not from me, it doesn't. That's enviable and I'm glad to hear you were able to have that.
  • dgfitz 2y ago
    I imagine the scorn would occur if you planted a flag about how the company morals aligned with your own.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      Actually, this is the first time I've done that. I pretty much enjoy the world I live in. That upsets some folks.
  • talldayo 2y ago
    I don't think people are scornful of your work. It makes me happy to hear that people still find meaningful employment within their means of living. It's increasingly rare that someone is paid to do something impactful these days. You should feel happy. The part that will attract scorn is pretending that everyone can do that. In the same way that religion spread by preying on the poor and lecherous portions of society, so too does the tech industry offer the downtrodden and mistreated a better life in exchange for moral leniency. It's not even the "revenge of the nerd" stuff past a certain point - if a $60,000/year software engineer in America turns up their nose to a contract, you can simply send it to a development firm in Pakistan for pennies on the dollar and get roughly equivalent results. There is no moral bartering with at-will employment. It's an illusion. As individuals, you and I are both powerless to stop the proliferation and success of harmful businesses. America's number one lesson from the past 4 centuries of economic planning is that laissez-faire policy does not course-correct without government intervention. Collective bargaining only works when you're bargaining on a market you control - boycotting certain employers is entirely ineffective when you compare it to legislative reform. So, with that being said, saving your dignity is not enough to save society. You have every right to take comfort in working a job that you respected - but nobody here owes you any more respect than their dairy farmers or the guy in Thailand that made their $55 Izod sweatshirt. If you come around expecting the hero treatment, then you're bound to feel shortchanged. Sorry.
• analog31 2y ago
  My counter argument is that the US is already the most charitable country in the world in terms of private contributions, yet there are maybe 10-20 countries where the common people are better off than we are (note the large error bar there). I speculate that private charity versus private anti-charity is like bringing a knife to a gun fight.
• CobrastanJorji 2y ago
  Yes. However, just like someone considering dinner might falsely convince themselves 'I will eat this broccoli and this cheesecake and it will balance out to mostly healthy,' teaching some neighborhood kids to code won't ethically offset evil professional work, nor will donating a trivial fraction of your share of the ill-gotten proceeds.
• calf 2y ago
  I think Moshe is right but chose a really poor analogy in Big Tobacco, I want to say because working in tech is not at all like a farmer working laboriously in a physical field which is a lot less ideological and more driven by being in a poor 3rd world country, etc.
• hereonout2 2y ago
  > knowing that the world would be worse off if you decided to switch gears and become a carpenter/baker/bartender/choose your adventure. I don't understand what you're weighing this against? A job that is literally saving lives maybe, or really leading in a field of science or technology? Most of us don't have that though, even here on hacker news. Most of us are part of a larger effort that will progress just as well without us, our personal impact is marginal at best. I've worked in tech for two decades for a company I deem "moral" and I feel I've had impact. But I could have fitted kitchens or made wedding cakes for that time and had just as positive an impact on the world and people I serve professionally. Hell, if I was a carpenter my work could probably outlast anything I've done in tech.
  • BurningFrog 2y ago
    This is a point too rarely made. Most work that produces something people are willing to pay for does make the world a better place! Not enormously so for the vast majority of us, but what one person out of 8 billion can do.
    • bumby 2y ago
      I’m not sure I buy the premise as it reads as a Libertarian pipe dream. There are just too many examples of people willing to pay for something immoral or unethical to think that transactions can be broadly painted as a net good. Capitalist transactions are a reflection of value systems and our own shortcomings/biases. To the extent that humans are flawed, many of those transactions are going to be ethically flawed as well.
      • hackable_sand 2y ago
        You are in agreement with the comment you're responding to.
        • bumby 2y ago
          Being generous, I’m maybe in agreement if the word “most” gets some clarification or nuance.
• quotemstr 2y ago
  > The duty to align your professional life ethically scales with your ability to do so. Humans respond to incentives. We seek rewards that may be monetary, social, or intellectual: we optimize our behavior for them all the same. Trying to improve the world by scolding people for acting according to their incentives will not work. It's not a serious position. "If everyone would just..." --- no, everyone is not going to just, and if they were, they'd have already done it. Your exhortation will make no difference. If you want to change the world, change the incentive structure. Don't expect people to act against their personal interests because you say so. At best, they'll ignore you. At worst, they'll maliciously comply and cause even more harm.
  • layer8 2y ago
    One’s conscience is part of one’s incentives. And talking to people can actually affect their conscience. Public discourse like the one taking place here is part of the factors that can cause cultural shifts.
• WalterBright 2y ago
  Trying to stop people from growing and selling marijuana didn't work out so well.
• CharlieDigital 2y ago
  > there are ways to contribute morally outside of your 9-5. Volunteer to teach a neighborhood kid to code. This simplistic view of the world does not scale -- especially so in today's global economy. Imagine we never had public education and instead relied on the good nature of individuals to teach their neighborhood kids. Imagine competing at a global level without a coordinated educational system with baseline standards. Instead, what we need is to teach every kid how to code (many may not end up coding as a profession, but that's fine; every kid that has the affinity and talent and and wants to do it should have the chance). That's nominally why we have government of the people, by the people, for the people. That's why we have taxes. These scale when the interests are aligned. We've seen them scale. The problem arises when (as Mitt Romney famously expressed) we think of corporations as people, too, and assign them rights associated with personhood. They are of "some" people, by "some" people, for "some" people. This is the crisis I think the US is having now. This is what it think was punctuated with COVID; there is no longer the spirit of "we" and the US is in the era of "me".
• gsf_emergency 2y ago
  "And while you were paying attention to these things, you were momentarily delivered from daydreams, from memories, from anticipations, from silly notions - from all the symptoms of you." "Isn't tasting me?" ... "I'd say it was halfway between me and not-me. Tasting is not-me doing something for the whole organism. And at the same time tasting is me being conscious of what's happening. And that's the point of our chewing-grace - to make the me more conscious of what the not-me is up to." --Aldous Huxley, Island