5 ms·
> There's no Bond villain at the helm. It's good people rationalizing things. I worked for a few years at a company that made software for casinos, and this wa
by rrrrrrrrrrrryan 1y ago
> There's no Bond villain at the helm. It's good people rationalizing things.
I worked for a few years at a company that made software for casinos, and this was absolutely not the case there. Casinos absolutely have fully shameless villains at the helm.
- lucianbr 1y ago> We are all very good and kind and not at all evil, trust us if we do say so ourselves Do these people have even minimal self-awareness?
- darkmarmot 1y agoVGT?
- stickfigure 1y agoInteresting. A year ago I joined one of the larger online sportsbook/casinos. In terms of talent, employees are all over the map (both good and bad). But I have yet to meet a villain. Everyone here is doing the best they can.
- shermantanktop 1y agoEvery villain wants to be the best villain they can be! More seriously, everyone is the hero of their own story, no matter how obvious their failings are from the outside. I’ve been burned by empathetically adopting someone’s worldview and only realizing later how messed up and self-serving it was.
- yoyohello13 1y agoI’m sure people working for cigarette companies are doing the best they can too. People can be good individuals and also work toward evil ends.
- stickfigure 1y agoI am of the opinion that the greatest evils come from the most self-righteous.
- cootsnuck 1y agoI think y'all are agreeing.
- taneq 1y agoNah this is lawful evil (I Am Following The Rules Therefore I'm Doing The Right Thing) vs. neutral evil (I Just Work Here).
- stickfigure 1y agoMore like Chaotic Neutral. I like a world full of novel things, and I don't moralize about it.
- TeMPOraL 1y agoThat may very well be the case. But I think this is a distinct category of evil; the second one, in which you'll find most of the cigarette and gambling businesses, is that of evil caused by indifference. "Yes, I agree there are some downsides to our product and there are some people suffering because of that - but no one is forcing them to buy from us, they're people with agency and free will, they can act as adults and choose not to buy. Now what is this talk about feedback loops and systemic effects? It's confusing, go away." This category is where you'll also find most of the advertising business. The self-righteous may be the source of the greatest evil by magnitude, but day-to-day, the indifferents make it up in volume.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 1y agoIt's not indifference, it's much more comically evil. Like, they're using software to identify gambling addicts on fixed incomes, to figure out how big retirees' social security checks are, and to ensure they lose the entire thing at the casino each week. They bonus out their marketing team for doing this successfully. They're using software to make sure that when a casino host's patron runs out of money and kills themselves, the casino host is not penalized but rewarded for a job well done. At 8am every morning, the executives walk across the casino floor on their way to the board room, past the depressed people who have been there gambling by themselves the entire night, seeing their faces, then they go into a boardroom to strategize ways to get them those people to gamble even harder. They brag about it. It's absolute pure villainy.
- sanitycheck 1y agoThere are jobs in which one may find oneself where doing them poorly is better for the world than doing them well. I think you and your colleagues should sit back and take it easy, maybe have a few beers every lunchtime, install some video games on the company PCs, anything you can get away with. Don't get fired (because then you'll be replaced by keen new hires), just do the minimum acceptable and feel good about that karma you're accumulating as a brake on evil.