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Why do so many engineers willingly build things bad for society?
by Ancalagon 8mo ago
Why do so many engineers willingly build things bad for society?
- bombdailer 8mo agoBecause the highest values of our society are non-values.
- mikestew 8mo agoBecause it generally pays well. I'd wax philosophically, but you can come to your own conclusions from that little nugget.
- popalchemist 8mo agoEnough said. Since the "death of God" (per Nietzsche - the collapse of the metaphysics underpinning our morals and therefore cultural norms and behaviors) the modus operandi has been the utilitarian "get what's yours." Reprehensible. Additionally, people are typically only "gifted" on one domain -- if one's gifted enough in the domain of intellect to become a SWE, they're typically lacking elsewhere, whether that be in moral scruples or the ability to discern social things such as when they're working for sociopaths.
- Ancalagon 8mo agoYou'd think empathy would just be enough, its very sad.
- asdfman123 8mo agoEvery accusation is a confession
- popalchemist 8mo agoNot every. That would be DARVO. Sometimes a spade is a spade, or a pedophile is a pedophile, to make a very clear example.
- bigyabai 8mo ago"Oh boy! I've always wanted to work at [microsoft, apple, google, etc.]!"
- mikestew 8mo agoThose aren't the companies OP is necessarily talking about. "I've always wanted to work at Persona!", said no one, ever.
- bigyabai 8mo agoAll of them are complicit. You only need ~50 greedy sociopaths to work at Persona, and 10,000 dumb-as-rocks engineers hyped to work at Microsoft/OpenAI and "stop the bad guys" or whatever the boogeyman du-jour is. We saw it with Bitlocker, we saw it with Client Side Scanning, we see it with Salt Typhoon. Most people that work on weaponized surveillance systems are entirely apathetic, or see themselves as righteous. Even when the system is known to be bugged, obviously flawed, or outright controlled by a foreign adversary.
- globalnode 8mo agooh thats a good point, kind of like the military or how propaganda demonizes the enemy during a war, its us vs them.
- konart 8mo agoBecause they do not believe it is bad? Because they believe that it's going to be build anyone by someone else? Because they are not entirely aware of what they are building?
- Ancalagon 8mo agoAll these bright engineers can’t figure out the bigger picture of what they’re building? “Hey boss man, why does this database ‘tracked_individuals’ have columns for license plate numbers, home addresses, and political affiliations?” Give me a break
- bigyabai 8mo agoYes, many of them don't. They're fed convincing cover-stories like "we need this to stop CSAM" or "this prevents terrorism", and then put on a security theater about E2EE and military-grade cryptography. They sleep like a baby because most of them genuinely think they're the good guys, hell, even people on HN appear to buy the obvious lie whenever Client Side Scanning or Flock is brought up. You can hire sociopaths to work the ~1% of jobs that require a complete understanding of your moral bankruptcy. Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Larry Ellison, none of these people ever apologized for their ethical flexibility because it's precisely what qualifies them for such a lucrative job. Persona can be a shell org with 20 evil engineers while their partners absentmindedly do the integration work.
- krapp 8mo agoBecause they're paid enough to retire at 30.
- kaashif 8mo agoMoney can be exchanged for services. Hope this helps.
- Nezteb 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_apples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_apples Immoral boot-licking human engineers are indistinguishable from LLMs.
- Ancalagon 8mo agoWhat's crazy is I know engineers like this in real life - and they're good engineers! So I know they do exist, but their existence to serve their company or CEO no matter what is completely foreign to me. Like, you're smart enough to understand that large codebase and generally function as a member of society, but you've completely given up your higher level decision making for someone or something that would throw you away in an instant.
- FrustratedMonky 8mo agoEvil pays more. A common theme in a lot of movies, books, et..
- GorbachevyChase 8mo agoThe tribe won’t eat their own… probably.
- biophysboy 8mo agoMany tech execs operate under the thesis that china & the democratic party are existential threats that warrant a surveillance/military/police ramp up. Meanwhile, many tech employees are credulous and frequently adopt self-serving geopolitical narratives. The current macro trends don't help (huge defense budgets, bad labor market power, China is in fact more powerful) Edit:forgot the most obvious... money
- ej88 8mo agosurprised nobody responded with the most straightforward, occams razor explanation they think what they're doing is actually good for society not everyone is in the hackerspace libertarian / socialist sphere i used to work for a place that used persona despite it adding extra friction to signups (literally resulting in less paying customers to the dismay of PMs) because it was worth it to combat fraud. theres a tradeoff in everything
- globalnode 8mo agoalso theyre subject to the same anonymity many other internet users have and so dont feel any consequences for their actions.
- snarf21 8mo agoIt is mostly a combination of Sinclair's Law and "I have nothing to hide" mindset.
- samaltmanfried 8mo agoMy employer isn't particularly bad for society, but let's pretend they are. My company is a large employer of foreign workers. I already live in fear of being priced out by foreign bodyshop firms. If I decided what we were doing was immoral, and dug my heels in. I'd just be replaced by a H-1B worker. If everyone else in my company decided they wouldn't build the torment nexus, we'd all just be replaced by H-1B workers. It'd be a minor inconvenience to the company, but they'd weather it just fine. Under this system, any kind of collective bargaining becomes impossible, moral, financial, or otherwise.