3 ms·

As a result of this filtration my impact as a voter on the site is amplified. Curious why that feels desirable.

altairprime 5mo ago
Where is it stated as desirable? I was only able to determine that they’re concerned about whether that predicted (and certain) outcome makes their actions leading to it unethical, so I’d like to know what I missed in my reading.
- brudgers 5mo ago
  If it was not desired, then what would be the ethical question?
  - altairprime 5mo ago
    Is it ethical to drive a polished-mirror vehicle on public roads? I don't particularly desire to do so (anymore), but even if I rolled a d20 to a nat 1 and that critical miss of a color was unconditionally applied to my new car, wholly decoupling any involvement of my desires with the obvious and catastrophic outcomes of a polished mirror finish on other drivers, I still owe it to my society to evaluate whether proceeding to drive that vehicle is ethical or not. You can't conditional 'is this ethical' on whether or not one desires one of the outcomes ('amplified impact', in this case). Whether or not I desire the specific outcome of the one hundred vehicle crashes my mirror-polished car would cause, the harm of that outcome itself imposes a rather severe ethical burden on the choice to drive that car at all. As is perhaps obvious (or perhaps not!), it would be highly unethical to drive such a vehicle on open-to-the-public surfaces regardless of whatever your desires and motivations may be. So, similarly, whether or not they desire to disrupt the balance of voting at HN, they are correct to recognize that their plans will, regardless of their interest or lack thereof, impact the site's algorithmic and voting outcomes. That disruption could present an ethical concern, and so they brought that concern to the community that would most be impacted — us, here! — and asked for our input. That is, in general, a sensible approach to working through the ethical concerns of complex outcomes impacting societies. The example provided is exaggerated to prioritize efficacy over plausibility. And it's to the credit of OP that they asked even though this impact would bring the site into closer alignment with their own interests and desires. In a contrasting example of outcomes to such concerns, HN users still post archive.is links to this day even though that site's owner/operator intentionally 'infected' all of our browsers with DDoS malware when visiting their site in order to abuse a single person. 'HN user voluntarily asks for serious ethical guidance from a community impacted by their software' was not something I ever expected to see here. Made my day. ps. Uh, I'd forgotten something. I did as a kid want a car just like the spaceship from Flight of the Navigator for years, even though society would punish me for it, and had forgotten about that for decades. It took discovering Asimov's Zeroth (Robots and Society) in my early teens for me to understand why I needed to account for a society's needs when evaluating the ethics of my own decisions, rather than just taking for granted the ethical patterns I was raised with. Thanks for the surprise nostalgic memories :D
    - brudgers 5mo ago
      If a choice is not contrary to your desire or other self interest, there is no ethical dimension.
      - altairprime 5mo ago
        Only if your society has no ethical opinions that its members are expected and/or compelled to attend to — and if you voluntarily choose to exclude non-compulsory societal impacts from your own ethical considerations. While I shouldn’t comment on your personal choices to opt out of social ethics as a sociopath with a very nice glass house and no desire to throw rocks, I’m still curious: Is your local governing body one such ethically-exempted ‘every person defines their own ethics and others have no say whatsoever’ society? They’re quite rare and I’d love to know more if so!
        brudgers 5mo ago
        If a person is compelled, they are not making a choice against their desire or other self-interest and therefore there is no ethical dimension to the act.
        altairprime 5mo ago
        Consider that people often receive pleasure for, and a subset of those actively desire to be a member of a society; and that quite a lot of them desire to abrogate personal ethics in favor of societal ethics. I’m not one of them, so it’s really creepy to me, but unfortunately it’s still a thing. I imagine it doesn’t apply to you either? People usually aren’t capable of adopting the ethical model you describe because they are wired for societal joy and it feels wrong to oppose that so uncaringly.

Where is it stated as desirable? I was only able to determine that they’re concerned about whether that predicted (and certain) outcome makes their actions leading to it unethical, so I’d like to know what I missed in my reading.

brudgers 5mo ago
If it was not desired, then what would be the ethical question?
- altairprime 5mo ago
  Is it ethical to drive a polished-mirror vehicle on public roads? I don't particularly desire to do so (anymore), but even if I rolled a d20 to a nat 1 and that critical miss of a color was unconditionally applied to my new car, wholly decoupling any involvement of my desires with the obvious and catastrophic outcomes of a polished mirror finish on other drivers, I still owe it to my society to evaluate whether proceeding to drive that vehicle is ethical or not. You can't conditional 'is this ethical' on whether or not one desires one of the outcomes ('amplified impact', in this case). Whether or not I desire the specific outcome of the one hundred vehicle crashes my mirror-polished car would cause, the harm of that outcome itself imposes a rather severe ethical burden on the choice to drive that car at all. As is perhaps obvious (or perhaps not!), it would be highly unethical to drive such a vehicle on open-to-the-public surfaces regardless of whatever your desires and motivations may be. So, similarly, whether or not they desire to disrupt the balance of voting at HN, they are correct to recognize that their plans will, regardless of their interest or lack thereof, impact the site's algorithmic and voting outcomes. That disruption could present an ethical concern, and so they brought that concern to the community that would most be impacted — us, here! — and asked for our input. That is, in general, a sensible approach to working through the ethical concerns of complex outcomes impacting societies. The example provided is exaggerated to prioritize efficacy over plausibility. And it's to the credit of OP that they asked even though this impact would bring the site into closer alignment with their own interests and desires. In a contrasting example of outcomes to such concerns, HN users still post archive.is links to this day even though that site's owner/operator intentionally 'infected' all of our browsers with DDoS malware when visiting their site in order to abuse a single person. 'HN user voluntarily asks for serious ethical guidance from a community impacted by their software' was not something I ever expected to see here. Made my day. ps. Uh, I'd forgotten something. I did as a kid want a car just like the spaceship from Flight of the Navigator for years, even though society would punish me for it, and had forgotten about that for decades. It took discovering Asimov's Zeroth (Robots and Society) in my early teens for me to understand why I needed to account for a society's needs when evaluating the ethics of my own decisions, rather than just taking for granted the ethical patterns I was raised with. Thanks for the surprise nostalgic memories :D
  - brudgers 5mo ago
    If a choice is not contrary to your desire or other self interest, there is no ethical dimension.
    - altairprime 5mo ago
      Only if your society has no ethical opinions that its members are expected and/or compelled to attend to — and if you voluntarily choose to exclude non-compulsory societal impacts from your own ethical considerations. While I shouldn’t comment on your personal choices to opt out of social ethics as a sociopath with a very nice glass house and no desire to throw rocks, I’m still curious: Is your local governing body one such ethically-exempted ‘every person defines their own ethics and others have no say whatsoever’ society? They’re quite rare and I’d love to know more if so!
      - brudgers 5mo ago
        If a person is compelled, they are not making a choice against their desire or other self-interest and therefore there is no ethical dimension to the act.
        altairprime 5mo ago
        Consider that people often receive pleasure for, and a subset of those actively desire to be a member of a society; and that quite a lot of them desire to abrogate personal ethics in favor of societal ethics. I’m not one of them, so it’s really creepy to me, but unfortunately it’s still a thing. I imagine it doesn’t apply to you either? People usually aren’t capable of adopting the ethical model you describe because they are wired for societal joy and it feels wrong to oppose that so uncaringly.