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I can't imagine ignoring personal ethics in career decisions. I also find it troubling when personal ethics are inaccurately dismissed as "identity politics". S

by n4r9 4mo ago

I can't imagine ignoring personal ethics in career decisions. I also find it troubling when personal ethics are inaccurately dismissed as "identity politics". Supporting carbon-neutrality and rejecting military applications are clearly matters of personal ethics.

dominicrose 4mo ago
Personal ethics is personal which means other people won't likely understand it nor truly think it's really ethical.
groundzeros2015 4mo ago
I think very often people are not looking and cause and effect (impact on those issues you care about), but rather brand identification. How does the image of this job match with my stated values? In that sense it does seem shallow, as it’s really a concern for your own PR and not harm reduction. For example I know people in mining who 1. Work on safety for people in mines. 2. Work on reducing environmental impact. But many of their friends say “I could never work for mining”. And what I hear is “I don’t want that brand”.
- n4r9 4mo ago
  That probably does happen, but I don't feel like it's happening here.
  - groundzeros2015 4mo ago
    I’m responding to a comment about what it means to take a moral stance in terms of career.
nla 4mo ago
[flagged]
n4r9 4mo ago
nla made a reply which I think is worth considering. It got flagged and killed and I don't know why. nla ------------ You’re eliding two very different things: personal conscience and actual consequence. The author is obviously free to resign for any reason. But once he publishes a moral indictment of Google and, implicitly, of people who remain there, it is fair to ask what concrete harm his resignation reduces. The post does not really answer that. In fact, it makes the opposite case. He lists a long set of valuable security and privacy improvements that happened precisely because he was inside Google. Then he concludes that the ethical move is to remove people like himself from the institution. That may satisfy a personal purity boundary, but it is not obviously harm reduction. It is closer to moral hygiene: “I do not want to be associated, even transitively, with something I dislike.” Fine as a private decision, but not the same thing as improving the world. That is what I meant by identity politics: career choices framed less around practical impact and more around preserving a morally coherent self-image. my response --------------- Practical impact is a useful way to explore ethics, but it's not the only way. I think it's reasonable to refuse to profit from an institution that does harm, even though removing yourself won't change anything. And I think a lot of people would agree if the choice was made stark. For example, suppose someone offered me £1k to go and keep them company while they tortured an innocent person. It's all somehow legal, and if I don't do it they'll just offer the money to someone else who will. Do I take the money? It won't make any difference if it's me or someone else. But I believe most people wouldn't. Or at least they'd duck out as soon as it got real.

by n4r9 4mo ago

dominicrose 4mo ago

Personal ethics is personal which means other people won't likely understand it nor truly think it's really ethical.

groundzeros2015 4mo ago

I think very often people are not looking and cause and effect (impact on those issues you care about), but rather brand identification. How does the image of this job match with my stated values? In that sense it does seem shallow, as it’s really a concern for your own PR and not harm reduction. For example I know people in mining who 1. Work on safety for people in mines. 2. Work on reducing environmental impact. But many of their friends say “I could never work for mining”. And what I hear is “I don’t want that brand”.

n4r9 4mo ago
That probably does happen, but I don't feel like it's happening here.
- groundzeros2015 4mo ago
  I’m responding to a comment about what it means to take a moral stance in terms of career.

nla 4mo ago

[flagged]

n4r9 4mo ago

nla made a reply which I think is worth considering. It got flagged and killed and I don't know why. nla ------------ You’re eliding two very different things: personal conscience and actual consequence. The author is obviously free to resign for any reason. But once he publishes a moral indictment of Google and, implicitly, of people who remain there, it is fair to ask what concrete harm his resignation reduces. The post does not really answer that. In fact, it makes the opposite case. He lists a long set of valuable security and privacy improvements that happened precisely because he was inside Google. Then he concludes that the ethical move is to remove people like himself from the institution. That may satisfy a personal purity boundary, but it is not obviously harm reduction. It is closer to moral hygiene: “I do not want to be associated, even transitively, with something I dislike.” Fine as a private decision, but not the same thing as improving the world. That is what I meant by identity politics: career choices framed less around practical impact and more around preserving a morally coherent self-image. my response --------------- Practical impact is a useful way to explore ethics, but it's not the only way. I think it's reasonable to refuse to profit from an institution that does harm, even though removing yourself won't change anything. And I think a lot of people would agree if the choice was made stark. For example, suppose someone offered me £1k to go and keep them company while they tortured an innocent person. It's all somehow legal, and if I don't do it they'll just offer the money to someone else who will. Do I take the money? It won't make any difference if it's me or someone else. But I believe most people wouldn't. Or at least they'd duck out as soon as it got real.