3 ms·

People are morally complex than that. Lots of people have no idea what they're invested in and many people work for companies like Meta and Amazon because they

People are morally complex than that. Lots of people have no idea what they're invested in and many people work for companies like Meta and Amazon because they have no other work options.

ndriscoll 2mo ago
All the same, if one generation completely fails to uphold their side of the generational contract, whether through malice or indifference, why would the following ones hold up their side? Their failure to build a world that the next generations can live and raise their own families in means they did not earn their rest. If dismantling things that are actively, today, still harming people as a means to fund those retirements means they can't have that comfort, well okay then. They should've spent their resources building renewable energy generation or something instead instead of still today voting against it. Something no one would want to tear down. And FAANGs have an entire industry around getting into. They are not and never were the only option. They're notoriously the more difficult option, and during the last 15-20 years when this was all being built, software had some of the best career prospects. No one was forced to work there. They had to go out of their way to do it, and a lot of them specifically practiced for it. They knew exactly what they were doing. Even if it were their only prospect, just like if a theft ring were someone's "only prospect" (it's also not), the correct answer is still to stop them.
- phyzix5761 2mo ago
  Have some compassion man. Hindsight is 20/20. I'm sure when we're both old, people are gonna call us out for things we should have done that would have prevented the world from becoming X, Y, or Z. At the end of the day most people are just trying their best to provide for their families and for their futures with the best information that's available to them.
  - ndriscoll 2mo ago
    It's not hindsight though. The problems with the ad economy were always known. Page and Brin pointed it out in the pagerank paper. Altman said ads would have to be a last resort (so he knows it's wrong), and then they did it. The employees there are in high demand. They didn't have to help build it, but they did. People who build TVs that spy on their owners know what they're doing is wrong; it's literally famous dystopian sci-fi. It's not that they didn't prevent something: they built it with eyes wide open. Or like the gambling thing: it was already illegal. All they had to do was not make the world worse. The saga that led to its legalization started with a voter referendum. Then other states jumped on the idea and took it further. No one needs hindsight to realize universities pushing their students to gamble on sports is evil. There's no "that's how it's always been" to excuse themselves; they thought of a new way to exploit young people and did it. In any case, even if you grant them being merely indifferent instead of malicious, that still earns them indifference toward whatever troubles fixing the damage they're still right now bringing might cause them.

People are morally complex than that. Lots of people have no idea what they're invested in and many people work for companies like Meta and Amazon because they have no other work options.

ndriscoll 2mo ago

All the same, if one generation completely fails to uphold their side of the generational contract, whether through malice or indifference, why would the following ones hold up their side? Their failure to build a world that the next generations can live and raise their own families in means they did not earn their rest. If dismantling things that are actively, today, still harming people as a means to fund those retirements means they can't have that comfort, well okay then. They should've spent their resources building renewable energy generation or something instead instead of still today voting against it. Something no one would want to tear down. And FAANGs have an entire industry around getting into. They are not and never were the only option. They're notoriously the more difficult option, and during the last 15-20 years when this was all being built, software had some of the best career prospects. No one was forced to work there. They had to go out of their way to do it, and a lot of them specifically practiced for it. They knew exactly what they were doing. Even if it were their only prospect, just like if a theft ring were someone's "only prospect" (it's also not), the correct answer is still to stop them.

phyzix5761 2mo ago
Have some compassion man. Hindsight is 20/20. I'm sure when we're both old, people are gonna call us out for things we should have done that would have prevented the world from becoming X, Y, or Z. At the end of the day most people are just trying their best to provide for their families and for their futures with the best information that's available to them.
- ndriscoll 2mo ago
  It's not hindsight though. The problems with the ad economy were always known. Page and Brin pointed it out in the pagerank paper. Altman said ads would have to be a last resort (so he knows it's wrong), and then they did it. The employees there are in high demand. They didn't have to help build it, but they did. People who build TVs that spy on their owners know what they're doing is wrong; it's literally famous dystopian sci-fi. It's not that they didn't prevent something: they built it with eyes wide open. Or like the gambling thing: it was already illegal. All they had to do was not make the world worse. The saga that led to its legalization started with a voter referendum. Then other states jumped on the idea and took it further. No one needs hindsight to realize universities pushing their students to gamble on sports is evil. There's no "that's how it's always been" to excuse themselves; they thought of a new way to exploit young people and did it. In any case, even if you grant them being merely indifferent instead of malicious, that still earns them indifference toward whatever troubles fixing the damage they're still right now bringing might cause them.