Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by yarou 3409 days ago
> Poor working conditions for one factory and saving the planet as a whole are different concerns.

I think that's contradictory. If you are setting out to save the world, but you can't improve factory conditions for your own workers, how have you shown the capability to save the world?

I'm reminded of having a strong AI agent that's given the condition "save humanity". That condition can be satisfied by having no humans on the planet to save.
3 comments
Dylan16807 3409 days ago
>how have you shown the capability

It's irrelevant. Nothing you do for worker satisfaction in one factory demonstrates whether you can or cannot save the world. There is absolutely no contradiction in treating them separately. This doesn't excuse making workers unhappy, but it's really a separate issue.

link
cderwin 3409 days ago
It is most certainly not contradictory. For example, one could make the argument that the allied effort against the Nazis in WWII was tantamount to "saving the world", yet the allied forces certainly didn't treat everyone in the most humane way possible -- see Japanese internment in the US, or the presumable "war crimes" that Allied forces committed in WWII. Yet that doesn't mean Allied forces weren't capable of destroying the Axis, which obviously is what happened.

A similar argument could be made about the Cold War and McCarthyism. It is simply nonsensical to mistake the goal of "saving the world" with the goal of "don't ever treat anyone slightly questionably ever again".

link
mikeash 3409 days ago
Let me consider the opposite question: if you are setting out to save the world, and you can improve factory conditions for your own workers, how have you shown the capability to save the world?

It's just not relevant. It's a non sequitur. It's "A is bad, B is good, you're doing A, therefore you can't do B."

link