[KGIII]

What is the level of culpability for a foot soldier in the army of an evil dictator? What is the level if they committed no atrocities? How about if they were an active participant? How about if they were zealous and inspired new levels of atrocious behavior?

I don't have an answer and those are rhetorical questions. The point I'm laboring to make is that there are varied levels of culpability. There are also varied levels of evilness.

We like to see the world in binary fashion, I think. This may not be new, but it is getting a lot more visible. Look at the political arena and the divisions between the politically active.

Hmm... How to describe this?

If I make a post that supports the right of Nazis to speak freely, I'm assumed to be as evil as they are (by some) and should be punched in the face. Yet, if I am speaking with White Nationalists and post a comment that supports the right for AntiFa to speak freely, I'm called everything from a Jew to communist.

They don't actually take the time to stop and think that I'm not actually any of those things, that I'm just supporting the right to free speech - for everyone. If I'm not supporting Hillary, I'm supporting Trump - even though I voted for Stein.

So, there are varied levels of evil and good - yet people seem to often focus on the extremes. Is Google evil? Maybe, but they've made mountains of information easily discoverable at no direct financial costs to the end user. Is Facebook evil? Maybe, but they've enabled broad communication with family and friends you might never have had the means to maintain on your own. Is Microsoft evil? Maybe, but they've done more to make the personal computer ubiquitous than any other company.

It's very much a sliding scale and no company is completely evil, as is no one person. Well, except Oracle - they are pretty evil!

I guess where you draw the line is a personal thing and, like the rest, is on a sliding scale. It's easier to try to place things into boxes and label them good and evil, but that's intellectually lazy and not very accurate. Even the most evil companies aren't entirely evil.

shrugs

That's my takeaway, for what it's worth. I also try really hard to not judge or to control. I do have lines that can be crossed, but I try to be understanding and have empathy.

I'm not sure if this helps, but it works for me.

[mbrock]

It seems to me that the basically religious concept of "evil" causes a lot of confusion.

What Google, Facebook, and Amazon are is primarily extremely powerful.

The U.S. government, say, does a lot of nasty, undesirable things; it also does a lot of benevolent, desirable things.

Working in these institutions means, to varying degrees, aligning yourself with the motives of extremely powerful entities.

But of course it also means potentially influencing that power in a way that you and your peers would recognize as benevolent.

Neither Google, Facebook, nor Amazon have core missions that are obviously bad, i.e., they are not directly opposed to a free society, they are not fundamentally violent, they are basically not the Nazi Party.

But they do share a core mission that is enormously expansive, kind of like the East India companies. Operationally, they are very likely to use some foul tactics in order to grow and compete.

As long as we have the global kind of capitalism where for-profit corporations grow into hyperobjects, it seems like we will have a top layer of quasi-monopolies using information technology and capital accumulation to dominate.

And according to the ideology, you can't really stop that without violating the principles of liberty. Basically to prevent such formations you need a powerful state, and that state will itself be such a formation, except with elections (hopefully, and maybe only nominally).

You might even need a global state-like entity, right?

If we use the word evil to describe Google, Facebook, and Amazon, I think we should rather say that the structure of capitalism is evil, and that'll get you into trouble.

Especially because this is a forum topically and structurally centered on the very impulse to launch exponentially growing IT firms.

This site is a promotional and educational wing of Y Combinator, which in its essence desires to be a recursively powerful generator of new mega-corporations, structurally bound to the multiplication of accumulated capital.

So, umm, yeah.

[yladiz]

The main issue with this argument is that you can't really choose the government you live in, especially if it's under a strong dictator (e.g. you can move from the US, you can't just from North Korea), but you can choose who you work for, especially when it deals with tech companies.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

> Is Google evil? Maybe, but they've made mountains of information easily discoverable at no direct financial costs to the end user. Is Facebook evil? Maybe, but they've enabled broad communication with family and friends you might never have had the means to maintain on your own. Is Microsoft evil? Maybe, but they've done more to make the personal computer ubiquitous than any other company.

Or have they?

Just because a monopoly provides a useful service, doesn't mean that without that monopoly we wouldn't have that useful service, in which case their net contribution to society would not actually be that service, but just their monopoly power over the service, which is not exactly a net positive.

[mirimir]

Soldiers typically have a duty to refuse immoral orders.

[KGIII]

And what if the soldier was never given immoral orders but was a simple cook who fed those who carried out the orders?

I know what you're saying, but that's why I listed all those example questions. I listed them to show there are various levels of culpability and various levels of evil.

Where you draw the line is a personal thing and I'm not qualified to suggest where you draw it on an individual level.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Really, the important question is: What realistic chance did they have to not contribute without killing themselves? I guess one can argue about whether people should also be required to kill themselves to prevent evil, but that certainly is a good minimum.

[taway_1212]

A duty to whom? In most armies and wars, insisting to refuse an order, moral or not, will get you in front of a firing squad (or, if it's a really civilized army, in jail).

[ionised]

The allied powers collectively decided that I was just following orders was not a credible defence of anything during the Nuremberg trials.

[taway_1212]

I kind of see their point - under this defense, the only person you could really convict would be Hitler (everybody else was following orders). I'm guessing the logic here is that if you were for example a commander a Nazi death squad that was doing mass murders of Jews in Eastern Poland, then yeah, you were following orders, but you could have also asked to be transferred to something else.

I'm not sure this logic would hold for Soviet genocides though (not that they were tried at Nuremberg), as I suspect a hint of hestitation from say NKWD commander would probably result in him being promptly sent to Gulag to die. During Stalin's rule, pretty much everybody was operating with a gun to their heads at all times.

[ionised]

I think the logic during the trials was that even if disobeying orders meant punishment such as torture or death, that was preferable to committing the crimes for which they were standing trial.

As in, your potential death or suffering at the hands of your superiors is also not a credible defence for what you did.

That obviously makes a lot more sense in the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity though.

[mirimir]

Well, it does depend on the army, I admit. And "immoral" was probably not a good term. More like "an order that seems to violate policy". But following illicit orders can also get you in trouble.