[mmjaa]

I once worked for a large industrial group in Europe. The kind that has a bit of a piece of every little pie there is - military, transportation, etc. I was pretty happy working there .. until I got a demo from the 'defence' group.

They demonstrated the willingness to push the company's technology into heinous, heinous territory. The kind of thing where a drone would be able to follow a single person in a crowd, and target them for execution - unguided, of course.

I quit the next day. Those of us who make technology, need to be very sure we see that it is not used destructively against the human species. The responsibility is very, very high. And, the danger is extreme. These people were revelling in the fact that they could develop targeted assassination drones and sell them to any country in the world.

Heinous.

[brolover]

I'm not surprised. After finishing my degree, I went to optimize a couple of production lines. I didn't get much detail and thought it was for plastic/glass bottles (filling liquids and moving them around - many tiny grabbers, simple movement, not that wide tracks).

After about 2 months of work, and after the production line got parallelized and speed drastically increased I went to see it work.

What I saw shocked me and I immediatelly quit. It was a production line for handling of female and male young and grown chicks. Debeaking, throat slitting. I was absolutely shocked how none of the superiors told me exactly which product was being handled.

After seeing the horrific product of my work I quit.

Since then, I'm not surprised, given what horrors we do to living animals, that we are ready to do them to each other.

I doubted the meaning of my work at university, what did I do? Spend 4 years at college to create killing machines? I didn't think I'd ever do that.

[nojvek]

> Since then, I'm not surprised, given what horrors we do to living animals, that we are ready to do them to each other.

I sometimes think this is why we don’t see any intelligent civilizations out there. Intelligence gives rise to deceitfulness and eventually, one selfish actor can bring down an entire civilization intentionally or unintentionally since the weapons get so powerful.

[sametmax]

That's the thing isn't it ? They can't do anything alone.

It always amazes me that those big entities exist, because they require such a huge highly educated and skilled human power. What are all those genius at the NSA thinking ? I can't imagine somebody smart enough to work here is not smart enough to understand the consequences of working there. So why are they not quitting ?

Social pressure and money are part of the equation, certainly. I remember when I turned down a Google interview, my close circle though it was weird that I did that, even more for ethical reason.

Having the best toys, budgets and projects certainly helps as well.

But still, I wonder.

[relics443]

Have you considered that there are people out there with values that differ from yours? It's not wildly impossible, regardless of what the screaming minority would have you believe.

Maybe they don't have a problem with working on such projects, because they agree with their end goal?

[sametmax]

Ocam's razor, so yes.

I learned very young there are differences, like I literally (NOT figurative at all) couldn't see the motivation behind destroying school equipment, drawing on walls, etc. While for some, it's fun.

But even after all those years, it's just so hard to wrap my head around that.

[vokep]

They probably understand others have different values. The confusion is, some values seem so self evident that its bewildering anyone with a certain level of intelligence wouldn't realize the same values.

I think the answer might be that they do have the same values, but they have a different model of the world overall, which calls for different ways of achieving those values.

To take this to an extreme, imagine a person fighting for their life against actual criminals threatening vs a person fighting for their life against a random person they think is a shape-shifting alien impostor. Both are internally justified by the same values, one is externally justified by a more correct perception of reality.

[p1esk]

How can you tell that your perception of reality is more "correct" than mine?

[sametmax]

Ah, those are the words I have been missing. Thank you.

[refurb]

I'm glad someone made this comment. It blows me away when people think their set of values is the only "right" way to think and anyone else who has a different set of values is obviously damaged or doing it unwillingly.

[pandaman]

There is nothing extraordinary or even unusual in this. It's basic tribalism: my tribe is made from virtuous people who are also smart and beautiful, the enemy tribe, on the other hand, consists of deformed degenerates with the room temperature IQ.

[sametmax]

No you see you imply that I've given a value to the people here. Which is not at all what I said.

I exactly said I can't understand the line of thinking that leads to the decision. That's pretty much all.

[pandaman]

Did not you imply that smart people cannot possibly be in the other tribe so there has to be some reason why your tribe members are not quitting the enemy tribe cause?

[sametmax]

Well, let's say suddenly you learn a community of elite thinkers eat babies and think it's good way to control population.

You'd be baffled, wouldn't you ?

It's not a matter of morality, of good or bad, or right or wrong.

I understand the difference exists. It just feels so alien to me I can't get to form the mental model that helps me understand what thinking lead to this behavior.

Also, read the other comments, we answered your points already.

[refurb]

you learn a community of elite thinkers eat babies

Maybe I'm not reading this correctly, but you're saying that if anyone holds an opinion different than yours your reaction is the same as if they thought "eating babies" was OK?

Things aren't that black and white. People can hold opinions different than your and you can withhold judgement.

[sametmax]

They just have a different opinion on eating babies. People can hold opinions different than your and you can withhold judgement.

See again, you add morality in the equation, talking about black and white. But morality is arbitrary. You can draw the line anywhere, one inch to left or the right, and so on, indefinitely.

So that's not what I said.

What I said was "I can't understand".

Not "it should not be" or "it's impossible" or "they are bad people".

Apparently, you have difficulty to understand that somebody can't understand.

[Sharlin]

It's literally the same thing that allowed concentration camps to happen. Or, in the words of the late Sir Terence:

“There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.”

— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

[cmrdporcupine]

Arguably the majority supports the ideological foundations, aims, and methods of the institutions you are speaking of. In particular the military and intelligence institutions. If they didn't, they would have been removed by vote or force some time ago.

Frankly the broad majority of people in the US benefit materially in some way from their existence in ways that they might not even be fully aware of.

I am not arguing this is a good thing, but I think it's a reality. Military power abroad means wealth accumulation at home.

[p1esk]

Interesting. I have absolutely zero ethical concerns with Google building a drone which can more accurately target someone. I'm also perfectly fine with US government using those drones to kill bad guys.

Now if they use it to kill good guys, then it's a problem that needs to be solved.

[sametmax]

Yeah but your good guys and their good guys will not be the same for ever.

[p1esk]

If that ever happens, I will protest them killing good guys, rather than protest them having advanced weapons.

[soVeryTired]

How does one determine who's a good guy and who's a bad guy?

I would have thought most people are somewhere in between.

[p1esk]

So far, the people they kill are very much in line with my definition of "bad guys" (e.g. bin Laden).

[mmjaa]

Are you paying attention to how many "good guys" are being killed by 'your side' daily? Because thats more important than your other stat.

[soVeryTired]

I don't think you're really engaging with my point.

[dorgo]

Is Snowden a good guy?

My government did enough stupid things for me to not want them to have sophisticated military toys.

[p1esk]

Is Snowden a good guy?

Debatable, but regardless - do you think the reason US government have not killed Snowden is the lack of "sophisticated military toys"?

Also, my government did enough stupid things (like killing innocent people in war zones by mistake) for me to want them to have more intelligent weapons.

[jerf]

It isn't hard to imagine a scenario in which the majority, or even the strong majority, of each nation disapproves of its own military or intelligence techniques, but nevertheless nothing can change because any nation that unilaterally drops some questionable technique (and don't just think "torture" here, but "excessive surveillance of the home population" and such) pays penalties vs. the other nations and experiences no benefit, making it very difficult for even one nation to climb the resulting gradient, let alone the entire world.

It's a hard problem, and most glib solutions are, well, just that, glib. Centralized agreements become increasingly difficult as the number of entities increase, for instance, even before we account for scenarios like this where the reward for defection increases proportionally to the number of other participants in the disarmament.

This is also ignoring those cases where there isn't even disagreement; in the real world, for instance, while you can quibble about the exact lines it seems to be the case that the Chinese accept and approve of levels of "invasive government" (to use a Western spin on the idea; I don't know what they would call it exactly) that Magna Carta-descended countries would consider abhorrent, making coordination even harder. (Meanwhile, they consider our lack of coordination or whathaveyou, if not "abhorrent", at the very least "sub-optimal", and possible dangerously socially negligent. As I'm using English here and, like I said, I don't know what they'd call it exactly, I can't help a bit of a Western spin here, but I acknowledge the flip side.)

[sametmax]

> Frankly the broad majority of people in the US benefit materially in some way from their existence in ways that they might not even be fully aware of.

No argument here, having a strong bully in the room is good for you when he is on your side.

[rixrax]

What about all the open source? I'l hazard that that quite a few instruments of war and mayhem run on FOSS. Is there a moral dilemma there? Should FOSS licenses make provisions for the type of use packages can be used for (I believe they should)?

[iblo66]

>So why are they not quitting ?

Because not everybody thinks the way you do. That's why we have elections.

[everdev]

I applaud your morality. In terms of moving the needle towards a more moral world, do you think employee resignations have a positive effect or does it create a less moral survivor bias where the people who are left have fewer limits or concerns?

I'm sure disclosure would be illegal per your employee contract, but are there any other steps concerned employees can take?

[jotm]

Yeah, pretty sure it's a good thing for those companies/projects. Someone who could've been sabotaging their work just quit right away, so they can get someone who will actually like working there. It's not like the employee takes away funding or resources (well, unless they're a genius/influencer, but then again, a good enough motivated replacement is fine).

[tormeh]

>and sell them to any country in the world

This is never true. No government will allow its companies (and in this context that's how it's seen) to sell weapons to countries they don't approve of. That said, apparently the defense industry is often irresponsible at best.

[thirduncle]

No government will allow its companies (and in this context that's how it's seen) to sell weapons to countries they don't approve of.

What the poster meant was "just about any country" in the world. Which we've seen happen time and time again - the restrictions may be nominally in place (for a while), but eventually they get selectively lifted, and/or the companies find a way to circumvent them.

At times (and not at all surprisingly) with the assistance of certain government agencies chartered with the purpose of not only enacting precisely this kind of subterfuge - but perfecting it as an art.

[jcbrand]

Doesn't really matter that much, AFAIK all (most?) western countries sell to Saudi Arabia for instance.

[Mediterraneo10]

Even if a firm in country A can sell only to group of countries X, another firm in country B might be able to sell to group of countries Y. All you really need is a few companies with overlapping markets to eventually bring such tech to the entire world.

[davesque]

It would be like Pandora's box, no? We didn't want North Korea to get nukes either.

[c3534l]

Is that really worse than bombing a vague area, hoping it has a lot of targets or the people you're after?

[walshemj]

You mean like those "fertilizer plants" that a certain European company sold to sadam ?

[astrodust]

There's an extraordinarily fine line between agricultural fertilizers and industrial explosives.

[walshemj]

I was thinking more along the lines of chemical weapons.

[astrodust]

Same thing. Chlorine gas is commonly used in many industrial processes, but it's also a highly toxic chemical that has been used (and banned!) in warfare.

The biggest problem is so-called "dual use" chemicals and compounds where there are legitimate military and non-military uses.

You can build extremely dangerous explosives from chemicals found on the shelf at a drug store, but that doesn't mean that company is in the business of selling explosives.

[mtgx]

Google leaders are either very naive and actually think the Pentagon wouldn't repurpose their tech for killing people, or they know exactly that this is how it will used but they agreed to sell it anyway, because money.

I'm much more inclined to believe it's the latter.

[dsfyu404ed]

I can beat you to death with a hammer or stab you to death with a knife. Should we not build hammers and knives? Should hammers and knives be subject to KYC laws?

Sure you can argue that it's different because those are things the common man can get whereas on the state can afford surveillance dragnets and drones but it wasn't that long ago that only the state could afford computers.

Edit: Apparently I struck a nerve.

Technology transfers between military and civilian application all the time. Propeller technology that helped submarines that are now obsolete stay quiet is fine tuned in a different manner to yield more environmentally friendly watercraft. A drone that can disperse insecticides on only the crops that need it can deliver chemical weapons with some slightly different fine tuning.

An 1984 (or 2018 UK if you like) surveillance and law enforcement system could be used to track down corruption in government, suppressing dissidents, identifying insider trading, identifying human tracking, etc. It all depends on who's using it. (I personally don't trust any government to properly wield that kind of power.)

The technology doesn't care. It's all how you use it.

[fredley]

The difference is between creating a hammer, and creating a hammer specifically for the purpose of efficiently killing humans.

[BookmarkSaver]

You mean, like a gun?

[anthony_romeo]

If you were to try and kill me with a knife, your life is on the line as well. If you try to kill me with a drone, your risk is only the money and time spent on the drone. There is quite a difference.

[BookmarkSaver]

I'm unclear as to what the moral difference is. It's more moral to kill someone if they can fight back? Then why are we giving our soldiers tanks? Guns? Fighter jets? Knives?

Why not just send them in with their fists.

This line of reasoning has no rational basis.

[jowiar]

The difference is the cost to yourself, or people you care about, when you want someone dead. Popular sentiment turned against the Vietnam war in the US because Americans were coming home dead, not because of the Vietnamese that we were killing. When we eliminate the cost of war, we make it more likely to enter one, and stay in one.

[BookmarkSaver]

Yeah, the American populace might not care, but the victims do care, and how upset they are made directly affects all other efforts in that area. Peacemaking and nationbuilding only gets more difficult the more people that have lost family members to the invaders.

If we'd gone into Baghdad WWII style, carpet bombing and all that, we'd probably still be fighting a significant war in Iraq. Or the country would be depopulated. Presumably the appearance of ISIS was largely a reaction to western actions in the region, and its initial strength was proportional to the outrage that could be drummed up. Sure, there are probably asinine military commanders that don't account for this, but it isn't the universal rule.

[kevindqc]

Are hammers and knives designed and bought to kill people?

[walshemj]

Some times yes there are companies that make bladed weapons for the military both for ceremonial and actual use.

And war hammers have a military context going back centuries and diy versions where used in trench warfare.

[dsfyu404ed]

Are advertising profiles designed and bought so that they state can oppress dissidents?