[enriquto]

> A bit OT, but I wonder how I'd feel if I was offered a job working on software for missiles.

Unless you are an extreme pacifist (which is a perfectly reasonable thing to be), you'll acknowledge the legitimate need for the existence of an army in your country. In that case, the army better be equipped by missiles than by youths carrying bayonets. Then, there's nothing wrong in providing these missiles with technologically advanced guiding systems.

On the other hand, if I worked in "algorithmic trading" or fancy "financial instruments" I would not be able to sleep at night without a fair dose of drugs.

[GordonS]

It's not that I'm a pacifist, but more that I don't trust my government (UK, but I have the same issues with the US gov too) to do justifiable things with them.

If they were for defense only, I might be able to do it. But instead they are sold to any government with the means to pay, regardless of their human rights record or how they will be used (e.g. Saudi). Aside from selling them on, they are used in conflicts that are hard to justify, beyond filling the coffers of the rich and powerful. Take the latest Iraq war for example: started based on falsified evidence, hundreds of thousands dead, atrocities carried out by the west, schools bombed, incidents covered up...

Given these realities, I just couldn't do it.

My original musing was more thinking along the lines of an ideal world, where I trusted my government; I'm still not sure I could do it.

[fancyfredbot]

I suppose we have the 2008 crisis to thank for creating a popular view that finance is an entirely morally corrupt industry. Perhaps it's not surprising given the role "fancy financial instruments" played there. All the same, it strikes me as strange to find moving risk around to be more morally difficult than designing a missile - moving risk around is at least sometimes straightforwardly beneficial for everyone involved, a missile strike less so...