Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

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> A genuine question: if one is a good, well intentioned human being, supposedly with principles, and ends up actively contributing to a dystopia or at least a much worse society, is that person excused because of "oh, the leadership fell off!" or "because I had good intentions"? At all? No, you'd be piled up with all the others that sold their morals and their society for money.

The challenge is that we are all simultaneously part of many groups whose behavior we don't always agree with.

Should you be piled up with all the others because you're a member of a species that is destroying the planet's natural resources? Should you be piled up with all the others because you pay taxes to a country that used that money to build weapons that killed innocents? Should you be piled up because you live in a city whose cops commit police brutality? Should you be piled up because you bought a product and gave money to a corporation that uses child labor?

Life is not so black and white. We have some responsibility for the behavior of the groups we are part of, but only fractional. We should exert our agency towards good when we can, but believing that we have all of the stains on our hands of every community or group we've ever touched or participated in is not a path to a better world, it's just a path to individual shame and misery.

You're right, and it makes sense. Let me propose another perspective then: would a well-meaning, good person not be liable to culpability if he or she worked on a feature that actively monitored its users for data to sell to advertisors, much more than if such a person was working with something like Flutter or Go, since the latter workers are doing net positive things?

I suppose I got a bit carried away originally, but the point is just that - can one truly be well-meaning if he works in such a feature as that of the first example?

Moreover, when it comes to the examples you cited, I agree that we all share fractional culpability, some more than others. But we do not have a choice in being humans, or in paying taxes to our governments. We do, however, have a choice when it comes to working for Google.

> I suppose I got a bit carried away originally, but the point is just that - can one truly be well-meaning if he works in such a feature as that of the first example?

One way of reading the original statements is that there are many people who are not doing that and would not do that.

> But we do not have a choice (...) or in paying taxes to our governments

This obviously reminds me of Thoreau, but more practically many people can move. Unless you are from the US (or a handful of other weird countries) that stops you from paying taxes to your origin's government.

E: Upheaval caused by moving is often actually not higher than one caused by quitting: consider (a) people on employer-tied visas and/or who don't speak the local language well enough to use it professionally (b) people who don't have families of their own yet.

> or in paying taxes to our governments.

Yes, but we must inevitably pay taxes to some government. If you can find one with zero blood on its hands, let me know and I'll be the first to emigrate.

> We do, however, have a choice when it comes to working for Google.

True, but we must work somewhere, and few corporations are purely good. And some large corporations that have done many regrettable things have also done many valuable things. Do the good things a group does enter into its calculation?

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