Comment by haxiomic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by haxiomic | Hacker News Reader

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I miss the recent past where new tech felt exciting and inspiring but for the last few years new developments are often coupled with an anxiety for the new harms possible and often unclear benefits. I wonder how much is 'inevitable', at large enough scale we will always exploring new possibility spaces as they become available and how much is our choosing – we put resources to build these things in full awareness because we think they bring value over focusing on other things. I realise though it is useful for society to develop understanding and defences for these things early

I've notice I've steadily become more ashamed to be associated with tech. I'm still processing how to react to this and what to choose to work on in response

Am I in a bubble? Do you share similar feelings or are yours quite different? I am very curious

> I've notice I've steadily become more ashamed to be associated with tech

Are you actively contributing to these areas you feel ashamed about? If not, you shouldn't really feel ashamed about what other people chose to work on, even if both of you work "in tech".

I'm sure not all people working on medical research agrees with what all other researchers are working on, but you cannot really control what others are working on, so why feel ashamed over what others are working on?

you shouldn't really feel ashamed about what other people chose to work on, even if both of you work "in tech".

Why not? Someone who builds boxes that hold bombs can be ashamed of being in the munitions industry, even if they don't make the actual bombs.

Right, but if you're in general "manufacturing", there isn't much point of feeling ashamed about some parts of the industry focusing on munitions manufacturing.

I feel the same way. I can't think of a single legitimate use case for this. I wish all those GPU teraflops were being used for something else.

Definitely with you. It used to be a higher entry point so a certain passion was necessary. And it was less about money and more about sharing info and joy. Now networking tech has been "democratized", it's another medium where the usual human pain and greed play out. High school again, but with real consequences on peoples' lives.

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