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Comment by zzzeek | Hacker News Reader

when you say "keep it legal" it sounds like you only mean, "so I don't get arrested". That is, you would not work on something very ethical, but illegal (like some system of assisting in the production of medical marijuana in a state where it's illegal) but you would work on something unethical but legal (NSA spying).

So really, saying anything legal is not saying much - essentially ethics don't come into question.

I know for a fact that I'm very uncomfortable working on something that I find to be obviously unethical. Though NSA stuff, I'd not work on that just because I'd hate keeping everything I do a secret.

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I can't agree more. Legal isn't the same as moral, and conflating the two is pretty disingenuous.

My professional goal (hell, my life goal) is to work on things that make a positive difference in the world. Laws don't necessarily come into it (and sometimes are in direct opposition to this). I believe (or naively hope) that other people in my profession feel the same way, otherwise the future is going to get... interesting.

Sure, as with all things human, there is the occasional gray area where there are no good answers, but yes I probably wouldn't work in a criminal enterprise in a democratic nation, whether it is about medical marijuana or not.

The point is, I'll work on things as per my ethics, not some random person's ethics or a hypothetical "engineers code of conduct" or whatever as the article seems to advocate.

I gave plenty of examples of software that some people would consider unethical (say drone targeting, or NSA crawling etc that TFA is about) that I would have no problem working on. My ethics are mostly in harmony with the legal systems of democratic nations. I'm sorry if that doesn't accord with your notions of what "should be".

Oh well that's something different - you'll work on what you find to be personally ethical. That's absolutely fine, ethics after all are ultimately personal. Like I'd not work for Monsanto, since I find them unethical, but certainly most hackers disagree with me on that. I'm not happy about the NSA situation though I see it more as an issue of bounds being overstepped, the engineers working there don't strike me as empirically unethical.

I agree completely. I threw in 'legal' in the original post to head off morons chanting "so you'd work for drug dealers" etc. My only point was, to quote you, "the NSA situation ...I see it more as an issue of bounds being overstepped, the engineers working there don't strike me as empirically unethical" (well stated).

I have a hard time listening to the demonizing of the NSA engineers by people who work at Google/Yahoo/Facebook/Amazon (or would like to) who build similar technology to profile users!

Throwing in "legal" in a discussion that pretty much revolves around that seems like a poor way to communicate.

Also "drug dealers" is probably the epitome of a morally/legal ambiguous job. Purdue has no doubt eased the suffering of millions of people, yet they were still hit with felony convictions.

> The point is, I'll work on things as per my ethics

I'm a bit confused... are you saying there are some jobs you wouldn't take no matter how good the salary was? You seemed to imply otherwise in your original comment.

oh what would we do without absolute black and white with sharp dividing lines ? Go read grellas's comment. He says it much better than I could

I did read Grellas's comment, and I'm not sure why you think my question had anything to do with "absolute black and white with sharp dividing lines."

In your original comment, you said:

> give me enough money and challenging work, great working conditions, and I'll work for any legal company or organization, though some organizations would have to put out a great deal of money vs others

The key word here is "any." You later stated that you operate by your own ethical standards, and didn't seem to disagree when zzzeek interpreted that as "you'll work on what you find to be personally ethical," so I was merely asking you to clarify if you would really work for "any" legal organization.

Of course, if your ethical standard = whatever the authorities deem "legal," then your position is entirely consistent.

There is a point when further nitpicking communication is not only useless, it is actually a disservice to the forum. I leave the thread to you, and bow out. Cheers, have a nice day.

I honestly didn't think I was nitpicking, just trying to gain some clarity on your moral perspective.

Also, in terms of grellas saying it better than you could, he specifically notes that we "ought to avoid being a proximate cause of something deemed wrong even though technically legal." This directly contradicts your comment, in which you implied that you would work for any legal organization if the money was good enough. I was merely asking if you could address this contradiction, in the spirit of provoking reasonable discussion about the intersection of money and morality. But if you feel my line of inquiry was nitpicking, then I apologize.

Hey no need to apologize, it is all good. What I meant by "go read grellas' comment" was "Ignore what I wrote, Grellas says what I should have said".

Yes the use of the 'legal' bit (which I threw in to keep the ravening hordes off 'but but are you saying you are ok with drug dealing/child pornography/whatever'. In my defense, it was late at night here (India) when I wrote that and it is too late to edit now.

My position in my original comment was "Within the law (see below for an alternative to this clumsy phrasing), I'd probably do almost any job in software, provided I were paid enough". The "enough" might be quite high.

As a thought experiment, take a sw job you'd find distasteful, and ask yourself if you'd take it if your pay was a million dollars a year. How about if it were a billion? If you are the rare human being who wouldn't work for the NSA, no matter what you were paid, then more power to you. I would gladly work for them if they rewarded me well, because I don't think the engineers at NSA are evil demons bent on world domination. By that logic, nobody should be a soldier, because the essence of that job is killing other people for dubious political causes. Yet the USA worships its service personnel ("Thank you for your service") to a far greater degree than most other countries (where being a soldier is "just" another job).

Grellas of course lays all of tis this out much better than I can. "proximate cause" is the phrase I should have used, but I am not a lawyer and wasn't even aware of the phrase.

So, yes I probably wouldn't work on something that has a pure unadulterated horrifying evil proximate effect( and no good aspects) to it. But that isn't saying very much since this kind of pure evil job probably doesn't exist outside a platonic ideal.

I was objecting to the broadbrush sanctimony in the article, and the use of (in my mind) silly examples.

The whole "legal" bit was clumsy phrasing on my part and you are right to call me out on it.

Cheers,

Well, I guess I wouldn't work for the NSA no matter what (well, it depends on the specific job, of course, they might actually have some positions that are not ethically questionable, after all), and there is one important reason why pay cannot compensate for it: The effects are not just on others, but also affect myself, so that's a cost that I have to subtract from the pay. A society with complete surveillance removes everything from life that makes it worth living, for everyone, including myself, and you can not buy that back, so money would be worthless as compensation.

I think a common misconception is that ethics are somehow something that you obey for others to gain from it. A concensus of behaving ethically creates wealth for everyone, including yourself. It's not that we do not commonly mug other people in the street because we don't want to have their money, but because a society where you can expect to not be mugged is just so much nicer to live in, so that is a value in itself. The only problem with that is that society can support some free riders, and so there is some motivation to be the free rider.

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