Yet another Hacker News

50 points Brajeshwar 41 minutes ago 19 comments

jmclnx 25 minutes ago | parent

Nice to see people standing up for their beliefs even when it could hurt them.

Story time :)

I remember when I was first starting out as a programmer. At QE (always occurred on a weekend) a slew of financial reports were created and printed for review the following Monday then I think used for summaries for Wall Street to look at.

A high level finance manager came to me and asked if the report could be changed, not knowing what he was asking I said sure. After a long discussion turned out he wanted the numbers on the report changed and re-printed. I said it was possible but the numbers would be all wrong.

So he said "do it". I went to my manager and told them what he wanted, then I refused to do it. I said I would quit first because I did not want the SEC to come after me. Luckily they all supported me and the finance manager was told to "FO".

FWIW, that company is long gone.

ArcHound 25 minutes ago | parent

Generally, I agree.

Imagine: you start working at the company with a good will towards them. As you learn more and see more decisions, you slowly realize how bad it is. Now you've already contributed. Then you leave.

It might be possible to build everything with this goodwill and that's how we'd still end up with a torment nexus even if you immediately drop it.

What I'm saying is, at one point you have to break the company fully.

I'm not sure what more we need to wait for, if the claim "10% it ends humanity" is not enough.

carterschonwald 18 minutes ago | parent

theres a certain amount of financial security needed for folks to do this kinda thing.

phyzome 8 minutes ago | parent

Of course. But software developers are, on the whole, pretty damn well compensated. As a group we have a lot of freedom to make these sorts of financial decisions.

Yes, some members of the group don't have that freedom. But that doesn't excuse the ones who do.

calcifer 5 minutes ago | parent

The article addresses that:

> If the answer is the salary, say it louder, and do not force yourself to make excuses.

moondistance 14 minutes ago | parent

The root issue is a lack of honour in the world today.

cluckindan 14 minutes ago | parent

Good people are easy to mislead into thinking they’re doing a good thing.

davsti4 9 minutes ago | parent

Correction - highly intelligent people.

Its the same playbook, over and over again.

rvz 9 minutes ago | parent

For the "benefit of humanity", "saving the world" and "imaging to do good" via effective altruistic ways. /s

rochansinha 11 minutes ago | parent

It’s an excellent article marred by the last line/ heading.

People do things.

Good or bad is relative to their own biases/experiences/ beliefs and moral compass.

Very few people are truly sociopaths who do evil stuff for personal gain.

Most do it because of the curse of the “banality of evil” (re: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem?wprov=sf...>)

Doesn’t make it right, but like everything else in life the reality is much more complex than saying “good people refuse to do bad things”

dgellow 11 minutes ago | parent

That Coxon guy looks as delusional as the AI leadership. If you watch interviews he gave he doesn’t articulate what he’s concerned about, only sharing vague information about a supposed AI god that will take over the world, but without articulating why now, and how that would even happen. The more I look into his story the more that move looks like what a grifter would do