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Comment by pi-squared | Hacker News Reader

On the one side we want freedom of speech inside organizations so that they can discuss ideas like this. On the other side it's dangerous if an idea like this leaks because it presumably shows how evil Google is.

Now imagine a leaker inside your own brain. Every thought you may have could be displayed on the front page of The Verge or whatever. "Peter's internal thoughts hint he may be a pedophile".

I prefer Google having these internal discussions of highly disturbing concepts vs not having them.

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

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> freedom of speech inside organizations so that they can discuss ideas like this

What does that actually mean in practice? "We're going to float this idea which we all think is unethical, but without actually labelling it as unethical in the presentation?"

(The strange thing seems to be a software engineering organisation that thinks of things without immediately coming up with dozens of examples of how this could go wrong!)

Keep in mind that we're seeing a leak taken out of its context. We have no idea whether the "immediately coming up with" was one location over and not leaked.

(... which leads me personally to ask the question: what was the intent of the leaker here? ;) ).

On the contrary, the earnestness of the presentation implies that they believe it _is_ the ethical thing to do. That is a part of what struck me as creepy about the whole thing.

Directly from the article, it seems that they are well aware that it's not going to be the most popular idea.

> When reached for comment on The Selfish Ledger, an X spokesperson provided the following statement to The Verge:

>> “We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be. This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It’s not related to any current or future products.”

> Now imagine a leaker inside your own brain.

But it isn't like that at all. We don't judge people on their internal thoughts because they are fleeting and can even be random. But we do judge when someone distills those thoughts and starts opening their mouth or acting on them.

There was a well produced video and concept. This took quite some time. This was not a fleeting discussion just an interesting idea. This was distilled.

It isn't so much a leaker in your mind, but someone leaking what you gave a presentation on.

We don't judge people on their internal thoughts because they are fleeting and can even be random.

I disagree. I think we don't judge people on their internal thoughts because we can't see those internal thoughts. If they became visible, people would start judging each other on them.

Motive is a relevant consideration in legal cases, in addition to speech and action. So no, we do in fact literally judge people in their internal thoughts.

But as you are pointing out, they took action on that thought. It was more than just fleeting.

> But as you are pointing out, they took action on that thought

They didn't take action if I correctly understood the allegory. If an organisation is a person (my friend...), then individual workers are like neurons/brain regions. This internal video is analogous to a thought that may or may not be acted out by creating a product that impacts other people outside of the org.

I agree that the idea is dystopian, but the article was a little over the top with the scaremongering.

Making a video is action. It is not implementation, but it is definitely action.

Of course we're just arguing about semantics here, but I would absolutely argue that under the organisation-as-person metaphor, this video is absolutely not an "action" by the organism, but rather just part of its internal process. I'd say it's similar to how leading a military exercise does not actually constitute military action, unless you end up actually invading some place.

The action alone is not what is judged. It is action and intent.

Discussion is fine. It's only when it turns to action that there are issues. At least, that is my view. The problem is, Google acts. And its leaders publish books announcing their intent to act. And it's exactly in line with The Selfish Ledger. That suggests strongly that this has not been a discussion which was had and then decided against through good reasoning and a glance at the history of the tragedies that have come from every attempt at large-scale social engineering.

> your right to say it.

I think what's more relevant is the right not to say something publicly, and by extension the right to have thoughts free of external judgement and consequence.

Exactly. Just as Google (and everyone in it) has the right to express their thoughts freely, I have the exact same right to be express my thoughts about their speech.

This Mitchell & Webb sketch may serve illustrative and/or informative purposes related to the topic at hand (may contain moving pictures and British accents): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owI7DOeO_yg

Links are great, but please provide some explanation in future (or edit in one now), people generally don't like surprise links.

Done!

Can you describe in what way you believe this program to be evil?

It's a building block for a command-side society. Just take a look at another article on the HN home page: https://apnews.com/6e151296fb194f85ba69a8babd972e4b

The Chinese are rounding up Muslims by the thousand and re-training them out of their culture. Do you want people behind desks thousands of miles away from you manipulating your culture with computer aids? My data is mine, not the fodder for a corporation.

The U.S. is about freedom. Want to create your own cult? Sure, find some land and do it. But I don't want to be involved in efforts to command-side my life. I don't trust google's corporate values for driving my life. I don't trust advertisers and election-riggers using psychological monitoring to influence consumption and voting choices. They haven't demonstrated they have our best interests in mind - or that they can be disentangled from evil foreign powers.

This video talks about synthesizing objects of desire based on intimate details of peoples' lives, throughout their lives. Then anticipating the decisions they make throughout their life. I don't want a server room full of computers figuring out how to make me comply with google's corporate values.

This video even admits explicitly that "the notion of a global good is is problematic," so it weasels to creating optimal health. In fact, the keys to optimal health are already widely-known: eating well and getting exercise. Society's problem is that we have overwhelming advertising influences using scientific techniques to push us away from what we already know. We need distance from this asymmetric power relationship, not deep learning to enhance it.

Seems like a false distinction in that Google doesn't have coercive power the same way the Chinese state does. Rather, the video is showing what is clearly an opt-in system to use data to guide a user toward some goal of theirs - in the example's case of "health." Which in theory would then expand into all areas of life so that someone could optimize their decisions with data.

Do you make the claim that it is impossible to align a user's goals with a company's goals?

At one company I've worked with, health care costs an extra $50/month unless one complies with their health-tracking system's goals. I recently read of an ADD sufferer who was unable to obtain enough medicine to last a full week due to a DUI infraction decades ago. Massive government control over our health and permanent records are extent and nascent.

Company's goals are absolutely at odds with individual goals in many, many cases. That's why Consumer Confidence is tracked by the government. That's why manipulative advertising is ubiquitous. I'm not saying it's possible, but why would we trust an advertising company with our health, especially one with a lengthy list of privacy violations? At the very least, health programs should originate from trusted health-related organizations.

> Do you want people behind desks thousands of miles away from you manipulating your culture with computer aids?

Did you mean to describe Hollywood or did you just accidentally describe Hollywood?

It doesn't just talk about synthesizing objects of desire based on intimate details of peoples' lives, but that the reason for creating those desirable objects and having the user acquire them is not for making money on the sale, but is in order for the ledger to gain access to that object's observation of user for better understanding of the user.

"The ledger is missing a key data source which it requires in order to better understand this user." (4:22)

It determines if the user is likely to interact with an object that will produce the data and if not then,

"In situations where no suitable product is found, the ledger may investigate a bespoked solution."

The video[1] says it much better that I can. It has amazingly high production values and writhing for an internal company video. Although Google has been higher tens of thousands of the best young people for awhile now, so I should not be too surprised.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqUCX5rPQug&feature=youtu.be

This is such a massive straw man. We're not concerned with their right to distribute memos internally. We're concerned with their ability to almost unilaterally direct the progress of civilizations.

This would be a good time to share internal free speech discussions of “highly non-disturbing concepts”.

But it is so much easier to jump to hatred and call them Nazi scum. Much harder to accept uncomfortable converstaions with conflicting ideas happen

It's actually pretty easy to accept that these conversations happen. I do. The thing is, in conversations, people claim to hold and/or appear to hold certain views and beliefs. Other people become aware of them (somehow), and make judgements.

That first part is basically universal human nature, and I think it's basically a necessity and right. The variety and possible problem comes in whether and how people express these judgements. I don't think the specific act of writing or speaking your opinion about someone's beliefs and opinions is ever wrong. You can do other bad things, like incite to violence or fraud but those are separate things

I agree with you completely, I meant for my comment to be sarcastic but forgot the /s. I think a large part of why people seem to fear free speech now is because they see people in the media and on tv get enraged about others beliefs and begin to think that it is the social norm to get outraged

kinda off.

this could have been discussed just fine, but instead they got 5 phds for a few months and then a video editing team to make a cheesy slideshow of why Peter might be a pedophile.

there's some tangible difference that you can't defend with your brain reading generalization.

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