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Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this guy at all. Two things confuse me:

First, the purpose of a military is to be able to break things and harm people as effectively as possible. Did he think his job would involve making the military less effective?

Second, why is it bad to work on software that's used to kill people? Killing isn't necessarily bad. If this software helped kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or Ayman al-Zawahiri, it would have a hugely positive impact upon the world.

To me, the post comes across as a bunch of meandering moral grandstanding. The core thesis is either utterly pedestrian ("Think about the consequences of what you’re building.") or totally fringe (that helping the US military is immoral).

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> First, the purpose of a military is to be able to break things and harm people as effectively as possible. Did he think his job would involve making the military less effective?

That's his point. He was distracted by the pay, the work, etc. and put thinking about what his software would do to the side. Of course it's obvious, but it's easy to "get distracted" and not think about it.

> Second, why is it bad to work on software that's used to kill people? Killing isn't necessarily bad. If this software helped kill Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi or Ayman al-Zawahiri, it would have a hugely positive impact upon the world.

This is inaccurate for two reasons:

1. It assumes moral absolutism: that certain killing is bad and certain is good, but good or bad for whom? The CIA tried to kill Castro multiple times, but he's a hero to the people of Cuba. I'm sure people in the USA would've applauded this, but Latin America would've mourned and been furious.

2. Is the US government the best judge to decide who lives and who dies? Moreover, is the single individual in the military who will ultimately call the order to kill the person who should decide who is good to die and who isn't? And on that note, where does that ethically place the enabling of certain people to wield such power?

> It assumes moral absolutism: that certain killing is bad and certain is good, but good or bad for whom? The CIA tried to kill Castro multiple times, but he's a hero to the people of Cuba. I'm sure people in the USA would've applauded this, but Latin America would've mourned and been furious.

Considering the horrific things Castro did to the Cuban people[1] and how he almost started nuclear armageddon[2], the world would have been better off if he had been overthrown (and possibly killed) as early as possible.

> Is the US government the best judge to decide who lives and who dies?

No, and nobody in this thread is arguing that. The US military is an extremely flawed organization, and any military is a blunt tool. Even when the US goes into a country with the best intentions (a rare occurrence), lots of innocent people will be killed. It's good that we continually raise the standards we hold our military to. It wasn't that long ago that people were fine with carpet bombing population centers. Now we recognize that such acts are abhorrent. The same is not true for other governments and leaders. So to answer your question: I don't think the US government is the best judge, but it's a lot better than the alternatives (such as the PRC or Russia). It's also a better judge than the people it tries to kill, such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/opinion/how-castro-held-t...

> Considering the horrific things Castro did to the Cuban people[1] and how he almost started nuclear armageddon[2], the world would have been better off if he had been overthrown (and possibly killed) as early as possible.

Considering the horrific things US presidents have done to the American people [1] and how they invented nuclear armageddon[2], the world would have been better off if they had been overthrown (and possibly killed) as early as possible.

(In fact, if we're going into the territory of human rights-- the US has not a page, but a whole category in Wikipedia [1] on violations).

> I don't think the US government is the best judge, but it's a lot better than the alternatives (such as the PRC or Russia). It's also a better judge than the people it tries to kill, such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

From your point of you, an American, sure. From the point of view of Chileans, I doubt the murder of democratically elected Salvador Allende aided by the CIA was good judgment, or that American judgement was better than his. From the point of view of Guatemalans I doubt the US's involvement in the coup against democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz was good judgement. The list goes on. As someone who is not American I can assure you the US government is not a better judge than the PRC or Russia, is equally as bad and in some cases, from my point of view, worse.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Human_rights_abuses_i...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

The US may have invented nuclear armageddon, but are you sure it would have been better if someone else had?

I frequently see this argument used to justify everything from ever creeping surveillance of civilians, to sanctions that primarily affect civilians, to the bombing, killing and maiming of civilians.

Surely we should aim for better than "yeah, but they'd be even more terrible than us"?

The US is the only country that has ever used atomic weapons, so yeah, probably.

And there it is: the blind ideology that drives this madness. Any rational analysis of the last 50 years would show the US is far, far more dangerous than China, Russia and terrorism combined. The US has slaughtered millions of innocent people across the globe in the last twenty years. China has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in that time.

The real lesson here of course is that true evil is absolutely convinced of its own righteousness and totally ignorant of real world facts. That evil is something many are all too happy to join.

You literally have no idea what the people of Cuba feel about Castro. Neither do I. There is no freedom of the press in Cuba. And the reason for that is that anybody who says he was anything less than a saint gets thrown into a dungeon-like jail cell at best, or executed at worst.

> You literally have no idea what the people of Cuba feel about Castro. Neither do I.

I don't. I personally haven't been to Cuba, but I'm not American so I know people who have (unlike the US, we could always travel to Cuba) and in fact have worked with people from University of Havana.

From what I hear, it's not a paradise, but its people are also not "tormented by the constant fear of a tyrannical regime" like some people seem to claim. Much like most other nations in the world, I'd say.

Lots of people disagree with you, and believe that killing is necessarily bad.

No matter how bad the person you're killing is, it's still not OK to kill (except in extreme circumstances of self-defence).

Capital punishment was abolished for a reason.

Right, but if you are an absolute pacifist, you should never join a military contractor. No matter what you work on, you are helping an organization whose mission involves killing people. Even if you were just making them lunch, you would be indirectly helping them do THEIR job of making killing machines better.

What about killing to protect others, as part of your duty?

I'd argue that not killing certain bad people is an immoral choice in itself, designed to absolve one's of responsibility at a great price to others.

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm"

You just need to incapacitate them not kill them.

That's not a viable option. There is no such thing as a truly effective non-lethal weapon.

> What about killing to protect others, as part of your duty?

How do you know if it's really going to protect others? How do you know you can trust the motives of those that say "it's all to keep us safe?".

Did the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which let's not forget, also gave rise to IS) really save more people than if we hadn't gone to war? Given the numbers killed, I very much doubt it.

Overthrowing democratically elected governments, murdering leaders, drone strikes on hospitals, Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay... are these really the actions of a benevolent leadership?

> "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm"

Churchill, I think? Those were rather different times, and Hitler's armies were a very different threat to those we're told we've faced since and now. These days, our leaders speak much the same words, but I like it would be naive to believe them.

Churchill, I think?

According to Quote Investigator[0] it's actually Richard Grenier of the Washington Times (not to be confused with the Washington Post) paraphrasing something he believed Orwell might have said.

[0]https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/

Hah, I got that a bit wrong then!

The basic sentiment has been around since at least the 1890s, and Orwell did during and after WWII criticize pacifism by essentially saying that the only reason you even can be a pacifist is because people that aren't pacifist are willing to protect you. But that particular phrasing is modern.

The US military is, by and large, concerned with killing people who are demanding policy changes under threat of violence. To commit to nonviolence requires making those changes, and any others that someone with a gun demands. Is that better?

Capital punishment is a very bad example, because it operates on people already arrested and neutralized as active threats.

An active terrorist who is planning the next attack is not.

Ok now I'm really confused. If killing is necessarily bad, then how can it be justified in the case of self defense?

And it's a distraction to point out that capital punishment is banned in some countries. Those countries still have cops that shoot criminals and they have military forces that would kill other soldiers in the event of war. Capital punishment is about depriving someone of life after they've been captured. Capturing is rarely an option in a warzone. Given that constraint, it's better that the military kill someone like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi rather than let them go free.

If the military is really about defence, it has no business in foreign countries whatsoever.

By that logic, America was not justified in attacking Germany during WWII.

Countries have several good reasons to invade other countries. They can come to the defense of their allies. Or they can invade to stop genocide, such as in the Kosovo War. There's also the idea of a preemptive war, though in practice that is usually a pretext.

Ugh, please don't use Kosovo as an example of a "good" kind of intervention, without looking more deeply into historical context and consequences afterwards...

> Capital punishment was abolished for a reason.

Well, not everywhere, and not even for that reason.

The morality of killing a prisoner who has done horrific things is not the only reason to end capital punishment. I have no moral problem with someone putting a bullet through the head of some evil thing that murdered one or more of our fellow citizens, but an honest distrust of the system we use to convict said person keeps me from supporting capital punishment.

You cannot undo capital punishment. You at least have some hope of going on if you wrongly convict someone and let them out of jail.

>Capital punishment was abolished for a reason.

Not in many places in the US. And not in many, many other countries.

YOU are not killed or enslaved because OTHERS are willing to kill to defend themselves. You happen to be collateral benefit.

I think you are being too harsh on the guy. He says at the outset that this is his first "real" job and it is clearly the first time he has worked on something where he was able to see a larger picture than the one directly in front of him.

When you are doing a problem in differential equations where you are calculating the inflow of a contaminant and water and trying to find the point where the equations solve for a steady state level of contamination. Nobody tells you this is what you do if you want to poison a lake and kill the fish with out killing off possibly other marine life. Its just a numbers problem.

People reach an adult understanding of the world at different times. In my experience and in stories others have told me, it all rings very similarly. Suddenly one's actions in the "real" world have real implications and effects and that opens up an entirely different way of looking at things. It is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. I think of this as one step past the one where you realize while driving that you could just simply drive into the oncoming traffic and create a huge pileup (and no doubt die in the process, no I'm not suicidal, it is the realization that it is only your will to not do that, that prevents it from happening.) This next step is "what I'm doing in my day to day life can be used to, or enables, this wide range of things, not all of which are good or moral. One of my cohorts at Google (the group of people that all start the same week have a built in social group) came to me in a panic when they suddenly understood the implications of what they were building. (It was an internal tool). And they didn't like it at all, and they were conflicted because they loved the project and the team, everyone was super smart and great fun to work with, but the tool ... that was not something they felt they could be associated with. I shared with them choices like that which came up in my career and how I chose to deal with them. (in general I've been able to tolerate usual and cursory sleaziness but have a line where I won't cross. At that point I choose to work elsewhere). This person transferred to a different group and was much happier, and it must have worked as they are still at Google as far as I know.

So when I read the article I heard someone who was waking up to the realization that "oh crap, the world isn't run by other people, its run by me and my friends here." and being overwhelmed at the sudden responsibility of it all. Give the guy credit for opening his eyes, and offer him a beer as he joins the rest of us trying to navigate life choices knowing that nearly every one we make impacts others in both positive and negative ways.

I like how charitable you are, and that is not meant to be sarcastic. However, he knew precisely who was signing his paychecks. No one pretended he was working in inventory management for the toy section of Walmart.

I once talked to a retired general who had been in Afganistan. In his view the purpose of a military is to reach a truce. Once you have a truce, politicians have the job to reach peace. Breaking things and harming people might sometimes be the most efficient way to reach a truce, but if it is not then a good military will avoid it.

This view might be a german peculiarity though. After WW2 they had to distinguish the new "Bundeswehr" from the previous Nazi "Reichswehr". They developed the concept of "Staatsbürger in Uniform" [0] (citizen in uniform).

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staatsb%C3%BCrger_in_Uniform

We agree. I said that the purpose of a military is to be able to break things and harm people as effectively as possible.

It’s difficult sometimes to really internalize the meaning of things that you do every day.

Growing up, good guys and bad guys often define your thinking. Then as you become a part of the world, things get grey.

Some countries overuse conscripts as a measure of population planning in additional to its intended purpose. This is an example of deliberate inefficiency in a military.

I'm not sure I understand, can you explain?

For example, assigning conscripts to high risk tasks instead of trained professional military.

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