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Comment by tuesdayrain | Hacker News Reader

I can't decide if it's more or less ethical to turn down these type of jobs. Even if you are anti-war, by declining such a job you open up space for the next person in line who may not be as talented of a programmer. The weapons will exist either way, but now they'll have an increased chance of having severe bugs because all the best programmers chose less morally ambiguous jobs. Maybe working for a military contractor is how you prevent the world from accidentally being destroyed. Or that's how you help it intentionally get destroyed, I don't know.

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I almost wonder if these movements are driven in part, or at least encouraged by, foreign state actors within these companies, who have interests in hampering US military dominance.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

Of course it isn't. I didn't claim it was.

Not sure about this one, but in the Vietnam era, many anti-war activists were Soviet spies, or influenced by Soviet spies, or communists who have no direct connection to the Soviets but want to see communism takes over the world.

Don't allow the evil come to this world via you.

Would you rather be in the room with decision makers, trying to make sure it doesn't go over the line, or go in the wrong direction? Or just don't participate, not know what's going on, and have less competent "yes-man" in your seat. This is my daily struggle, it keeps me up.

Usually when I'm confronted with such conundrums it's a signal to me that I'm thinking about the problem too narrowly. Surely being at the table, unless you are the one making decisions, is lending yourself to someone else's cause. If you weren't a yes man one way or another you'd probably be thrown off the team anyway and replaced by another yes man. Maybe you get to sway them towards competency but you aren't changing their end goal.

There are other ways of changing the world than working with those who perpetuate violence.

I think the better question to ask is.. who stands to gain from slowing down the pace of innovation in the US military? Basically.. competing nation states. In a world full of liberty loving friendly democracies I might think more parity in military capability is desirable. In the world we have.. we basically have to be able to win a war against major the hostile major military powers.. at the same time (Russia, China, etc).

The decision makers won't put you in the room with them. They will take the weapons you built, pay you for them, and use them on whomever, and whenever they see fit.

Or maybe they'll be more talented?! But that seems beside the point.

"If I don't do this evil thing, someone else will, so I may as well" isn't a good argument. There is an enormous difference - it won't be you doing bad things. It sounds like you know it's wrong, but are coming up with a lot of justifications for not seeing it.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

I don’t know. I remember reading a thought experiment years ago which I believe was presented by and to libertarians. If you were a German who found yourself conscripted into the Nazi military during World War 2 and assigned to an extermination camp, should you aspire to kill as few people as possible without getting fired? The supposed reasoning being that you are “saving” lives, since if you were fired and replaced, your replacement would likely kill even more people.

I suppose it’s supposed to be a challenge to consequentialism or the claim that the ends justify the means. Personally I think it’s a bit silly, and you just shouldn’t murder people.

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