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Comment by LordFast | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: my comment below is directed at the culture of Google, and following in the train of thought from your comment. It's not directed at your comment or you.

Reading this comment just makes me feel baffled. How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world?

An organization(in this case, a for-profit company) created to deliver products and services to consumers and advertisers playing politics on the world stage is laughable at best, and downright irresponsible at worst. There's no framework established within the confines of a corporation to deal with any of these sorts of social problems, and it shouldn't.

Play the right part, do the right job, and let others with the right skills and tools do the same.

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> An organization(in this case, a for-profit company) created to deliver products and services to consumers and advertisers playing politics on the world stage is laughable at best, and downright irresponsible at worst.

Google is one of the largest technology corporations in existence, controlling the flow of information for huge swaths of the world's population. They have no choice but to "play politics" as many of the decisions they make can have tremendous impact on global policy and society.

> Play the right part, do the right job, and let others with the right skills and tools do the same.

No. More and more, technology firms and the individuals within them are realizing their own responsibility to consider the ethical implications of the systems they are building.

Private corporations acting in quasi-government ways is risky at best and terrifying at worst. While some of the checks & balances in civil+legal society have been broken, many are still there and there are repercussions when they're broken.

A corporation doesn't have the same mechanisms - public rules (aka laws), processes, appeals, accountability, etc, etc - built in and there's limited recourse when their definition of "right" and others' conflicts.

Frankly, it's begging for regulation.. and that's not even considering the potential monopoly angle.

What do you mean by they have no choice? Societies have different views and values, and the most intransient of these tend to be reflected in their laws. Companies can offer their product while avoiding politics by simply obeying the laws of a nation. For instance online pornography is a political topic yet the answer is clearly determined by nations: very illegal in Saudi Arabia, kind of legal in the UK, completely legal in the US. Companies can respect cultural views and values by simply gearing their behavior to obey the laws of the nations in which they operate. Since some people would prefer to avoid seeing pornographic results regardless of laws companies can offer an option to remove such results - which is exactly what they do. Nice, simple, no involvement in politics except perhaps determining whether 'adult results' should be opt-in or opt-out.

The last 'people' you want involved in politics are mega-corporations because they are one of the few groups that actually have the power to manipulate elections, corrupt politicians, and generally break democracies. In my opinion it's likely that the world will gradually 'progress' towards worldwide overt corporatocracy, but there's no reason we should embrace this in any way shape or form on the way there. If nothing else your post is a strong argument for why companies such as Google should be broken down. But, getting back to the original point, I think it's possible if not likely that that's already impossible -- thanks to their involvement in politics and the influence it has undoubtedly gained them.

They have no choice because it has political ramifications when they sneeze.

"No. More and more, technology firms and the individuals within them are realizing their own responsibility to consider the ethical implications of the systems they are building."

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Translation: Who watches the watchmen

Should people act in ways that disagree with their sense of justice?

Should people be allowed to speak out against things that other people do, but that disagree with their sense of justice?

I don't see how you can call it "arrogant" for people to act in accordance with their moral and ethical standards. We don't have the power to force the world do line up with our personal sense of justice. But we do have the power to make our lives and the lives of those around us more just, according to our own personal interpretation of that concept. Do you really think that striving for justice isn't OK?

I think the problem is that the US has developed for various reasons (including a lack of discussing politics) a series of echo chambers and people don't connect politically beyond their echo chambers. In urban California, among software developers, you are likely to have one or two political views represented at most, and these represent a small racial and class-based cross-section of urban California. The first of course is the Neoliberal views of the Rainbow Capitalism camp that brought us Hillary Clinton's candidacy. If there is a second view it is the Business Liberalism view of the elite GOP members such as the Koch brothers.

You aren't going to get the political concerns of rust-belt America, or the political concerns of black families down in Watts recognized, nor will you get the communitarianism of rural America in there either.

And so that sense of justice gets warped, even regarding national issues of the US today.

What happens when these things go world wide? Someone's sense of justice gets offended by economic orders where procreative/childrearing families hold businesses which are inherited and passed on to kids, and where there are solid gender roles associated (my kids' second culture for example)? I guess we better do what we can to make the world safe for American Capitalism to come in and liberate people from family expectations. But that means opening up such cultures to economic exploitation by foreign business and that harm is waved away as if it doesn't matter.

The arrogance does matter, because the arrogance can easily lead to outright economic colonialism ("for their own good" as much now as a century ago). The way to hold it in check is for other viewpoints to actually be entertained and discussed.

> In urban California, among software developers, you are likely to have one or two political views represented at most, and these represent a small racial and class-based cross-section of urban California.

I would argue that these are the only ones allowed.

In what sense allowed?

Allowed by the echo chambers

I used to hang out in predominantly Californian tech circles, and the atmosphere there was... not at all respectful of places that aren't California.

It would have been a good career move for me to suck up to them. Some of them were serial founders who hired their friends, and others could've given useful referrals.

But that'd come at the cost of being constantly insulted, hearing my family constantly insulted, and so on, and not being able to say anything in defense. I'm not interested in being around people who think everyone who isn't exactly like them is subhuman - even if cutting contact with them is a bad career move.

Then again, that might be why they do that.

When I was in the US I used to have a big client in LA. When I would visit I would hang out with various immigrants when not working. There was a lovely Iranian family that owned a restaurant in the area of my client's office and we became friends.

I developed a very strong appreciation for how stratified California social class was on issues like public transportation.

Come to think of it I have been wondering why Sweden can have a really nice public transit system covering the entire country and California with less land, more people, and more tax dollars cannot. I bet that stratification is the answer.

In the sense that if you are in public with "wrong" views, you'd be shunned socially and professionally, your peers would avoid you or shame you, you may be attacked (verbally and sometimes physically) by unhinged activists, your career development may stall, you may be excluded from professional conferences, groups and projects, your employment may be threatened and in general the overall costs of maintaining such an opinion would be much higher than the "correct" one that "everyone agrees".

I am not saying this is the situation everywhere. Not at all. But it is the situation in some places, and Google seems to be one of such places.

> In urban California, among software developers, you are likely to have one or two political views represented at most

Centrist neoliberals, progressives, libertarians, and “I need active government support because private parties are not actively supporting me” anti-SJW meninists, among other political cliques, all seem to be vocally present in significant numbers among urban California developers.

I'm not sure which “one or two” viewpoints you were referring to.

Fair enough but it still does not reach a fair cross-section of society.

But is it fairer or less fair than the cross section of society represented by executives and board members who would be policy making if employees did nothing and just followed instructions?

That is a point. It would be better though is we recognized Google as something of a common carrier and insisted that they do not try to be the arbiter of what is true.

Libertarians are rare and far between (if you don't consider somebody who likes to smoke a joint and not be busted and hates paying taxes a "libertarian", but talk about serious libertarian views), the right is almost non-existent publicly. Of course you can split hairs and find different left viewpoints represented - after all, we have how many Democrat candidates now, twenty? More? They must have some viewpoint differences between them. These probably are represented in hitech too. But is you look for broader political diversity... not the right place to look, from my experience.

Any citations for “Business Liberalism view of the elite GOP members such as the Koch brothers”? Unable to confirm this term

Parent's probably referring to Koch-style libertarianism.

I'm not super familiar with the nuances of their worldview, but it's definitely more business / enterprise-centric than non-Koch libertarianism.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc77gn1 for starters.

If we understand Liberalism to be a social philosophy tradition starting with Hobbes, being further developed in various forms through Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, John Rawls, etc. and seeking the liberation of the individual from culture, community, and family then for various the social Liberalism of the democrats (which seeks particularly to liberate people sexually from community judgments and rules) is closely connected to the efforts by the GOP to do the same for people in the business area. They are based on a common view of what it means to be human, a particular view of what freedom is, and so forth.

These assumptions are not really so fundamentally shared outside North America. So in both Sweden and Denmark, society looks a lot more like it did structurally to Aristotle than to Hobbes -- strong family households joining together in local communities to address common issues. Those local communities joining together into larger and larger units to address common needs until you have the overall kingdom. These places are less individualist and more localist.

Growing up in small towns in the US, I can also tell you that this Business Liberalism is most heavily a force politically in the urban centers of the GOP. Rural politicians don't tend to push it in the same way.

1) I would not include Rousseau among the fathers, but among the enemies of Liberalism.

2) I think the discourse in the USA has been heavily tilted in favour of libertarianism (maybe what you call "Business Liberalism") by concerted subversive effort sponsored by Koch, Mercer, etc., as outlined eg in the book Dark Money by Jane Mayer.

Rousseau certainly had an interesting relationship to the rise of Liberalism. And I am often unsure of whether to count him among the developers or enemies of the movement. I can read him both ways.

Your second point is I think correct on part of the problem but I think there is a second deeper issue which goes beyond dark money per se and implicates everyone. That is the fact that family and community are support structures which each of us rely on during hard times. If you come from a wealthy family and you really screw up repeatedly you will still probably do better than if you come from a poor family and do everything perfectly. But the family support structures have been under constant and sustained attacks on a number of means on the idea that if we undermine the family we will, for example, liberate women from inequality (in truth, it only increases gender inequality because motherhood has heavier burdens as single motherhood). Undermining the family, however, creates larger markets for a lot of things. A larger number of smaller households consume more. So business steps in to fill the role, as does the state. Moreover if you liberate business from the state and from community, then the first thing it will attack is the family and the reproductive order because it isn't very efficient for employees to have and raise kids (better to import kids after they grow up).

So I actually see the sexual liberalism of the progressive left and the business liberalism of the Koch brothers as mutually reinforcing, as politically heretical as that might be in the context of US political discussions.

Let me clarify:

- A non-decision by Google management to not place limits on its internal culture is a decision in itself, and has consequences that we are currently experiencing.

- "Justice" is not something for a profit-seeking company to have influence or power over. This is my personal belief. I believe there are other channels that are better designed to address those issues.

- My belief on this subject is limited to the above.

> "Justice" is not something for a profit-seeking company to have influence or power over.

But since they do in reality, especially if they are profitable and thereby gain power, it seems like something that should be discussed.

It would be great if they actually didn't have influence or power over justice, definitely, but they do.

Why should a bunch of tech workers be administering justice? We've elected government officials to handle that.

They don’t.

The solution to that problem is a new government.

Not to give Google corporate Sovereignty to replace it.

"Freedom is a verb", "citizenship", whichever of the many versions of the objection to that idea are all available.

We elected officials to administrate it only, these ideals are done by everyone.

>We elected officials to administrate it only, these ideals are done by everyone.

That's mob rule / vigilantism.

Justice is a much larger category of things than "using violence to control anti-social behaviour" as in policing/criminal law/etc.

If you take a look inside the United States for a moment, you’ll realize we actually have a fairly hard division between civil, criminal, and political disputes.

Civil justice concerns two private parties, typically adjudicated by a Judge and Jury when they cannot reach an agreement.

Criminal justice concerns the State, represented by the Attorney-General or someone who works for him, and someone found to be in criminal violation of the laws of the State. They murdered, raped and/or defrauded someone, or something like that. The State takes a special interest because they have a monopoly on violence to enforce, and no one wants people taking Justice into their own hands. It would violate the social contract.

Political justice is typically subjective, an example of political justice would be Congress impeaching and removing a President or other official from Office.

What form of Justice are corporations specifically found to have disproportionate influence over? Certainly they might influence some laws and regulations around the governing of their business practices, but not all laws are concerned with Justice.

Justice is the domain of legislatures, Attorneys-General, police officers, juries, lawyers, prosecutors, public defenders, and so on. Justice is the domain of people that have the power to detain, arrest, try, pass judgement, imprison and kill you.

You take it as a given that they have this power and influence, but let’s say they do. Why would we formalize that state of affairs implicitly or explicitly? Their job is to be profitable, it is not to act in any meaningful capacity on Justice.

>> Do you really think that striving for justice isn't OK?

The problem is that one person's justice is another person's genocide. I'm exaggerating, but not by much.

Consider the typical political discussion around Israel and Palestine. Both sides feel they are on the verge of being wiped out, with or without merit. Both sides feel they can do anything and everything to avoid that presumed outcome.

"Striving for justice" means very different things to both sides. To a Palestinian mother who has seen, say, two toddlers shot to death, justice might mean killing the offender, a soldier. To an Israeli mother of the soldier, justice might mean killing the Palestinian mother before she kills the soldier (her son.)

Details will vary, but suffice it to say, no view of this is pretty.

You dont want to talk about that stuff in the office, because there is not going to be any just solution.

> You dont want to talk about that stuff in the office, because there is not going to be any just solution.

There are going to be asshats in the office that can't handle being wrong or the fact that not everyone is sharing their views. Political discussions aren't toxic - immature people who can't handle disagreement are.

It is not great that we are letting those people ruin the workplace for the rest of us. I'm pretty sure that's one of the main drivers behind the alt-right movement. People aren't discussing and sharing views because doing so is taboo and they risk losing their jobs. Instead, people just sit at home and read wildly spun news stories which they soak up because their critical thinking ability has been impaired due to lack of training.

It seems clear alt-right is being deliberately made to look bigger than it is. Same various “extreme leftists”.

I fear you’re making a grave mistake by thinking the volume level is correlated with actual humans.

Utter nonsense - the lack of politcal discourse at work does not result in worse politics generally.

Politics at work has long been a no no at most companies and there's no evidence to show this has caused the rise of any extremism.

Work is where you get your work done. There is no room for you opinions on Trump etc, whether positive or negative. Your political views can very easily marginalise others especially when you hold a majority view.

You're asking why people that can't handle politics at work are 'ruining it for the rest of us'. May I turn the question around and why people that want to discuss politics at work are ruining it for the rest of us that don't?

Lack of respectful political discourse in general results in worse politics.

It should be possible to talk (and disagree) about politics without it affecting work cooperation. I'm not sure whether the fact that it's not, is a cause or a symptom of the current political climate.

I don't think that's true at all. The best teams I've ever worked on had zero political discourse.

Are you saying you wouldn't be able to work with someone you disagreed with politically if you were aware if the disagreement?

No, I am not saying that. This is exactly what politcal people at work do - they are so high on their own opinions that they start to plant opinions in other peoples mouths if they don't agree with you, you just did that to me.

I very very rarely engage in any politics talk at work unless I'm totally cornered. I couldn't care less what you think about anything beyond the scope of our work. Chances are, your opinions are nauseating. I will be polite but I won't engage.

I rarely see any political type at work that doesn't somehow create drama. Your politics and your religion are of no interest to me. No I won't join your womens march, no I don't believe in equal pay (regardless of gender etc) and yes I'm a liberal / labour voter that favours unions. These are all distractions to what I am here to do though.

Maybe it's a cultural thing, me and my work friends never discussed politics, maybe that's just the apathy of my generation? Don't know, don't care. Politics is not for work. It's divise and the people pushing their political opinions are usally toxic and they don't even know it.

My apologies, I didn't mean to put words in your mouth.

Impaired critical thinking ability leads to shitty politics. Impaired critical thinking ability is caused by people's lack of experience which is caused by political arguments being seen as taboo. You become fat if you never exercise and you become dumb if you never think critically.

Work is where we spend a major part of our lives 8-9 hours per day five days per week. The idea that freedom of speech should be suspended for the duration is dumb. People aren't automatons and shouldn't be treated as such. It leads to the bizarre situation that you neither care for nor have anything in common with the people you spend the majority of your time with. The most interesting conversations you have is "I see it is raining outside." "Yes, it is raining." because people are so afraid of breaking the workplace decorum.

I respectfuly disagree with most of your points.

Being respectful of other people not being interested in your BS opinions is not stopping your freedom of speech. You're at work to get work done, not to espouse your opinions on the middle east.

Politics isn't the only way to keep your critical thining sharp. We're knowledge workers after all.

> Should people act in ways that disagree with their sense of justice?

Yes absolutely; because that is a what a True professional does when their job requires it.

>according to our own personal interpretation

That's incredibly problematic

> How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world?

That of a regular human being with rationalized opinions through the lens available to them? For some reason only because Google has a lot of power to control the dialogue you ask them to bury their head in the sand? Or are we going to pretend that there hasn't been an arms race of sorts to game search results across nearly every topic and as such one might consider removal of what one considers to either be harmful, false, or manipulative to be a part of doing the "right" job?

What's the quote again, " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing " -- Edmund Burke

And as far as Google goes, I think it would be easy to rationalize that (if I was a Google member) I have access to better tools than most to make a decision (more information).

All opinions can be rationalized through a particular lens can they not?

Are you asking Google to be a voice of reason in the debate over global labor markets and liberalization of SE Asian economies for example?

Doesn't that give you a wolf-and-lamb problem, to reference Aesop?

Let me clarify:

- A non-decision by Google management to not place limits on its internal culture is a decision in itself, and has consequences that we are currently experiencing.

- My belief on this subject is limited to the above.

> I have access to better tools than most to make a decision (more information).

That does Not mean that Your Opinion would be a correct one--actually the opposite could just as easily be true.

Everybody thinks they have better tools than everybody else to know what's right and what's wrong. In most cases, they are mistaken. The cost of being mistaken for a company that has power to control significant amount of information available to humanity is enormous. That's why in the US there are direct prohibitions on government suppressing points of view. You could think - why should there be one? Of course, if the government would suppress normal people, like you and me, it would be bad. But why not bad people? Why don't we elect a very good government, an excellent one, with the best tools and information we have, and then let it do whatever it wants, no limits? Except we know it won't work. The power corrupts, and what we'd get would be the worst tyranny, regardless of how pure were the initial intentions. Why would we delude themselves into thinking if we call it "Google" and replace elections with technical interview it would go any better?

Agree.

In the US, we have government to take these things on. We have rule of law. And rights. Both government and individuals are subject to these.

With Google, there is no rule of law or rights. Goggle does not have a constitution. If you have a problem with them, what can you do? Nothing.

There is no right to question your accuser. There is no right to protect agains unreasonable search/seizure. There is no right to free speech. No right to privacy. And so on. There is only what Google arbitrarily decides to do. And if you're not in the majority as Google defines it, then it just sucks to be you.

This is why unregulated monopolies are intolerable. The US is founded on the principle that powers are separated to keep any one entity from getting too much and being able to infringe on the rights of citizens.

Google is way over that line, with monopolies in many areas. Add the partisan activism, and this is a very toxic brew.

>How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world?

I'm often stuck in the elevator with Googlers (our office is on the same floor as one of theirs). Some of the stuff that I end up overhearing is particularly jarring. It's not really the opinions but the self entitlement that makes me wish we had faster elevators.

I think the logic is backwards. In today's world government policy is the shadow of business interests, not representative government of the people like it is supposed to be. So I am glad for political discussions inside these large organizations, it seems like an escape valve for a broken system. The biggest problem with it is that it is not representative, as organizations are often unfairly hierarchical (and hence some people get an unfair amount of influence) and the workers in these organizations aren't often a representative cross section of society.

I think you raise a good point about the nature of a for profit organization and it’s design being optimized for a particular thing, which is very much not a thing meant to generate good answers to tricky political questions that impact a whole lot of people/things. In reality, it’s headquarters is in a politically radical place where conservative voices have a helluva hard time speaking up because they could face career backlash by dissenting with the overwhelming majority views in those rooms, which are not representative samples of America. Google decision makers are not designed to be accurate representatives of America’s constituents.

Ideals aside, I think there’s a clear business reality that the radical left employee base is giving google a lot of headaches. Many might argue this is for the better, but that’s mostly because they have similar political sentiments. It seems like woke culture has made google a very tense place and is gobbling them up.

Blaming radical “lefties” and exaggerating their negative influence is a favorite tactic used to demonize that part of society. This is analogous to the now discredited argument of leftist students silencing and tensing up college campuses in the US. And it is a similarly disingenuous argument.

These "arrogant" Googlers aren't changing the magnitude of Google's impact on people's lives. Google's impact will still be there if they go away. There is no option that makes it go away. The choice is between the company's workers trying their best to come up with a just way to pilot it, or Google's impact being directed entirely by its executives and profit motive.

They changed the impact of Google on my life. I completely excised Google from my life after a couple high-profile incidents at Google indicated they the company would use its power for political gain.

>An organization(in this case, a for-profit company) created to deliver products and services to consumers and advertisers playing politics on the world stage is laughable at best, and downright irresponsible at worst.

Most large companies have lobbyists. That's much more "playing politics" than simply deciding not to bid on a military contract.

How arrogant do have to be to not lie, steal, cheat, and kill?

Not at all because acting according to your morality is a basic part of being a human or member of society.

There's no reason that changes because you take your fun hat off and put your work hat on.

> How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world?

Not very much? Doesn’t everybody think like this in one way or another? I certainly know what is better for the world than the majority of the US.

> Not very much? Doesn’t everybody think like this in one way or another?

Probably. But lots of people realize they've been wrong before, might be wrong on this occasion, and therefore don't just put their ideas over everybody else's. That's the non-arrogant way to handle that, I guess.

No, it takes extreme arrogance.

People who look at someone else and think "you should just.." are normal. We all do that.

People who look at the world and say "everyone should just.." are the height of arrogance and epitomize the phrase "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Is Google saying "everyone should just.."? It sounds like jgunsch's comment is about "what should we (Google) do?". That is, should Google bid on the JEDI military contract, should Google make a censored search product in China.

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