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Comment by lwansbrough | Hacker News Reader

A lot of harm has been done by humans “just doing their job.” The world needs people who are willing to stand against those who take no interest in weighing the morality of their work.

For example, AGI will be built either by accident or intentionally by sociopaths at Google, etc. All decisions at a certain scale are inevitably political, and choosing to ignore the politics in those contexts is in itself a political position.

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There is a difference between being aware of the negative externalities of your work, and using your position in your company as a platform to accomplish your own partisan political goals. The former should be encouraged and the latter discouraged.

Much of the discussion here today is confused by the intermingling of so many concepts under the singular term "politics".

I feel that this is the same argument as the kneeling football players argument. People should be allowed to use their position of power - however limited or not it may be - as their platform for protest. If it becomes so burdensome that you have to put rules in place to prevent it, that's a very clear indication of an underlying problem with society. Creating policy to ignore the problems of society that impact your own workforce is going to leave you with a workplace filled with people who are largely unimpacted.

I think we probably agree in this. The extent to which you use your position of power as a platform for espousing your political views is the key. In my mind, a football player kneeling is akin to a colleague wearing a BLM pin in a prominent place on their clothing at regular company meetings. This kind of "activism" is acceptable in my mind; it doesn't interfere with the activities or purpose of the setting.

But if the football player interrupts the game and starts running around with a BLM flag in the middle of a play, that's inappropriate. Or if my manager decides to use the first 5 minutes of every standup to have a group discussion about libertarian ethics.

There's no bright line between which speech is appropriate and which in inappropriate and it's all subjective; and I would certainly oppose any sort of legislation that impinges on the expression of free speech in this area. Society can negotiate these rules in the course of social etiquette, not in the court of law.

But c'mon, when we're at work we're here to get shit done, just let us focus on that. If a group of coworkers wants to organize around common political goals, do it amongst yourselves. Go ahead and use a conference room and work laptops even, if it's after hours and not disrupting business.

Yes, humans have created harm "just doing their job", such as purposefully making addictive apps like youtube or social media sites like Facebook that make people depressed, or gathering vast amounts of personal data for targeted advertising.

Except this has nothing to do with that. It has do with a group of people that insist that everyone get behind their pet cause and use their job to promote whatever activist belief they have - and negatively affect everyone else who may not agree with them.

I'd stand behind anyone who wants to protest their companies business model - like the executive at Amazon who protested the treatment of a union organizer (which was racist and absolutely disgusting). I'm not going to get behind the culture of activism which has nothing to do with civil disobedience.

>A lot of harm has been done by humans “just doing their job.”

For a deeper dive on this, look at Arendt's "Report on the Banality of Evil."

> A lot of harm has been done by humans “just doing their job.”

I'd say most harm was done by humans who did not just do their job, but thought they knew how everyone else has to do their job, live their lives etc, by political activists.

You might think of activism only as what those do that you're politically aligned with. What are those on the opposite side who work just as hard to bring about their ideas of society?

What serves the public better, a utility company that "just does its job", or a utility company that snoops around people's garbage, identifies dissenters and then stops supplying water to them (because otherwise you'd be aiding the enemy)?

The argument of ethics always exists. As far as I understand the parent comment, they are talking about scenarios where a political position does not necessarily align with the ethics. For example, ending racial discrimination is a right thing to do. But ending racial discrimination by running a campaign on Social Media isn't something that everyone will agree with.

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