Pretty standard human behaviour, I'd say. Reference points include Exxon, Shell, et al, at any time in the past forty years. The crucial part is that it's possible to be aware at one level and deny the problem thoroughly at another. Please do not tell me I have to prove the existence of the possibility of the psychology of denial? :)
> Because the word "studiously" implies that they are aware of what they are doing.
That is exactly what they are doing. They are constructing themselves as unaware. As Upton Sinclair put it, it's hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheque depends on not understanding it.
> You yourself said that tech workers, or "tech bros" as you so nicely put it, are perceived and portrayed as uncaringly and knowingly destroying peoples life.
I didn't say uncaringly, but yes, for certain values of 'unknowingly', this is the case. Contrived innocence is the order of the day.
One example (there are many): Tech bros in major west coast cities with large homeless populations routinely pass within centimetres of people whose suffering they -- through capitalist competition -- underwrite, whether they want to or not. We have priced whole communities out of their historic neighbourhoods. Evictions are commonplace, and despite the fact that we know they help manufacture unnecessary poverty, they are allowed to persist, in part because we -- the housed professionals -- are the quiet beneficiaries. (See recent HN-trended https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/20/matthew-desmon...)
The main psychological tools I see deployed to deal with the so-called "unfortunate" (take a moment to unpack that word) are: aversion, bad faith (in the Sartrean sense,) angry denial (anger is such good anesthetic) and libertarian dogma that falsely localizes the problem either in inevitable facts-of-life or personal failure.
We are now extending that 'read' to include those who are about to be professionally (and perhaps literally) displaced by the GPT revolution.
> If you think that that is a fair assessment of most tech workers motivations, then you are constructing a caricature.
See, again, you managed to construct a caricature of the position of the person telling you that you'd constructed a caricature.
This is impressive. Would suggest introspection.