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Comment by Ritewut | Hacker News Reader

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positive company inside Facebook and she just had to navigate the politics to make it known despite all evidence to the contrary.

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My experience is that people will be able to justify anything that is "normal". I went vegan after learning too much of how the literal sausage is made and the amount of people who have unprompted (people are weird about it so I try to avoid talking about being vegan except for mentioning it quickly while declining food) said something along the lines of "factory farming is awful but I just love bacon" and laugh is legitimately terrifying. It seems like if it's normal enough people will say something is bad and will happily do it anyway.

It's made me rethink my life and how I do the same thing and was the impetus for me leaving tech.

They are letting perfect be the enemy of good. If they respond with "I love bacon" then tell them to eat plant-based + bacon. It's still a vast improvement environmentally than what they were doing previously.

Yeah there's some kind of absolutism aspect tied into identity.

Also the funny tendency humans have to dislike the people who are most similar to them. Someone who is at least recognizing factory farming is bad and willing to even think that far is more similar to a vegetarian than the people who don't give a shit and never even think about where their food is coming from.

Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent.

>Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent.

Not necessarily. I mean, the people who give out an uncomfortable laugh do exhibit signs of cognitive dissonance.

I don't have an issue with accepting both statements: factory farming is awful, and I still eat meat.

There is no cognitive dissonance.

The logic is straightforward: I do not believe that me, an individual, abstaining from meat is going to do much to factory farming, while it will make a huge, adverse impact on my life.

Government regulation is how this problem would be solved (the only way it can get solved), and I'm all for voting for bans on factory farming, heavy taxes on meat products, etc.

One's gotta pick their battles.

I pick ones where my participation won't amount to martyrdom.

Yeah but tons of things are awful. For me I couldn't keep doing things I knew caused immense suffering in other beings, be it humans or animals. (Sourcing things from ethical whatever and reducing consumption in general the last two decades, I'm sad my iPhone 6 isn't supported for banking so have to go android 10 etc).

Vegetarian options got cheap, and I still eat locally produced eggs and some milk products.

But like, awful can be coped with. Everyone thinks factory farming is awful. Few give a shit.

Few people can afford to give a shit. Most people are getting the cheapest meat and dairy they can get from Walmart.

Blessing/curse that meat is so expensive in Scandinavia that good vegan options actually became competitive. I know meat is dirt cheap in the US =/

It's still not cheaper to have a very meat rich diet then to have one that is mostly plant based; or entirely vegetablebased plus milk and eggs from local production - which wouldn't get you in some of the difficulties vegsns have to desl with, where they need to take some nutrients in the form of supplements if they don't absolutely optimize their diet (which again becomes expensive - would be interesting to be corrected here)

All that is to say: some people act less ethical then others, and should have to accept that fact - instead of trying to produce an image of the self (to themselves mostly but also to others) that conceals it; be it through normalization ("guess we all do that"), rationslization ("if i wouldn't do it someone else would"), or blame shifting (if someone would do this and that i would behave like that, so it's up to them to provide me with xyz)

edit: I apply that to myself. I know that I don't act as ethical as I could regarding the consequences of my diet.

Basically this boils down to "I don't feel responsible for the meat I eat being factory farmed."

Not that I'm in any position to criticize; I'm in the cognitive dissonance camp.

Have you considered consuming "ethical" animal products (e.g. free range eggs or whatever?) That doesn't seem like martyrdom; compared to what you want (government mandated livestock welfare) it only costs you marginally more (due to missing economies of scale.)

I’m in the same camp. On the other extreme, I find it darkly funny that eating plants is supposed to be okay…

Aren’t they alive too? What if they were conscious? If they aren’t but still a lifeform, that makes it perfectly okay?

No answers, just makes me wonder at times if common ethics is all it’s cracked up be.

Is eating plants not required for sustenance or nutrition really justifiable? (Chocolate, sugar, spices, …)

> What if they were conscious?

Well, they're not.

> If they aren’t but still a lifeform, that makes it perfectly okay?

According to Jains: No. Violence against plants, insects, and possibly even certain microorganisms is considered unethical.

IMO as an irreligious person: Yes. Life is just a particular form of self-sustaining and self-propagating system. Those properties are of little to no moral value.

Are you sure? What about a stand of trees whose consciousness might just run extremely slowly compared to ours?

About as sure as one can be. It's neither logically nor physically impossible, but the claim that trees are conscious is practically unfalsifiable and is not supported by any substantive evidence. It has nothing to do with "fast" or "slow," no matter how you poke or prod or slice or dice a tree, there's nothing that suggests a capacity for consciousness. I would be less surprised if my friend's dog started speaking perfect Chinese with an American accent.

If anyone cares about plants suffering they should go vegan, as many more plants are consumed to raise animals than would be if there was a direct plant intake in humans for the same amount of calories and nutrients. Ditto for land use, water, CO2 emissions, etc. but let's assume our friend cares strictly about reducing suffering short of starving themselves to death.

Just FYI, the designation "free range" on eggs means essentially nothing. It means the hens have access to the outdoors, but that could still mean a tiny, packed space, just missing a roof.

"Cage free" and "no antibiotics" are probably the only USDA-regulated terms worth caring about, but they're fairly low bars. "Certified Humane" designation is a higher, well-audited bar, but many farms that might qualify forgo it due to the costs associated.

Factory farming is a consequence of a post-industrial economy where 95% of the population isn't directly involved in farming. Few people would want to reset the clock back to where most are attached to the land with limited options. The only reliable source of B12 before the modern era was to consume some animal derived products. Other basic nutrients are hard to attain through plants alone. It is necessary for us to engage in animal husbandry in the absence of technological interventions that we never evolved to depend on.

To the extent that I can, I do try to pick ethical products (like the aforementioned free-range eggs).

It's not an all-or-nothing thing indeed; there's a huge spectrum between veganism and not at all thinking (or caring) about where the animal products come from.

But yes, I, as a consumer, am not responsible for what is already heavily regulated in favor of factory farmers. Heard of the ag gag laws? You can't vegan them away.

It's not a free market, see.

It's as delusional to blame people for eating the availableunethically produced meat as it is to blame them for starving during the Holodomor (..or Great New Leap, or the Irish Potato Famine, or...).

Radium-based snake oil "medicine" didn't disappear because the consumers boycotted an unethical product. It was because we have FDA.

I really do not feel responsible for what would amount to trying to enforce regulation that doesn't exist.

I am responsible for voting, so when it comes to the ballot, ethical farming does get my vote.

> like the aforementioned free-range eggs

I noted this in another comment, but the "free-range" designation means almost nothing. Hens have access to the outdoors, but that can mean a packed coop with no grass where part is missing a roof.

Look for "Certified Humane" or research the farm directly.

Thanks for the actionable advice.

Side note: I've never seen that "certified humane" label. I'll look for it though.

The people who are saying that it's "easier than ever" to be buying ethically farmed products are full of it.

All markets have rules, the "free" in "free market" is just marketing.

(Not disagreeing with you, just mentioning it because your statement inside made me think of it)

Well of course. Free market (even as a theoretical concept) is only possible with regulation that prevents monopolies and ensures some sort of fairness.

The agricultural market is perhaps the furthest thing from it, given the importance of, well, having food. Farmers get subsidies. Nation-states get involved in the circulation of food around the planet. Geopolitics comes into play.

In some markets, individual choices of consumers matter a lot in shaping them.

Agricultural products are as far from that as it's possible.

I am not convinced that not buying unethical meat does any more than not buying unethical weapons of mass destruction, or not using Palantir's products.

Few of us are hoarding stashes of chemical weapons or signing contracts with Palantir, and yet Palantir still thrives.

Perhaps simply not buying it isn't always the most effective way to end something.

>Government regulation is how this problem would be solved (the only way it can get solved)

My cynical inner pedant compels me to point out that societal collapse will also solve "factory farming is awful". And we're probably closer to that than effective government regulation of it.

Equating eating meat with martyrdom in the year 2026 is, in fact, the same cognitive dissonance you personally deny.

I eat meat. And I'm highly, highly morally conflicted. I'll leave it at that to avoid sounding hypothetical—except to mention that the only logical reason I don't go vegetarian/vegan is the work and personal development that'd be required of me. (I'll take being called lazy over disingenuous any day, if we're ostensibly virtue signaling here.)

> I eat meat. And I'm highly, highly morally conflicted. I'll leave it at that to avoid sounding hypothetical—except to mention that the only logical reason I don't go vegetarian/vegan is the work and personal development that'd be required of me. (I'll take being called lazy over disingenuous any day, if we're ostensibly virtue signaling here.)

But that is precisely acting as a martyr.

You're "highly morally conflicted", which means you suffer inside. You could stop that suffering by either 1) going vegan, so you don't have to worry about it, or 2) deciding to continue eating meat and no longer worry about it. Right now, you're picking the strictly worse combination of continuing to eat meat and remaining conflicted indefinitely.

I'm starting to realize that internal moral conflicts are a lot like physical pain - it's an important signal from the body, and you should pay attention to it, but in the end, if you know you're not going to do anything about the underlying cause, then there's no point in continuing to suffer - you just make it go away with painkillers, and carry on living. This does not mean denying the problem - quite the opposite. Constant pain makes it hard to think rationally, and suppressing it puts you in a much better position to address its underlying cause.

You say I'm 'suffering inside', not me.

What is confliction if not suffering?

What is suffering?

Do what you like and as you like, but my two cents: if you want to make something that seems hard, start with one step and continue step by step at your own peace. Big goals are accomplished by proudness of small gaps instead of shame and desires of the missing ones.

During 10 year I gently removed some ingredients of my diets/habits and added others in the meantime. It was longer but way easier than I imagined.

Good luck, you lazy :-)

Hey, at my ripe, old age, I only started learning how to properly feed myself more recently than I'd like to admit. So I take your point about acknowledging one's baby steps once you successfully string a few together.

Thanks for the encouragement!

>Equating eating meat with martyrdom in the year 2026 is, in fact, the same cognitive dissonance you personally deny

You completely missed the point.

In the context of picking battles, martyrdom is (self) sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, with no direct gain for the cause.

Abstaining from meat, to me, will take away one of the not-so-many joys I have in my life, without possibly making a meaningful impact on unethical farming.

I'm well off. You might be. Most people in the US are not.

And in the end of the day, poor people are going to buy the cheapest products in the grocery store.

So, there's always be a demand as long as there's supply.

More than that. We don't really have a choice for where meat comes from anyway. There's no requirement to put that on the label, along with nutritional data.

That, by the way, is another example where legislation can make a lot of difference.

My point is that abstaining from meat is about as useful as that young man setting himself of fire in the US to help children in Gaza.

Same goes about feeling bad about eating meat (while eating it).

The impact on the cause is zero.

Your energy would be better spent fighting the ag-gag laws, requiring disclosures on the labels, making ethically farmed products cheaper (and factory farmed produce more expensive), and so on.

You having morally conflicted feelings doesn't help anyone.

And it's simple, really: you are complicit in doing a bad thing. But the complicity is not in doing the thing, it's in supporting the system where in doing it is the rational choice for the majority of people.

Your choice in doing or not doing the thing has very little impact on whether the thing happens.

Aren't vegetables cheaper than meat? I'd assume poor people also like the taste of meat, as was evolutionarily advantaged, not that it's the cheapest.

>Aren't vegetables cheaper than meat?

Do you even do any grocery shopping where you live?

Not long ago, I could get chicken for $0.99/pound, same as the cheapest tomatoes, whereas quality tomatoes sold for $2.99/pound.

Now the prices for meat are up, but chicken still costs $1.99/pound[1], while decent tomatoes are $3.99/pound[2].

Even if you are thrifty and find cheaper tomatoes, they are incomparable to chicken in nutritional value.

You know the expression "chicken soup for the soul"? There's a reason it's not "tomato soup for the soul" (as much as I love gazpacho).

> I'd assume poor people also like the taste of meat

Try eating on a budget instead of assuming what them "poor people" like.

[1] https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.960014952.html?...

[2] https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.184570092.html

The comparaison of chicken and tomatoes is a strawman.

First off: people don’t swap them in their diet, a better exemple would be wheat or soy - which are what the 0.99/p chicken eat [edit: and it's closer in term of nutrients].

Second: the shelf price you mention includes gouvernement subsidies and economy of scale. The grains price should be the one paid by the fermer, adjusted for smaller packaging. Your comparaison may stands where you live because of political choices and societal evolution. It doesn’t in a more liberal and non regulated juridictions, does it?

>The comparaison of chicken and tomatoes is a strawman.

It's a direct answer to the question asked by the parent.

The answer is: no, vegetables are not cheaper than meat in the US.

It is perverse. Which is my point: what enables the low, low price of chicken isn't merely the laws of supply and demand.

>First off: people don’t swap them in their diet, a better exemple would be wheat or soy

Those are not vegetables. Those are grains and legumes, respectively.

>Second: the shelf price you mention includes gouvernement subsidies and economy of scale.

No shit.

Which is my point exactly: the problem is addressed by government regulation, and exists because of government regulation, including, but not limited to, subsidies to particular forms of farming, and ag gag laws.

>Your comparaison may stands where you live

Well of course I can speak about where I live.

And yeah, we're talking in English on a US-based website (specifically, a Silicon Valley one). I am talking about the US, a country of about 350M people.

It's not like I'm talking about a small state few people have heard of with no impact on anything. The situation in the US matters because it influences a lot.

Canada isn't that different from the US food-wise, for that matter.

Ah I might be confused by my low english skills but it seems grains and legumes are vegetable. I was curious and a quick search returned several sources confirming that however I'd be pleased to learn other usages.

> a plant or part of a plant that is eaten as food. Potatoes, beans and onions are all vegetables.

https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

I'm don't want to argue on definitions though but the chicken/tomatoes comparaison hardly make sense in an answer to satvikpendem: he mentioned vegatable in comparaison to meat in a poor people diet. In that situation one would certainly aim mainly for cheap and nutritious staples AKA grains and legumes instead of tomatoes.

At least we agree on the regulation impact! I wish you a pleasant Californian day :-)

They are vegetables technically speaking, the parent is being too literal and obtuse with their inference of what I was talking about.

If you are going to be that literal then I'm not sure what to say. By vegetables yes I meant a plant based diet (including legumes and grains which are vegetables technically speaking) vs one with meat, not literally tomatoes versus chicken. You might have given a direct answer but it's not what was implied in the context of the thread. I do agree that there is a big problem with the current regulations and subsidies artificially pushing down the price of meat, yet even still it is cheaper to not eat meat. And I say this as someone who does eat meat.

Aside, I'm not sure why you're being so aggressive in your comments, it doesn't make for good discourse when one says things like "you've completely missed the point" or "no shit" or the oft seen pattern of quoting and rebutting each line. If I were to speak to my friends that way I'd quickly lose friends.

Bro you're picking the most yuppy veggies you can find to strain to make your point. "I can't just eat the cheap tomatoes, I demand the finest!"

Quit being such a fruit.

> In the context of picking battles, martyrdom is (self) sacrifice, with no direct gain for the cause.

On the first clause, exactly. (The second clause appears to be a bit of ad lib.)

> Abstaining from meat, to me, will take away one of the not-so-many joys I have in my life

I don't think the concept of 'martyrdom' encompasses self-interest. It does however consider the cause/s of other beings. So I maintain, not a very cognitively consonant use of the term.

>On the first clause, exactly. (The second clause appears to be a bit of ad lib.)

The original definition of martyr is: "a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty for declaring belief in and refusing to renounce a religion"[1].

It's suffering for the sake of being true to one's faith; impact of that decision on anyone else not being a factor in whether one is a martyr.

Abstaining from meat consumption when it's something you really enjoy is martyrdom in that sense: you are sticking to your moral principles while having no impact on the proliferation of unethical farming.

>I don't think the concept of 'martyrdom' encompasses self-interest

You think incorrectly. The concept of martyrdom means forgoing the self-interest of self-preservation and not being in pain. There's no martyrdom without sacrifice.

>It does however consider the cause/s of other beings.

It may, in the modern sense of the word, but it doesn't have to. See the linked definition. The causes for which one martyrs themselves may vary. The unifying factor is suffering in the name of the cause.

Not suffering with the effect of making something happen. It's choosing to suffer in the name of something that makes one a martyr.

Martyrdom is not an efficient way to bring the cause closer to reality.

> So I maintain, not a very cognitively consonant use of the term.

You can maintain it's not the correct usage of the term, dictionaries be damned, but cognitive consonance has nothing to do with that.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martyr

Many individuals independently making the choice has made a difference, both in harm reduction on the demand side and choice on the supply side. It's never been easier or more accessible to be vegetarian/vegan.

We used to have more humane farming. We used to have laws against child labor. We now eat pigs, animals smarter than dogs, that lived tortured lives while wearing clothing made by children.

You can easily chose 'not factory farmed' and still eat meat. You just don't. I'm guessing unless you grew up rich or very recently, you consume more meat now than you were accustomed too growing up. In that case you choose to actively benefit from the factory farming.

>We used to have more humane farming. We used to have laws against child labor.

So, you get the point of having legislation like laws prohibiting child labor instead of moral grandstanding calling on people to abstain from purchasing unethically produced goods, right?

>We now eat pigs, animals smarter than dogs, that lived tortured lives while wearing clothing made by children.

Which goes to show my point: the problem of child labor has only ever been resolved by having legislation against it.

Not by passing the (un)ethical choice onto the consumer.

>I'm guessing unless you grew up rich or very recently, you consume more meat now than you were accustomed too growing up.

I grew up in a communal flat in post-USSR-collapse Ukraine with five families to 1 toilet, in case you are wondering, and no, I don't consume any more meat now than I was accustomed to growing up.

I don't see how that is related to anything I'm saying, other than trying to go for another holier-than-thou ad hominem.

>You can easily chose 'not factory farmed' and still eat meat.

Pray tell how.

Let's be specific. I live in California, and while I consider myself well off, I'm not what you'd call rich.

I shop in stores like Lucky, Ralph's, and 99 ranch.

When I go to those stores, how do I tell which meat was "factory farmed", and which wasn't? Honest question, because that information isn't on the label.

Which is, again, a point I am making: it should be illegal to not put this information along with nutrition data.

To add a data point, I've reduced my meat consumption from "whenever I can" to "once a day" to "normally once a day, but some days none at all". It's really not that big a deal. I have no idea what this is doing to the environment, but I can confirm that I'm saving some scratch (bacon is expensive!), my hunger and tastebuds are just as sated, and my routine bloodwork has improved somewhat.

I personally think vegans should consider eating cows. If you care about sentient life and abuse, think about how much meat one cow produces. Killing a single cow can feed you for well over a year.

You say that like it's mandatory to kill sentient life to feed people. It isn't.

I can imagine this poster's chortle thinking to themself, 'they thought I meant the animals!'

aren't plants also sentient?

Isn't all life sentient?

If not, where do you draw the line? "It has eyes and bilateral symmetry and an endoskeleton looks vaguely human-like so I can anthropomorphize it"? "Only members of the animal kingdom are conscious"?

Do you think plants achieve the same degree of sentience as say, a pig? Or would drawing even that line be too arbitrary for you?

honestly, I don't know.

Sentience is consciousness. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a plant, the plants existence is too different from mine for me to imagine it.

It would be like trying to imagine life in a 12-dimensional space - I'm a human, with a human consciousness, living in 3-dimensional space, that makes sense to me.

I can empathize, and to a certain degree imagine what it must be like to be a dog or a cat or a cow, because they're very similar to me in how they work. They move, they eat, they poop, they reproduce sexually. They have similar mammalian feelings and similar DNA (well, more similar than the plant).

But for all I know a plant, say the spinach I had a few days ago, could be just as conscious, albeit in a way that I absolutely cannot comprehend, and my ripping off the plant's leaves to eat them may be, to the plant, every bit as painful as someone ripping out my lungs to eat them.

So you acknowledge the former but can't get past the latter. Got it. I wonder how the judges will score.

sorry for the stupid question, but what is "the former" and what is "the latter"?

Did you mean I acknowledge the sentience of plants but not animals?

I believe that all life might be conscious, but life that is "very different" from me I have a hard time imagining what that consciousness might be like. For animals, especially mammals, I can easily imagine what they must be feeling and empathize with them. I can understand that a cow feels pain when hurt, because the cow is very similar to me. A plant might also feel pain when hurt (even the grass I step on might not appreciate me walking on it), but I'd have a harder time empathizing with that.

It's never stupid to clarify what someone means if they communicate in a way that's unclear to you.

'Former' and 'latter' were in reference to the two questions I posed to you.

No, plants, bacteria, mushrooms are obviously not sentient as they lack a brain.

I always wonder what vegans think is going to happen to all the pigs, cows, and chickens if people stop eating meat?

Billions of pigs cows and chickens will stop being massacred in grizzly ways? Yours is an extremely common and unfortunately ill-informed argument that I see a lot. If I was given the choice between end all suffering by killing all factory farmed animals right now vs perpetuate it, im choosing kill all animals right now

It sounds like you don't have a problem with killing animals. Is it just the living conditions? If we replaced factory farms with more ethical practices, would that solve the problem for you?

> would that solve the problem for you?

not the person you replied to, but it mostly would for me. Factory farms are among the closest things to hell on earth.

Maybe we need a certification for ethical animal raising. I know we can buy free range eggs and chicken, and grass fed beef, but I know know if that really means anything.

Somewhat. I think we are still quite a long way from ethical practices even in the "good" cases.

I eat meat, but try to limit it to once a week and have replaced milk with oat and soy in a lot of places. I still love cheese but it does give me conflict when I spend even a second thinking about what it takes to actually get cheese. (Cows dont lactate without pregnancy). That said, my own personal philosophy is that we have likely evolved to consume animal products so I cant dismiss it fully, just reduce my own consumption. ~75% of all agricultural land is used to feed livestock, yet livestock produces only 18% of the world's calories and 37% of its protein, which just seems insanity to me.

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

Demand would go down, so meat companies would reduce breeding to reduce output. Or start an ad & lobbying campaign to increase demand again.

> I always wonder what vegans think is going to happen to all the pigs, cows, and chickens if people stop eating meat?

factory farms would stop breeding animals to kill them? Did you think you had an argument here?

Should pacifists likewise murder one person?

I’m gonna pull a Rogan and mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth?

What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us.

In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.

> mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth?

Loads of small field animals are killed when eating vegan. Loads more are killed when eating omnivore, because you have to plow even more field to also feed the factory-farmed animals.

> In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.

Assuming you stick with it, I think that could be a good idea.

The deer are full of Chronic Wasting Disease and we've half given up trying to stop it. Many states have stopped their targeted culling programs because they're ineffective once incidence is above 5%. You're suicidal if you eat meat that you know comes from an animal with a prion disease.

I've never hunted (yet). Have fished plenty but that doesn't count.

I lived for a year in a suburb of Charlotte NC a couple of years ago, and there were herds of whitetails on my dog walks.

I'd like to learn more about "Chronic Wasting Disease" if you have any resources, because on podcasts or r/Archery and the like, "harvesting your own food" is par for the course. Thank you.

Decent overview from the US CDC https://www.cdc.gov/chronic-wasting/about/index.html in one study, Rhesus monkeys were infected by eating CWD infected meat. There's no cure or mitigation of prion diseases so that'd be enough for me to stay away from hunted deer in any county with reported incidence of it. And deer range and roam, and not every place in the country is as on top of testing for it as everywhere else. Maybe I'm Chicken Little, but I don't like the odds.

Thanks. Wild stuff, pun intended. Even though the article mentions “The disease hasn't been shown to infect people”, just the thought of a “maybe” is deterrent enough. But then, who knows what’s in the meat I’m getting from Costco. Perhaps the fish are next and the Soylent future is upon us.

> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us.

You are very wrong here by orders of magnitudes. The US produces about 5 billion bushes of soybeans. 1 bushel is around 60 lbs. Having made tofu myself, depending on the type of tofu you make 1 lb of dry soybeans is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 lbs of tofu(remember we are adding water to the mix so we increase weight). If 1 bushel is 60 lbs and we produce 5 billion then we have 136 million metric tons of soybeans which makes 272 million tons of tofu which is enough to feed the entire US several times over.

This doesn't even begin to touch the amount of food you can make from the byproduct of tofu, soy pulp which is itself a food in some countries.

I'm not suggesting we actually do it but to answer your question of "is tofu the answer," it could be. The vast majority of our soybean crop was sold to other countries until Trump tariffs made China switch from us to Russia. I'm not sure what the current status of our soybean production is but we have the crop production to feed the entire US.

Thanks for the math. Obviously not everyone will go for Soyfu, but I'll attempt to integrate it into my diet. I've had it, it's an acquired taste, but what isn't really. I remember hating black caviar growing up in Ua.

I'd recommend checking out Serious Eats for Kenji's "Vegan Experience" recipes. He has some tofu recipes for omnivores that I really endorse. His tofu banh mi is divine.

Tofu is amazing when it's used for things tofu is made for instead of as a sad meat substitute. Miso soup isn't miso soup without tofu, and mapo tofu is one of the most amazing flavors in existence. (It's sichuan, so it's not for people who can't tolerate flavor.)

I just want to chime in and say it's a rather nice to see an earnest and pleasant response like this.

To your first point about the small animals in the fields that are harmed by agriculture, I think that's worth having concern about overall, certainly. But many of the animals that people currently consume are fed large quantities of crops that incur that same cost. The average beef cattle is eating such things for 18 months prior to being slaughtered, breeding sows do the same for 3-5 years, and their offspring 5-6 months on average.

If there are advances in things like cultured meat that can be produced in a sort of industrial setting at a competitive price it might be possible to drastically limit both the conscious and inadvertent harm to animals.

There's a case to be made for wild/hunted meat. But the majority of meat production worldwide relies on feeding those animals farmed plants, and that entails a lot more plowed fields than farming plants for direct human consumption does.

> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times?

It's much more efficient to use land to grow food crops for people to eat directly than it is to grow food for livestock and then have people eating the livestock.

It's one of the reasons that I've been pescetarian for a few decades - it's unsustainable for everyone to eat substantial amounts of meat and there's a lot of deforestation just to sate people's desire for burgers.

to be fair, you can get "good" meat - factory farming is awful, but not all meat is factory farmed. You can eat happy animals, for example pigs that spent their lives outside being pigs, hanging out with their pig friends, and near the end of their pig lives had to go be eaten. If you believe plants are conscious too, that's probably more ethical than eating Nutella made with palm oil from forests that were completely massacred to harvest that oil (and even if you don't, the animals in those forests probably didn't enjoy their natural habitat being destroyed).

In fact, I've had the idea floating around my head for a while now for "fully ethical" meat, where you don't even kill the animal, just wait around for it to die of old age. Depending on your views on euthanasia, maybe if the animal gets like cancer or something and is evidently suffering, gently kill it to put it out of its misery because that might overall reduce suffering.

Also, pardon my asking a possibly stupid question out of ignorant curiosity, but if you're vegan for ethical reasons, why not eat eggs? My stepmom had some chickens a while ago, they lived lives that seemed pretty happy, they hung around the backyard eating stuff on the ground + the food we gave them, relatively free to move around (we did put up a small fence to keep them away from the dogs and cats, who did not exactly have a stellar track record of veganism, but they were free to roam inside that safe space) they laid eggs, because there was no rooster around to fertilize the eggs the eggs weren't going to go anywhere... did us eating those eggs hurt anyone?

Veganism is about being pragmatic. It's not a dogmatic mindset. The main goal is to not harm another sentient being. Both factory farmed or 'happy' farmed animals usually end up in the same slaughterhouse. Pigs are being gassed and have a terrible death. And in general, animals feel when they are about to die and then start to panic. In the words of Carl Sagan 'they are too much like us'.

Look up Mike Bisping, someone you would typically class as a tough man. Even he couldn't work in a slaughter house. So imagine what it does to your psyche day in and day out having to kill animals. Slaughterhouse workers suffer from PTSD. In one report one worker described how a pig came up to him and gently headbutted him (like a cat showing affection). He had to suppress his compassion to be able to kill it. How effed up is that?

We can vote with our wallet to reduce or stop all that.

In regards to eggs, I would say eating eggs from chickens you have in your garden is OK. There are folks who rescue chickens and let the roam in their garden and eat their eggs. There are certain vegans who complain about that. That is being dogmatic.

And what you suggested, eating meat from animals who died naturally and didn't have to be killed for you, I'd even class that as vegan, because no animal had to suffer. But it wouldn't be profitable as a business, so I don't see how it can work on a large scale or replace factory farming.

We need cultured meat or simply train ourselves to enjoy plant based foods. Dr Wareham said it will take a few weeks for your taste buds to 'like' other foods. And you get enough of nutrients and protein from those foods. Plenty of top athletes prove that point.

Or folks who eat road kill, I'd say that's also vegan. The animal died by accident. You didn't pay for it to be killed, i.e. you didn't contribute to the demand that keeps the meat & dairy industry running.

EDIT: typos & clarity.

I think we have almost "fully ethical meat" now - engineered from tofu and other plant material.

ps. Im by no means a saint in this regard, but I have moved to soy milk and eat much less red meat generally, both out of self-interest for the health aspects, but also partially as I think its better for the environment generally. I suppose I should give up chicken, but its a habit hard to break in my social circle. My point is a gradual move by degrees is still improvement, when integrated over the whole population.

You don't need to give up anything just reduce. I don't drink alcohol at home but I'll have a few drinks socially. If having a burger socially is what you want to do then do it.

> "fully ethical" meat

Clams. Clams and oysters and such. Sessile bivalves are the plants of the animal kingdom, the "genetically engineered brainless cow" of nature. They're also environmentally friendly even when farmed, and more healthy than any animal meat while addressing the same nutritional needs and more. They're almost comically ethical and healthy (and seafood dishes are great imo), they just don't produce bacon and burgers specifically.

Palm oil comes from palm fruit, by the way, not from "massacaring" the trees. Fruits are, from an evolutionary perspective, meant to be eaten, it is their purpose. If plants are conscious of fruit being harvested at all it probably feels good.

I think you're not reading the comment accurately, they're referring to the environmental harms of palm oil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_environmental_impac...

I'm pretty sure a lot of commercial egg farming involves keeping the hens in bad conditions

You can't know out at a restaurant the what eggs they use, but at home you can buy eggs from sources you trust that don't keep hens in bad conditions.

I'm disconcerted from the opposite direction, because it seems people feel uncritical compassion for anything with a face, and they want to prevent suffering but instead of caring about the complexities of human anguish they seem to define it as "pain signals in vertebrates", and they call this ethics, but they just base it on vibes, and so maybe all their morality is incoherent intuition.

Maybe it's a cultural thing but I've never met anyone like you describe at all (certainly none of the vegans I've met). What you describe is obviously a dumb way to think about ethics but I'm also skeptical any significant amount of people think that way

Everything humans believe is based on vibes- which happen to change with the centuries.

Can we please get back to the topic of palantir? The whole eating meat discourse is interesting but also distracts from the topic at hand: do people working at palantir pose themselves question what it means for them to work for palantir? What do we think should be a proper ethical norm regarding people working at palantir?

This very closely resembles my philosophy. I too downplay vegan/veggie because I don't want to cause a stir.

I agree. It's easier to change your morals than your behavior, or contort your thinking around your own behavior until you can imagine it fits into the shape that you've decided your morals are, reality notwithstanding. I think that explains a lot of it, for unabashed meat-eaters. The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal. Most acknowledge that animals lead internal lives while a small minority don't, but in both cases humans are the center of the universe around which the earth and the sun orbits, and we and our convenience and comfort is all that really matters.

I have no doubt whatsoever that half the people I know and love would have owned slaves or at least defended slavery if they were born into a time where it was commonplace. They easily would have bought into nonsense science or religious arguments about the intelligence or moral value of this race over that, like they do for animals.

First off, I believe veganism is, probably, morally correct.

However, I lead a morally imperfect lifestyle. I get around by driving or being driven in a car, even when it would only be moderately less convenient to walk or bike or take transit. A few dollars could feed children in poverty for weeks, and I spend on lot more than "a few" dollars on luxuries like travel. By my measure, knowingly choosing not to prevent human suffering on such a scale is massively worse than eating meat, but at the end of the day, I don't consider myself or others in my position to be monsters.

> The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal.

While I believe non-human animals generally have greater moral value than a single meal - the most widely consumed animals are clearly capable of suffering and IMO intelligent enough for most to instinctively empathize with - I don't think it's particularly strange for humans to view humans as sacred.

Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.

Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.

I didn't say it any of it was unusual. Your observation that humans place themselves at the center of the moral universe and have the agency to enforce it is in line with my thoughts.

> Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.

Ironically making us the only animals capable of moral evil.

> Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.

Is this due to a internally consistent moral value system apart from a view of humans as sacred? If on the other side of the trolley were some of a race of aliens, smarter, better, faster, younger, and more emblematic of the human ideals by way of virtue than the humans on the other side, would you save the aliens? Probably not. Your preference to preserve other people is very natural and probably hard-wired into your brain. That doesn't mean it isn't human chauvinism.

It’s sort of interesting that “I love bacon” turns into “I must have bacon on a scale that can only really be satisfied inhumane farming practices.” I suspect we could raise meat humanely if we had it on a weekly or monthly basis.

I always think that this sort of culture and interaction was exactly was it was like to live during a time when slavery was legal and permitted. I hope in 100 year meat eating will be seen as similar.

I grew up watching my grandmother butchering a chicken for a Sunday dinner. Or my uncle butchering and skinning the calf. Knowing how the sausage is made does nothing for me.

I can understand someone being vegan because they believe eating plants is healthier. I can understand being vegan because you don’t like the taste of meat. But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators

> Knowing how the sausage is made does nothing for me.

Considering that this is nowadays a substantially less common background, and probably trending that direction indefinitely, this reads more as you being desensitized. It's not like vegans are unaware that people could have a background like yours.

> But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators

Morals and religion aren't about what's natural, they're about what humans desire. Illness, violence, and deception are all perfectly "natural."

I don't find might is right to be a convincing moral argument. The only reason I was born a human instead of one of the 300 billion animals humanity consumes each year is the outcome of a lottery system, simple as that. Consider whether you'd feel the same way when applying a "veil of ignorance" test.

He’s not making a might is right argument.

Yes he is. "Nothing more natural than one animal eating another" is might makes right. It's also an appeal to nature, but in this case it's both.

Weaker animals can eat stronger animals. Pack animals, carrion feeders, bugs, animals feeding their offspring, etc. So almost entirely an appeal to nature argument.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.

> There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another

So how do you get from that to human cannibalism == bad?

The naturalism argument has a zillion counterexamples of things that used to be considered natural and now we arbitrarily consider bad.

Have you ever reflected on the legitimacy of your sentinents? As in, you find “terrifying” that people find factory farming bad, but choose to consume its products anyway. But have you considered that perhaps the moral severity that is causing your reaction of horror is actually miscalibrated and unwarranted?

>the impetus for me leaving tech.

What do you do now?

I started a master's in ecology with the hope of doinh a PhD after. Academia honestly sucks and has pretty bad culture issues (and like 10% of the pay) but I genuinely really like animals and it feels good to have my job be helping them.

Personally I don't think I would recommend it. Not that it's necessarily a bad choice but I think that the people for who this is the right choice will feel compelled to make a change regardless of what I say (I know I had people trying to convince me to stay in tech). Fully changing careers like this and living the poor and overworked grad student life in my 30s has taken more commitment and stubbornness than I had expected but some fights are worth doing.

This is terrifying even if you're not vegan. There are moral questions raised by animal products that people should think about. I am worried by people who eat cheese without understanding bobby calves or rennet.

Some people have thought about it and are just deflecting, of course, but not everyone.

I do a lot of damage to other species and humans now and in the future with the energy use caused by my large detached single family home and various leisure travels and imported toys.

The two paths I see would be giving up a lot, including my family since I doubt my wife would go along with it, and live a much less consumptive lifestyle, starting with less space. In the meantime, billions of people in China/India/Brazil/Nigeria are waiting to increase their consumption.

Or I stick my head in the sand and continue ignoring the problem and living the one life I have, and let nature take whatever course it will.

Eating factory farmed meat is seen as very low-class and irresponsible in my immediate vicinity. I have a hard time imagining any of my work colleagues admitting to eating factory farmed meat, even if they do due to cost reasons.

But farmers also enjoy high societal standing here, maybe that helps.

Where did you go after tech?

man look at everyone getting weird as hell about it under here. Good gravy!

This comment section is actually pretty good and it's generally well intentioned so I'm not mad but it's the same stuff every time. It's like how a tall person I know hears the same "how's the weather up there" joke over and over and got tired of it.

The only thing people will say that annoys me is the "but animals eat other animals" argument from otherwise intelligent people (no worries if children say it). I've yet to meet someone who sincerely thinks that what happens in nature is ethically okay (as a simple point, many animals will eat their own family when stressed and sexually assault each other constantly, which are very natural but obviously unethical for humans to do. I've seen animals torture and eat each other alive) so the whole argument is a waste of time. It's weird that the "it's natural" argument is probably the most common when many people will walk it back even before I point out the flaws.

Carnivores need to eat other animals to live. If a living thing needs to do something to live, then almost all cases, there is a very defensible argument for it being moral.

And humans aren't obligate carnivores.

The argument is over whether a certain thing is moral or not. I argue that it is because carnivores need to do that to survive. Humans don't but does that affect whether that thing is moral or not?

Then you would have to argue that an omnivore eating meat is immoral while a carnivore eating meat is moral. I wouldn't enjoy defending that statement.

I like your 6,000 foot view.()
Most people get proseltyzed abt veg before independence. As adults, few reconsider, replaying childhood scripts.
Then, society papers over reality.

() oops just realized that tracks your tall person analogy.

I've never met a vegan as preachy as the average omnivore upon learning someone is vegan. Good luck in all your undertakings, beloved.

Veganism is a terrible example in this context because that community is riddled with all or nothing dogma.

If people were pragmatic instead, and the vegan community would quit alienating people the non-perfect, non-purists the world would be slightly better, too.

For example, in my country licorice is popular. Whether it contsins gelatin or not, not one pig less will be killed because it is a by-product.

10 years ago, I went to a workshop (with DIY) on how to make vegetarian and vegan sausages, and since you mention sausage, I'll use that as another example. A sausage contains herbs and vegetables (to develop taste) and certain chemistry (= cooking) techniques, for example salt and to keep the product together. It is relatively easy to make something akin to that yourself. Heck, one can sauté carrots and build something akin to a hotdog fairly easy.

Comparing it to gelatin is unrealistic, but to say sausages are made from the best meat of the animal? No, minced meat is not since then they wouldn't mince it (as rule of thumb). Frikadel is another example eaten a lot here (NL), the Germans also got their sausage culture.

Meanwhile, there's a much more dramatic example: chicken. There's a lot less meat on those birds per serving, so suffering per human/day on avg omni diet is much worse. But does that mean one should avoid free range chicken eggs? No.

And that is ignoring the environmental impact, since there too a vegan diet (with avocado and almonds requiring a plethora of water and movement of product to market) isn't ideal either (the latter might be less of issue for say Cali).

So in short, we should welcome those people who love bacon to 1) consume less bacon 2) try vegn alternatives. But it doesn't have to be either they're vegan or omni 24/7. Flexitarianism is much more reasonable for a lot of people, and also many situations can arise where such is desirable (such as gifted food, festivities, etc).

Written by someone who follows a pragmatic vegn diet.

Eating meat is normal.

Yes, animals have feelings and are intelligent (to varying degrees, but generally a lot more then most think). Modern meat factories are absolute shit shows and it's outlandishly bad our societies treat the animals like that.

However, it doesn't have to be that way. And killing an animal for food which lived a nice life is perfectly fine. We're all part of the physical reality in which the survival of the fittest reigns supreme. Even if you want to put your head into the sand and deny this, animals eating each other is perfectly normal. And yes, humans are animals too.

I’m not a vegetarian and have no plans on becoming one but.. just because eating meat is normal doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way.

There’s an endless list of atrocities committed by our ancestors or our peers in the animal kingdom that we no longer tolerate. There’s no reason why eating another animal can’t someday become as abhorrent as cannibalism or slavery or whatever.

If eating plant-based didn't make me sick (and I could tolerate gluten and cereals and carb-heavy foods), I'd do it. Now, one might go on a tirade that I'm doing it wrong, but from my research, it's pretty clear the body and the brain evolved for a high-fatty diet; or at least that's how I feel the best.

So here's the conundrum: should I be sick and avoid the food that makes me feel really good, because of ethical concerns? Self-preservation, I believe, should be the top-most concern.

Whenever I hear vegans preaching, I think of the quote "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" — if veganism works for you, I'm glad, but I wish most vegans would be a bit more empathetic and scientifically-minded rather than making people feel bad because, for many reasons, they live their life another way. A way, must I say, that is completely natural.

Honestly I'd rather have a discussion about nutrition with a vegetarian, than a preachy vegan that first insults me, shames me, before trying to hear my reasons.

And a corollary to that: when considering historical figures, before condemning them wholesale, consider how history would judge you if--for example--eating meat is considered in the future the way slavery is considered today

Nowhere did GP say animals eating animals is abnormal.

Right, they just heavily implied it with

> It seems like if it's normal enough people will say something is bad and will happily do it anyway.

I disagree it was implied. Not to mention that in an honest conversation, I shouldn't have to point out that you've cherry picked a quote (which on its face doesn't mean what you apparently think it does) from its actual context.

I do not see that implication in those words. I take it much more literally. People overlook things that are simultaneously bad and normal.

I cannot agree with that interpretation considering the rest of the comment

But let's agree to disagree there

The very first chapter was actually excellent in setting my relationship to the book going forward, because stuff like this twanged against my brain and made me think, "Oh, she just really wanted to be powerful and influential and chased whatever she thought would give her that"

> [after surviving a shark attack] why did this happen to me? If I survived against the odds, surely there had to be a reason? [...] After becoming an attorney, I ended up in the foreign service because it seemed like a way to change the world, and I wanted an adventure. I ended up at the UN because I genuinely believed it was the seat of global power. The place you go when you want to change the world.

> It seemed obvious that politics was going to happen on Facebook, and when it did, when it migrated to this enormous new gathering place, Facebook and the people who ran it would be at the center of everything. They’d be setting the rules for this global conversation. I was in awe of its ineffable potential.

> The vastness of the information Facebook would be collecting was unprecedented. Data about everything. Data that was previously entirely private. Data on the citizens of every country. A historic amount of data and so incredibly valuable. Information is power.

> After years of looking for things that would change the world, I thought I’d found the biggest one going. Like an evangelist, I saw Facebook’s power confirmed in every part of everyday life. Whatever Facebook decided to do—what it did with the voices that were gathering there—would change the course of human events. I was sure of it.

> This is a revolution.

> What do you do when you see a revolution is coming? I decide I will stop at nothing to be part of it. At the center of the action. Once you see it, you can’t sit on the sidelines. I’m desperate to be part of it. I can’t remember ever wanting anything more.

She sounds horrifying.

Consider that she's one of 'the good guys'-- someone who self-reflected on her ambition, saw the 'evil' in hers and other's, called it out publicly, and assumedly regrets hers, and is trying to do better.

Sadly, terrifyingly, for every one of her, there are hundreds who might also self-reflect - but >choose< to be comix-book villains.

And exactly the type to be in power. Explains everything that is fucked up about our world.

She is but in a way that's what makes the book fun. She is very flawed protagonist.

From what I've seen the focus on a few big companies can have a backwards effect on some people's sense of morals. I've heard a few people justify their work for unethical companies as "At least it's not as bad as what Facebook does".

It can also have the opposite of the intended effect when it encourages beliefs that bad behavior is normalized in the industry. I've heard an executive try to drum up support for a program to sell customer data by saying that everyone does it, from Facebook to Google. When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it. They had read so much about big companies collecting customer data to sell that they thought everyone did it and therefore it was okay.

"When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it"

I'm not sure there's a significant meaningful difference between direct selling and what they actually do, which is to make it available to target and manipulate people with extreme granularity. This is a huge part of why a person may not want their data to be held much less purchased to begin with, meaning it's "doesn't sell your data... but does or facilitates all of the things you do not want a group, in buying it from them, able to do."

It's a distinction without much practical difference.

Also: They buy your data from other brokers who do sell it, vastly enriching the degree to which customers of their ad platforms can make use of the data you already know they have far, far beyond your ability to know their full capabilities and the profile they have on you.

Again, it's not actually selling your data, but it's worth noting that when "they didn't believe it", that misconception was possibly helped along by Facebook or Google being on of the potential customers for that data either directly or via the proxy of a data broker whose largest customers are companies like that.

Selling your data means that anyone can have access your data forever. On the other hand, anyone can turn off ad personalization and delete their data on Google and Facebook.

A key way people rationalize bad behavior is saying "everyone does it" without distinguishing the intensity or frequency of bad behavior.

Like a guy who has taken home office supplies from work is not on the same level morally as someone doing home break ins.

New Startup idea: Mordor is a company dedicated to doing evil. We actually plan to lay waste to the world, enslave everyone in it, enshittify anything in sight, and maximize the use of AI for the worst possible thing. Just negative externalities, all the way down.

A (covert) investment in us today can make you seem like an angel tomorrow! Also, with this agenda we're probably going to make a fortune so you might as well get in on the ground floor. Why just fall into hell when you could take one of our luxurious express elevators and get there twice as fast?

Indeed. It would be difficult to make person understand something if their salary depends on not understanding it.

I'll never forget this spot on NPR where they interviewed a machine learning engineer working on AI videos. The engineer was purely focused on how cool the technology is, how real it looks, etc.

The interviewer asked, "aren't you worried about this getting into the hands of the wrong people, and creating deepfakes for extortion and things like that?"

The engineer paused for a few seconds, and then said, "gosh I never even considered that." She created this monster and all she could think about was how neat it was technologically.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in university, we used to have at least one engineering ethics class in undergrad. Have they stopped those? It sure seems like it, given how many engineers are out there who only seem to care about how technically cool and interesting their projects are.

I took one back in 2018 or so, and I assume it's still a degree requirement. If most are like the one I took, however, very few people seriously engaged with the class, and it's just viewed as a filler class.

It didn't help that the workload was a joke. I believe the entirety of our assignments were 5 single page "essay" responses to some ethical scenarios, and the professor seemed to hand out As just for writing enough. It probably took me less than 2 hours of total writing. I imagine most of the students these days are just having ChatGPT write it for them. We absolutely need to take ethics more seriously though, even if it involves adding more/more rigorous courses to the curriculum.

They exist for the "college of engineering" majors such as mechanical, chemical, civil etc. Computer science is considered a natural science in many universities (and is in the corresponding college) and thus does not have an ethics course mandated like other engineering disciplines.

When I did mine, it was mandatory to get BCS accreditation for the degree to teach some professional ethics.

I don’t know if that is still the case though, I’m not sure how relevant BCS membership is these days, I don’t know anyone who has it.

Took one in my undergrad circa 25

Yeah engineering as a discipline tends to be pretty naïve to the consequences of what they build, and sociopaths take advantage of it. Norbert Wiener [1] observed this about the engineers working on nukes in the 1940s-1950s:

“Push-button warfare... possible for a limited group of people to threaten the absolute destruction of millions, without any immediate risk to themselves.... Behind all this I sensed the desires of the gadgeteer to see the wheels go round.”

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener

I'm in the middle of this book right now, and I agree. It's a fantastic read to get inside the psychology of the folks that are making huge decisions about how society works.

This is a really important thing that people on the left in particular seem to consistently overlook: local incentives, emergent corporate behaviors, and the unconscious need to believe you’re “right” have way more explanatory power than “X is actually evil”.

The banality of evil is a well-known idea. That evil is often done by people who are just doing their jobs and see themselves as decent people.

Words are cheap, thoughts are cheap, and voting is cheap. A full-time job, on the other hand, is a substantial contribution towards something, and it comes with a huge opportunity cost. The job you have is a major factor in determining your moral character. Determining what kind of a person you actually are, as opposed to the kind of a person you believe to be, or wish you'd be.

I don't think its reasonable to use the whole "banality of evil" for people working FAANG jobs unless they are on trial for war crimes and genocide. The Nazi officers were not standard grunts but rather key executives of the regime and then they tried to throw Hitler under the bus by claiming they were just following orders. When in reality, they were all pyschopaths and truly believed in what they were doing to minorities was right.

Extrapolating that to Meta or Google is a fundamental misunderstanding of history and insenstive.

The need for belonging is also really powerful, and companies actively try to fulfill that need. Not, generally speaking, for nefarious purposes, but because people do better work when they feel a sense of belonging.

If you decide that your work is against your values, you're also deciding to separate yourself from the group, even if you don't actually leave the company. That's painful. It's not an excuse, but it is a powerful motivator.

Yes, but once you're aware of these factors and leverage them for personal gain anyway, it's evil. It's not like it's impossible to make out the bigger picture on many issues, or to ask oneself if the upsides are really so great that it's worth being responsible for the downsides.

This is equally true for leftist projects. If one is dedicated to the cause of improving the general welfare and creating economic and social opportunities for as many as possible, that's laudable, but you can't use it as an excuse to just ignore the human rights whenever you run into a problem or a tricky ethical situation.

Yeah but keep in mind what Zuck specifically has done. He copied Snapchat multiple times, Facebook overwrote people's public-facing emails, "dumb fucks" in IMs

Zuckerberg is awful person but he alone is not "Meta." It is a company made up of thousands of employees and each of those people play their role in enshittifying the internet. Some of do it gleefully and others do it because they think the battle is better fought in the company than out of it. The large salary also doesn't hurt.

If your incentives and emerging behaviors land at an evil result, it is evil. I’d argue the problem is everyone who constantly generates these “well actually” reasons to excuse the consequences. Marx wrote about people being simultaneously perpetrators and victims of capitalism over 150 years ago, I assure you the left isn’t overlooking this very obvious mechanism.

It’s also a little funny to turn a thread about the blatant failures of a neoliberal “success” story into a weird criticism of the left.

You’re probably right about the book either way, but I think the comparison has an obvious limitation. At best, Meta’s mission is “social connection.” Held up in an equally charitable light, a defense contractor is “protecting American interests.” The positive case is so much more stark that it’s probably easier to convince yourself of.

But I also think that’s partly because it’s actually true. (I concede I work in defense and am biased.)

There’s certainly a necessary debate to be had about whether these companies are doing the right things, whether they’re going about it the right way, and whether the United States’ actions are moral and legal.

But it’s very hard to argue that national security itself isn’t necessary. Whereas you can much more easily argue that a social-media-based ad company has no reason to exist in the first place.

I think Mitchell and Webb sketch is enough. It's not some slow descent to badness in case of Palantir, it's obvious from the PR materials alone

How do you determine if they are mentally convincing themselves they are the good guy, when in fact it is you who is the good guy.

From either perspective, if the roles were reversed, wouldn't it look the same? Both parties thinking they are doing the right thing.

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms out there, they seem to be vastly outnumbered by illegitimate criticisms, no matter what position you hold. It's easy to hold your opinion when you are inundated with a constant stream of invalid arguments that say little more than "I don't like the tribe you chose". Any valid argument is easily overlooked without a sense of guilt in that environment.

I got very far into this book, but didn’t finish it, in large part because the author clearly needed to work through her problems a little more before publishing it. The biggest “I’m not ACTUALLY like them” complex ever.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman is a book with a similar theme. A guy trained by NSA to be sent to poor countries, making deals through false projections with the goal to extract their natural resources.

There is no “ethical” company. They will tend towards making money by means that can be interpreted as being legal. Sometimes they will do things not legal - but those are calculated decisions based on how much the profit from said actions is compared to how much they will pay out as fines.

Ethics and laws are for chumps like us. Because we don’t have the financial and legal muscle to challenge the state.

this take is irritating because it implies that people at companies don't have to bother being ethical or holding the people around them accountable at a personal level for being ethical, as if it's somehow predetermined by the environment, being at a corporation, how you behave.

Certainly it's true that the incentives of corporations push you to ignore ethics. But that's why they're ethics: they're precisely the things you should do that you don't have to do. That's what morality is. Sure, for the purposes of doing things about unethical companies, it might be best to view all corporations as fundamentally unethical because that implies that the right place to make society better is by opposing their behavior with laws. But at an everyday human level everyone is responsible for exactly the things that they do and being at a corporation in no way changes it at all.

I’ve seen this time and again. The more money that a corporation or the leaders in there make, the less they’re worried about ethics.

It’s an irritating take. But personally I don’t move in the same circles as those making ethically dubious and partially legal decisions.

Do I want corporations to be ethical? Yes. Will I campaign for that and call my senator and congressman? Yes.

Are corporation lobbyists calling my congressman and senator with boatloads of money? You bet.

I don’t think everyone understands how disruptive privacy violations are. I think the best place to begin is start educating kids in high school about it, like they do for sex ed.

Am I willing to put money on the line and risk unemployment in the current market? Depends.

Thank you for putting into words what I dislike about that refrain so eloquently. It’s a cop out.

An irritating take can still be largely true simply due to how the incentives are set up.

It's not about true or false. The point is that it's true if you're conceptualizing corporations as enemies to be handled and false if you're conceptualizing them as something you're part of that you're responsible for and you're trying to hold people accountable. The truth value is relative to your moral goal.

Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well.

It is ok to harm another group of people financially and even personally because that’s what “business does”. Degradation being a ratchet that calcifies unethical behavior doesn’t help. Companies tend to get less ethical the older and larger they become.

> Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well

The phrase essentially describes subsuming individuality in favour of group interests. You see similar refrains in militaries, monarchies, non-profits and HOAs.

Especially HOAs.

As far as businesses go, I'd say Palantir finds itself somewhere between "extremely ethically dubious" and "overtly, transparently evil."

I mean, this kinda pushes them past the "in between" phase and squarely into "overtly evil" IMO:

https://xcancel.com/i/status/2045574398573453312

Why not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification)

sure.. but there is 'not ethical' and there is palantir...

They would read it and just say to themselves "Wow, how could anyone fall into that trap? Certainly I never would!"

I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields". Over the last 10 years, I also have come away with an intense impression that Silicon Valley is full of the self-delusional type, as evidenced by Sara's book, Palantir's weird advertising and CEO, and the insane Nimbyism.

I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast. I and many others had enough of Silicon Valley.

Side note: I find it illuminating that one of the most popular social apps that birth social trends did not come from Silicon Valley, but China. I don't think Silicon Valley can drive social trends at all (anti-humanity types are too prevalent).

> I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields".

Can you clarify what you mean by "believes in"?

I believe Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field, that he was an expert convincer. Do you hate me or do you hate him or do you hate something else entirely?

That power, today, is expressed through technology, and these overlords hold their control via proprietary software and anticompetitive business practices.

To seize power back, you need to relinquish their shackles by using technology that is designed with user freedom in mind, not "lock-in", and support businesses constituted of that ethos.

We don't need to support business. We need to support political institutions that oppose proprietary software and support people's right to general purpose computing

It's exactly this over reliance on companies to shape society that got us in this mess

Free as in freedom!

> I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast.

Yes, because Wall Street is a paragon of ethical corporate behavior.

The fact that they're at least honest about what they care about (money) makes them far simpler to deal with than these entities (both private and public) that spin complex webs of half truths about how they're making the world better by implementing 1984.

> I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast

I'm not an American, never set foot in the US for that matter, but I'd say I'm pretty sympathetic to the people actually living there. All this to say that I've recently had the same realisation as you when it comes to West Coast people vs East Coast people, by this point the SV automatons are way, way outside of "normal life", maybe that has always been the case but for sure back in those days SV didn't have the same power as it has now (I'm not talking money, even though that is important, I'm talking actual power to have control over people's lives), not by a long shot.

Silicon Valley must be destroyed to save America. Gladly more are waking up to this. There’s been a surge on both the right and left in my state of people wanting to reject the place and it’s disgusting “culture”.

People do anything for money

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair

This just another example of Sinclair's Law.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Everybody need to be a hero of their own story. Even concentration camp guards had this mental model, apart from outright sadists (I know I know, Godwin is cheap but it fits so well when talking about sociopathic traits and/or lack of morality when convenient).

To quote Upton Sinclair:

> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

But there's something bigger that you allude to, which is that very few peoplel think of themselves as the bad guys. People separate themselves from the harm they contribute to or they dehumanize the targets of that harm and then argue they deserve it somehow or simply that this is necessary for some reason (eg lesser evil arguments).

I eschew the concept of "bad guys" in general because it's a non-argument. Philosophically and politically it's known as "idealism" [1][2]. It's saying "we are the good guys because we are the good guys" and everyone think they're the good guys.

The alternative to this is materialism [3] and historical materialism [4]. There is no metaphysical or inherent goodness (or badness). You are the sum of your actions and their impact on the world. Likewise you are a product of your material world.

So we don't really need to go down the rabbit hole of figuring out if, say, FB/Meta or Palantir is a "good" company or if the employees are or feel "good". We can simply look at the impact and whether that impact was intentional or otherwise foreseeable.

And that record for Meta really isn't good eg Myanmar and the Rohingya genocide [5] or FB's real world harm from spreading misinformation [6].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

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

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

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism

[5]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

[6]: https://theconversation.com/facebook-data-reveal-the-devasta...

This quote immediately stood out:

> Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?

Their framing is wrong. The beliefs and internal politics of the people making the surveillance tools don't matter.

The fact is they're making tools to assist government overreach, and anyone with any political awareness (or maybe more importantly here, objectivity) could have seen that. They're just the enablers.

lol what? "it's not that corporations could be evil, it's the gubermnt!"

meanwhile large corporations literally bribe trump -- they're the ones calling the shots, and the government is just the organ

Nah, it's not like that. It's not defending them.

I'm more saying they never DESCENDED into fascism -- their ideas about how things should go in the world don't really matter. They are merely enabling fascism, regardless of their attitudes towards politics or their work, and they should have known that from the beginning.

They're literally saying "people are using the weapons we make to hurt people." No shit, what business did you think you were in?

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