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Comment by addedGone | Hacker News Reader

> We cannot separate ethics from technology. Huh, yes, we can, writer's have the direct proof and still refuse to acknowledge it, aka that Mullvad, a COMPANY meaning a separated entity from the founders is doing great things for humanity, which proves that we can separate but still writer is obsessed with one of the shareholder and imply that Mullvad itself isn't an ethical company despite the contrary proven by multiple external auditors.

This blog is honestly terrible, it seems that the writer is race-obsessed, half the articles are stuff about race, weird gender ideology, veganism, nazism... it literally feels like the garbage we see on Reddit, aggregated and parroted without substance, writer isn't proposing a solution to anything, he is just defaming people and companies and feels extremely judgmental, it's not at all accepting opinions of other people, it's imposing that the world has to be writer's way else it's wrong.

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we can separate technology from ethics, but should we? and if yes, how do we do it? the problem is not that we couldn't, but that the debate around this seems to be polarized. either the separation is 100% or there is no separation at all.

if we take google, amazon, etc, for example, clearly their products are of benefit to a lot of people but on the other side they do a lot of bad things too. if we didn't insist on separating ethics from technology then maybe more people would protest and refuse to use their tools and services. on the other hand, sometimes you are forced to use a tool because there are no alternatives, or because you can't afford to quit your job or reject a client over it. so some separation is necessary.

mullvad is a milder case. the company is clearly doing something positive, and many just disagree with the personal actions/opinions of one of their founders. some people are comfortable to separate that and others are not.

personally i would approach this from the question: how strongly do i want to send a message to this person that i am not ok with their actions. how strong i feel vs how much i depend on the tool/service will affect my choice.

Thank you for this voice of reason.

> We cannot separate ethics from technology.

Watch me

In spite of what you might think, Nazi sympathizers do not have valid opinions and should be shunned by everyone.

> XYZ sympathizers do not have valid opinions and should be shunned by everyone

Seems like something a nazi would say

Why would their opinion not be valid? If a "Nazi sympathizer" invent something, it's not valid, it doesn't exist? You don't make any sense.

Can you cite a Nazi opinion that you find valid?

I don't know any "current Nazi" so I can't say, but from history, it's pretty easy.

Brilliant or useful ideas/work can come from morally monstrous or politically toxic people you know. Many people have done things that are very morally wrong (up to murder and so-on) and provide great things to the world, not that it "compensate" in anything, but both can be true at the same time (do bad & good at the same time, or during different life periods).

You need to realize that millions at the time of Nazi regime were "Pro-Nazi", and many were scientists that invented great things, many were writers that wrote lasting pieces, many used their experience to actually to meaningful things later-on, such as avoiding that those terrible things re-occur, how do you explain this?

Let me give you another example: Programs meant for homeless, drug addicts, criminals... are often managed by former criminals, and they turned their lives around and decided to actually contribute to society instead of continuing to do harm (or sometimes do both at the same time).

interesting examples:

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

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

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

also, traditional german blackletter and german handwriting were abolished by the nazis, so if we take this concept of complete rejection of any of their ideas seriously then germans should have gone back to the old forms after '45. attempts were actually made but failed and in hindsight i think going back would only have strengthened german nationalism as it appears to do today. imagine germany using blackletter today and you ask them: why don't you use normal print like everyone else? only to get the response: we can't, nazis tried that first, and therefore it's a bad idea.

I didn't ask for a work, I asked for opinions. Can you name a Nazi opinion, current or historical, that you agree with? Preferably something that would make the average person say, "you know, that Nazi/those Nazis were right about that?" That is what huslage above was talking about, opinions, not works. I don't understand your pivot from opinions to works.

Applying a label to a population will never get you the full perspective of what you are looking for from within that population.

I just want one Nazi opinion that the guy agrees with. One opinion to invalidate the original commenter's statement.

Hermann Göring (apparently a top Nazi war criminal, Gestapo founder, Holocaust architect) held that animals deserve strong legal protection from cruelty and pushed the progressive 1933 Reich Animal Protection Act that banned unnecessary suffering.

Do you agree with his Nazi opinion? But of course, this isn't about "Nazi", we are talking about serious criminals that did a lot of wrong but also doing a lot of good, that's the whole point, is that people can do both (thousand do so, everyday).

Again, before I'm being mistaken for a Nazi, I'm not saying that doing good invalidate doing bad, I'm saying both are true simultaneously, you have many real life examples with people that did great within their community and later been discovered to have done extremely immoral things, I can pull up a massive list with Fable if you want me to but I don't think it's necessary. Previous slave owners that did heavily fight for slave rights later-on is another example but I don't think it's necessary as there is probably hundred of thousand of cases and this is HN, I believe we can extrapolate a minimum.

There you go, that's one Nazi opinion that you agree with that invalidates the grey comment above. You can speak clearly on HN without couching your agreement in paragraphs of defense. This isn't Reddit.

edit: I can't reply to your comment below, so I'll respond to your question here. Knowing the atrocities and the genocide that the Nazis committed behind the cover of the law, and how their antisemitism was at the root of so many of their laws and actions, I would never agree with any of the laws the Nazis passed. I would be concerned that I would be validating, enabling, or endorsing the antisemitism that inspired any particular opinion or law.

For example, why did the Nazis pass a law strengthening protections for animals? Was it for moral and ethical concern of animals, or was it so when they later dehumanized Jews that they had a legal framework protecting the Nazis who would conduct torturous experiments on them? Their motivation for any action is corrupt and inseparable from their antisemitism and genocidal conduct.

Knowing that antisemitism is coming back into style, and seeing your agreement with this infamous Nazi's law, I find myself finding your denial of Naziism suspect. One cannot simply agree with a Nazi without casting suspicion upon oneself. But thank you for your bravery.

It was useless to point it out because the point isn't about a specific Nazi, it's that everyone would agree with some of the good opinions of bad people, war criminals and so-on. You haven't replied btw, do you also agree with this Nazi opinion?

Knowing the atrocities and the genocide that the Nazis committed behind the cover of the law, and how their antisemitism was at the root of so many of their laws and actions, I would never agree with any of the laws the Nazis passed. I would be concerned that I would be validating, enabling, or endorsing the antisemitism that inspired any particular opinion or law.

For example, why did the Nazis pass a law strengthening protections for animals? Was it for moral and ethical concern of animals? Or was it so when they later dehumanized Jews that they had a legal framework describing how they could treat Jews like draft horses and lab rats, and protecting the Nazis who would conduct torturous experiments on them? The Nazi motivation for any action is corrupt and inseparable from their antisemitism and genocidal conduct. This is why the greyed out commenter above feels that the opinion of a Nazi sympathizer doesn't matter, because one can't tell whether or not their opinion is based on antisemitism and genocidal ideation or not.

Knowing that antisemitism is coming back into style, and seeing your agreement with this infamous Nazi's law, I'm finding your earlier denial of Naziism suspect. One cannot simply agree with a Nazi without casting suspicion upon oneself and one's motivations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party

> Some key issues for the Örebro Party locally include strong secularism, a 30-hour workweek with retained pay, lowered wages for politicians, expanded social housing, abolishing preschool-fees, making public transport free of charge,[3] ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care.[4][5] Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration, closing the Swedish borders to immigration, a stricter assimilation policy and ending taxes on energy and fuel as some of its key issues.

Strict immigration policy does not equal nazis, sorry.

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