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Comment by gretch | Hacker News Reader

> Wrong. I specifically stated I hold myself to a higher bar than I held anyone else. I took actions to diminish my contribution, and eventually left. I do not begrudge other Americans who did less than I did.

This is not what I was trying to say.

First let me state the assumption I made: You think that working at Anthropic/OpenAI is morally bad because that's the parent thread, and you made a comment about how somethings are good enough and other things are too bad to tolerate.

So yes, you hold yourself to the bar of I should not work at Anthropic/OpenAI - but the point is that this bar is convenient to hold yourself to.

Did you "took actions to diminish my contribution, and eventually left. I do not begrudge other Americans who did less than I did."

Or did you simply never work there, maybe never even had an offer to work there.

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I wasn't particularly commentating on specific companies. The scope of my reply was strictly responding to a claim that voluntarily choosing to contribute to an evil organization is the same as being physically coerced to do it.

That said, I do hold myself to professional standards that are 'inconvenient' as well. User surveillance, manipulative dark patterns for maximizing engagement and monetization, and just about everything else big tech does is antithetical to the way I live my life. I strive to develop software that I myself am happy to use and that my users are delighted to use. My career certainly got off to a slower and less lucrative start than it otherwise would have if I had no scruples about how I made a living. I could've made much more money if I harvested my users' data and sold it. And yet, I chose not to. That is a choice you can just make. If you were in a position where you were facing homelessness, I could understand taking any job you can get, but the people chasing $300k+ TC jobs at $evilcorp aren't usually in that position.

This isn't the gotcha you think it is, and you're basically accusing the individual of "sour grapes". It isn't clever, it's plainly transparent, and about the easiest way to trivialize someone else's moral convictions. Shame on you. Be better.

> This isn't the gotcha you think it is

You really presume what I think about it huh?

> It isn't clever

Never said it was

> easiest way to trivialize someone else's moral convictions

Did not trivialize it at all. Regardless of what's "right" or "wrong" we are definitely in the territory of "advanced ethics" and not "trivial/beginner ethics"

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