I have friends who work at Facebook. I still don't know how they rationalize their employment.
Additionally, apart from writing in PHP, there must be tons of technical fun and deep problems to solve that makes FB fairly unique.
And also, I'm not really sure how unethical it'd be to work for them, even if you felt they were wrong. Unless you're bringing some rare 4-sigma value to FB, it's likely they'd just get someone else. Might as well be you, where you have a chance to influence things.
Now, this is not an attempt to defend Facebook's actions here or in their other recent efforts. I am merely providing another point of evidence to support MichaelGG's point that Facebook is not flat-out evil, and provide a reason someone might want to work for them despite their recent behavior.
Must be nice to have it wrapped up all tidy like.
It wouldn't surprise me if some startup starts trading conscience futures!
I try to do this when I buy an RIAA-published album or watch a Hollywood film. I make sure I donate an equivalent amount to civil-liberties orgs (EFF, ALA, and others) during that year.
"Carbon credits," basically.
Your comment's actually a pretty good illustration of the effect the grandparent is (probably) talking about.
Climate change is the primary challenge for the next few generations, and once we move on from 'debate' we see that there are a wealth of opportunities in mitigation, reduction of CO2 output and coping with the impact. Just ask Elon Musk.
Permalink For Great Justice: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1990/to
Let's go back even further, to 1900... http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to The upward trend in temperature is clear, the question then becomes why it is happening. What is your theory on this?
I don't have one, but what is your theory on this?
http://i.imgur.com/5hPqZQh.png
Now, here's the whole 12-hour graph, rather than just a three minute excerpt from the very end:
http://i.imgur.com/npSuZd9.png
Whatever your theory was, does it still hold up?
The usual metaphor is a drunk person looking for his lost car keys. He meanders around under the streetlight because that's the only place where he can see where he's going. He won't stray very far from the lamp post, but his direction at any given time has little or no correlation to either his past or future behavior.
It's easy to fool yourself into thinking you understand what's going on based on recent historical behavior, but in reality, the presence of random-walk noise means that it's impossible to infer anything about long-term trends or short-term biases by looking at short-term trends. In climate science, even a hundred thousand years' worth of data is still a "short term" record. We need better data, we need better models, and most important, we need to give ourselves time to evaluate them on the basis of their predictive power.
Based on my own experience watching random-walk processes in real time, someone who expects me to take action based on the last 100 years of data from a multi-billion year timeframe is just going to get laughed at. I've spent so much time fooling myself (that's my software, and my cesium standard) that I probably am erring on the side of too much skepticism.
For the record, my theory is that "average global surface temperature" has a nonlinear response to various known and unknown forcings.
That a group of nonprofits and academic institutions all colluded over a decade or three to make money in a very roundabout way for groups they don't have any direct involvement with?
-or-
That a group of oil industry types, in a nod to the junk science used by big tobacco for years, colluded over a decade or three in an attempt to discredit something that will directly impact their bottom lines in a bad way?
Follow the money. Hell, follow human nature.
That's what has actually happened a few gazillion times throughout human history, unlike either of the other two scenarios you posit.
The best thing we can do is force the climate scientists to make specific predictions, then look back in a few decades and evaluate those predictions. Predictive power isn't everything, it's the only thing.
So far, the predictive power of the vaunted "scientific consensus" has been mixed. Personally, I'm not as satisfied with the quality of the models or the data as I would like to be, given the magnitude of the changes to global economics that are being demanded on the basis of those models and data.
Show me a critical analysis of the data that wasn't commissioned by or sponsored by the energy industry or any organization or person connected to it.
Extraordinary claims may or may not require extraordinary proof -- at least one famous environmentalist said so, anyway -- but extraordinary demands most certainly do.
Rubbish. Are you seriously telling me that nobody has done critical analysis of the data who wasn't associated with the energy industry?
[1] http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pa...
I'm sure your frinds rather be working for some project that would make the world better (hey Linux, I'm at you!:) But, still, they have to pay bills.
That's life. Don't like it? Change it.
It reminds me of a friend of mine whose wife works for the TSA at the airport. Honestly, I have zero respect for her, but hey, at least she can pay her mortgage right?
While Facebook isn't on the same level as working for the TSA, it is definitely a company that appears to be run by people of questionable moral character, and I would absolutely not want to be associated with them.
2nd ¶: your friend loves her, and she helps him to lift the weight. Who are you to question that?
3rd ¶: thank god your parents are such great persons.
That's irrelevant though. Is morality relative to your current financial situation? Is it ok to do wrong in order to make money?
There are plenty of jobs available. People just want to be picky about what jobs they take. If a person justifies a salary because other jobs are "beneath them" or they don't provide the standard of living they desire, that person has compromised themselves.
I have done many things in my past of which I am not proud, but I try every day to keep that list from getting longer. The only way the world will improve is if we all become more conscious of our actions and their consequences. Any other course is selfishness.