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There's involvement and then there's commitment, as the pig said to the chicken about breakfast.

I'm wondering if merely getting a job programming for a defense company leads to a moral slide into authoritarianism. You know, suppose you're doing sysadmin for HT - is that enough to start warping your view of the world?

Also there's the involvement in actions just short of creating a banking-credential-stealing botnet. False BGP announcements, sniffing for bitcoin credentials and stuff is the domain of Russian and Romanian "Bad Guys". How on earth can an employee justify doing that sort of thing?




is that enough to start warping your view of the world

That's certainly how cognitive dissidence works. People will do great mental gymnastics to avoid seeing themselves as one of the bad guys.


while I think "cognitive dissonance" is the phrase you were looking for, you just came up with a great punk band name.


Also "cognitive dissidents", which sounds the same but is a noun and thus maybe better for a band name. Both already have hits on Google. :)


"Cognitive Dissidents" was used in William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. :)

glcd.bandcamp


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




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