The past year has been strange. Back in 2016, there was so much opposition to Trump. Even after he was elected and granted tremendous power, the other "elites" were staunchly opposed to him and spoke out against him. This despite the fact that the worst thing you can say about DJT in 2017 is that he is an uncouth man.
Fast forward 8 years, and the things we know about DJT today are so much worse than anyone imagined in 2017. He tried to subvert our nation's democracy and political stability. He summoned a mob of rioters, stood idly by while they assaulted our leaders in congress, and eventually pardoned all of them. He has been convicted of multiple felonies, and found guilty in civil court of sexual abuse. People from his own previous administration have called him out as being corrupt and incompetent, and seven Republican senators voted to impeach/convict him.
And yet, despite a jaw-dropping list of unforgivable offenses from the past few years, he enjoys more support today than he did in 2020. From people as smart as Zuck and Andreesen.
It really is true what they say about the fragility of political norms. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, there's no putting it back.
What it is ... is depressing. I've never seen such cowardice and avarice. You'd think these people were being threatened by a mob boss with getting their legs broken. All they need to do is stand for ... something? Rule of Law? The Constitution? Our present and future economic and political strength? It's not hard, just replace their propaganda with truth. Do it slowly so people don't get too mad. Boil them gently until they stop believing the lies. Bring our country back, so the government starts working for the people again. Pick any number of easy non-partisan answers: Term limits or Publicly funded elections. Get the poison out of the system. It just takes the will to do it. Bah, it's hopeless.
> despite a jaw-dropping list of unforgivable offenses from the past few years, he enjoys more support today than he did in 2020. From people as smart as Zuck and Andreesen.
I don't think it is as much support, as not caring enough to be seen to be against, because there are benefits to not being seen as against and previously acting against (it at least bit acting with) has achieved little.
While Shart is in office, and possibly for some time after depending on what the current administration manages to setup over this term, the likes of Zuck have enough to lose by being against three current administration and little to gain otherwise (at least not in the short term).
In a shorter set of words: not support, greed and cowardice pretending to be support.
Not that this changes the right/wrong dynamic of the situation in the eyes of any side…
Most modern incarnations of this idea revolve around Citizen Assemblies. Ireland, as an example, convened a citizen assembly in order to discuss and propose reforms on topics like abortion, climate change, and political reform.
The idea behind Citizens Assembly isn't very controversial. Randomly select a large pool of citizens, have them discuss a topic in great detail with plenty of testimony from experts, and then vote on their recommendations.
In concept, this is very similar to how courtroom juries operate. We don't just let millions of people vote on whether a defendant is innocent or guilty. We instead pick a smaller pool of jurors, force them to sit through weeks of expert testimony and arguments from both sides, after which they cast their votes. Hence why there is a movement to similarly have courtroom juries elect our political representatives as well
I'm always impressed how many of our problems were solved very long ago (in this case, we know Athenians did "Citizen Assemblies" more than a thousand years ago) but then our systems slowly decay and the solution is lost.
That means a well working democratic country with a working welfare and social net will eventually degrade into some random authoritarian shithole. That scares me.
Not true:
While frame as "the holy first democratic state", most people were excluded: The ones who were allowed to vote/elect, were mainly the rich upperclass, Women, Slaves, Children etc. weren allowed to participate / attend.
The only way in which this is relevant is if the populations of voters are different in ways that affect the voting mechanism. For all we care they could have been warlord cannibals: all that matters is that we can use the same mechanism.
I don't see why not just skip the "representatives" part and have juries vote on laws directly.
If you take away the little power people have to influence the government, why not at least do it without adding another layer of indirection?
The idea of a representative is flawed from the start to begin with. There is probably no single person in my country who agrees with me on everything. Therefore any person I choose to represent myself is only an approximation of what I really want.
I increasingly feel like the belief that people need to be ruled by powerful individuals (or worse, i single individual) comes from some primitive need that evolved back when combat ability was your group's primary predictor of survival.
If you have independent votes on everything then you run the risk that there are a bunch of mutually-incompatible things that all get majority approval.
(Would you rather higher taxes or lower? Lower, of course. Higher state pensions or lower? Higher, of course. Stronger or weaker military? Stronger, of course. Better or worse infrastructure? Better, of course. More teachers or fewer? More, of course. More national debt or less? Less, of course. Etc.)
This doesn't require any individual person to be irrational or forgetful or anything, although in fact people frequently are.
Also, whoever selects just which things get voted on has a great deal of power, more than most elected representatives have. If those people are elected then you've effectively got a representative democracy after all; if not, then arguably you've effectively not got a democracy at all.
Representative government as such doesn't solve this problem, but in practice it means that a candidate or party proposes a whole basket of policies to get judged collectively, and between when they get into power and when the electorate decides whether they did a good enough job to elect them again there's enough time for a wide variety of those different interacting things all to have happened and either worked well or not.
I don't want to claim that this works particularly well. But it feels to me like any sort of direct democracy would likely work much worse.
(Maybe there's scope for a hybrid system: elections every few years for representatives who are then obliged to put various classes of major decision to a national vote.)
In theory, I think the argument for juries electing candidates is one of efficiency: back in normal times, there were many, many issues facing Congress in a given year, and they would pass lots of legislation to handle those issues. Empaneling a new jury for each update to the farm bill or appropriation of money for some random government program seems like a lot of overhead. On the other hand, in the current ridiculous US atmosphere, it seems like Congress only passes a couple bills each session, which are enormous omnibus spending bills using strategic pork and legislative tricks to bypass the consensus-based rules that used to be easy to meet before polarization. I don’t think that’s a good condition though.
I agree that the extreme, though, where a jury elects a monarch, would be excessive. I would be interested in a system where separate juries elect government ministers (e.g. Defence, Education, Housing, etc), so that there would be a better chance that average people’s opinions could be taken into account in the running of each of the government agencies, instead of having all of them run by the same ideology because they’re all appointed by one party or president.
Yea one nice characteristic of a representative democracy is that the voting is a rough approximation of who would win if the swords (guns, whatever) came out and it devolved into civil war. But without the bloodshed and loss.
Doesn't work as well as a proxy in the modern age with our level of technology though I suppose.
I dream of this so much. I’ve spent a lot of time in court around juries. It is truly amazing how reasonable people are, how much they listen, and how seriously they take the process. Seeing how regular people acted in jury duty is one of the few things that gives me hope about our country.
By and large, if you give a “Regular Person” a “Solemn Important Duty”, they rise to it and give it their best. We should seek to cultivate institutions that do this far more often.
> Once they judge a business to be a monopoly, the business falls apart and the monopoly is irrelevant
You're ignoring the reverse causality. Antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft in the 1990s/2000s put them on edge, and made them think twice about strong-arming their competition. Back when Google was starting to make a name for themselves, MS strongly considered adding a warning on Internet Explorer, telling people to "beware" of any results they see on Google. MS eventually decided against it, because of the antitrust magnifying glass they were under. Having a level playing field allowed Google to grow exponentially, and eventually rendered MS' monopoly irrelevant.
Monopolies use anticompetitive tactics to preserve their moat, and continue being monopolies. When antitrust legislation works effectively, this moat disappears, and the monopolist is eventually overrun and becomes irrelevant.
> Frank’s chief software engineer, Patrick Vovor, testified that Javice had asked him to generate synthetic data to support her claim that the company had more than 4 million users. When Vovor asked if that was legal, prosecutors said, Javice and Amar assured him that it was — and told him they didn’t want to end up in orange prison jumpsuits. Vovor testified that he refused to help. “I told them I would not do anything illegal,” Vovor told jurors.
> Seeking to dent Vovor’s credibility, defense lawyers suggested he was resentful that Javice didn’t want to date him.
This should be used as an example in engineering ethics classes for how important it is to say "no" to your employer when you are asked to do something that doesn't pass the smell test, no matter how trivial it may seem. This simple act saved the guy his career and (potentially) freedom.
Yeah, I think it's an ABET requirement for accreditation of engineering degrees.
Lots of people with an engineering title don't have an engineering degree though. And of course, passing the class doesn't mean you'll be ethical. Knowing the material and acting on it are different. Also, understanding the requirements and working right at the edge of them is engineering...
If you're a witness with damning evidence, literally anything you will ever do, as well as anything you didn't do will be used to impeach your credibility in court.
That's what lawyers do. They throw shit and see what sticks.
This is the job of a lawyer. And it's a knife that cuts both ways. You hate them when you are on the stop, and you love (?) them when they do your dirty bidding.
What do you call 500 lawyers lying on the bottom of the ocean?
A good start...
(The War of the Roses, 1989)
> How would that help defend you against the accusation that you resented her
That's the "cordial and friendly" part; if you've never expressed any negativity about her it boosts your credibility.
> not wanting to date you?
That's the "distance" part.
If you've never approached her in private, or for watercooler chat, or had lunch in the cafeteria together, or got coffee together ... that buys you some credibility.
In short, you never reached out to her for anything other than a work request, made in a work-provided channel (email, slack, etc), and only reached out verbally/telephonically/in-person when urgency was required.
I agree with you. However, there are cases were even that kind of behaviour is turned around to stab you as a male... Not making any personal connection is considered creepy by some, and there have been cases were that was reported to HR.
> This kind of risk mitigation is probably a losing strategy. Lawyers will find any reason to crucify you.
Right, but much better for them to have flimsy reasons that literally won't pass even a cursory glance by a court (like alone time with someone), than give them situations which allows them to introduce doubt about your innocence.
Because if your relationship is friendly, cordial and appropriately distanced, there would then be no evidence that you resent her not wanting to date you.
No, the stories are very careful, but i get it - they parse words.
AFAIK, he did not deny that he made romantic overtures (or whatever the hell phrase they used, i can look it up again if you care).
If he denied it, i don't see it.
What he denied was that he was resentful she said no, and in any way used it against her :)
If they had no evidence, etc, it would not be an even mildly viable way of attacking his credibility (IE ignoring whether it's smart/dumb/ethical/etc, if wouldn't be effective).
It would also be cut off by a judge very quickly because you'd lack any foundation.
So it would be a very short questioning, too.
IE you'd end up STH like this:
"Q:Did you ever ask her out on a date
A: No
Q: Did you ever flirt with her
A: No
<3 other ways of asking the same question>
Q: So you weren't resentful she declined to date you or flirt back
A: No
"
At this point, if you try to go further, you have no basis on which to do so, it will be objected to, you will be forced to move on. Actually, you probably won't even get to ask the last question if they answer no to all the others, it will get objected to, you will have to withdraw it, the jury will think you are an ass.
You'd have to have evidence to impeach them or ask them about (IE conversations they admitted to, etc).
Or they'd have to say yes to one of these questions, so you could hammer them some more.
A ton of no's like the above where you have nothing else just make you look desperate to a jury, and worse than doing nothing, so you really wouldn't do it, even if you are losing badly.
A particularly revealing aspect of Menchel’s cross-examination focused on Mr. Vovor’s feelings toward Ms. Javice. He admitted to sending her flowers, messages, photos, playlists, and even a card without signing his name, instead using a heart emoji. His behavior had previously led to a human resources complaint by Ms. Javice, resulting in a discussion with the company’s legal and Human Resources representative.
[EDIT: All of the below is now inaccurate]
> AFAIK, he did not deny that he made romantic overtures
Depends on how it's phrased - it's common to preface with "What's not explicitly addressed is denied. My Client reserves the right to address the unaddressed claim in the future." in court papers, but I'm not sure if that works for witness-box testimony.
TBH, if he neither denied it nor admitted it while in the witness box, then it is unlikely he was asked the question "Did you make any romantic overture to $X" at all.
And, to be even more honest, if her lawyer avoided asking that question, it's because he knew the answer already.
> (or whatever the hell phrase they used, i can look it up again if you care).
Actually I cannot find the court transcript (my google fu is failing). Do you have a link?
It seems a pretty important part of this thread's premise; assuming that the main witness [did/did not] ask out his boss on a date.
No surprises here, companies will tell this to your face on day 1. Asking your boss/subordinate out on a date is frowned upon and will be used aggressively against you.
No, this story shows that if you ask your boss out on a date, and they say no, and your boss gets in trouble and you are the star witness, they will try to use your idiocy against you.
Why do you insist on making this about one-way false claims of sexual harassment, etc, that didn't happen, when it's about something that did happen.
This guy did ask his boss out on a date. Which is just ... beyond stupid. Yet somehow you insist on making this about things that did not.
It's not only about having a boss. When a man and a woman land on opposite sides, the man stands a risk to be accused of sexual harassment, misconduct and being misogynistic.
Modern sexuality might mean that avoiding the opposite sex is off little help. Instead you need to know how to avoid manipulative sociopaths - which takes years of experience to learn (and perhaps after you learn the skills you decide to join them).
Yeah, I slipped by not mentioning homosexuality. However, while we are at pedantry: Homosexuality isn't particularily a modern phenomenon either. So we both erred on the side of inclusive speech... However, it doesn't really matter in this context, I was particularily refering to male/female, given the whole metoo thing and "trust all women" and all that. As a male, you're particularily exposed to female claims usually being the end of your reputation.
I appreciate the author and this article. As an immigrant and person of color, the author's concerns resonate with me. I don't think people like PG or Andreessen are evil bigots. But they are underestimating and enabling a movement that is cruel and exclusionary by design. A movement that they seek to tame and harness, but not understanding that the movement is fundamentally untameable.
I miss the days when the Republican party was led by a President like Bush, who told America that Islam is a religion of peace. And nominees like McCain, who told his supporters that Obama is a decent family man, and a natural-born American. I worry for the future, and my children's place in it.
> I miss the days when the Republican party was led by a President like Bush, who told America that Islam is a religion of peace
At the same time he also said that if you don't agree with him, you're with the terrorists. I do agree that Bush went out of his way to not stigmatize Muslims or Islam, but "don't be a flaming racist" is not that high of a bar to meet, and he was very much not a moderate open to nuanced views (on this topic, and various others). Never mind stuff like Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, torture. I'm not sure it really matters for the Guantanamo Bay whether Bush is or isn't prejudiced against their ethnicity or religion: they're still detained in a camp. Without trail. For years. Being tortured.
McCain defending Obama against vile racist attacks was also not that high of a bar to meet. McCain was also a standard GOP senator during the "obstruct whatever Obama does at all cost" years, never mind how he tried to appeal to the crazy Tea Party fanbase with Palin. I don't entirely dislike the man by the way – I'd say his legacy is mixed and complex.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't look at it the past too rose-coloured. The current mess didn't spontaneously come to exist out of nothing. People like Bush and McCain made a pig sty of things, and then were surprised pigs turned up to roll around in the mess. The old "gradually and then suddenly" quip applies not just to bankruptcy.
> I miss the days when the Republican party was led by a President like Bush, who told America that Islam is a religion of peace.
He said this as he invaded a majority muslim country causing the deaths of tens of thousands of muslims. It was perception management, not a genuine concern for muslims. Words are not more important than actions.
Far be it from me to defend GWB, but in fairness he didn't invade them because they were muslim. There were many (poor) reasons for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, but their primary religion was not among them. If it were, many other Middle Eastern countries would have also been invaded.
Words are not more important than actions. But words can inform us of the intentions behind the actions - which must be considered when casting judgement.
I don't have exact numbers but my understanding is/was the US-led wars into Iraq and Afghanistan didn't cause millions of deaths but the insurrections against the governments established afterwards did. Iraqis killing other Iraqis, Afghans killing other Afghans.
Bush might have been the one who toppled the existing equilibrium of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, but most of the suffering was inflicted by the bloody civil wars (often fueled by third parties such as Iran).
You break it, you bought it. You get zero points for invading a country for no good reason and saying you’re going to bring freedom and democracy while having no realistic plan for actually doing it.
> Islam is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a religion of peace.
It is. The word Islam and Salaam are etymologically tied to the word "peace".
If your definition of peace is "never wages war", well there's no country or political regime in the world like that. Even India, which was liberated by the famous nonviolent philosopher Gandhi, did not last many years without needing to wage war and take territory.
Islam is the only remaining religion with a political element and an existing desire for statehood. You could argue for Judaism (but some of the Orthodox would disagree) also. Back when Christendom had aspirations of statehood, it was also not "peaceful" in the way most people imagine. But this isn't a feature of the religions. It's a feature of world politics. No one can be peaceful and engage meaningfully in world politics. Everyone is propped up by some army somewhere.
You can have many arguments against the social regime, views on gender, etc. Etc. of Islam, but to say it's not peaceful because it is a political entity is just not understanding politics or the world, imo
I'm reasonably sure the GP is referring to the fact that there are explicitly political aspects to Islam (wanting an Islamic state) that don't exist in other religions.
I'm not sure I agree though, as Judaism now has a state and Christianity had one and lost it.
I mentioned "remaining" as the explicit political aspects are in all religions, it's just that as we came to modernity states became secular, and only Islam remains with that element still largely in tact.
I did mention the Jewish state as well, but imo, since it is based partly on ethnicity even for open non-believers, it's kind of a mix between a secular and a religious state
Yes, that is pretty much what I mean. But the idea of a unified Muslim state is also still pretty alive in the world. In a way it's not in other religions (Judaism is an interesting edge case, imo)
As POC I feel like equity movements in the US have, by far, become majority LGBT+ issues with a minority of racial or religious issues. Many POC cohorts in this election shifted toward Trump and I suspect it has to do with how much diversity initiatives have come to settle around White LGBT+ voices. I don't think I've seen the topic of Islam in America covered in any MSM article in years unless buried deep into an Opinion section.
I like to build bridges between minority groups but the current moment is really about mostly White gender minorities in the US. This is especially fraught right now because many POC communities tend to be more socially conservative than white communities, and LGBT+ acceptance is lower in POC communities than among the general American public.
That said I am not a fan of Trump and the modern MAGA movement's discriminatory politics, lack of respect for rule of law, denial of basic climate realities, and many many other things that I could list for days.
Kindly you're mistaken. I know it feels that way but polls say it isnt.
A solid majority of the US want mass deportation. This moment is about being white, make no mistake, the trans stuff is a side show.
I can't read minds of the POCs who went along with it but my guess is they essentially think they're white enough now and won't be swept up, but their white friends certainly don't see them that way. Likely over the next month (next week really) a lot of them who did vote for him are about to find out.
While I understand the point you're making, I am surprised by the examples you chose.
What Bush's speechwriter wrote, did not stop Bush from authorizing torture stations across the world, murdering hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians in two failed military occupations, while weakening America vis-a-vis Russia and China, a confrontation that has dominated the past several years. Do not mistake public statements as any indication of actual policy.
As for McCain, his words were "No Ma'am, he is not an Arab, he is a decent family man", which I suppose is addressing misinformation with a decisiveness Republicans wouldn't dream of today.
> As for McCain, his words were "No Ma'am, he is not an Arab, he is a decent family man", which I suppose is addressing misinformation with a decisiveness Republicans wouldn't dream of today.
To be precise: they'd oppose the misinformation if they felt it was to their benefit, embrace it if they felt it was to their benefit, or behave neutrally towards the misinformation when it was brought to their attention... if they felt that was to their benefit.
"who told America that Islam is a religion of peace"
This is something I considered a brazen lie in the interest of stability.
I believe in existence of individual peaceful Muslims, but I don't believe in inherent peacefulness of a religion founded by a warrior who converted Arabia by the sword and which had since seen an endless series of holy wars initiated in the name of Islam.
You can't really build societal understanding on a foundation of such misinformation.
To be clear, Christianity and Judaism aren't "religions of peace" either. Some explicitly anti-militaristic sects like the Amish maybe. But the Abrahamic faiths as such, no.
I haven't said that every Muslim area in the world was converted by the sword.
But Muhammad led a lot of wars, in which thousands died. Which is fairly untypical among the founders of currently widespread religions, though the Old Testament heroes like Joshua can be categorized into a very similar slot.
> This might also be a microcosm of why the working class is pissed off in America, because looking at this experience, the optimal strategy for revenue is to blow smoke up the ass of a wealthy corporation until they give you a fat stock grant, then claim credit for the work of others so that they give you more.
Here's an alternate take. A competitive free market has squeezed corporate profits so much, that most would-be-capitalists would be better off joining the working class instead. Consider the alternative where anyone who doesn't have the financial means to build their own company, is relegated to a sub-par quality of life.
> Also, why would you conduct an interview in a language where even if you don't know the syntax (and this is obscure) you could have looked it up or disallowed the interview to be done in Python?
The norm in most of my interviews has been that candidates can solve coding problems in whatever language they are most comfortable with. For most languages like Python etc, it would be a mistake to reject a candidate just because they don't have experience with that specific language.
The norm in most of my interviews has been that candidates can solve coding problems in whatever language they are most comfortable with.
I assume they've already filtered out candidates whose "most comfortable language" isn't the one they're hiring for, or they're going to have a difficult time when they come across the one who wants to use APL or x86 Asm.
I heard a tale of a candidate white boarding in an obscure language (in a bit of an attempt to hide a deficiency), unfortunately for the candidate the interviewer happened to be well versed in the language and saw right through the charade.
Hah. Even if the interviewer didn't see through the charade they have plenty of time to check the code after the fact. Once or twice a candidate has done something I didn't know about so I just googled it. Nice little learning opportunity for me.
> homeowners who have regularly rented out their property on Airbnb or other short-term rental sites will be subject to paying 13 per cent HST when putting the home up for sale
How are they defining regularly? If someone rents out their home for one weekend every month, will they be liable for that 13% tax? Regardless of whatever threshold they choose, it seems weird that someone's tax liability will jump from 0 to potentially hundreds of thousands, because of a tiny change in their renting behavior.
The way to find out the answer is to ask the relevant tax office for a ruling. You can then use this to evaluate whether it's still worth doing this kind of business.
The guy spends an entire section talking about this. Just because he has different moral opinions doesn't mean he doesn't care about morality. To quote the author:
Grey areas. By this I mean I mean ‘involve morally thorny, difficult decisions’: examples include health insurance, immigration enforcement, oil companies, the military, spy agencies, police/crime, and so on.
Every engineer faces a choice: you can work on things like Google search or the Facebook news feed, all of which seem like marginally good things and basically fall into category 1. You can also go work on category 2 things like GiveDirectly or OpenPhilanthropy or whatever.
The critical case against Palantir seemed to be something like “you shouldn’t work on category 3 things, because sometimes this involves making morally bad decisions”. An example was immigration enforcement during 2016-2020, aspects of which many people were uncomfortable with.
But it seems to me that ignoring category 3 entirely, and just disengaging with it, is also an abdication of responsibility. Institutions in category 3 need to exist. The USA is defended by people with guns. The police have to enforce crime, and - in my experience - even people who are morally uncomfortable with some aspects of policing are quick to call the police if their own home has been robbed. Oil companies have to provide energy. Health insurers have to make difficult decisions all the time. Yes, there are unsavory aspects to all of these things. But do we just disengage from all of these institutions entirely, and let them sort themselves out?
I don’t believe there is a clear answer to whether you should work with category 3 customers; it’s a case by case thing. Palantir’s answer to this is something like “we will work with most category 3 organizations, unless they’re clearly bad, and we’ll trust the democratic process to get them trending in a good direction over time”. Thus:
On the ICE question, they disengaged from ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) during the Trump era, while continuing to work with HSI (Homeland Security Investigations).
They did work with most other category 3 organizations, on the argument that they’re mostly doing good in the world, even though it’s easy to point to bad things they did as well.
I can’t speak to specific details here, but Palantir software is partly responsible for stopping multiple terror attacks. I believe this fact alone vindicates this stance.
This is an uncomfortable stance for many, precisely because you’re not guaranteed to be doing 100% good at all times. You’re at the mercy of history, in some ways, and you’re betting that (a) more good is being done than bad (b) being in the room is better than not. This was good enough for me. Others preferred to go elsewhere.
The danger of this stance, of course, is that it becomes a fully general argument for doing whatever the power structure wants. You are just amplifying existing processes. This is where the ‘case by case’ comes in: there’s no general answer, you have to be specific. For my own part, I spent most of my time there working on healthcare and bio stuff, and I feel good about my contributions. I’m betting the people who stopped the terror attacks feel good about theirs, too. Or the people who distributed medicines during the pandemic.
Even though the tide has shifted and working on these ‘thorny’ areas is now trendy, these remain relevant questions for technologists. AI is a good example – many people are uncomfortable with some of the consequences of deploying AI. Maybe AI gets used for hacking; maybe deepfakes make the world worse in all these ways; maybe it causes job losses. But there are also major benefits to AI (Dario Amodei articulates some of these well in a recent essay).
As with Palantir, working on AI probably isn’t 100% morally good, nor is it 100% evil. Not engaging with it – or calling for a pause/stop, which is a fantasy – is unlikely to be the best stance. Even if you don’t work at OpenAI or Anthropic, if you’re someone who could plausibly work in AI-related issues, you probably want to do so in some way. There are easy cases: build evals, work on alignment, work on societal resilience. But my claim here is that the grey area is worth engaging in too: work on government AI policy. Deploy AI into areas like healthcare. Sure, it’ll be difficult. Plunge in.8
When I think about the most influential people in AI today, they are almost all people in the room - whether at an AI lab, in government, or at an influential think tank. I’d rather be one of those than one of the pontificators. Sure, it’ll involve difficult decisions. But it’s better to be in the room when things happen, even if you later have to leave and sound the alarm.
I love this discussion, and I think it's critically important for people to engage with it.
However, I cannot more strongly disagree with your implicit assumption of innocence for "category 1." Facebook alone is unquestionably more harmful than Palatir, and any purely for profit entity is by necessity intentionally unanchored to any ethical foundation at all. Facebook is known for explicitly supporting genocidal regimes abroad, and for intentionally ignoring white supremacy, child abuse and domestic terrorism here in the US, all while being very explicit about not cooperating with the government agencies responsible for combatting these issues.
To that end, I would extend your thesis to the effect that people who eschew category 3 for category 1 aren't simply abdicating social responsibility, but are hypocritically engaged in substantially more socially harmful behaviors.
Sure, Palatir leads to people dying, and sometimes those people are innocent bystanders, but those actions are the result of any engagement with the public sector. Facebook is a direct progenitor of genocide abroad and fascism stateside, and is wholly untethered from either conscience or consequence. Category 1 is worse.
Fast forward 8 years, and the things we know about DJT today are so much worse than anyone imagined in 2017. He tried to subvert our nation's democracy and political stability. He summoned a mob of rioters, stood idly by while they assaulted our leaders in congress, and eventually pardoned all of them. He has been convicted of multiple felonies, and found guilty in civil court of sexual abuse. People from his own previous administration have called him out as being corrupt and incompetent, and seven Republican senators voted to impeach/convict him.
And yet, despite a jaw-dropping list of unforgivable offenses from the past few years, he enjoys more support today than he did in 2020. From people as smart as Zuck and Andreesen.
It really is true what they say about the fragility of political norms. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, there's no putting it back.