Witness testimony from northern Gaza shows that Israel is using facial recognition technology to organize how it conducts mass arrests and forcible displacement. Some Palestinians say the technology is also being used to carry out field executions.
sure. I just don’t see a lot of historical examples of that working, personally. I guess you could organize your coworkers against the evil shit, but well compensated engineers tend to be pretty morally flexible in my experience, and not easy to meaningfully organize towards any goal.
And as a cog in the machine you are replaceable, and your work up until that point will then continue to be used for ends you have no control over even if you stuck to your principles and quit when asked to participate in something reprehensible. IMO it’s easier to not get into a field that has a lot more potential for genocide than it does for improving society, than it is to minimize your harm once you’re there and basically guarantee you’ll be forced to make very hard morally compromising decisions.
There wouldn’t be historical examples of that happening because if it works then it’s there’s no example to draw from. The closest thing I can come up with is figures like MLk or Gandhi who advocated for better progress and standing in their society while working within it. But I can’t give examples of when this kind of mindset stopped a bad thing from happening in the first place.
There does come a point where you have to cut your losses however. Reminds me of a quote that I’m having trouble digging up where it talks about how there were plenty of good people who were Nazis who tried to steer the direction of what the Germans were doing. The quote ended with essentially saying it didn’t matter what their motivations or intentions were, history just remembers them all as Nazis.
sure. I just don’t see a lot of historical examples of that working, personally. I guess you could organize your coworkers against the evil shit, but well compensated engineers tend to be pretty morally flexible in my experience, and not easy to meaningfully organize towards any goal.
And as a cog in the machine you are replaceable, and your work up until that point will then continue to be used for ends you have no control over even if you stuck to your principles and quit when asked to participate in something reprehensible. IMO it’s easier to not get into a field that has a lot more potential for genocide than it does for improving society, than it is to minimize your harm once you’re there and basically guarantee you’ll be forced to make very hard morally compromising decisions.
There wouldn’t be historical examples of that happening because if it works then it’s there’s no example to draw from. The closest thing I can come up with is figures like MLk or Gandhi who advocated for better progress and standing in their society while working within it. But I can’t give examples of when this kind of mindset stopped a bad thing from happening in the first place.
There does come a point where you have to cut your losses however. Reminds me of a quote that I’m having trouble digging up where it talks about how there were plenty of good people who were Nazis who tried to steer the direction of what the Germans were doing. The quote ended with essentially saying it didn’t matter what their motivations or intentions were, history just remembers them all as Nazis.
yeah cuz they didn’t do anything lol.
History does remember defectors and saboteurs if the news gets out.