A well-respected pirate, neighbor, and Lisper is also a chud. Welcome to HN, the Nazi Bar where everybody’s also an expert in technology.
It’s good to obey the law. I certainly try. But treating it as some kind of holy grail of ethics is fraught with peril. You’re outsourcing your thinking to the lowest common denominator: it’s what people in positions of power feel is justice. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. And when it isn’t, do you really want to be the kind of person that believes it should be obeyed no matter the tradeoffs?
Kinda sad to hear a person say something like this.
I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney and this reminds me of the typical bogan attitude that drink driving is only bad if you get caught. This is no different.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. And when it isn’t, do you really want to be the kind of person that believes it should be obeyed no matter the tradeoffs?
I’m not about obeying blindly but when it doesn’t feel like “justice” it doesn’t mean it isn’t. These people want to sound smart, seem smart, and believe they are smart, but they are allergic to learning to understand.
That line stuck out to me as well – the law isn’t some holy Grail of ethics, it’s literally the bare minimum.
what?
I think that guy is an idiot because stuff like airbnb is so demonstrably bad it’s had to be banned in places to help house people but the law doesn’t seem related to ethics except accidentally to me?
Sometimes the law if aligned with ethics, e.g. don’t kill people cause you get mad at them in traffic. Sometimes it’s monsterous e.g. put peoples struggling with addiction in cages, force abused women back to their husbands, follow this racist order etc.
I don’t think it’s wrong to say we should be careful about what laws we follow.
You properly explain how laws can be actually horrendous. Unfortunately the person in the HN post didn’t because they want to justify their breaking of copyright law to level the playing field of breaking copyright law.
Anyway this tweet was relevant. (Sorry, direct link because nitter seems to be dead and archive.org failed to archive it)
https://x.com/iwriteok/status/1692702405111292205
I’m sorry, potentially I’m a moron but I don’t understand what you said/the post formerly known as a tweet
It was just a tweet I saw while writing that seemed relevant to the subject. Don’t read too much into it. I have a short attention span.
Raise your hands if you’d rather go back to a world without Airbnb.
I mean the sneers just write themselves
the very next paragraph:
Self driving cars, ditto. Cruise’s fleet is finally deployed all around SF, according to pg. It’s about to become as ubiquitous as electricity. And in the beginning, so many people argued that it’s against the law and therefore shouldn’t be developed. Then it quietly shifted to well, maybe the law should change.
it’s fun to watch self-described engineers tie themselves into knots to defend dangerous technology. this is why programmers aren’t allowed to design bridges (at least until we find a billionaire stupid enough to fund a bridgetech startup (and it’s probably going to be musk))
They should all read Henry Petroski’s To Engineer Is Human before they call themselves engineers
Shit, I have that book! Never read it though :(
I’m afraid you can’t call yourself an engineer
I (legally) can! Got the degree and everything.
(“civilingenjör” is a protected term in Sweden, only graduates from technical universities can call themselves that)
I didn’t know that! I was joking of course. I wonder if Alan Kay knows this, though. Have you seen this talk?
I’ve argued for a while that software “engineers” regularly develop the equivalent of the First Tay Bridge.
Wish we’d gone with software carpenter or software plumber.
something something don’t threaten me with a good time
