"Give people just the right amount of dopamine and fiddle with their psyche in all the right ways in order to maximize the amount of time they spend staring at their phones."
you don't know what the word "objective" means
"Give people just the right amount of dopamine and fiddle with their psyche in all the right ways in order to maximize the amount of time they spend staring at their phones."
And yet, that's basically what every entertainment driven person/business wants to do. Every app, TV show, news media, magazine or even the guy playing the guitar in the subway, all they want is the money that comes from constant attention.
There's the kicker, no? A lot of human technological progress was made under unfortunate (to put it mildly) harm-filled circumstances, and a lot of that wouldn't have been made at all otherwise because the option to make it with a cleaner conscience simply wasn't there. However if you do ever take such a role, despite its context, even if you have a clear conscience, I'd ask to try to have your work expand and live beyond the patron so that it can one day benefit all humanity. There is so much still buried behind the walls of corporate research that's worthwhile to a much broader group, but efforts need to be made to bring it out. Even more so if there aren't many other vertices of the company trying to pull in a better direction. (Ed: And I'd like to add that despite everything, Facebook engineers seem to be doing remarkably well at this. I won't ever join them but I'm not going to blacklist any interactions with them or worse aggressively target them.)
Not really, for almost everyone who works there. I know a few exceptions. A rare few.
Look, I'm not arguing that we go string up all facebook engineers from the nearest tree. I'm merely saying that it is in fact quite reasonable to say that you shouldn't work for a company that is actively causing harm. And that there is "cool work" being done there does not obviate that.
And yes, good research is sometimes done in bad places. That isn't a justification for joining bad places so you can do good research. Your logic is all messed up there. It's better to instead do good research at a good place.
The simple matter is most of the people who work there, are there because of the relatively high compensation, and have plenty of other better options to do equally exciting work at more ethical organizations. But maybe not quite as well paid.
So. Let's stop sugar coating that.
Look, selling out is a thing humans do from time to time. Sometimes people are even in places where making that choice is totally justifiable. But don't tell me someone isn't doing it when they are. And you shouldn't let them tell you that either. Because if we don't let them tell us that, maybe they'll have more trouble telling themselves that, and honestly, that's what's really going to be important in the end.
