

I want to write software that helps kill people. - edsu
https://gist.github.com/zmaril/5326884#file-softwarehelpskill-md
from the Philosophy in a Time of Software discussion list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/philosophy-in-a-time-of-software/SnV8qMUQc3Y
======
anigbrowl
That you have a computer at all is in large part due to the overwhelming
demand for accurate ballistics data and codebreaking during WW2. It's very
easy to play '6 (military) degrees of separation' and conclude that virtually
any human activity supports the killing of people. Like baking at home? Your
bakery hobby slightly reduces the demand for manufactured bread, thus making
it more affordable to a heartless military machine. And so on.

If you're not actively and directly involved in military activities, there's
little that you can do about the knock-on effects of whatever it is that
you're engaged in; and even if you can quantify the human cost of your
activities, it needs to be offset against the positive externalities. For
example, the same software that allows Palantir to identify 'bad guys' who are
potential targets for military attack is equally capable of identifying
peacemakers or other constructive individuals who are good candidates for
receiving financial aid or suchlike.

Technology itself is neutral. Don't use it as a stick to beat yourself over
the imperfect state of the world.

~~~
wildermuthn
Technology is not neutral. Technologies are designed for discrete purposes. A
hammer is designed for, among other things, hammering nails, not eating. And
as it has been said, "When all you have is a hammer, all your problems look
like nails." A CIA drone is not a neutral technology.

Kevin Kelly (a former editor of Wired) wrote a book called "What Technology
Wants." He reminds us that technology does have a purpose, does influence
human behavior, and may in fact be changing human nature.

Kudos to the OP for taking a reflective, responsible, and principled stance.
We should all be so discriminating.

~~~
alexjeffrey
Technology is _morally_ neutral. To use your own examples, a hammer could be
used to build a house or commit a murder, and a drone could be used for aerial
strikes or to monitor endangered animals for poaching activity
([http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/01/2013117135...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/01/2013117135422298209.html)).
The initial use case for a technology to be developed will always be shaped by
the morals and intent behind it, but other uses can always be found that are
good or bad no matter what the technology is.

------
fennecfoxen
The question that this comes down to is a question of one's world-view and
philosophy of responsibility, guilt, and concept of sin. It says something
about how you conceive of those things if you trace responsibility from
"meaningful contribution to a NoSQL storage engine" to "code was executed by a
system used by people to seek terrorists and justify an eventual drone
strike".

Due to relativism, I can't tell you whether your view is intrinsically right
or wrong in a manner that all people are guaranteed to respect, but I can tell
you: I would be upset if you used that logic to find fault with someone _else_
who wrote NoSQL database engines, and blamed them for killing people
(terrorists or no). I think it would be horribly unfair and modestly
ridiculous - and if you agree with that when it applies to other people,
consider whether you are, in fact, giving yourself a fair shake here.

------
rayiner
The fact of the matter is that war is a basic function of human societies, as
much as food production or waste disposal. Unsurprisingly, it thus taps the
ingenuities of the society in the same way as those other areas. It both
benefits from ingenuities intended for other purposes, and results in
inventions itself that can be used for other purposes. And for better or
worse, war is a great way to get the public to support R&D spending. DARPA
could not be what it is without being a part of the DOD. See:
<http://tech.mit.edu/V114/N29/dod.29n.html>,
<http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres07/12.00.pdf>,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge>.

And let's face it, its something you benefit from tremendously. You do not
want a society in which the US does not have the power to kill everyone. That
is a society in which your lifestyle is not as nice as it is now. Indeed, with
the challenges we face in the coming century (oil, water scarcity, etc) as
well as the ascension of India and China as world powers, our ability to kill
people is going to be more important than ever.

~~~
smtddr
_> The fact of the matter is that war is a basic function of human societies,
as much as food production or waste disposal._

That makes me sad. Does anyone on HN(besides me) believe that one day humans
will be able to rid themselves of war? That one day we'd find a solution to
these issues that don't involve sending a group of armed people to kill?

~~~
rayiner
I'm sure people do, but they're wrong. There are always situations in which
the use of force is rationally self interested. As such, as long as those
situations exist, a rational people will maintain and use war capability.
Asking people not to go to war is asking them to put emotion (empathy) above
rationality. You can do it to a degree, but only to an extent.

Indeed, US hegemony is good for peace. You can eliminate the rational self
interest in going to war by imposing an external cost to going to war (like
any negative externality). That's the role the US serves. Its military machine
implicitly backs things like international sanctions that are punishment for
anti-social behavior.

------
venomsnake
"It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever
consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would
instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could
be given as a parameter."

Nathaniel Borenstein

That sums it up for me.

------
vubuntu
You also give money to kill people (You do pay taxes, right?). How come you
are not bothered about that also?

It's pointless to think about the impact of a micro action on a macro event.
Especially macro things such as war. There are so many different factors that
culminate in a war.

And about the good/evilness of war, that has a been a debate since ages. One
can never win this argument.

~~~
wildermuthn
Plenty of people refuse to pay taxes for precisely this reason, or
deliberately seek lower salaries that do not pay federal taxes.

They believe, correctly, that macro-events are the culmination of micro-
events, and that change begins on the personal level. It takes just a handful
of dedicated people to start revolutions. Startups should know that.

~~~
vubuntu
Such people are hypocrites at best. Don't they use roads for their commute.
Dont' their kids go to public schools. Don't they visit national parks etc. If
they do all these things, aren't they ashamed of living off the money of the
rest of the society that diligently pays taxes, and not contributing/pitching
their share towards these common societal support structures?

~~~
aric
Conscientious objection within a system is not hypocritical. That's how actual
change begins. Movements generally arise through disobedience to immoral laws
and through an appeal to the reason and compassion of others. It's
unintellectual to presuppose the validity, morality, and consistency of the
actions of others based on divergent false equivalencies.

There is currently only centralized, pooled, coercive funding. Certain
institutions (e.g. war industries and monopolistic entities) are
disproportionately backed by forced funding. Certain road contracting is also
backed by forced funding. It's illogical to suggest that a conscientious
objector to the war industry is therefore being hypocritical by using roads.
They are, as it happens, trapped within a system where the only alternative
would be to refrain from using roads, which itself is a highly oppressive
suggestion and a predicament many people find worth conscientiously rejecting.
The funding of roads and the funding of unethical industries are not mutually
inclusive. These are the types of moral imperatives that most discriminatory
and anti-humanitarian policies have imposed on people throughout history.

Wiser is the one who asks why and listens. Many things that appear
hypocritical are, in actuality, the superficial understanding of a much deeper
dilemma taking place.

------
brown9-2
This logic seems like quite a stretch. I'd imagine the person who designed a
hammer or a screwdriver isn't preoccupied with the fact that it might be used
in helping to build a bomb factory.

------
binarymax
I wrote, but never published [1], a variation on the MIT license that has
specific clauses stating that the software can only be used by parties who
dont own/manufacture/trade firearms or ballistics. I never published it
because I am not a lawyer, and it probably would have come across as an
elaborate troll. If anyone is interested, I'll release it.

[1] <https://github.com/binarymax/Non-violent-License>

~~~
gyardley
It's your license, but owning firearms somehow makes you violent? Certainly
sounds like an elaborate troll to me.

Even if you could somehow iron out the kinks, the end result of your sort of
action is a host of additional licenses that bar the various bête noires of
their various authors, eventually leading to code that simply can't be used
together because of conflicting moral obligations. I really don't want to have
to run a program just to sort out the ethical dependencies of the stuff in my
Gemfile.

~~~
binarymax
Yes, all those points and more :)

While I don't consider everyone who owns a firearm to be violent - firearms
are instruments of violence.

------
guelo
This has nothing to do with open source. It's just a consequence of living in
a warmongering superpower. Considering that a good percentage of America's GDP
goes towards killing brown people overseas, just about every economic action
you take as an American is contributing towards killing people. If you extend
certain moral frameworks far enough, just living in America is an evil act.

~~~
venomsnake
Come on ... be real ... america spends roughly 600 B USD on military and
related stuff. And they kill what 200-300K of civilians and combatants
overseas per year top.

So this means that a brown person's life costs the government what 3 million
USD per person to take. That is grossly inefficient. I am sure that if they
just offer the dictators and warlords the money directly to kill their own
populace they will manage to bring down the bill to 10K per person.

The goal of the US military is not to kill people (it is just not good enough)
or defend the country (there is no real threat and terrorism is a joke) - it
is to waste GDP in the best Orwellian way possible in which it excels.

------
mschuster91
I vaguely recall license terms which disallow anyone from using the code for
military purposes - maybe it's time to adopt stuff like GPL/CC by extending
them with an (optional) "do not use this software in machines/systems which
have the power to kill/hurt people, or enable people to do so"

~~~
wereHamster
Like the JSON license. MIT with this additional clause: The Software shall be
used for Good, not Evil.

~~~
mschuster91
Who defines what is "good" and "evil"?

Just take the example "pornography": in most Western countries pornography is
accepted and not considered as "evil", but in many Islamic countries,
pornography is considered sinful.

~~~
jamessb
This concerned IBM, so Crockford sent them a document saying : "I give
permission for IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for
evil."

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138866>

~~~
yjyft846jh
Makes sense for IBM, as they do have a history of that sort of thing [1].

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.highe...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/mar/29/humanities.highereducation)

------
edsu
I should've have noted that this came from the Philosophy in a Time of
Software discussion list: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/philosophy-
in-a-time...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/philosophy-in-a-time-of-
software/SnV8qMUQc3Y)

------
wildermuthn
Check out Stanford's Encylopedia of Philosophy entry on double-effect:
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/>.

Essentially, double-effect means that your good actions can have unintended
yet foreseen evil consequences. If you make a hunting rifle, and someone uses
that to shoot children at a school, are you responsible? Not an easy question
to answer.

~~~
tshepang
I suspect that future generations will be disgusted by the fact that we find
it okay to shoot conscious beings for amusement. Am generalising of course.

~~~
phaus
Is shooting an animal really any worse than what happens inside a slaughter
house? The videos I've seen seem to indicate that it isn't.

------
pessimism
I was once at a guest lecture by Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of C++ for those
who don’t know), and during Q&A, someone in the audience asked him how he felt
about the fact that his work was used to kill people.

(The rationale behind the question was based on fighter jets, to some extent,
using software written in C++.)

The question was not tongue in cheek. Everyone in the auditorium laughed,
though.

------
ceautery
I want to hack your software such that it always returns null. And then write
software that identifies better distribution methods of food and water to
famine and drought-stricken areas. Or maybe find the best areas to reseed of
those that have been deforested.

------
jimfl
If you work at McDonalds, you probably fed a soldier or a weapons designer, or
CIA field operative. You'd have to drop out of productive society entirely to
escape this dynamic.

------
moron4hire
This is the nature of living in a free society (or at least what parts of one
that are left). You don't get to dictate what other people do. If you release
your code "free to the world", you have to open your idealistic eyes and
realize that that might include things you aren't comfortable with. And to
maintain consistency with the views that led you to opening your code, you
have to be okay with it. That is the unfortunate conceit of most people who
claim to be tolerant and open minded, they often mean "but only for things I
approve of".

------
peterwwillis
It's even worse than that! I hear people use hammers to build buildings where
people work on military projects that eventually kill people! Clearly, we need
to stop people from using hammers for evil. Boycott the hammer industry today.

------
Dewie
> I'm reasonably certain I would be orders of magnitude less well off and less
> happy if open source didn't exist as a concept.

Right... what happened to just saying 'hundreds/thousands of times better
off#' in hyperbolic sentences? Too pedestrian?

#Of course you can replace 'better' with any fitting adjective.

