
MIT's student newspaper criticizes MIT's convenience-based ethics - polygamous_bat
https://thetech.com/2018/04/05/editorial-mit-selective-moralizing
======
gumby
Where do they think Lincoln came from anyway? MITRE, Lincoln and Draper were
ways to shift classified research off campus in the wake of MIT's involvement
in the Viet Nam war (which was far more than the crimes of Walt Rostow).

MIT has been first and foremost a government research lab since Conant (an MIT
grad) was FDR's wartime science advisor and reformulated the institute (just
compare the small size of the student body vs overall research staff, or
consider that education brings in only 14% of the institute's revenue). Your
education is essentially subsidized by the Pentagon.

The 1970s reforms shuffled the pieces around the board but didn't make a
substantive change (they did improve academic freedom, though). Through the
1990s MIT was really more policy rather than corporate focused but now there
is more private sector involvement can you really say it's any better?

~~~
hueving
Same story with Stanford and SRI. Stanford admins didn't like the optics of
supporting the military so that was split into the Stanford Research Institute
one caltrain stop away and suddenly everything was fine.

------
fatjokes
If it makes MIT feel better, I don't think "ethics" when I think of MIT. I
think technological leadership and excellence, but definitely not ethics. For
starters, they have plenty of collaborations with the military (e.g., MIT
Lincoln Labs; not saying that can't be ethical... but it usually means
someone's going to die). Nothing to be ashamed of. Somebody's gotta do it...

~~~
darawk
What's unethical about collaborating with the military? We don't exist in a
vacuum. American military hegemony has been an extremely powerful stabilizing
force, post-WWII. This idea that it is unethical to build weapons is
profoundly wrong, short sighted, and morally selfish.

Not to overly pick on your comment, since you did say that it can be ethical,
of course. But i've seen this sentiment that military work is unethical echo'd
a bunch of times here lately, and I think it's an incredibly naive
perspective.

~~~
fatjokes
That's exactly what I meant when I said it's nothing to be ashamed of,
somebody's gotta do it. Just don't kid yourself that it makes you ethical.
Sure, you could argue that you're "better than the other guy" or "they started
it", but that's a pretty low bar. It just means you're both unethical.

~~~
darawk
I respectfully disagree. Consider a thought experiment: You have two groups of
people. Group A is ethical (per your definition), well intentioned and smart.
Group B is cruel, authoritarian and egotistical. Group A doesn't like to think
about war, and certainly doesn't want to contribute to the machinery of war.
Group B, on the other hand, delights in it. Group B loves building weapons and
thinking about military strategy. Very quickly in this civilization, Group B
will come to dominate Group A, and they will build a world in their own image
- cruel and inhuman. Given that we know this is the outcome, in what sense is
Group A's choice really ethical?

The question you have to ask is: If it's not you who has the best weapons, who
is it? If it's not you devising military strategy, who is? The answer is
someone else. Probably someone who likes those things more than you. Is that
the sort of person you want to have that kind of power?

~~~
majewsky
> Very quickly in this civilization, Group B will come to dominate Group A,
> and they will build a world in their own image - cruel and inhuman.

You're skipping the important part of the argument here, and going directly
from the premise to your desired outcome without arguing why that will happen.

If what you describe were the unconditional outcome, how is it that our world
is not gradually becoming more cruel and inhuman? I mean, there certainly are
cruel and inhuman aspects to it, but for the most part, we live in a world
that's vastly more prosperous and sophisticated than any other epoch before
that, and also _less violent_. You included the link to Our World In Data
yourself to prove that point.

Obviously, there are other aspects that contribute to the success of a society
besides its military engagement. This can arguably be seen in how the
influence of the US is slowly diminishing even though they have the largest
military expenses by a wide margin.

~~~
darawk
> If what you describe were the unconditional outcome, how is it that our
> world is not gradually becoming more cruel and inhuman?

Because not everyone makes the same naive choice to bury their head in the
sand and say "moral people don't build weapons". There is a long tradition of
great scientists making the _only_ moral choice and choosing to develop
weapons for the powers they trusted the most. Those people made the extremely
hard, but ultimately correct choice to build weapons of war for imperfect
powers. They did so because they knew that if they didn't, someone else would.
And that someone else might be building them for an _even less ethical_ power.

------
tech_opn
Hey folks --

Thanks to everybody who read the editorial and commented! We're glad that it's
generating some discussion.

We're interested in writing another piece on MIT and the military. A lot of
these comments contain useful information and we'd love to hear more tip from
you all for future pieces -- if you have any information regarding the topic
(regardless of how trivial or how well-known you think the information is),
we'd really appreciate it if you could email opinion@the-tech.mit.edu.

Further, if you're affiliated with MIT and you're interested in writing a
letter to the editor in response to this piece, we'd love that as well --
please email letters letters@tech.mit.edu.

Thanks so much everybody!

~~~
lvs
Just a brief note of support here. It's really moving to see the younger
generation taking this on. Great work, and keep on fighting the good fight.

~~~
tech_opn
Thanks so much! :) Also for anybody reading this - I'd really appreciate if
you could upvote my comment so more people can see it!

------
prepend
I just figured MIT was making “easy” ethical statements. In general the
examples that MIT spoke out about had no opposing parties, had no impact to
MIT, and no repercussions. So MIT didn’t really have to care or make a
sacrifice to speak out for Dreamers or against Charlottesville and whatnot.

But for anything that requires sacrifice like MBS not giving an endowment,
they suck it up. This is what sucks as wishy washy populism as it doesn’t
reflect any insight into an orginizarion’s leadership’s values.

MIT is likely concerned with increasing its power. Thus is part of the
establishment. Doing lots of great things, but part of the establishment.

Thus their total cop out over Aaron Schwartz back to when they didn’t admit
their first black professor until 1956
([http://diverseeducation.com/article/7136/](http://diverseeducation.com/article/7136/)).

There’s a really popular and well respected engineering school that has a big
problem with sexual assault. They issue statements and sponsor marches and
stuff. But drag their feet on any actions like removing organizations that
frequently have members commit sexual assault.

I just consider most of the statements from universities PR and virtue
signaling unless it’s acompanied with allocation of resources.

~~~
varenc
Can you elaborate on MIT's problems with sexual assault? That's news to me. If
true, I'm pretty sad to hear about this. As an aging alum, MIT is still a
place dear to my heart but over time it feels like the institute I remember is
slipping away... (or I'm just becoming more aware of reality)

(also not clear if you're referring to MIT or some other 'well respected
engineering school').

~~~
Donald
Is MIT '09 really an aging alum?

~~~
varenc
well, I've started forgetting all the building numbers so I think I count :-)

------
tzs
> It is a well-documented fact that Apple products are built through the
> exploitation of laborers in foreign factories, who must work deplorable
> hours for pitiable wages.

It's also pretty well documented that Apple does at least as much as, and
usually for more than, any other major consumer electronics company to make
its suppliers improve working conditions and wages.

I'm curious how Apple compares to whoever made the computer the author used to
type that article, or whoever made the author's mobile phone.

~~~
MadSudaca
I bet the wages are not pitiable for the people that work there.

------
jzl
You don't even have to look as far as Saudi Arabia to raise similar questions.
The Koch brothers are MIT graduates and huge donors. For a similar discussion
of the ethics of MIT's acceptance of their money, see:
[https://www.quora.com/How-could-MIT-have-received-a-grant-
fo...](https://www.quora.com/How-could-MIT-have-received-a-grant-for-the-
David-H-Koch-Institute-for-Integrative-Cancer-Research-read-details)

~~~
jadedhacker
I remember being shocked at walking down Kendall and seeing the cancer
research building named the "Koch Institute". I'm glad the Kochs are doing
things with their money other than attempting to overthrow democratic
government and burn the world but my feeling is that MIT shouldn't help
immunize them to criticism by burnishing their reputation.

~~~
erikpukinskis
“Greenwashing”. It’s a big business for non-profits.

------
jadedhacker
As a former MIT person, I applaud the editorial board here. I had long assumed
that despite MIT housing a dissident or two here and there, their primary
social mission is to provide technical advice to the people that run the
country and elite staff for them. MIT students and staff spend far too much
time narrowly focused on (beautiful) math and engineering without properly
reflecting on how their hard earned abilities will be used.

MBS's crimes in his country and in Yemen (and US complicity) should be sharply
criticized by people who think they represent the front of progress for human
civilization.

~~~
internetman55
They'll be used to make me money beeeeitcg

------
znpy
Living ethically is very expensive, as you often have to turn down generous
but unethical offers.

I am not surprised about MIT's behaviour by the way. As long as top-level
education stays private and has to hunt for funding, things like this will
always happen.

~~~
germinalphrase
Does MIT really _need_ to "hunt for funding"? My impression is that their
endowment is enormous.

~~~
jacobolus
A huge amount of the money in big endowments comes from various unsavory
characters. The names of buildings at famous universities are a Who’s Who of
famous fortunes built on slavery, war profiteering, drug running, child labor,
wage theft and other worker abuse, large-scale environmental destruction,
bribes and kickbacks, fraud, outright theft, etc.

The Saudis are a particularly unsavory monarchy (torture, arbitrary
imprisonment, lack of basic political rights, foreign assassinations,
sponsorship of terrorism, direct military attacks on foreign civilians, etc.),
but not fundamentally different from many historical donors.

~~~
rflrob
The Saudi money is different in that the university administration today is
seeking it out, as opposed to money from historical donors, which the current
administration already has. Which is not to say that historical blood money,
whether the direct result of (for instance) slave sales [1], or laundered as
philanthropy from robber barons is ethically free and clear; rather, if your
institution has long been engaged in taking that money, the very least you can
do is _stop taking it now_.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-
university-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/us/georgetown-university-
search-for-slave-descendants.html)

------
komali2
A lot of righteous, eloquent fury here. I had nearly forgotten about the
foxconn suicides, and now that I think about it I don't remember anything
really happening except nets being put up.

Louis CK (RIP our opinion of him, but still) put it pretty well once,
something along the lines of "slavery built everything we love. We just throw
human death and suffering at a thing until it's done. There's no end to what
you can do when you don't give a fuck about a certain group of people. You can
have candles and horses and be a little kinder to eachother, or you can
leverage the endless suffering of someone really far away so you can leave a
mean comment on someone's youtube video while you take a shit."

~~~
evanpw
Apparently
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides)),
the suicide rate at Foxconn during that period was lower than the overall
Chinese or US suicide rate.

~~~
dragonmum
> the suicide rate at Foxconn during that period was lower than the overall
> Chinese or US suicide rate.

Please allow me to change your opinion on this. The comparison being made
there is the ( number of suicides at Foxconn / number of Foxconn employees )
vs number of suicides in China / population of China. At first glance, this
looks like a valid comparison. But it is not. It is actually comparing apples
to oranges. The real comparison is against number of employees who choose to
commit suicide at their employers premise / number of employees. A useful way
to paraphrase this is:

Lets say Google has 100,000 employees. How many Google employees commit
suicide at the Googleplex per year? Not how many google employees commit
suicide overall.

When phrased this way, it becomes clear that other companies have much lower
suicide rates than Foxconn.

That's what is critical to compare. It turns out Foxconn's suicide rate is
massively higher than equivalent Chinese employers and the inference is the
alleged egregious mistreatment of Foxconn laborers by Foxconn is the cause.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Why do you think the Foxconn suicide figures don't include all suicide
attempts by employees?

Note that one of the attempts catalogued on Wikipedia states that one Mr. 刘
"threw himself from the sixth floor of a _dormitory building_ ". That would
tend to imply that the statistics cover the workers while they're on or off
the job -- the statistics are for suicide attempts on campus, but the
employees live on campus.

And that would tend to imply that the appropriate comparison is indeed "how
many people commit suicide anywhere?", not "how many people commit suicide in
the office?".

~~~
hokus
Its much simpler actually.

If you have a bunch of companies trying to keep their shit together while
barely able to make their product and then someone kills himself simple
because the situation is no longer worth living - then it is a sad thing.

If the product is one of the most successful things in human history the
suicide is a design goal.

If we don't stand up to it and at least voice our objection we will all be
treated like that eventually - regardless of corporate success or personal
productivity.

The only other role is that of the psychopath pressuring those who do the work
in order to meet the suicide quota. If you don't meet the suicide quota your
workers are not working hard enough or you are paying them to much. It's
simple business logic nothing personal.

~~~
lopmotr
This contains a common logical error in most of the poor-people-suffer-to-
serve-us-rich-people arguments. That is to ignore anyone whose suffering has
no causal link from us. For example, an isolated tribesman may die from an
easily treatable disease because he has no medicine and we don't blame rich
people for that. But if he moves to town to earn money for medicine and then
dies in a construction site accident, we blame ourselves for causing the
construction site to exist. We forget that he may have been in greater danger
or suffering more before getting involved with us.

It applies to low wages for illegal immigrants too. Once they're in our
country, we feel responsible for them. Before they got here, we don't care at
all how little they earn. Some people even go so far as to want to kick them
out to save them from earning low wages. Really it just saves us the guilt but
makes it worse for the individual.

------
isthatart
Anybody about Aaron Swartz and MIT? EDIT:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16769270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16769270)

------
temporama
Mbs is not trying to make himself look like a positive transformative figure,
he actually is one. The war in Yemen is equally the fault of Saudi Arabia and
Iran but I don't hear anyone calling for sanctions on Iran. I am astounded
that such ignorance could come from one of the worlds pillars of higher
education. Consolidation of power such as that recently performed by mbs is
_routine_ and it was done in a very humane way indeed compared to other
instances. When you consider that not properly consolidating power could lead
to the compromising of the state and perhaps set the groundwork for the
destruction of the state, his actions seem quite reasonable

~~~
ascorbic
> I don't hear anyone calling for sanctions on Iran

You're not listening very hard then.

~~~
tempagain567i
Among liberal circles like hn and MIT,Jesus Christ dude. But appealing to you
people is useless because my polite and correct comment gets flagged, flagged
for nothing more than offending someone. Iran's influence is overblown? Are
you serious? Where are rebels getting their supplies? If Iranian support
ceased completely the resistance would dry up and the whole thing would grind
to a total and complete stop. Same more or less for saudi Arabia. Iran has
committed directly and indirectly heinous terrorist crimes that match or
exceed the acts commuted by Saudi/us. This is basically a war between two
countries and as has always been true, trying to reduce the thing into a
framework of good and evil or right and wrong is a fools errand and an
intellectual molestation of the truth.

In actual fact mbs is a force for reform. He is perusing reform both because
it is plainly in the best interest of his empire and because this is a trend
that goes all the way to the beginning with for example the introduction of
television to the masses despite huge resistance from religious bodies. Anyone
who claims to favor reform and simultaneously condemns mbs knows nothing about
the history or international politics of Saudi Arabia. I have been watching
mobs and his behaviour indicates very positive direction indeed. Do your
homework. Astoundingly the people at MIT seem to have not done theirs.

------
valuearb
They should have stuck to attacking MBS, and brought up the fact that the 9/11
hijackers had direct support from Saudi diplomatic personnel.

Attacking Apple for providing well above market pay for jobs that rescue
chinese laborers from brutal and dangerous rural farm jobs just makes the
writer sound entitled.

~~~
DamnYuppie
Can you please provide more context from the "brutal and dangerous rural farm
jobs"? I am aware agriculture production in China is very different then here
but even at its most labor intensive times it is not something that I would
have considered to be "dangerous".

~~~
aarongough
Farming in general is a dangerous occupation, even in the USA where machinery
tends to be reasonably modern and well guarded:

[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf)

I wasn't able to find a source but my understanding is that being a farmer is
many times more dangerous on a percentage basis than being a police officer,
and that's only counting fatal accidents. I would bet good money that the rate
of disfiguring/crippling injury is way higher.

~~~
perl4ever
I seem to recall reading that farming is comparable statistically to mining,
or even more dangerous. It's pretty much among the top most dangerous
occupations, at any rate. Which is consistent with how historically people
have given up farming to work in the seemingly brutal sweatshops in cities,
whether in the US and Europe, or in the Third World.

Anecdotally, my grandfather died some time after being burned in a
conflagration related to cleaning something with gasoline, and none of his
children became farmers. One daughter went to college and became a computer
programmer, another started a delivery business, his son went to work for a VA
hospital, and his wife sold the farm and became a nurse after her husband
died.

It's hard to imagine conditions that predate your parents' time, and most
people at this point are probably more than one generation away from their
farming ancestors.

------
tempagain567i
I must re-iterate my opinion here because of flagging abuse. In the article,
mbs's consolidation of power is criticised. This is naive and incorrect. Mbs
is in fact a positive force for progress and reform. Detracting him only
serves to aid the people of sa and the religious bodies of sa all of whom wish
to remain cemented within the traditional and brutal interpretations of the
Koran that MIT seems to dislike so much. The rebels and Iran are just as
responsible for the innocent deaths as sa and us are. This is difficult to
explain in such short form but it is true and if you disagree then you can
tell me why instead of flagging my comment. This way I can promptly respond to
you and our disagreement can be settled. It's very important for non-
mainstream narratives to be heard, especially when they are correct as in this
case.

