• _stranger_@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    I had a friend in a difficult position, deciding between high pay at Buy N Large or the opportunity to work on insanely cool shit for Death Inc.

    Ultimately he chose Death Inc, and the reasoning was along the lines of “This might kill a hundred people, but at least it’ll kill them specifically. I can’t even conceptualize the harm Amazon et al. do on a global scale to entire populations without even trying”.

    Made me think. I didn’t have a very good answer to that.

    • valtia@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      those bombs will kill far more than just a hundred people, far more than he can ever conceptualize. the consequences of those deaths will shape the world more than the extra microsecond an engineer could shave off of an internal Amazon function

    • Prox@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Also, “if I don’t make this thing that will kill a hundred people specifically, they’ll just use something that kills more people with less precision / more casualties.”

      • EstonianGuy@lemm.ee
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        6 hours ago

        Technically if you think about it, he’d be saving innocent lives, since non precise weapons have more collateral damage. Might as well make bombs accurate and hit the right targets.

        • valtia@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          The “right targets” tend to be innocent lives as well. Besides, who said anything about precise weaponry? These days, it’s all about AI, where precision is actually not the goal