have you ever been asked to do something horrible in your line of work, and if so, did you do it? not necessarily something like working for the SS, but maybe incorporating a dishonest framing into an article, or implementing mass surveillance software, or helping a corporation skip around environmental regulations, or jusr deregulating them, just any number of awful things
how do people allow themselves to become the guy that designs the bomb, or builds the bomb, or drops the bomb, or transports the components for the bomb, given what the bomb means for their own existence and that of their offspring
From experience? Ignorance, then cognitive dissonance, ending in deep shame and regret
@caitp simple: If not building the bomb would be worse, because the enemy would build it anyway and bomb you and your loved ones.
Humans are still incapable of working together as a species, which might as well be our downfall.
@caitp The math becomes even more cumbersome, considering the H-bomb dwarfs the A-bomb. But empathy has been easily undermined by #Capitalism.
Any historian of note, agrees that ignorance is the ultimate enemy. Aside from an educational revolution making Behavioral Science core education, it's #permaculture or bust, for our progeny.
"But empathy has been easily undermined by #Capitalism.
Any historian of note, agrees that ignorance is the ultimate enemy."
Hmmm.
Nope. The closest I got was writing a good file upload module in JS. Since our company used open source software almost exclusively, I requested that we open source the upload module code.
Nope.
Me: "Ah, that's how we support the open source code we use?" 😡
Jun 28, 2026, 7:32 PMNope! Well...vandalism when I was a teenager, but I still don't consider that /horrible/ horrible, and at the time it was fun. Other than that, well...I mostly stayed out of the corporate world. People running smaller businesses tend to have morals. They have to. Otherwise nobody will deal with them.
I was asked to write a web scraper for Facebook that would collect information about local businesses.
While researching the problem, I learned that for less than $200 you could purchase access to an index of local businesses from the city, which would be relatively simple to verify against data that could still be scraped from Facebook.
He ran a marketing company. Boss wasn't interested in "good" or "verifiable." He wanted me to write a web scraper for free. He asked if I could do it. I said yes. He asked if I would do it. I said no.
@tanysfoster well im glad you stuck to your principles!
@caitp I think the guy that designs the bomb, builds the bomb, or drops the bomb, goes through some intense mental gymnastics to justify their own actions. It is amazing how human beings can rationalize things. Then there is complete disconnection and loss of empathy which gets mislabeled as having "thick skin." I don't think they go from good guy to evil guy overnight, but they manage to fit their destructive actions into a altered version of reality.