Yeah, those replies are low-effort trashtalk. There’s a difference between dumping your opinion and actually sharing insightful information/thoughts.
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I hear if you don’t want people to trash talk your job, you can post on Indeed or pay for an ad 
Or you can enjoy the free advertising on a forum if you have the stuff to handle criticism of your business. I’d say most good businesses can handle that.
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You’re not even wrong, but a word processor is a general-purpose tool, so improving it could be seen as a net positive for humanity. It’s more difficult to make that argument for a weapons manufacturer.
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I think this argument is as old as time, but you’re aware they’d bring up self-defense, right?
At this point the discussion becomes an ideological one, which makes it anything but insightful.
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Oh yes, I too have been thinking of getting “Electromagnetic Warfare Systems” for self-defense, it’s already on my shopping list.
By the way, I’m not taking any sides here: I just want to point out that comparing this stuff to a word processor is disingenuous.
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Hit me up, I need to get on that group order, because the delivery fees are insane 
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It’s not necessarily for personal self-defence. For instance, as a Ukrainian, I know better than many that electromagnetic warfare is an important component of national self-defence.
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On the topic of self-defense I think this post also has reasonable significance. After all the fight against entities promoting militarism / profiting from increase in violence, is also an act of “self-defense” from the point of view of general public. We must fight those invading borders and killing civilians, and also those that would want the wars to keep on going (which is surely every weapons manufacturer right?)
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That’s national security, not self-defense. But sure, national security is indeed a reason one could use to justify working on military technology. Some will find this argument convincing and some won’t – either way I don’t have a problem with that position because it’s an honest engagement with the moral dilemma.
What I do take an issue with is comparing that to a clearly civilian technology of arranging letters on a page that simply happens to be used in a military context (in other news: military personnel also breathe the same air as the rest of us).
Anduril’s products aren’t even in the same category as e.g. a knife, which, while a cold weapon, is also used in cooking. Their technology exists to track down and neutralize military targets. And it’s pretty impressive. But I don’t know how well I’d sleep at night if I had a hand in making something like that. You know better than to compare it to Microsoft Word.
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What about the work of Alan Turing wrt Enigma, which clearly caused the death of enemy soldiers?
It is called self-defence, see the Chapter VII, Article 51 of the UN charter.
To be clear: I haven’t shared my political or ideological opinions in this thread. I’m challenging motivation and reasoning.
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You refer to “the bombe”, correct? I don’t think it can be compared to Microsoft Word either because it wasn’t designed for everyday civil use.
Thanks, I was unfamiliar with this usage.
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Microsoft Word was? 
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Hmm. Unless you’re about to reveal some unsettling truth about Microsoft Word, then yeah, I think it’s just an office program. To edit documents on your PC.
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Why not? What is fundamentally different between civilian and military technology. Did the internet not start as a military technology? Should we go over all the stuff humanity came up with as part of military efforts?
Sure, we’re talking about weapons systems, which are indeed different. But:
- you can use civilian technology for criminal purposes (e.g. encrypted communications)
- you can use military technology for committing war crimes
And you can use both in legitimate ways as well. Unless you say self-defence is not legitimate (which is a fair standpoint, but not very insightful).
The moral dilemma of creating software that may enable immoral actions doesn’t just present itself in military industry. Are there differences? Sure, but they’re obscenely obvious in this case.
TL;DR: Don’t work for a weapons manufacturer if you can’t stomach it.
I guess we can move on.
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the military has definitely been made more effective at its job thanks to tools like microsoft word. if you took that technology away from the military, it would tangibly hamstring it.
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alright, which mod hid that reply, that’s some nonsense.
Edit: it was f-a, which he admitted to via DM:
I did, and that is because this is off-topic and an example of “the night in which all cows are black”.
Keep it on topic — Anduril, not som hypothetical firm!
yeah so
The Night Where All Cows are Black. It’s a Yiddish proverb that means “all sexual partners look the same with the lights out.”.
i don’t know what the hell that DM is supposed to mean.
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I think @cheater is being treated unfairly here.
The discussion had already gotten into thought experiments about if MS Word is unethical due to its tangible benefits for the military.
If anything, my read is they were arguing against such silly thought experiments with normal rhetoric. And was talking about Anduril and not a hypothetical firm.
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@f-a can you un-hide this?
I’d rather have this entire thread “hidden”. Going resource after resource after someone is called “stalking” and is definitely not an okay thing.
You don’t want work with military, we got it. Don’t apply there. You don’t like their CEO, corporate image or whatever, sure, don’t apply there. Their reputation is one query away even without your help.
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I don’t think Haskell moderators should be deleting/hiding very real and relatively civil (if contentious) discussion relevant to Haskell
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