I love that you reference Tom Greer in the abstract of your dissertation: he was one of my profs in undergrad, affectionately known as the White Rabbit for always being late to class and meetings.
Alas, Myles--the Tom Greer I cited was writing in 1885, so if he was your advisor, you probably engaged in some inadvertent necromancy.
But seriously, can I have the details on your advisor? Where was this? Obviously you see some connection between our work else we wouldn't have this cross-over.
This is an interesting and compelling way to adapt academic work to a newer media format, and I'm interested to see where the story goes! Almost a serialized narrative of academic work.
To answer the question you asked--I think it's right that weapon manufacturers should share some of the moral blame for their misuse, given that most people who design weapons or manage weapon-manufacturing firms could easily get jobs elsewhere. (An interesting post on this here: https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/quit-your-evil-job?r=716j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)
Surely there are counterpoints. A single person quitting their job at Northrop-Grumman won't stop war crimes, for example; surely other people might step in and take the job. But no single act of moral uprightness ever eradicates wickedness.
On the other hand, I could never get any of these jobs if I wanted to, so of course it's easy for me to criticize those who can and do.
"No one, especially no one with options, should spend their one wild and free life doing something that unambiguously makes the world worse. While we should not judge people for ending up in bad places doing bad things, we can and should judge people for remaining in bad places doing bad things after they themselves have had the realization that what they are engaged in is bad."
Generally, I agree. In fact, this past year I've grown curious about the criteria for determining that one is in a 'bad' line of work. What brought me to the issue were the accounts of whistleblower drone pilots, many of whom started experiencing trauma symptoms after leaving their operations centers, stopping at QT for gas, and then driving thirty minutes home to the suburb where their family lives. In that particular case, PTSD seems to be part of the evidence that what they're doing is somehow bad. They may not be certain it's bad for the world; but when they see how bad it is for them physically, that badness seems to be a clue that something's amiss with the job.
So the passage above is really sharp. But then Nolan sells the entire farm:
"'Bad,' of course, is subjective, and there are many people whose beliefs are so opposite from mine that we would never agree on which one of us is doing the bad stuff..."
I think there might be shades of "bad" that are difficult to discern clearly. But I'm reticent to commit to the totalizing relativism of the proposition that "'Bad'... is subjective." In some cases, it's just not. Murder for hire. Loan sharking. (Or payday lending.) Driving a wienermobile, promoting horrifically unhealthy 'meat' while warming the globe with a gas-guzzler. And if, in any case, there's such a thing as objective badness, then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that in the cases where a job's badness seems merely subjective, maybe some facet of it really is objectively bad but just difficult to discern?
Also, I've always snickered at formulations like, "'Bad' is, of course, subjective." "Of course"? If we can't discern objective badness, how can we fiat that, objectively, badness is subjective?
I love that you reference Tom Greer in the abstract of your dissertation: he was one of my profs in undergrad, affectionately known as the White Rabbit for always being late to class and meetings.
Alas, Myles--the Tom Greer I cited was writing in 1885, so if he was your advisor, you probably engaged in some inadvertent necromancy.
But seriously, can I have the details on your advisor? Where was this? Obviously you see some connection between our work else we wouldn't have this cross-over.
This is an interesting and compelling way to adapt academic work to a newer media format, and I'm interested to see where the story goes! Almost a serialized narrative of academic work.
To answer the question you asked--I think it's right that weapon manufacturers should share some of the moral blame for their misuse, given that most people who design weapons or manage weapon-manufacturing firms could easily get jobs elsewhere. (An interesting post on this here: https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/quit-your-evil-job?r=716j&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web)
Surely there are counterpoints. A single person quitting their job at Northrop-Grumman won't stop war crimes, for example; surely other people might step in and take the job. But no single act of moral uprightness ever eradicates wickedness.
On the other hand, I could never get any of these jobs if I wanted to, so of course it's easy for me to criticize those who can and do.
Isaac, thanks for sharing this. I'll give it a read and circle back here when I'm finished.
This passage was excellent:
"No one, especially no one with options, should spend their one wild and free life doing something that unambiguously makes the world worse. While we should not judge people for ending up in bad places doing bad things, we can and should judge people for remaining in bad places doing bad things after they themselves have had the realization that what they are engaged in is bad."
Generally, I agree. In fact, this past year I've grown curious about the criteria for determining that one is in a 'bad' line of work. What brought me to the issue were the accounts of whistleblower drone pilots, many of whom started experiencing trauma symptoms after leaving their operations centers, stopping at QT for gas, and then driving thirty minutes home to the suburb where their family lives. In that particular case, PTSD seems to be part of the evidence that what they're doing is somehow bad. They may not be certain it's bad for the world; but when they see how bad it is for them physically, that badness seems to be a clue that something's amiss with the job.
So the passage above is really sharp. But then Nolan sells the entire farm:
"'Bad,' of course, is subjective, and there are many people whose beliefs are so opposite from mine that we would never agree on which one of us is doing the bad stuff..."
I think there might be shades of "bad" that are difficult to discern clearly. But I'm reticent to commit to the totalizing relativism of the proposition that "'Bad'... is subjective." In some cases, it's just not. Murder for hire. Loan sharking. (Or payday lending.) Driving a wienermobile, promoting horrifically unhealthy 'meat' while warming the globe with a gas-guzzler. And if, in any case, there's such a thing as objective badness, then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that in the cases where a job's badness seems merely subjective, maybe some facet of it really is objectively bad but just difficult to discern?
Also, I've always snickered at formulations like, "'Bad' is, of course, subjective." "Of course"? If we can't discern objective badness, how can we fiat that, objectively, badness is subjective?