No, it’s screwing people over because you’ve committed to doing something, and that something screws over people. If there was no honorable way out, that would be a difficult moral question; benevolence vs. trustworthiness. But there’s an easy way out: employment is at will and you can simply leave.
There are two distinct desirable properties to have, ethically. (Probably more than two, but two that I can point to here.) One is benevolence: to do, and seek to do, things that are good for people; people in your circle of concern, typically, but that could be everyone who will ever live or just your family or in between. It’s also benevolent to expand your circle of concern on purpose. The other, trustworthiness, is to deal fairly with people when benevolence doesn’t require it. And you might say ‘all humans alive are in my circle, benevolence covers everyone the second one doesn’t matter.’ But this is not correct, because most of those people don’t trust that they are within your circle. They shouldn’t! You have not given them reason to. It’s very easy to say you care about all humanity—observe the case of 2015!Sam Altman! He even looked like he was paying costs for the belief! - and very hard to prove it—again, see how he did not, at all, care about it, and screwed over everyone who founded OpenAI with him.
Either one has to proved, and both are desirable even if you already proved one. Benevolence you prove by showing you keep paying real costs to help people, that you don’t benefit from except via their future benevolence, and by being predictably good for people with similar circles of concern. Then benevolent people see you as a kindred spirit and want to help you, because you’ll pass on help to others they also care about. Trustworthiness you prove by living up to your promises to people, maintaining commitments, and when you thought you could maintain them but can’t, winding down the commitments and paying recompense (monetary or not). Proving trustworthiness is most effective at proving you’re reliable when done with people you don’t much care about, because it shows you’re not up to lying to them, and so are less likely to be lying to those you call friends. Then people can trust that if they extend trust and credit to you—money, borrowed tools, vouching for you, anything—that you won’t take the money (or etc.) and run.
It’s very dangerous to have neither, and have people notice that. “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!” Nope, no one’s giving you anything. Society is not built to be navigated alone; it assumes you have a reasonable level of both types of honor, and wants to filter out people who don’t, to make it easier for those who do. “You made a contract with me, didn’t give to my demands, therefore die!” is a madman’s move, because now everyone who only wants to make contracts with reasonably honorable people knows you’re not one. (Someone very benevolent might pull it off. Benevolent, Pete Hegseth and the USG are not.)
And here’s the kicker: You are coming off as in that category too. Someone extremely untrustworthy, which you appear to proudly be, may still be benevolent. But if you’re sufficiently sloppy in your thinking you can convince yourself lots of selfish things are benevolent. (I could point to SBF, except that I think he was probably never particularly benevolent either.) And your thinking here’s pretty darn sloppy! So I don’t particularly trust that you’ll notice if you’re actually not benevolent, and I certainly don’t trust that you’ll admit it if you aren’t.
Certainly, and I think a sane civilization would throw everyone in jail who has been selling out humanity in this way. But the OP seems to be muddling right and wrong. It reads to me as though it’s meant as general advice for people who think they’re good people too, and I object to this being called good.
Doing a job that harms people because you get paid is...also screwing over people because it’s convenient to you.
No, it’s screwing people over because you’ve committed to doing something, and that something screws over people. If there was no honorable way out, that would be a difficult moral question; benevolence vs. trustworthiness. But there’s an easy way out: employment is at will and you can simply leave.
There are two distinct desirable properties to have, ethically. (Probably more than two, but two that I can point to here.) One is benevolence: to do, and seek to do, things that are good for people; people in your circle of concern, typically, but that could be everyone who will ever live or just your family or in between. It’s also benevolent to expand your circle of concern on purpose. The other, trustworthiness, is to deal fairly with people when benevolence doesn’t require it. And you might say ‘all humans alive are in my circle, benevolence covers everyone the second one doesn’t matter.’ But this is not correct, because most of those people don’t trust that they are within your circle. They shouldn’t! You have not given them reason to. It’s very easy to say you care about all humanity—observe the case of 2015!Sam Altman! He even looked like he was paying costs for the belief! - and very hard to prove it—again, see how he did not, at all, care about it, and screwed over everyone who founded OpenAI with him.
Either one has to proved, and both are desirable even if you already proved one. Benevolence you prove by showing you keep paying real costs to help people, that you don’t benefit from except via their future benevolence, and by being predictably good for people with similar circles of concern. Then benevolent people see you as a kindred spirit and want to help you, because you’ll pass on help to others they also care about. Trustworthiness you prove by living up to your promises to people, maintaining commitments, and when you thought you could maintain them but can’t, winding down the commitments and paying recompense (monetary or not). Proving trustworthiness is most effective at proving you’re reliable when done with people you don’t much care about, because it shows you’re not up to lying to them, and so are less likely to be lying to those you call friends. Then people can trust that if they extend trust and credit to you—money, borrowed tools, vouching for you, anything—that you won’t take the money (or etc.) and run.
It’s very dangerous to have neither, and have people notice that. “It’s dangerous to go alone!
Take this!” Nope, no one’s giving you anything. Society is not built to be navigated alone; it assumes you have a reasonable level of both types of honor, and wants to filter out people who don’t, to make it easier for those who do. “You made a contract with me, didn’t give to my demands, therefore die!” is a madman’s move, because now everyone who only wants to make contracts with reasonably honorable people knows you’re not one. (Someone very benevolent might pull it off. Benevolent, Pete Hegseth and the USG are not.)And here’s the kicker: You are coming off as in that category too. Someone extremely untrustworthy, which you appear to proudly be, may still be benevolent. But if you’re sufficiently sloppy in your thinking you can convince yourself lots of selfish things are benevolent. (I could point to SBF, except that I think he was probably never particularly benevolent either.) And your thinking here’s pretty darn sloppy! So I don’t particularly trust that you’ll notice if you’re actually not benevolent, and I certainly don’t trust that you’ll admit it if you aren’t.
Certainly, and I think a sane civilization would throw everyone in jail who has been selling out humanity in this way. But the OP seems to be muddling right and wrong. It reads to me as though it’s meant as general advice for people who think they’re good people too, and I object to this being called good.
Your ethical framework here doesn’t seem consistent to me, but maybe you can explain how it works.