<story><title>Keeping Secrets</title><url>https://medium.com/stanford-select/keeping-secrets-84a7697bf89f</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eps</author><text>Pardon the longer quote, but I want to comment on this -&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Rather than trying to understand both sides of the 
  issue and make the “right” decision, Hellman said 
  that in the heat of the controversy, he listened to 
  his ego instead.

  It was not until Hellman watched Day After Trinity,
  a documentary about the development of the atomic 
  bomb, that he realized how dangerous his decision-
  making process had been. The moment in the film that 
  troubled him most, he recalled, was when the Manhattan 
  Project scientists tried to explain why they continued 
  to work on the bomb after Hitler had been defeated and 
  the threat of a German atom bomb had disappeared. The 
  scientists “had figured out what they wanted to do and
  had then come up with a rationalization for doing it,
  rather than figuring out the right thing to do and
  doing it whether or not it was what they wanted to do.&amp;quot;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This attitude - screw the consequences, let&amp;#x27;s just scratch my curiosity itch - is &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; common in tech circles. Cryptonomicon did a good job presenting this issue in a highly digested form - that is when the Avi character is setting up a data haven for all the good reasons and the only people that show up for the (funding) presentation are the criminals and rogue government agents. I was messing with anonymous private p2p systems at the time when the book came out and it was frankly a shock to read, because somehow it was an obvious angle that I never considered at all. I was just &lt;i&gt;engineering&lt;/i&gt; stuff because it was really interesting, but never did I consider the consequences of actual application. Realizing that there&amp;#x27;s an ethical component to every technical project was quite an eye-opener and it had profound effect on how was viewing projects ever since. Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s obvious to some or a non-issue to others, but then perhaps there are those here who can relate...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ableal</author><text>A short story that I read many years ago, possibly in an SF anthology, has stayed with me. I&amp;#x27;ve forgotten who&amp;#x27;s the author, and don&amp;#x27;t necessarily agree with his point, but it is a good parable.&lt;p&gt;Briefly, a man comes to the house of a famous scientist, who happens to have a mentally disabled son. The unknown visitor comes to plead, politely, for the scientist to cease working on a super-weapon project. He is heard, but is rejected. The visitor accepts it well, and asks to use the bathroom before leaving.&lt;p&gt;After he has left, the scientist finds out that the man has given a gun to his son. He manages to get hold of the weapon without mishap, and wonders what kind of man would give a loaded gun to a disabled child ...</text></comment>
<story><title>Keeping Secrets</title><url>https://medium.com/stanford-select/keeping-secrets-84a7697bf89f</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eps</author><text>Pardon the longer quote, but I want to comment on this -&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  Rather than trying to understand both sides of the 
  issue and make the “right” decision, Hellman said 
  that in the heat of the controversy, he listened to 
  his ego instead.

  It was not until Hellman watched Day After Trinity,
  a documentary about the development of the atomic 
  bomb, that he realized how dangerous his decision-
  making process had been. The moment in the film that 
  troubled him most, he recalled, was when the Manhattan 
  Project scientists tried to explain why they continued 
  to work on the bomb after Hitler had been defeated and 
  the threat of a German atom bomb had disappeared. The 
  scientists “had figured out what they wanted to do and
  had then come up with a rationalization for doing it,
  rather than figuring out the right thing to do and
  doing it whether or not it was what they wanted to do.&amp;quot;
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
This attitude - screw the consequences, let&amp;#x27;s just scratch my curiosity itch - is &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; common in tech circles. Cryptonomicon did a good job presenting this issue in a highly digested form - that is when the Avi character is setting up a data haven for all the good reasons and the only people that show up for the (funding) presentation are the criminals and rogue government agents. I was messing with anonymous private p2p systems at the time when the book came out and it was frankly a shock to read, because somehow it was an obvious angle that I never considered at all. I was just &lt;i&gt;engineering&lt;/i&gt; stuff because it was really interesting, but never did I consider the consequences of actual application. Realizing that there&amp;#x27;s an ethical component to every technical project was quite an eye-opener and it had profound effect on how was viewing projects ever since. Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s obvious to some or a non-issue to others, but then perhaps there are those here who can relate...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>arethuza</author><text>One of the many memorable parts of Cryptonomicon is where Randy asks Avi how long he wants to keep his secrets safe and gets the answer:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;I want them to remain secret for as long as men are capable of evil.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>