Short answer: I don’t know anymore. Long answer: I think I would have had a definitive answer four years ago. As a high-schooler I was idealistic, probably too much for my own good, and I envisioned myself as some kind of philosopher-engineer. Fulfilled by a corporate objective such as click-through rate? Not I! Impressed by brand recognition and its ability to get me places? What nonsense! I could just tell myself the world had so many dire problems that needed solving, and regardless of outcome or compensation, I would dedicate myself to solving them. Now, not only do I not feel convinced that I can solve the problems, I feel less sure of what the problems are.
If you want to solve a meaningful problem, you need funding. To get funding, you need connections. To get connections, you need credibility. And, given the fact that 18-year-old philosophy-engineers don’t have any, clearly I needed a starting point. Right? Well no, not right. Because clearly starting points can still contribute to long-term negative impact. And, clearly it’s never “just a starting point”. And clearly, that’s my version of what the reading defines as an absolute to a balanced ethical stance.
But the world operates within this paradigm. That seems to hold whether you come by your credibility in an industry setting, in an ivory tower, as inheritance, or so on. So is the problem with the paradigm? Maybe, but what even is the paradigm? Is the paradigm hierarchy? Is it capitalism? If its either, clearly there are arguable trade-offs to the alternatives. But if it is either, clearly I, a Stanford student, am complicit and actively benefiting from both systems. But what was I before Stanford? An idealistic teenager without any hard skillsets and certainly no means of even conceptualizing large scale problems.
Which is all to say, it feels wrong to advocate for moral relativity on this subject. To say there’s a gray area seems to mean I’ve already given up on doing what’s right. Yet, saying there’s no gray area makes it so much harder to say what is right. Or to say if right even exists.
