John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

But isn't that true for every big corp, or even every public company? Even if founders may had some other goals in addition to making money, as the time passes profit becomes the only goal, and usually more profit is being generated while doing bad and malicious things.

Problem is systemic.

Depending on the founder. With Apple it can be reasoned that it only went down after you know who passed away.

Yeah its not reliable to count on one charismatic leader to run the whole thing, but that is what the corporate model has being doing and how we ended up here.

Nokia (mostly networking-related things nowadays) touts - or at least used to, haven't kept up to date - itself as one of the most ethical companies around.

> But isn't that true for every big corp, or even every public company?

So I suppose not really, no.

Additionally companies working on carbon-free energy might also serve as evidence. There are some big ones around.

I remember, nokia about to release the first smartphone, full linux with a clean plain and simple C written OS/platform... and... then nothing happened. I recall the user groups being puzzled on what was waiting nokia, they were ready, had it all super open source and LEAN open source, and the iphone happened and they were bought by msft... ??????????

There are lots of profit motivated big companies that cause much less collateral damage. Facebook ranges from individualised harm like showing kids makeup ads when they delete a selfie, to macro scale harm like election interference

You could take a job designing landmines and you'd have a real hard time causing as much actual harm, as there just aren't enough wars going on to reach the same scale

I think I can say that this wasn't the case with Sun Microsystems. I never worked there but everything I read on tht company was positive. I gate the fact that Oracle (one of the worst) bought them.

the most ethical company still goes for profit and earn shittons.... the most fragrant turd still smells of shit

Nokia Siemens Networks provided the Iranian Revolution with their lawful intercept equipment under a special contract. They may have a good overall ethical track record but they don’t have a clean sheet.

You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

> Additionally companies working on carbon-free energy might also serve as evidence. There are some big ones around.

Interesting exemple because the biggest investors in renewable by far are big oil companies.

So what should people do? Go or not go? Sadly, the world is never black and white.

> its not reliable to count on one charismatic leader to run the whole thing

> it only went down after you know who passed away.

I mean that's kind of ironic. You believe that Jobs was a great and decent person who led Apple to be roses and rainbows. Outside this cult of personality it was a company that engaged in unethical and monopolistic business practices just as anyone else did, walled-garden lock-in of their platform, intentionally making their devices impossible to repair, planned obsolescence, slave labor conditions in manufacturing, etc. etc.

So the point is untrue, its the benevolent dictator delusion, just like there are no benevolent political authoritarian leaders so are there no benevolent CEOs either. Because the system itself is the issue, authoritarianism/capitalism. If you are a conservative/authoritarian you believe in the former if you are a liberal/libertarian/capitalist you believe in the latter.

I think people should do/go where they have a peace of mind, whatever that place may be.