This is a reasonable point in the abstract, but it doesn't account for the current reality in which "Look, I found a heretic" affords such outsized rewards in karma (or social cachet, or the personal satisfaction of having taken down a baddie, or whatever you want to call it).

Fifty years ago, you could say women are too dumb to program computers and still keep your job and be invited to dinner parties, and now you would be fired and shunned. Progress, right? The problem is, that power - the power to destroy careers of people who have done something bad - is not being wielded consistently or sparingly. We're aiming it at misogynists and homophobes, and also their defenders, and also people aren't defending them per se but kinda sound like they are if you only read the headline.

(But the point of the essay is not that Brendan Eich and James Damore shouldn't have been fired; it's that the "Brendan Eich and James Damore should be fired" position has caused a chilling effect on open dialogue.)

Nitpicking here, but your example was somewhat ironic, as 50 years ago, Computer were predominantly programmed by women [1] , so the heretical idea would have been to say that men should be programming computers.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programmi...

"Programmer" was a data entry job that we automated away. They were basically compiling flowcharts that were written by "systems analysts" doing the work we would call programming.

It's like an "EPROM programmer", which is a tool to make the hardware run the software.

In the old days it was thought that only the implementation of an idea could cause harm. The only evidence I've seen presented that the idea itself is harmful rests upon an assumption it will obviously be implemented or you wouldn't be thinking about it. It's aenthema to a free thinker.

Fair fair but to be clear the one example in this article is calling someone unethical who is working to implement an idea.

"people working on this must be really unethical"

It is not clear or obvious that allowing people to live longer is unethical. Resorting inmediately to an ad hominem is not an appropriate form of debate.

No individual has a moral obligation to debate ideas. However if debate is shut down with fallacious arguments it limits the ability for the idea to progress.

If this happens too often then progress will be slowed. That is the point of this post.

But the argument isn't fallacious and it's not an ad hom...

Extending life expectancy will increase human population and harm our environment and that harm to the environment will harm future generations so individuals working towards extending life expectancy are hurting future generations and that's unethical which makes them unethical. You can disagree with the argument but it's not fallacious.

By that argument all medical care is unethical.

Regardless ideas need to be discussed divorced from the people presenting them. Medical care is no more or less ethical because Hitler is making the argument.

Yes but this isn't about presenting an argument, the one example given in this blog post is about someone working towards a goal. If that goal is unethical and the person is working towards it we should be able to call them unethical. It's not about whether Hitler is saying medical care is good, it's about whether someone working to exterminate the Jews can be called unethical.

Everyone has done something that caused harm at some point. If that is the bar to declare a person unethical then we all are. In this framework you are right but it makes the label useless.

Most people would require action which creates direct (not second order as in this example) harm of a large magnitude before applying the label to a person.

In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotionally charged subjects. Which is why they don't have a place in honest debate.

>Most people would require action which creates direct (not second order as in this example) harm of a large magnitude before applying the label to a person.

That doesn't make any sense. If I directly try to eradicate the Jews I'm immoral, if my actions just have a second or third order effect of eradicating the Jews then I'm not? Most people probably use the direct vs second order distinction when it's themselves who are doing something unethical via second order effects but that's just to save some cognitive dissonance. If I know my actions have second order effects of hurting lots of people and I still do it that's unethical.

>In any case labels mean different things to different people in emotionally charged subjects. Which is why they don't have a place in honest debate.

Reality isn't an honest debate, reality is realpolitik. People are likely to be emotionally charged when they're told that it's okay they're being hurt because it's just a second order effect after all. Learn to deal with that emotion and argue against it, not make posts on the internet opining for something which never existed.

> If I directly try to eradicate the Jews I'm immoral, if my actions just have a second or third order effect of eradicating the Jews then I'm not?

This is a common moral principle; it is found in, for instance, the classical Christian doctrine on homicide, where directly willed killing is (leaving aside war and capital punishment) categorically prohibited, but killing (even when it is a certain result, or as nearly so as practically occurs) incidental to some act with a different end is not categorically prohibited, but judged according to the proportionality of the risked harm of the act with the harm it was avoiding. (Self-defense doctrine in American, and some other, law is ultimately strongly influenced by this principle, though it diverges a bit from it.)

First order effects are easily anticipated such that intent can be assumed. Second order effects are not always obvious even to experts in the field and so require debate and consideration. Intent is unlikely in this case without evidence to the contrary.

Of course If your definition of unethical doesn't require intent to harm then this is a meaningless distinction. Another Reason why labels are unhelpful.

>Extending life expectancy will increase human population

[citation needed]

>harm our environment

[citation needed]

>individuals working towards extending life expectancy are hurting future generations

[citation needed]

We don't know any of those things. You can debate it. Even passionately so, but it's wrong and dangerous to assume your unproven beliefs are facts and label people based on them.

And yet here we're discussing an idea for which you personally believe that someone or some group will be harmed but it is not certain, some of us would say it's not even likely. Some of us would even say it would be a great benefit to society and have the opposite affect you claim.

But because you believe (perhaps even irrationally) that the idea could harm you give yourself, and anyone who thinks as you do, the right to damage people's reputation. History has shown this to be very dangerous behavior.