To use a hypothetical: Would you condone someone teaching particle physics in North Korea? How about biology? Chemistry? Turbine engineering? Teaching any of these would probably increase North Korea's ability to threaten and harm its people and the rest of the world. It's sad that this is the case, but it's hard to argue otherwise.

Unfortunately, I seriously doubt education will help free North Korea. If you read the stories of defectors, you'll find that almost everyone in universities is indoctrinated. Also, because of how people are encouraged to report each other, no underground network of dissenters can exist. Even if 90% of North Koreans wanted to overthrow the government, anyone who voiced dissidence to a few friends would likely be reported and thrown in a prison camp (if not outright executed), along with their family. It doesn't take much to control many.

I really wish it was as easy as, "Education is good." But there can be dire consequences to actions, even ones as typically benign as teaching others. It's important to have a finely-tuned sense of ethics, otherwise we risk harming people who we mean to help.

Exactly which ethical principle(s) are you following?

This seems like a 5 minutes of thought kind of solution to an incredibly complex problem.

North Korea can buy/steal/grow the knowledge they need. They already have nukes, and are working on missiles. I think the notion that we should sanction education (on top of the existing sanctions) is just playing by the already broken playbook we (the rest of the world) have been to date. We are feeding their propaganda machine on how evil we are.

Just a question, how is the DPRK any MORE evil than other states the US happily does business with? (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, etc) What in particular makes them evil?

I agree that it is a messed up situation and some horrible shit is going on. But I also have a feeling we are being manipulated by the media.

We are not obligated in any way to provide education to North Korea. Saying we are "evil" for not educating another country is quite a stretch.

North Korea has withstood decades of economic isolation, and yet it lives and its people live much better than citizens of Somalia and other great capitalist nations, not that anyone would let you know. You're not freeing North Korea by isolating it and starving it, you are killing it, and the people. You say it doesn't tame much to control many, but this applies to the West as much as it does anywhere. You have a set of values, and you are in harmony with enough people, you can work for them, with them. The same applies in North Korea, and USSR (where I'm from). The country is a single company, the CEO might be eccentric, but people do have jobs, work hard, have education, healthcare and believe in communism. What they don't have is Hollywood, McDonnalds and Fox News. And this is why you want to "free them". They have nuclear weapons not because they are evil, but because they know what US does to countries people like you believe need to be freed.

And I believe that a bad country that doesn't fuck with your country is better than a bad country that fucks with mine and most countries.

Is this comparison available for us to view?

Does that mean that the Western European models of governance work? Duh!

Because in the US, at least in my experience, 'starving people in africa' is kind of a colloquial trope - it is more readily referenced than starving people in asia, since we don't see charity organizations constantly using asian faces to advertise their foundations.

>forced into producing cash crops for export to Western Europe

Who exactly went around the the countries in africa and asia and disallowed them from growing their own food instead of cash crops? My bet is that these places found economic incentive in growing these crops rather than what they would consume locally - whether the global economy is a net benefit or net loss for a poor country is an entirely different discussion

They have giant statues of their leader and a massive painting of him in the most prestigious place of the country. On official articles, the leader is mentioned everywhere. They manufacture 'pins' with the face of the leader on it and everyone is wearing it. There is painting of the leader in almost every house. (do I need to continue ?)

I'm sorry. I agree NK is a horrible place but that reasoning is ridiculous. Every heard of the Lincoln Memorial [0] or the Lansdowne portrait [1].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne_portrait

Edit: Just realised you may have been using sarcasm. If so my mistake.

You'll note that there isn't a giant statue of Obama on the White House lawn and in every town square. In N. Korea this is the case.

Adult Americans are not legally required to wear lapel pins featuring prominent past presidents, nor are they required to have images of those presidents in their homes with nothing else permitted on the wall that hosts those images, while in N. Korea they must.

Americans can freely speak a poor opinion of Obama or the Congress or the SCOTUS and not fear that they and their family will be imprisoned and tortured, unlike N. Korea.

The press can say what they like about Obama/other branches of the government without fear of censorship and imprisonment, unlike N. Korea where there is only state-run media that fawn over their leader.

I think that was what they were trying to get at even if they didn't fully expand it.

Washington Post? ;).

North Korean concentration camps, for example, are several orders of magnitude more horrific than the US prison camps you compared them to. And it's significantly easier to end up in an NK concentration camp than it is in prison too.

Families being rounded up and taken away and/or killed is a common theme discussed by the defectors as well.

Now I'm not saying that America (nor any other country for that matter) is perfect. If anything, I happen to agree with you that the US has some hugely hypocritical tendencies. But for all America's faults, the DPRK is still in a whole other of league of bad.

So when totalitarian regimes apply denial of education, mass surveillance, indefinite detention without trial, then that is evil.

But when the USA does it then it is due to a "finely-tuned sense of ethics"?

How's NK different from the US to that regard?

You know, the one country among those two that actually blasted two civilian cities with atomic bombs, sprayed Agent Orange over Vietnam, and has chronically had leaders who "speak with god"...

Don't throw the guilt on him or others,their fate is already abysmal because of their government and sending them a few teachers is not going to benefit their society and if its for feels, well they are misdirected and other countries are far more deserving of our time

Let's not forget the great value and results of CS education in the US:

- spying for pretty much everybody, regardless of location

- drone guidance systems to kill people unlawfully

- missile systems for air strikes on countries purported to have WMDs

- millions of $ spent on silly apps that arguably do nothing to improve quality of life, whilst millions suffer and die of starvation

Do you really know enough about North Korea's tech community to say that "More likely, these students will go on to make software for less-than-ethical purposes"?

Getting dangerous? The game is over, Europe has outsourced their intelligence gathering and show no indication of even wanting to try to catch up.

If what you say is true: DPRK spends $3 billion (approx) on military.

It's neighbours spend the following:

China: $150 billion (approx) South Korea: $33 billion (approx) Japan: $50 billion (approx)

Lets not forget that South Korea and Japan are satellites for the US, and a conflict would involve them: $640 billion (approx).

So their spending is at least 10x less than their cheapest neighbour.

Especially as each comp sci grad probably has greater potential to contribute to GDP than say your average farm labourer.

That makes the outright wrong assumption that the major cost of Military is personel...

Your argument is close to "Nobody should teach basic chemistry in the middle east, because hey, terrorists might use that knowledge to make bombs."

Plus, More than likely he (and others like him) are providing intel or participating in espionage on behalf of Western Governments.

But to respond to your real argument: It's a matter of probabilities. The chance that an American programmer will work on software harmful to humanity is quite small. The chance that a North Korean programmer will do so is massive. Even if the person doesn't want to work on missile guidance or centrifuge control software, they can be ordered to, and their family can be held hostage. There is no such thing as a conscientious objector in North Korea.

Spoken like a true patriot.

In actual life, most of the world hates the US interventions (too numerous to mention, including toppling legitimate leaders and installing friendly to the US dictators) and invasions (from Phillipines back in the day, to Korea and Vietnam and on to Bush's wars).

Besides South Korea, and if that, nobody has much to fear from North Korea, an insignificant provincial state that 99% of the time deals with its own issues.

Compare that to a hypocritical world "cop", dealing BS "democracy" all around the globe (e.g. mostly ruining previously stable countries to get rid of dictators it doesn't like, while doing business with or helping install dictators it does like elsewhere) to serve its interests.

Great point - the USA only kills millions of other nations people[0][1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_sanctions [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

It is the same argument made by nuclear non-proliferation countries. Only responsible countries should own the nuclear weapons. Well, guess how that argument turned out. The only country to use nuclear weapon is the one calls itself responsible one.

Along the lines of your argument, DPRK citizens shouldn't be learning physics, chemistry, mathematics, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and medical or any subject because they all can be used as "weapon" for nefarious purposes.

Keeping the population of a country uneducated because you don't agree with the government running the country is discriminatory and racist. No person irrespective of race or belief or country of citizenship should be denied education.

> Along the lines of your argument, DPRK citizens shouldn't be learning physics, chemistry, mathematics, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and medical or any subject because they all can be used as "weapon" for nefarious purposes.

Except for medicine, probably yes. See my other comment for why I think that is the case.[1]

> Keeping the population of a country uneducated because you don't agree with the government running the country is discriminatory and racist. No person irrespective of race or belief or country of citizenship should be denied education.

How is it racist? I have no ethical issues with South Koreans or North Korean defectors learning these things. I'm simply pointing out a concrete example of how, in some cases, education can be harmful on net. Simplifying it to, "Education is good." won't steer you wrong often. But when it does, the consequences can be horrific.

And to say one doesn't agree with the DPRK is putting it far too mildly. Read Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.[2] The stories will make you thankful to be in whatever country you live in. For many people, North Korea truly is hell on earth. It's far worse than anything Orwell wrote about.

If the leaders of the DPRK could get away with it, they would rain fire on South Korea and the US tomorrow. The only thing stopping them is lack of ability. Educating their citizens helps them gain technology that will most likely be used to achieve the goals of the DPRK's leaders. That will almost certainly lead to more harm than good.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8910491

2. http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North-eboo...

Has it though?

Between now and WWII you've still had several -arguably illegal- wars such as Iraq and Vietnam (and not to mention the cold war with Russia and tensions with Cuba and China). You've had a president assassinated. You've had more than 2 decades of racial segregation; and yet more assassinations (this time of figureheads who campaigned for equality such as Martin Luther King). You've have gun laws that most of the rest of the developed world considers right wing. You have your own breed of religious fanatics - which is so riff that election candidates have to prove to believe in God just stand a chance at becoming president. Then there's the NSA leaks - a whole essay could be written just referencing that organisation alone. And don't get me started on the xenophobic beliefs that the likes of Fox News spreads.

From an outsiders perspective looking in, America hasn't looked too respectful to either it's own nationals nor other countries in the decades following the second world war. So it really doesn't surprise me that many outside of the west might consider the US (and Europe) as bloodthirsty.

This is true, but what is also true is that most of the world outside the US and EU views the West (which is something like 12% of the worlds population) as an extremely bloodthirsty and cruel culture/society (regarding external behaviour) that is the greatest threat the humanity faces today.

You want to believe that the US is ethical and good because you probably live there and like your country and people, which I can understand very well.

Except the US has been in constant perpetual war since 1943...and not all of these wars have been in good faith either.

More DPRK people with the hacker mindset (e.g. not just accepting answers but asking questions, a hunger for knowledge, etc) would in the long term be a really great thing for everyone but the leaders of DPRK.

- you can have a CS degree and be a total and utter asshole (for some reason I though education makes people more polite)

- you can have a CS degree and be an antivaxxer who sees vaccines as Illuminati's conspiracy (not joking here)

- you can have a CS degree and not have an ounce of rational thinking in you

- you can have a CS degree and not be able to code your way out of a paper bag

I could list some more, but you get the picture.

The world would be a better place if subversion didn't exist. As long as the North Koreans keep using it they won't get very far. Maybe Will Scott is funded by the CIA if he's promoting that over git...

American kids should not be allowed to get a computer science education.

In the US, the person must voluntarily choose to pursue such a role. (Though I would not consider Stuxnet unethical.)

What if a skilled programmer in North Korea volunteers to perform unethical work? What if a skilled programmer in US volunteers to perform unethical work?

What if "ethics" simply depends on your country of origin?

To be honest, what you and the grandparent post should be saying is that North Korea is the enemy, and to help the enemy in any way is "bad". Why pretend that you're helping the people of North Korea by not helping the people of North Korea so they can't help their country?

>Right, in US, the government will never force anyone to perform unethical work. That's an interesting assumption.

I think it's a reasonable assumption. You can't be forced to join the military (unless there's a draft) or an intelligence agency, and if you work for one, you can't be forced to do something you don't want to do; you can just quit. They can threaten you with prosecution if you leak anything, but they can't make you do something you don't want to.

In NK you can both be forced to work for an organization and you can be forced to do specific tasks you may not want to do, at risk of torture or death.

>What if "ethics" simply depends on your country of origin?

That is true of course. And no doubt there are going to be NK programmers who are ethical and do nothing but help their populace. Obviously many US programmers are performing unethical tasks daily as well. But again, in the US these will almost always be voluntary actions.

I think educating NK citizens is a perfectly good idea, just there are certain topics that perhaps they should not be taught, due to their oppressive and Machiavellian regime.

We have invented, but more importantly manufactured, a lot of pretty fucking effective weaponry.

You are still doing it by writing that, and actually you aren't suggesting that the trouble to him would come from DPRK, but you are "nicely" suggesting he should get "in trouble" in the US just for lecturing in DPRK. Basically claiming, without writing the words that you are "surprised" he isn't considered a "traitor":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism