I've read Wynn-Williams' book. It is astonishing and fascinating. If even half of it is truth, it's nightmarish how the leaders of Meta behave. And completely predictable that they'd try to punish its author, despite that punishment having no bearing on whether the book is out in the world (it is).
That said, the author doesn't come off particularly well, either. In her effort to excuse herself for working for Meta's leaders willingly for so long, she comes off as a painfully naive workaholic who ignores the welfare of her husband, children, friends, family, and even her own body in order to serve the whims of executives who will never care for her. Reading stories about how she, her colleagues, and even world leaders are repeatedly debased and devalued in order to please people like Mark Zuckerberg and Sherly Sandberg is deeply sad.
She doesn't deserve what's being done to her but it's hard to see how it is unpredictable.
Or maybe she wasn't that naive but thrilled by the proximity to the power working for facebook and shmoozing with heads of state gave her, and neglected everything else in service of that. She may not be the most reluable narrator for her own case.
Yeah, to be clear, I think that is just as likely but she isn't comfortable saying that in a book where she is the protagonist.
"I did this willingly and now realize it was awful" would have been much more noble than "oh, lol, i didn't know they sucked, woopsie", but she mostly went with the latter.
> In her effort to excuse herself for working for Meta's leaders willingly for so long
From your description, this doesn't sound too uncommon. You're right that it doesn't make her look good, but isn't this also behavior many of us here do as well as likely the executives she's criticizing? Having a moment of reflection and reevaluation is a good sign, even if it came late. Better late than never?
Its an easy trap that I think many engineers fall for to varying degrees. It is easy to get caught up in the excitement of your work and lose sight of the implications of it. As engineers we build things that have great power. When building them we concentrate on how that power can be used for good. How much we can help the world. But it's easy to ignore how the same construction can be used for great evils. That's why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Few people are truly evil and a sad truth is that evil is mostly created by good men trying to do good.
Maybe the most famous example of this is the scientists who worked on the Manhattan project. Captivated by the exciting challenges of the work and the exhilaration of solving these complex puzzles. Rushed by the war effort, blinding them to what was really being created. That sense of urgency that the bomb would be inevitable; if not them, then someone else. As they got closer to their goal more started to rethink. After Trinity more followed. After Hiroshima many became outspoken critics, including Oppenheimer himself. Many of these men ended up being disgusted with themselves, with how far they could go before they saw the consequences of their actions. Many more performed great acrobatics to justify why the construction was good and justified.
To be honest, it doesn't matter if it was the right decision to make the bomb or not. The real lesson is how easy it is to get lost in the work and blinded by a sense of urgency. It's magnitudes easier to recognize the consequences post hoc rather than a priori. But in most situations these things are even harder to see. We're not omniscient, so it's impossible to imagine all the ways a technology may be abused.
Our duty, especially as engineers, then becomes to make frequent pauses and rethink. Are we doing the right thing? Is there a better way? Is there something we've missed? This doesn't just make us more ethical, it also helps us solve the technical challenges. We're fortunate that this can align.
Since we cannot turn back time, all we can do is accept those who change. To accept that harm cannot be undone, but future harm can be prevented or lessened. The best we can do is recognize that the world is complex and we are blind to so much. I fear if we blame too much this only makes us dig our holes deeper. (Essentially) No one wants to be the harbinger of evil or harm, so we'll go to great lengths to blind ourselves to the damage in our wake. Not because we are evil, but because we want to be good.
The crazy thing about the Manhattan project is that scientists thought there could be a runaway chain reaction in nitrogen or hydrogen in the atmosphere, burning all air or oceans and result in an extinction event.
It’s such a mind bending story and point in human history. I digress..
I'll note that I have a physics degree. My undergrad advisor and several people I've worked for had worked directly under those scientists, though post project. Including my time at the two labs not in New Mexico. I'm saying this to help convince you that I know what I'm talking about here:
That story is wildly overblown. No one really thought this would happen. But given the consequences of being wrong no one wanted to trust themselves. So what they did is keep asking each other to try to do the calculations independently and see if they would get the same results. The idea came from Teller who was researching stars, which do have a runaway reaction. In the movie Oppenheimer says "nonzero chance" and that's accurate. He really did mean "we aren't confident that this would get impossible" but they were very confident the likelihood was almost zero.
The reason this it's important is because it flips the story on its head. Had they thought there was a meaningful chance and moved forward then the story represents how brash they were and careless. But instead it is a story of where they were considering and taking seriously something they thought was a near impossibility and yet they took great effort to ensure that it was actually impossible. That's now a story of how careful they were. It's the exact opposite of being brash.
Mind you, this doesn't contradict what I said before. They did know the bomb would be powerful, but I doubt many knew how powerful until near or at Trinity. And I'll tell you, unless you can do the calculations then you really don't understand what those things actually do. It is so much more than an explosion. It is more than the radiation. There's a reason so many could no longer be blind to the consequences. To this day the skeletons are out of the physicists' closet because we all know we are capable of unknowingly following the same path. When you learn what that bomb does you hope you're at the center of it
Would you say they were significantly more concerned about nuking the entire atmosphere than scientists were "concerned" about creating a small black hole that would swallow earth by turning on the LHC (AKA not at all)?
Wow what an amazing follow up! I’m thrilled to hear this anecdotally with your personal commentary. I always go down the rabbit hole and take everything at face value, so I appreciate the color you added to the story.
That said, the author doesn't come off particularly well, either. In her effort to excuse herself for working for Meta's leaders willingly for so long, she comes off as a painfully naive workaholic who ignores the welfare of her husband, children, friends, family, and even her own body in order to serve the whims of executives who will never care for her. Reading stories about how she, her colleagues, and even world leaders are repeatedly debased and devalued in order to please people like Mark Zuckerberg and Sherly Sandberg is deeply sad.
She doesn't deserve what's being done to her but it's hard to see how it is unpredictable.