This comment make a couple assumptions I don't agree with:
1. That technological development and a "carbon neutral goal" are incompatible. Carbon neutrality is precisely a problem of technological development, with green energy, battery technology, and improving the grid all on the vanguard of modern technological development. The problems caused by global warming will only get more severe (even if they don't cause the apocalypse) and these technological issues will be correspondingly more important for the survival of any other tech that depends on energy.
2. That America's military interests and private sector involvement are inevitable. I think that Google could influence an overly militaristic policy precisely by withholding support. We are _not_ a dictatorship where everyone and every institution must bend their will to the leader, and changes are in fact sometimes made through a show of resistance. This may be a somewhat naive view, but I think it's more correct than one that sees US politics as so inevitable that even Google has no choice but to fall in line. Sure, it would probably cost them to resist, but as another commenter pointed out: ethical decisions typically have a cost.
In my workplace we argue without ego and with the assumption that we are working together to find the best way to do something. If someone realizes that the other person is right, they will say something like "Ah, OK, yes that's true..." and from that point on it stops being an argument and becomes a collaboration where both of us examine the correct position to make sure we're clear on it and its potential downfalls.
Reading this article has me a bit surprised, and the culture the author describes does not sound like an engineering culture to me. I am a bit saddened to think that people have to work in such an environment, and I am curious what it would take to change such an environment for the better.
Just for some perspective, my kids get about 1 hour of screen time a day, and a lot of my friends are shocked at how much they watch. I'm glad you made this change and saw the positive effect, especially to the extent that they started choosing other activities over screen time, but I can't image how much they were watching before you "cut down" to 2 hours a day, and how you could have felt that that was OK for children?
Historically, all speech was considered "intentional". And by speech here I am including two distinct things: the expression of opinion, and the publication of opinion by a magazine/newspaper owner.
I separate those two things because they are very different with respect to the scale of the dissemination of speech. Nevertheless, magazines and newspapers are free to publish opinion, though it is significant in my opinion that in those cases there is an accountable individual (the editor/publisher).
It strikes me as different when we have social media platforms that amplify speech to a massive scale without any accountability. Clearly, monetization fuels the large-scale amplification of some undesirable speech so that 1. it is not an opinion expressed in good faith and 2. there is no directly accountable individual, unless the poster can be considered accountable for FBs large-scale publication of their speech, which feels perverse to me. It's effectively "robo-published".
There are some conclusions which could be drawn here, and I'm not sure which should be drawn if any. But I think it's important to point out that the details do matter (libel laws and "malice" for example) and that the details change in significant ways as society and technology change.
> It's much like climate science today: any dissent at all, even just questioning the predictions of catastrophe, immediately brands you as a heretic.
I'm not sure I understand this. We've added hundreds of gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere. There's no mystery here, it's basic physics and chemistry that this will change things, and it's accepted that we don't know exactly _how_ things will change. The alternative: "adding gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere will _not_ change anything" is simply non-sensical. It goes against the basic rules of physics and causality. I'm happy to be proved wrong here, I just legitimately can't see how an alternative position makes any sense.
Edit: I see you specifically pointed out "predictions of catastrophe", which if that is true (and not just the position of radicals on Twitter) is indeed unfortunate.
Ah this reminds me of my first big mistake with PCBs. I have recently started down the hardware track, and my first PCB has a number of BC547 and BC558 transistors on it.
Once I had a functioning prototype, the next step was to convert it into a schematic. After that, you have to convert the schematic into a PCB. Now we are at two layers of translation, and at this step I made a mistake: I wanted to use SMD components to save money, and I found that the BC8xx transistors are the SMD equivalent of the BC5xx ones, so I used the footprint of the BC8xx transistors in my PCB, with no errors from KiCad.
As it turns out, the BC8xx footprint is not compatible with a BC5xx schematic! The pinout is different: the base is pin 1 instead of pin 2, so the components in my PCB that use transistors (crucially, the voltage controlled amplifier) didn't work. Unlike a bug, that mistake cost me $200 and weeks of development time, but after 10+ years of writing software I'm still happy to be making things that people can touch.
I don't know if this was in your lifetime, but Bill Clinton reduced government spending through the National Performance Review. Not only did he do it, but he did it in a planned and strategic way, that included an initial phase of research, followed by education and recommendations, which were send to congress for approval.
You'll notice that this approach is consistent with basic project planning and execution principles, and follows the principles of government set out by our constitution. In contrast, DOGE sidestepped the legal and administrative principles of the government, which led to cuts followed by retractions, which are ultimately more costly and wasteful.
I'll take the bait here and be the one to point out that the usage of literally to mean "figuratively" is recorded in dictionaries at least 100 years old, and there are probably even older examples of that usage.
1. That technological development and a "carbon neutral goal" are incompatible. Carbon neutrality is precisely a problem of technological development, with green energy, battery technology, and improving the grid all on the vanguard of modern technological development. The problems caused by global warming will only get more severe (even if they don't cause the apocalypse) and these technological issues will be correspondingly more important for the survival of any other tech that depends on energy.
2. That America's military interests and private sector involvement are inevitable. I think that Google could influence an overly militaristic policy precisely by withholding support. We are _not_ a dictatorship where everyone and every institution must bend their will to the leader, and changes are in fact sometimes made through a show of resistance. This may be a somewhat naive view, but I think it's more correct than one that sees US politics as so inevitable that even Google has no choice but to fall in line. Sure, it would probably cost them to resist, but as another commenter pointed out: ethical decisions typically have a cost.