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Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#241

Post by vn100c »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #86
spaniard89277 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there more Europeans here in HN? Because this hard push for empathy and stuff it just feels... weird to me. Empathy as the ability to see through your own biases and understand others POV is good in every setting. Empathy as a way to not communicate directly is just a waste of time. Most malicious people I've encountered in my career are the types that comes with smiles, corporate language and all that stuff.

You can communicate directly without also being insulting. You don't need to literally feel what other people are feeling (empathy) to not go out of your way to make people feel bad about themselves. I don't think there's a concern with 'Linus didn't wish everyone a good morning/didn't compliment so-and-so's code while suggesting changes' but with 'Linus insulted people to their face'. The former is cuddly, the latte…

Mainly there are really nice people with no influence, Machiavellian sociopaths with smiling faces, the unperturbed who often come across as haughty and boring, and the Linuses.

The haughty people often get more on my nerves than Linus.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#242

Post by furgooswft13 »

Millennium wrote: post #179
yosefzeev wrote: post #88

I don't need my computer tools to define my political/spiritual beliefs. In fact, I think Torvalds adopting something like this in relation to Linux is a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos. I will be keeping my eyes peeled for alternatives that understand the division between spiritual beliefs and "forced agreement with an assertion by participation" that uses religious terminology that has quite a different meaning to…

It is indeed a deep betrayal of a hacker ethos: in particular, Geek Social Fallacy #1 (Ostracizers Are Evil). And you know what? That's probably a good thing. The radical inclusivity (i.e. exclude no one, for any reason) of the geek community led to some beautiful things. We took in the people nobody wanted around, and with their help, we built something special. But in our reluctance to exclude anyone, we forgot som…

Who, or what exactly are you talking about?

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#243

Post by matz1 »

eropple wrote: post #218
matz1 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better to train myself to not be affected with insult ? If some one say to me "No, you stupid pile of sheet, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." I'll just ignore the insult part or at very least to not let myself negatively affected and move on.

No, it's not. It is better to respond coolly to assholish behavior. But it is not better to allow it to remain unchallenged. Not challenging assholish behavior means that it becomes a community norm and is then incumbent upon everybody else to "train" themselves, as you say, to ignore the behavior of a minority of assholes. It hands the responsibility of defining what the culture is to those assholes. Letting the ass…

Isn't is easier to change one person namely myself, rather than try to change one other person, let alone many?

The culture and the world always evolving and changing, it can be worse or better or whatever, most importantly for me is how can I make myself adapt to the every situation and make the best of it.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#245

Post by eeZah7Ux »

matz1 wrote: post #188
eropple wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are highlighting the false dichotomy that a lot of folks in this thread--and, if I'm being frank, not for good, decent, or ethical reasons--are piling in on. You can do something that makes people upset without being an asshole. It's really that simple. "No, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." Somebody's probably not going to be happy. But you have not needed to stoop to insulting them. You h…

Is it better to train myself to not be affected with insult ? If some one say to me "No, you stupid pile of sheet, I won't merge this pull request because of X, Y, and Z." I'll just ignore the insult part or at very least to not let myself negatively affected and move on.

It's unlikely that someone can be impervious to all and every type of insult and at any point in your life, as long as you are human.

In some cultures e.g. Japanese, being publicly accused and insulted is worse than insulting - it's a mark of shame that doesn't go away.

Unfortunately people simply can't rewire their brain, especially as adults, and that's why good manners exist.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#246

Post by AllegedAlec »

beaconstudios wrote: post #208
AllegedAlec wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alt-right was a term used by grass-roots movements and libertarians long before the term was ever co-opted by other groups. If you mean neo-nazis, just say neo-nazis.

I mean neo-nazis, neoreactionaries, neo-fascists, all those types. Basically the subset of /pol/ and stormfront users who genuinely believe what they espouse. At least that's my interpretation of the term.

Fair enough, that is the interpretation that seems to be pushed a lot these days. I just annoys the hell out of me, since alt-right at some point meant exactly that: someone who was right-wing, but in a way which does not align with any of the standard right wing parties.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#247

Post by beaconstudios »

pjc50 wrote: post #233
beaconstudios wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the question of the status quo is itself politicised. One side (progressive sphere) says people who don't belong to the normed group (cis-white-hetero-male in US/EUR) are inherently treated worse, either consciously or unconsciously (bias), and conscious effort has to be made to overcome this. Another (classical liberal sphere) says that exclusionary behaviour are the exception and most people abide by the golden rul…

Per sibling comment, the question of whether discrimination happens, consciously or unconsciously, is one amenable to factual analysis and is not a political question. What is political is whether anything should be done about it. > exclusionary behaviour are the exception and most people abide by the golden rule So the question for this has to be: when do you think the date was at which "most people" started to do t…

personally, I think the majority of people have acted like this (or perhaps more "live and let live") by default for a long time. However, basic morality is not the only operator of people's behaviour, and other operators can override morality such as economic exploitation, group conflict, education, stereotypical perception of other groups, and so on. Basically, it's a really complicated series of systemic issues that leads to things like racial inequality. Fundamentally I don't think people hate groups because they look different (beyond a small amount of subconscious in-group/out-group bias), they hate because of fear, conflict, they dehumanise to exploit, they misunderstand, basically just the whole gamut of human flaws driven by systemic issues in the economy, in justice, in culture and other systems we operate within. The idea that we can fix these problems by curing the symptom rather than the disease seems illogical to me.

or TL;DR: bias is mostly a learned behaviour, with probably some inherent subconscious bias from our evolutionary roots.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#248

Post by DFHippie »

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #214
DFHippie wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is important to note that this isn't merely a matter of opinion. One can study the effect/presence of unconscious bias objectively and quantitatively. These studies have large error bars but they use conventional and accepted statistics. To the extent it is politicized, it's politicized the way evolution and climate change are: groups who are politically opposed have opinions about the consequences of these studie…

Taken at face value, your statement seems to imply that if there is any research devoted to a topic using "conventional and accepted statistics", then no one can have an opinion on it.

I don't think you're taking it at face value. Note the word "merely".

There are typically many arguments for and against a particular policy, many costs and benefits. These costs and benefits don't hit everyone equally, which explains most of the difference in political opinion. One category of argument in the political debate is to claim that particular costs or benefits are illusory or of a different scale. The empirical evidence can show that this is false. This does not eliminate the debate. One would hope it would then proceed on different arguments, because denying empirical reality makes any resolution other than physical domination of one party by the other impossible. But even if it does, costs and benefits still fall unequally on the participants, meaning the political division remains. This difference in opinion is normal and legitimate.

[ETA I do not think it is pure coincidence that the group that believes it is more likely to win a contest of physical dominance is the one more likely to deny the validity of empirical evidence.]

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#249

Post by BeetleB »

08-15 wrote: post #225
aetimmes wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do what you should have done in the first place and locate specific problems. If the code is too clever for you, ask them to refactor in a simpler way rather than rejecting outright.

Well, you ask for improvement and reject. You have to, because you don't want to accept it. That pisses the submitter off. What now? A possible alternative is to do what Pieter Hintjens recommended: Accept everything , wait for the community to clean it up. Somebody might outright revert the bad patch... you accept that reversion patch, too, because you don't judge, you accept everything . This approach supposedly wo…

>Well, you ask for improvement and reject. You have to, because you don't want to accept it. That pisses the submitter off. What now?

The goal of better communication (in this case) is not to be the offensive asshole. It is not to ensure the other person isn't pissed off. I've pointed it out in earlier threads, but do try to read some good books on communication. While they do talk about phrases that lead to defensive behavior and how to avoid them, the focus is always on ensuring your perspective gets out, and i a way that is most likely to be heard.

As one book said "Do not make a metric how upset the other person becomes. That is giving too much control to the other party, and you have limited control over their behavior".

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#250

Post by cblades »

rooam-dev wrote: post #31
matthewmacleod wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s essentially a cliché false dichotomy. Wouldn’t it be even nicer to work with someone who can express how they feel in a constructive and helpful manner?

Sometimes "constructive" requires more effort, which for an engineer could mean "overhead". Especially if communication is text based (email, chat, etc.), it's more difficult to express your emotions. My imho of course.

No doubt, but we're people talking to other people. We can afford that overhead, and neglecting it incurs down-stream costs that can be unpredictable and significant.
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