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I Stand With Trolls

braythwayt.com

111–120 of 155 posts

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#111
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some of the sub-comments to this: Not at all (AT ALL) defending Prop 8 here, but where do you draw the line in cutting these people out of your life? Take the issue of abortion, which is easier to see that there are no easy answers. You either believe that abortion is MURDER or stopping abortion curtails PERSONAL LIBERTY for all women. Either way, people are defending a highly moral position and you can argue agai…

There is pretty clearly a line between those two moral choices. The abortion debate is basically a balancing act between two undesirable outcomes. No one likes abortions, but no one (by simple definition) wants unwanted children, either. Choosing either outcome is very much a moral gray area; how do you know you've made the correct decision? I don't think anyone has the right to make that decision for someone else, b…

If you condition on "a foetus is as valuable as a baby", which is something that a lot of people believe...

Then even if you accept that to deny abortion is to curtail women's liberty, and this is bad, so that preventing abortion is not an unmitigated good...

And even if you accept that allowing gay marriage is an unmitigated good...

Then it still seems to me like abortion is a much more pressing issue than gay marriage. It's a trade-off, but that doesn't mean the answer isn't obvious, and it doesn't mean that a good thing which isn't a trade-off will necessarily be more valuable.

(There are three "if you believe..." statements in this post. I want to make it clear that I'm not endorsing or disendorsing any of those beliefs.)

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure some beliefs actually ruin lives (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.). Do you just accept all of them as being "weird and wacky"? Shouldn't we draw the line somewhere? Even the great thinkers in ethics like Kant or John Stuart Mills draw the line somewhere, each in their own way... but both utlitarian and kantian ethics would agree that preventing sexuality equality is unethical.

>I'm pretty sure some beliefs actually ruin lives Lots of beliefs ruin lives. I can show you conservatives who fervently believe that having high taxes on high income earners would destroy the country, because Henry Ford types would then find it more attractive to take a 40 hour a week management job at an established corporation than to spend 100 hours a week to create a new industry, and the lack of anyone selling…

I'm not saying I have proved that I am right. I simply provided an argument for the position (which you have failed to do). I just said that homophobia ruins lives (and it does, ask a homosexual). Now, it is up to the other party to say "ah, but gay marriage is bad because the Bible says so." Then, when all arguments are done, it is up to the judge to say who is right and who is wrong.

You can't just say "umm but no one is evil and everyone disagrees and everyone ruins someone else's life some way or another so what the heck? Let's just do whatever?" That leads nowhere.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#113
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. > I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it -- Attributed to Voltaire. IMO, that perspective is one of the keystones of our culture, and not to be thrown away lightly.

You should understand that does not apply here. That quote doesn't extend to defending intolerance, because it is wholly incompatible with it. This isn't surprising, but context is often lost with that quote. Think about it for a second, how can you advocate that you would defend one's freedom to limit one's freedom?

> how can you advocate that you would defend one's freedom to limit one's freedom?

You're confusing the quotation with the referent. (Or at least making a similar class of mistake.)

I won't defend your freedom to limit my freedom, but I will defend your freedom to say that my freedom should be limited. (Even if doing that makes it more likely that my freedom will in fact be limited.)

I'm sure I'll draw a line somewhere, but so far I can't think of anyone whose speech I find sufficiently scary that I want them silenced.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#114
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. > I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it -- Attributed to Voltaire. IMO, that perspective is one of the keystones of our culture, and not to be thrown away lightly.

You should understand that does not apply here. That quote doesn't extend to defending intolerance, because it is wholly incompatible with it. This isn't surprising, but context is often lost with that quote. Think about it for a second, how can you advocate that you would defend one's freedom to limit one's freedom?

You're failing to distinguish between speech and action. If someone wants to argue that we should limit freedom, let them speak. They may be wrong but we can hear them out -- and once their argument is put in the light of day we can deconstruct it and prove why they're wrong, if they are. There is no need to censor idiots; just give them enough rope and they'll hang themselves in front of everyone.

Leaving wrong ideas on display is a necessary part of democracy, because it encourages the refutations to be regularly publicized as well. It requires people to understand why an idea is wrong, rather than merely being told that it is and admonished never to speak of it again.

If you don't allow people who are wrong to be wrong in public, they will continue to be wrong in private where no one is there to correct them.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> asserting that Eich might have supported Prop 8 because he really does support gay marriage through some complicated nonsense. This is a really weird, silly rationalization. Don't you think he would have said something to this effect when this blew up on Twitter? You think he's just sitting there on his hands going "Jeez, I wish there was something I could do to convince people that I'm not actually a horrible bigo…

That is an interesting interpretation of what I wrote. I certainly agree that it is your prerogative to act in the way that aligns your actions with your interpretations.

I think it's a completely fair interpretation of what you wrote.

The guy is a bigot. He worked to ensure that a class of people had fewer rights than other classes of people. If that doesn't make you a bigot, I don't know what does.

I'm disappointed that you wasted our time with that completely ridiculous argument. That said, thanks for letting me know that if I ever take a morally abhorrent position on something, you'll be there to say I'm a great guy, and that even if I'm not, people should still work for me.

(though even in that world, I think it's baffling that you managed to attack people who don't want to work for a bigot as being somehow bigoted...)

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If abortion were rare, I might agree with you that there is some trade-off involved that we have to consider, some hard-luck cases. But about 25% of my generation was killed by abortion, including 50% of black babies. That's sickening, and the word "genocide" starts to creep into my mind. The same sex marriage debate is nowhere near as urgent or serious as the abortion debate.

Serious issues like abortion must be approached with more care than you are offering it. Call things like they are, firstly, and avoid bending the English language for dramatic effect. Abortions deal with an "embryo" or "fetus", not a "baby" or a "generation", both of which are born beings (out of the womb). The argument is thus not "is it ok to murder people?", as you're trying to make it look like (we've solved tha…

The language has already been corrupted. I am correcting that. It's amazing what people can get comfortable with when Kermit Gosnell is "snipping" "fetuses" instead of beheading babies.

The fact is that real people that would have existed now don't (50 million Americans since Roe v. Wade). That may not be murder, but it is certainly something akin. Filling the language with euphemisms doesn't change the reality.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#117

Just an anecdote, which I know is not the singular form of 'data', but still: I respect Mozilla as a company, but have no desire to work there (despite there being a lot of technology fit) because the CTO, Brendan Eich, made a donation of $1,000 to support Prop 8—a 2008 California ballot measure which banned gay marriage. Sure, I understood that his views were not those of his employer. But that doesn't make it easie…

Just as a heads up, there were a non-zero number of people who "supported" Prop 8 for a very different reason. This group of people reasoned that the only way to get equal protection under the law for gay and straight people was to have this law pass , have it be contested, and have the Supreme Court toss it out. Here is the thing, you can't go to the Supreme Court with some random request to rule on a principle they…

> choosing not to work at the company (which doesn't take the same position) your actions put you at risk of committing the same sins that a hiring manager might make of choosing not to hire someone because of a difference of opinion

It's a perfectly rational, and intelligent decision to avoid working at a job where you report to a bigot whose opinions are directly opposed to your own.

He was willing to spend hard-earned money to deprive people of legal rights. What on earth would make you think it's smart to trust him to be fair and even-handed in the workplace?

In a perfect world he'd only be a horrible bigot at home, but in the real world that's unlikely.

There are plenty of jobs elsewhere. Jobs that don't involve reporting to a bigot.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure some beliefs actually ruin lives (sexism, racism, homophobia, etc.). Do you just accept all of them as being "weird and wacky"? Shouldn't we draw the line somewhere? Even the great thinkers in ethics like Kant or John Stuart Mills draw the line somewhere, each in their own way... but both utlitarian and kantian ethics would agree that preventing sexuality equality is unethical.

Beliefs don't ruin lives, actions do.

Sure... and what caused the action? Was it not the belief? So should I have said "beliefs indirectly ruin lives"? Actually, does the action even directly ruin lives, or is it the way you react to an action that will ruin your life or not? Bah. It's just a nitpick, isn't it?

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#119
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a heads up, there were a non-zero number of people who "supported" Prop 8 for a very different reason. This group of people reasoned that the only way to get equal protection under the law for gay and straight people was to have this law pass , have it be contested, and have the Supreme Court toss it out. Here is the thing, you can't go to the Supreme Court with some random request to rule on a principle they…

This reasoning is bending over backwards a little too far. If the goal was to have marriage equality, then supporting a ban on marriage equality is not going to achieve that. Working against the ban would be much more likely to lead to marriage equality, because the supreme court can always decide over the next marriage equality ban that pops up. Secondly, the supreme court does take public support into account in it…

Hmm, ok so definitely not communicating successfully.

First, I don't know if Brendan is pro-Gay, anti-Gay or agnostic. My assertion is that with one data point (a contribution to the prop 208 campaign) is, by itself insufficient deduce his actual feelings.

My exposition on the strategy of passing it in order to change the country was not in a vacuum. Several people, myself included, who very much support a bias-blind right to marriage, agreed that adjudicating the issue would be both faster and more effective than legislating it. Prop 208 needed to pass in order for that to happen. And yes, there were people who argued in favor of more legislative work. But the history of this issue inside of California looked to be a predictor of a national debate on the issue. "fixing" it in one state is necessary but insufficient to ensure the rights of the married. Had Brendan been a member of that group I could have represented his actual position, but since he was not, I can only share that folks on the list of donors included people opposed to the concept of a marriage ban but with a strategy of getting it adjudicated and settled. The argument was made and rebutted that supporting it might make it the law of the land when we opposed it, the counter argument is that it is either constitutional or it isn't. If it is constitutional then our modest group did not have the financial resources to counter a very vocal and well funded religious constituency so opposing it might kill it for now but it would keep coming back again and again. If it is not constitutional then by getting it on the books now, we start the clock on the adjudication process sooner rather than later, and can sponsor the prosecution effort to make that case. At the end of the day one has to know the shape of the problem and where to fix it, until prop 208 started winding its way up to the Supreme Court there was no definitive statement on if the problem could be fought that way or not.

The second point was that making a job choice based on the politics of the people you may or may not work with means you may miss out on some great opportunities. One of the reasons given for anti-discrimination hiring practices is that discrimination isn't about the quality of the work someone can do, and by discriminating you miss out on quality workers you would hire in a non-discriminatory way. Granted it's not the primary reason, or even a major reason, but it's a reason to avoid your personal biases when hiring that can benefit you personally. That also applies to people looking at a company, they can choose not to work for a company because their future manager has a point of view or a race or a gender the potential employee finds distasteful, but if they let those tendencies rule their choices they miss out on things which could be really really good.

An example of that was when I was walking around 'career' day at USC with a fellow engineering student talking to various company recruiters. My companion was adamant about not working for any company where women were put in management roles over engineers. Their reasoning was that women didn't understand engineering and so would be unable to manage well. (this in spite of having women classmates who were excellent engineers!) He could have been trolling, I didn't really know him well enough to say. But I thought at the time that was really sad.

So my points were simply that one data point is a weak place to start drawing conclusions, and writing off a company because of one employee risks robbing you of some excellent experience.

I suspect too many words got in the way of the point.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious issues like abortion must be approached with more care than you are offering it. Call things like they are, firstly, and avoid bending the English language for dramatic effect. Abortions deal with an "embryo" or "fetus", not a "baby" or a "generation", both of which are born beings (out of the womb). The argument is thus not "is it ok to murder people?", as you're trying to make it look like (we've solved tha…

The language has already been corrupted. I am correcting that. It's amazing what people can get comfortable with when Kermit Gosnell is "snipping" "fetuses" instead of beheading babies. The fact is that real people that would have existed now don't (50 million Americans since Roe v. Wade). That may not be murder, but it is certainly something akin. Filling the language with euphemisms doesn't change the reality.

You are again pushing the "beheading" and "murder" argument, which is not what people disagree on. People agree already that these things are wrong (wow!). But you just hinted at what the problem actually is when you said "That may not be murder, but it is certainly something akin". So, again, the question is: what is it? When is it murder? Can I kill sperm? Can I let a woman have her period? Can I kill an egg that has just come into contact with a sperm? What about 1 second later? 1 minute after?

Keep in mind, I'm not even taking a position here. I'm just letting you know what the fuss is about.

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