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The web runs on tolerance

shkspr.mobi

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Re: The web runs on tolerance

#101

Post by Incipient »

edent wrote: post #61
Incipient wrote: post #47

This whole article has, to be ragebait - surely? It's such a inane piece of writing, the world needs to give less time to anyone that genuinely holds these views. They're entitled to hold them, but they're still wrong. >It had an intolerant ideology. Without going into the various reasons why its trash, conforming to a spec is not intolerance, it's success. Imagine the Brooklyn bridge design committee saying "requiri…

Thank you very much for your constructive criticism on my writing. I appreciate the candid feedback. I must take one small issue though. Every engineering project I've worked on has very definitely specified a tolerance. Something may be X cm ± Y mm. Tolerance is essential to engineering.

As pointed out my comment was not as constructive as it could have been, apologies for that.

It was a bad morning. I do appreciate being called on it.

However my less dramatic point, that precice protocols and exact requirements is what makes technical projects successful, is what I could have conveyed.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#102

Post by zozbot234 »

47282847 wrote: post #92
didgetmaster wrote: post #7

This guy lost me when he started talking about diversity issues instead of tech. I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use. Does it work? Is it easy to understand and use? These are the things I am interested in. I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!…

> I couldn't care less You do care , otherwise you would not even have thought about it twice, let alone comment. The most striking argument against this line of reasoning is that there is no possibility for you not to act politically. By ignoring the issue of systemic discrimination (“don’t care don’t personally discriminate”) you actively contribute to and participate in the systemic discrimination. It’s a choice,…

> The most striking argument against this line of reasoning is that there is no possibility for you not to act politically. By ignoring the issue of systemic discrimination (“don’t care don’t personally discriminate”)

This is not a very good argument, it would make the words "political" and "systemic" simply meaningless. First of all, it's implicitly assuming that the only way of effectively addressing the issue of systemic discrimination against X is to actively care about whether X is involved in the stuff we personally use. But "personal" and "systemic" issues and approaches are mutually contrary; that's what "systemic" means. Also if every social action is "political" by definition, what's even the point of resorting to the word "political" to begin with? It's not saying anything of relevance.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#103

Post by arp242 »

didgetmaster wrote: post #7

This guy lost me when he started talking about diversity issues instead of tech. I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use. Does it work? Is it easy to understand and use? These are the things I am interested in. I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!…

He talks about "throw[ing of] slurs" and "denying rights to others", "wishing violence on people because of their heritage", and that type of thing. Does not besetting people with slurs count as "diversity" now?

Do you think these people will be able to do good technical work if they're constantly beset by this kind of thing? Or do you think they will retreat to somewhere where they don't have to do with that?

And secretively hiding who you are is not a solution. No photographs. No video meets. No YouTube videos. Can never discus anything personal. No conferences.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#104

Post by zozbot234 »

arp242 wrote: post #103
didgetmaster wrote: post #7

This guy lost me when he started talking about diversity issues instead of tech. I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use. Does it work? Is it easy to understand and use? These are the things I am interested in. I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!…

He talks about "throw[ing of] slurs" and "denying rights to others", "wishing violence on people because of their heritage", and that type of thing. Does not besetting people with slurs count as "diversity" now? Do you think these people will be able to do good technical work if they're constantly beset by this kind of thing? Or do you think they will retreat to somewhere where they don't have to do with that? And se…

> Does not besetting people with slurs count as "diversity" now?

It depends whom you ask! There are certainly some people both off- and on-line who seem to think that uniformly slurring all white, male, cis-sexual, whatever folks as "oppressors" - and even occasionally suggesting, apparently as a serious political proposal, that "Whiteness" (whatever that means) is something that should be forcibly done away with - is an effective way of advocating for diversity.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#105

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

> Denying rights to others is poison. Wishing violence on people because of their heritage is harmful to all of us.

I think this is true for all cases, the author gives us example of trans co creator of arm architecture and alan turing and how their contributions in the web mattered

But I think quite frankly, even if that might not be the case, there STILL ISNT any reason why we should discriminate and I feel like some part of the intepretation I got was that we should be tolerant to all communities currently still persecuted because some part of them contributed to us...

But what about communities that did not support you because they weren't in the shape of? I feel like we should be tolerant to them.

I tend to stay less political nowadays but just look at the case of sudan. Its state is atrocious. I am not sure if sudan contributed quite heavily on the web or not so pardon me but even if they might not have, We should still be tolerant and like stop the atrocities happening there in my opinion.

Basically the point I am trying to make might be obvious but with or without the creations of alan turing, and co creator of arm, We should still be tolerant to each other as long as they are tolerant to us, thus a tolerant society.

I like referring to the paradox of tolerance as its a key of literally every problem in my opinion and this time tho its actually as clear as day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I think what we as a society need is to look at if we are infighting with each other over petty differences created by spews of lies by people in power to stay in power so that we infight. The british used conquer and divide on India and africa which I am not going to lie, still impacts these countries.

I am pretty sure that people do divide and conquer on their own people too, Power and the Powerful don't discriminate in this sense.

TLDR: We should be tolerant of each other as a whole even if there might not be any web contributions simply because being kind is mostly good I guess but also we should be intolerant to the true intolerant of society which try to create this divide from (both sides) imo and just try to remove any type of extremism and actually focus on class issues too.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#106

Post by arp242 »

whycombinetor wrote: post #13

What a bizarre bait and switch. Starts talking about browsers allowing malformed HTML and uses that to draw conclusions about allowing certain types of people.

So these certain types of people should not be allowed? Or what are you trying to say here?

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#107

Post by DeathArrow »

To credit a technical advance to a person's identity is to commit the 'Correlation is not Causation' fallacy. While diversity in a technical pool is interesting, the technical merit of the contribution must stand alone, independent of the contributor's personal characteristics. Shifting the focus from 'Does it work?' to 'Who wrote it?' is fundamentally anti-meritocratic and undermines the value of the technical discussion.

The health of a technical community like this one depends on its ability to separate the merit of the work from the moral character of the contributor. This is a necessary separation to preserve the integrity of the technical commons. For instance, a paper on a secure hash algorithm should be judged only on its mathematical proof, regardless of the author's personal life. Any attempt to link the two injects ad hominem fallacy into a technical evaluation.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#108

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

SPICLK2 wrote: post #96
47282847 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I couldn't care less You do care , otherwise you would not even have thought about it twice, let alone comment. The most striking argument against this line of reasoning is that there is no possibility for you not to act politically. By ignoring the issue of systemic discrimination (“don’t care don’t personally discriminate”) you actively contribute to and participate in the systemic discrimination. It’s a choice,…

As a person, treating everyone the same is an excellent response (and even a political one, if you wish) to counteract a system of discrimination.

I am raised in hindu religion and we have a saying here basically meaning, treat others the way you wish to be treated yourself and I am sure that literally every main religion and philosophy can kind of share the sentiment and create a tolerant society overall.

Shame that those same religions and people in power forget this core part I suppose. I think that the forgetfulness might be on purpose but I basically hope we can treat literally everyone others the way we wish to be treated ourselves, with dignity and respect.

Of course, some people who are clearly bad shouldn't be treated this way but I hope you can get what I mean by the general sentiment of this idea I guess.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#109

Post by SPICLK2 »

47282847 wrote: post #100
SPICLK2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person, treating everyone the same is an excellent response (and even a political one, if you wish) to counteract a system of discrimination.

Agreed. To illustrate, say you live inside a fenced-off city. You say you don’t discriminate, anyone is welcome to come and talk to and trade with you. Somebody points out that there are people outside the city, behind the fence, that aren’t able to come talk to you. You are free to act or not act on that, but speaking out against the one that merely points it out and tries to change it means you take an active posit…

No-one is "speaking out against" the one who is pointing out any wider discrimination, beyond whatever aribtrary circle you choose to draw.

What is being "spoken out against" is the idea that taking the moral (or political) action within whatever circle you feel able or willing to support is insufficient, or even discriminatory in itself. After all, this is exactly how this conversation started. Good for you if you want to change the world - let's not forget 3rd party discrimination against other 3rd parties! For many of us, it's one of numerous pressing problems to be addressed. If you wish to bring privilege into it, having the freedom to make fighting any and all discrimination a primary concern is a sign of privilege that few have.

Re: The web runs on tolerance

#110

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

autoexec wrote: post #52
didgetmaster wrote: post #7

This guy lost me when he started talking about diversity issues instead of tech. I couldn't care less about the race, gender, or sexual orientation of the person(s) who created the hardware or software that I use. Does it work? Is it easy to understand and use? These are the things I am interested in. I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!…

I'll gladly take the opportunity to avoid directly supporting a racist/bigot, or anyone who seeks to silence/oppress/murder entire groups of people for simply existing. I don't care if they're selling me an application, or a laptop, or a car, or a cheeseburger. The internet, and the world, are a lot more interesting and exciting when you get a lot of different people from different backgrounds participating. Genius a…

> The internet, and the world, are a lot more interesting and exciting when you get a lot of different people from different backgrounds participating. Genius and innovation can come from anywhere. Morally and practically I think we're better off being inclusive

Agreed but honestly sometimes I wonder about the funding sides of things, I love tinkering with software and making (right now LLM based but I know it can be a crutch, I use it to just "test" ideas tbh) but basically my question is, I wish to do more stuff on the web but as someone from a third world country, even 30k $/year are enough to me right now.

I am extremely frugal, most of it might just go into my savings/ETF world funds but basically I worry that if I cannot earn that amount, or even if I do, I am subjected to some very high risks which scare me as I have seen its costs first hands

I want to build software which some people might even work on full time but I just don't know how to make money out of it. If I can't make money out of it, I just open source some half assed implementation of it and literally noone knows about it.

I don't know too much about marketing and monetization perhaps. I don't know how to monetize, I hate ads and don't wish to push them, most of my servers/services I create can be abused so there is an issue the server provider might block me and I don't know if people are willing to pay for the software.

I am in a unique position but honestly what most people do is that they create growth right now, then sell it or smth or take VC funding etc which might include enshittening in the future for profit.

Like I just want to build, and a sustainable/profitable business with a profitable business model but the web just lacks this ability and I think I try to see it from my lens where I am frugal so I expect everyone is so its :/

The internet is interesting if people participate from different nations but that means that I just feel like what I might do will always be risky and I always need a job to fall back upon I guess.

Maybe an compromise I think I will do is work in very adjacent industries and contact them directly and work for 30-40k$ so I can get paid "enough" for my country and basically be good to go I guess.

The thing I get worried about is that if any such business goes bad, I would be on the chopping block and that its inherently more riskier than any business here who will try to extract 10x more value out of me and be the middleman...

I wish to be a software engineer here out of my own passion but since literally everyone wants to be here, my talent literally means jackshit in colleges or their applications so Genius and innovation can come from anywhere but opportunities can have an inequality which I hope I can fix for myself and hopefully help others in solving too one day I guess Idk.

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