I Stand With Trolls • Hacker News Board

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#121

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:20 PM UTC

pilgrim689 wrote: post #112

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Were you expecting me to defend the religious zealots? I never said I agreed with them. All I'm saying is that they're normal humans who have jobs and lives. They don't get up in the morning and say, "geez, how can we make life hard for pilgrim689 today?" A lot of them honestly believe that they're acting in your interest by saving you from eternal damnation.

>Then, when all arguments are done, it is up to the judge to say who is right and who is wrong.

The judge is just a lawyer in a robe. The judge can be just as wrong as anyone else. (See e.g. Dred Scott.) And the judge doesn't get the final say anyway, we do. We The People get to appoint different judges or pass new laws or amend the constitution. So we have to decide somehow which of you is right or wrong. Isn't it better to treat one another as people acting in good faith and have a debate and try to convince each other than to wage a holy war where each side dismisses the other as a immoral and proceeds to partisan political maneuvering rather than mutual understanding?

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#122

Post by kevingadd » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:22 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #76

kevingadd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is one of the safest and most welcoming places to work in software, regardless of your sexual orientation or gender identity. Their actions, collectively as an organization, speak for themselves. But yeah, one of their employees happens to hold personal beliefs you disagree with. That means he should be fired regardless of job performance? How does that make any sense? It's one thing to say that he directly t…

>It's one thing to say that he ... has openly said harmful, awful things in public. But neither of those things are true of Brendan Eich. Yes, it is. Look up Prop 8 supporter commercials. Brendan Eich paid for those.

Show me a list of every purchase you've made in the past year and I'll bet you $50 I can find more than one company with employees on staff who contribute to causes you find despicable, using the salary that's being paid indirectly using the profits you sent to that company.

Get a clue. Politics in the US are absolutely not black and white. Sometimes you ally with groups you disagree with to advance a cause you agree with; sometimes you support an organization because the good it does outweighs the bad it does. The EFF isn't perfect, the ACLU isn't perfect, Planned Parenthood isn't perfect, etc etc etc.

P.S. It's Brendan's money to do with as he pleases, not yours. Mozilla is a non-profit - his salary doesn't contain a cent of your money.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#123

Post by eropple » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:26 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #81

zacharyvoase wrote: post #10

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…

I don't mean any of this to sound like a personal attack, so please don't take it that way. I'm just trying to show you the other side of your argument. Let's pretend I agree with Prop 8 (I don't, with the exception of what ChuckMcM mentioned below). Clearly you feel strongly about it, enough to avoid a company on the sole basis there is a leader there who disagrees with you, someone you may or may not work directly…

He's not writing off an entire company because of a $1,000 donation. He's writing off a company because one of its leaders chooses to publicly do shitty things.

Relative power is important to understand and take into account in a situation like this. Within the Mozilla community, Eich has power. Eich also not only holds repellent viewpoints, but acts on them (and while I respect the hell out of ChuckMcM I think he's several miles off-base with his what-if). I can understand not wanting to work for an organization where the powerful has no problem with a public declaration of hatred for me (if I were gay) or for dear friends of mine (in my own case).

As an aside, this is also why the arguments for at-will employment often fall very short; they equate "you can be fired for any reason" with "you can quit for any reason" without acknowledging the vast gulf in power between employer and employee in most situations and industries. Power dynamics matter. Context matters.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#124

Post by kevingadd » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:28 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #56

kevingadd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is one of the safest and most welcoming places to work in software, regardless of your sexual orientation or gender identity. Their actions, collectively as an organization, speak for themselves. But yeah, one of their employees happens to hold personal beliefs you disagree with. That means he should be fired regardless of job performance? How does that make any sense? It's one thing to say that he directly t…

>But yeah, one of their employees happens to hold personal beliefs you disagree with. Holding personal beliefs and acting on personal beliefs are two different things entirely. In my arrogant opinion, being anti marriage equality should be held in the same level of disrepute as someone being against racial equality or similar. You're free to hate whatever you want, but when you give money to organizations that cause…

Even if Prop 8 was directly responsible for people like me killing themselves (and it's NOT, and you know it), that doesn't somehow make someone donating to a cause they believe in a murderer. This is literally the laziest argument you can possibly use to support this criticism.

I don't personally believe Prop 8 was a good thing, but maybe he had compelling reasons to donate. You won't know unless you ask him. I don't particularly care what his reasons were, because it's HIS MONEY.

I mean, if you think somehow boycotting Mozilla and trashing them in public will help advance some social cause you believe in, then go for it. I bet if you looked through the donations made by every Google employee you'd find hundreds, if not thousands of them donated to the campaign for Prop 8. Same goes for Apple, and Microsoft, and pretty much any big company - even in the valley.

Being able to ignore political disagreements - even big ones - in favor of making progress in some other field is the mark of being an adult, and it's what our civilization is built on. If we refused to have contact with people who didn't exactly conform to our worldviews, and refused to cooperate with them, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING would get done in this country. You need only look at the utter impotence of the US Senate and House to see an example of this in action.

Do you think the world would have benefited if Alan Turing had refused to work with the research establishment because some of his colleagues were homophobes? Do you think the world would have benefited if Turing had been unable to get work because the establishment considered his personal views unacceptable? That's the kind of behavior you're advocating here: Blatant, unflinching intolerance in both directions.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#125

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:30 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #121

pilgrim689 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Were you expecting me to defend the religious zealots? I never said I agreed with them. All I'm saying is that they're normal humans who have jobs and lives. They don't get up in the morning and say, "geez, how can we make life hard for pilgrim689 today?" A lot of them honestly believe that they're acting in your interest by saving you from eternal damnation. >Then, when all arguments are done, it is up to the judge…

[deleted]

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#126

Post by ben0x539 » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:38 PM UTC

yew wrote: post #107

ben0x539 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like "You're free to believe whatever you want, but that freedom doesn't automatically make you not a bigot". If someone spends their entire life having to justify their existence to the de-facto ruling class, patience for this "all viewpoints are equally valid" stance can run out fast.

It's more like "You're free to believe whatever you want, but that freedom doesn't automatically make you not a bigot". So many words for 'we won't accept it'! I'm not saying that all beliefs are equally valid. I don't even have a problem with calling people bigots, as long as you're careful to mind the gap between 'speaking' and 'acting'. I am saying that you are not the only one who really, truly, actually believes…

No, I'm not going to accept oppression, and that doesn't make me the bigot who imposes their beliefs on others. Jesus.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#127

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:40 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #121

pilgrim689 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Were you expecting me to defend the religious zealots? I never said I agreed with them. All I'm saying is that they're normal humans who have jobs and lives. They don't get up in the morning and say, "geez, how can we make life hard for pilgrim689 today?" A lot of them honestly believe that they're acting in your interest by saving you from eternal damnation. >Then, when all arguments are done, it is up to the judge…

[deleted]

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#128

Post by eropple » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:47 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #119

jules wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I don't mean to reply to this too pithily, but some pith kind of fits here:

When you hear hoofbeats, assume horses, not zebras.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#129

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:49 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #124

Karunamon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But yeah, one of their employees happens to hold personal beliefs you disagree with. Holding personal beliefs and acting on personal beliefs are two different things entirely. In my arrogant opinion, being anti marriage equality should be held in the same level of disrepute as someone being against racial equality or similar. You're free to hate whatever you want, but when you give money to organizations that cause…

Even if Prop 8 was directly responsible for people like me killing themselves (and it's NOT, and you know it), that doesn't somehow make someone donating to a cause they believe in a murderer. This is literally the laziest argument you can possibly use to support this criticism. I don't personally believe Prop 8 was a good thing, but maybe he had compelling reasons to donate. You won't know unless you ask him. I don'…

>that doesn't somehow make someone donating to a cause they believe in a murderer.

Woah woah slow the fuck down. That is not what I said. I said that supporting the actions of organization X which does Y with your direct financial contribution means that you have supported Y in some way, however small.

That applies regardless of who you are. It doesn't matter that Mozilla might be a great place to work - it puts him in the same company as the guy that runs Chik-Fil-A. Giving money to a company that does bad things means you have supported those bad things. Doesn't particularly matter whether you like this fact or not, because it's true.

I'd argue even more that it applies when you're the CEO of a large company. $hate_organization can now legitimately say that this Mozilla guy supports them. Great press right!?

>I mean, if you think somehow boycotting Mozilla and trashing them in public will help advance some social cause you believe in, then go for it.

Which I also didn't say or advocate.

>That's the kind of behavior you're advocating here: Blatant, unflinching intolerance in both directions.

Which.. I also didn't say or advocate.

Please read what I actually said and not what you want me to have said. I didn't advocate boycotting Mozilla, and I drew no conclusions other than "This is uncool, and being related to the company in such a position now drags their name into it, and it makes perfect logical sense that a company may choose to distance themselves from a person in such a case"

Roughly half of your post is a damn lie.

And another thing, if you don't think that being told by evangelicals and conservatives and other hate groups that you are wrong and terrible and evil all the time doesn't contribute to suicide, you're out of your damn mind. I can't tell you exactly what message at what time might cause someone to snap, but I can very well say that every one contributes somehow.

Re: I Stand With Trolls

#130

Post by lotharbot » Wed, Apr 17, 2013, 8:50 PM UTC

pilgrim689 wrote: post #103

newnewnew wrote: post #94

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…

> "Serious issues like abortion must be approached with more care than you are offering it"

The same can be said for same-sex marriage and related issues (polygamy, civil unions for widows/widowers who don't want to remarry, the imposition of religious definitions on secular society OR secular definitions on religion, and so on.) Can you give me a good reason why the benefits attached to marriage should be attached to family A but not family B? Does your reasoning hold up when introducing family C into the mix? What if one family doesn't want to use the term "marriage" but another does?

Take my family: I live with my wife, my son, my sister, and her son. I'm responsible for both children during the normal work day. It seems reasonable that this family arrangement should allow us certain benefits which are presently tied to marriage, like access to my nephew's school records and being able to schedule medical appointments for him.

As the rest of your comment demonstrates, if you choose certain terminology, you can make complex issues appear to have obvious and simple solutions. The question of how to legally define family relationships deserves far more care than it's usually given.