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Cancel We The Web? (2020)

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Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#231

Post by [deleted] »

yellowapple wrote: post #206
r3trohack3r wrote: post #6

A different take: Microsoft, Oracle, et. al. waged a war against OSS in the 90s. They went as far as using mental illness as a weapon against the community (equating participation in the commons as an equivalent to mental illness). It’s not a coincidence the class of human that weathered the storm looks like Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al. That’s what it took. The toxicity in these communities is a result of what was l…

A different take on your different take: it might not be coincidental that said current wave of villification coincides with large technology corporations (ostensibly) embracing "open source". The causality is unclear - it could be some nefarious attempt by corporate interests to weaponize public sentiment against "obstacles" to said corporate interests, or it could simply be corporate interests becoming more 21w/ill…

[deleted]

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#232

Post by tomjen3 »

Clewza313 wrote: post #199
b215826 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She spends a considerable fraction of her day turning non-issues (such as the term "domain driven design" [1]) into major issues. I really empathize with her coworkers; it must be really difficult to work with a person like this. [1]: https://twitter.com/sarahmei/status/1073234104311734273

> Last night I posted about the term “domain driven design,” frequently abbreviated “DDD” - which is a common large bra measurement in the US, & often part of dirty movie titles. ...wow. Also, did she just call human sexuality "dirty"? I would have thought that was a cancellable offense these days.

>often part of dirty movie titles.

As always, one wonders how she knows this.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#233

Post by dguaraglia »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #177
_euac wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always curious about this line of thinking. What exactly do you think people are gaining by - say - denouncing sexism or other kinds of awful behavior? What's so wolfish about that?

They improve their social status, which potentially makes them more powerful and influential within their tribe. Unfortunately this can be entirely orthogonal to making genuine improvements in how humans relate to each other. You're dealing with some deep seated flaws in human social psychology, and the polarised morality of cancel culture doesn't leave room to explore potential solutions which are based on that unco…

> You're either an insider who agrees with The Cause or an outsider unbeliever who must be reeducated or destroyed.

This can be also said of the 'anti-anti' crowd. Their whole objective is to moralize about how bad the 'anti' crowd is and telling them to shut up, while throwing a number of perfectly valid concerns out the window in the process. While most people in HN might leave it at denouncing the behavior, people have been doxxed, harassed online and in person for 'canceling' someone or something before.

BTW, I hate the 'cancel culture' term. I hate how it is used by people who - given the opportunity - would 'cancel' LGBT rights, immigration, etc. Every time I see someone using the term, I can't help but feel they've fallen for Propaganda 101.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#234

Post by _euac »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #139
dguaraglia wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have misread the comment twice over. I didn't. > I wrote nothing that would preclude your scenario from being a possibility That's kind of my point: there's a lot of questioning the motivations of the 'cancel culture mob' around these parts recently, but very little questioning of the motivations of the 'anti cancel culture mob'. It almost feels like there's a gaping blind spot there. Unsurprisingly, a signific…

I just don't agree with the symmetry you're drawing here. Pointing to a group of people and saying "I think they're engaged in a moral panic" doesn't make me part of an equal and opposite panic. If I were going around saying we've gotta ostracize the cancellers before they cancel us, that would certainly deserve some serious introspection - but I'm not, and neither is the original commenter.

While you might not be calling for ostracizing the cancellers, plenty of people out there are calling for exactly that.

There's a number of terms being used ('SJW', 'woke', 'cancel culture', 'cultural Marxism', etc.) to denigrate and quell any kind of discourse that goes against conservative talking points. I'd suggest you go and watch any of the self-described 'conservative comedians' to understand the level of otherization and systematic invalidation of any views that don't match theirs. Then come back here and tell me their behavior isn't as much of a moral panic as the supposed 'cancel culture'.

The fact that it is majorly powerful self-described Christian conservatives politicians that are constantly pushing the 'cancel culture' narrative should be a hint, don't you think?

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#235

Post by Const-me »

bill_mon wrote: post #228
Const-me wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human... ), and if you're in US you have 1-st amendment there. For this reason, verbally harassing people for their faith is IMO more toxic than "I disagree with you" or even "I disagree with you and I think you're stupid".

The UN humans rights are not law in the USA. The first amendment says that the government can't make laws about religion. In the USA, people are free to have whatever religion they want, which is great. Pointing out that all available research points to some religious claim being wrong is not harassment.

All available research also points man and women are different physiologically, neurologically and psychologically. Yet if one goes around pointing that out to women for no good reason, some people will view such speech as discriminatory and will act accordingly. I don’t necessarily agree with these people, but that’s how it works in practice in many places.

According to US federal laws, religion is a protected class just like gender. You can’t discriminate people based on that, no matter whether you related to government or not.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#236

Post by strken »

dguaraglia wrote: post #230
strken wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who denounce sexism because they've got a moral framework or intuition that tells them sexism is bad are principled actors. People who denounce sexism because they're trying to get likes on social media, because it grants them social approval, or because they've made a job out of it are acting out of self-interest. Not everyone who is in the second group knows what their motivations are: people usually come up…

I understand your argument, but wouldn't be the opposite be true too? Aren't RMS's comments defending Minsky just a form of 'clout seeking' and being argumentative for arguments sake? If people are making the case that RMS is neurodivergent and therefore his behavior should be tolerated, shouldn't we be making exactly the same argument about the people you put on the latter group? Or is it only people we agree with t…

The argument was explaining why Twitter mobs form and what they're getting out of it, not in favour of RMS. I think the general principle of scepticism towards people who benefit from the stance they hold applies to you and I, to RMS, and to his detractors.

That being said, I don't think he expected to benefit socially from the opinions that got him cancelled in general, or from complaining about the term "assaulting" in particular. His autism is less relevant than there being no real gain for him. It being a costly opinion for him to express is evidence he genuinely believes it. Whether or not he should be tolerated is another question, but I don't think he's the metaphorical wolf here.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#237

Post by seebs »

boulos wrote: post #45
seebs wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fascinating take, but I don't think it's particularly related to what actually happened. I wasn't toxic because of some Microsoft FUD, I was toxic because I was a teenager with low empathy who hadn't learned things yet. I grew out of it. Lots of people in open source were never particularly toxic, and there's no reason they should have been. Even granting the existence of the external stress (and it really w…

What, if anything, would you update in your post from a decade ago [1] on Steve Jobs, RMS, and empathy? (My guess is not much, other than maybe a personal preference on the empathy side?) [1] https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2011/10/11/why-steve-jobs-did...

Haha, wow. I totally forgot I wrote that one.

When I wrote that I was unaware of some of the Sort Of Creepy stuff. I recognize that some of the allegedly creepy stuff is sorta misquoted. I think that matters. But I don't think it changes my overall conclusions, which is that RMS was acting in a way that he could reasonably predict would hurt or distress people, and he didn't think it was important to change this.

But I also note that, completely unaware of any of the allegations now being discussed, I thought he was bad for the development of free and open source software because he was bad at treating people in ways conducive to positive outcomes, and I knew many people who worked on free or open source software, or worked with the FSF or on FSF projects, who also felt that way. I believe quite a few of them had told him of these concerns.

I wrote about the specific more-recent RMS stuff last year: https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2019/09/21/rms-minsky-and-the...

Thomas Bushnell wrote about this, too, and honestly his post was much better: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa...

It is perhaps worth noting that, maybe thirty years ago, I had some run-ins with Thomas Bushnell, and I thought he was sort of a jerk at the time, but when I called him out on an example of that, he acknowledged it and apologized and said he'd try to do better. Nothing external to RMS was preventing RMS from doing that if people said his behavior hurt or distressed them.

The idea that we couldn't try to do better because we were being threatened by Microsoft is honestly sort of condescending and insulting in and of itself.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#238

Post by seebs »

preommr wrote: post #182
boulos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, if anything, would you update in your post from a decade ago [1] on Steve Jobs, RMS, and empathy? (My guess is not much, other than maybe a personal preference on the empathy side?) [1] https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2011/10/11/why-steve-jobs-did...

Is seebs someone that's particularly famous? The parent comment seems to imply they were part of the "Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al." And their profile just says "that seebs".

I don't know about "particularly" famous but I know that I've talked to people whose family members were programmers who reacted with "wait you know SEEBS!?!" when they mentioned me, so apparently some people have heard of me. I used to be fairly active in Usenet discussions of C, and I've published some stuff, most of it now lost to the mists of time.

Re: Cancel We The Web? (2020)

#239

Post by visarga »

smsm42 wrote: post #62
etrabroline wrote: post #3

> Luckily, another co-author on the book has spent a lot of time pondering inclusion, women’s rights, children’s rights, and free speech. Her name is Nadine Strossen and her credentials run deep. She served as the first female President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), America’s largest and oldest civil liberties nonprofit, from 1991 to 2008. When she stepped down as President, three Supreme Court Justic…

It shouldn't be, but it surely helps to not be eaten by piranhas immediately. Somebody without this kind of shield - especially somebody, say, having a misfortune of being a male and of European descent - might be. I personally have been told many times that I do not get to have opinion about cancel culture and ideology because of my identity. Having credentials that even PC zealots can't deny surely helps to make it…

> I do not get to have opinion about cancel culture and ideology because of my identity

That works both ways, you can ignore them back because they are of a different identity (as they insist) and they are biased against your own identity.

I have already begun to doubt the papers of woke scientists in the last year. If they are not inclusive they are not worth my time. For example a researcher raising scandal on racial bias had a paper where she excluded the Asians, not even a mention. She was only watching for her own and the token whites for baseline. Why should I take her seriously? She's not fighting for my good. It would have been a different story if she was including everyone's good in her agenda.

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