Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it is true. If a community doesn't listen to that sort of behavior, then it has no effect.
That is a mountain sized "if".
That's part of community building. A good community will reject noise and move on.
Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
401–410 of 412 posts
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The problem is that it is often turned into a politics." Everything is politics. Politics is part of everyone's life, and affects everyone's life. Some more than others, and some have the good fortune to not have to face that fact every day.
No, this attitude is harmful. First, because it dilutes the meaning of the word "politics", which describes something much more specific than "everything". And second, because as you point out in your last sentence, politics is something that can and should be kept separate from many aspects of life. Inviting politics where it does not belong particularly harms vulnerable populations, because politics is about the us…
You are still wrong, and the parent comment is correct.
The political axis may be invisible to //you// because you are privileged. A bathroom is political. Food is political. Education is political.
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
"politics is something that can and should be kept separate from many aspects of life." The Trump administration had plans leaked this weekend that stated their intent to change the definition of "gender" so that trans people would not exist to the Federal Government. I'm sorry, but being able to keep politics separate is a privilege.
Listing the outrage du jour is not a good counterargument. The principle of "keep politics where it belongs" is a critical part of your ability to effect political change on issues like yours. If you abandon it, then it gets much easier to silence unpopular voices -- the cab driver won't take you to the protest march, your ISP shuts down your advocacy domain, facebook bans your support group, all because your politic…
Cabs are political, see Uber. ISPs are political, see net neutrality and state providing. Facebook is political because it is a corporate entity defined in law.
But do go on...
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#404> The way we do this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help people learn to make their communication more kind. This is excellent; using love and persuasion to help someone improve is so much better than by force, compulsion, and fear. How many children rebel against restrictive and domineering parents? but a child who is loved and taught, but allowed to make choices and pursue independence u…
On the relationship between persuasion and force from a psychoanalytical perspective, Zizek has a nice example showing in what ways persuasion can actually be more subversive : >The psychoanalytic concept that designates the short-circuit between the repression and what it represses is the superego. As Lacan emphasised again and again, the essential content of the superego’s injunction is ‘Enjoy!’ A father works hard…
> The parent will make him feel terrible. ‘How can you say that!’ his mother will say: ‘How can you be so cruel! What did your poor grandma do to make you not want to see her?’
Because I don't love her and don't enjoy spending time with her. Yeah, it takes some toll to say it out loud and to defend it emotionally, but excercizing freedom is never free - so I don't see how it limits your freedom in any way.
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#405Linus: I'm taking time off and getting help from people who are (probably) trained to understand people's emotions. RMS: Armed only with email archives, I generated a novel solution from inside my own head and tested it against feedback arriving back to my own head from a smattering of individuals. What every happened to, "Gee, I don't know the answer to that question. Perhaps I should ask an expert for help."
What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem? Are you suggesting that hackers cannot hack behavior and must rely on the medical community?
> What's so wrong with engineering a novel solution to a difficult problem?
If there are outstanding effective approaches in fields outside of one's area of expertise, everything.
At least one should seek the guidance of people who study these problems for a living. I don't see any evidence that RMS did that-- his only footnote refers to his own article wrt pronouns.
The hacker ethic is great. But if it is seen not as a supplement to prior art but as an alternative to it-- as you seem to imply-- that's a real problem.
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You get more bees with honey than vinegar What does this mean? Don't bees make honey? Why would you try attracting bees with honey or vinegar in the first place?
It's usually said with "flies" rather than "bees". You catch more flies with honey than vinegar is a well-known English proverb. The literal meaning being that you have flies in your home, you will have better success catching them with honey than with vinegar. The broader meaning is that in life, you will have more success if you go about things with sweetness than with acidity. (Though I've heard that--despite the…
Not sure why I was downvoted, but thank you.
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
Listing the outrage du jour is not a good counterargument. The principle of "keep politics where it belongs" is a critical part of your ability to effect political change on issues like yours. If you abandon it, then it gets much easier to silence unpopular voices -- the cab driver won't take you to the protest march, your ISP shuts down your advocacy domain, facebook bans your support group, all because your politic…
Cabs are political, see Uber. ISPs are political, see net neutrality and state providing. Facebook is political because it is a corporate entity defined in law. But do go on...
"X is political because it is a corporate entity defined in law." is a fully general argument that every company ever "is political", which is the dilution into meaningless I mentioned earlier.
And for all the things you mention, I support making them less political rather than more, and so should you. Finding an example of a politicized aspect of a thing is not an argument that it should become more politicized.
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
Stallman’s guidelines fully support correcting biases. Making diversity a goal is identity politics, which is a very different thing than correcting biases.
The opposition to "identity politics" is a form of identity politics in itself. The reaction to so-called identity politics is merely a defense of the current status quo where the demographic of software developers is predominantly male, as the most obvious example. You could try to argue that this is somehow natural, although the evidence suggests that actually computer science and software was a lot more popular wi…
That is absurd.
Anyone who thinks that “the privileged” respond the way that they do out of fear is seriously delusional. Activists who think that way will never accomplish their goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand the problem.
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
The opposition to "identity politics" is a form of identity politics in itself. The reaction to so-called identity politics is merely a defense of the current status quo where the demographic of software developers is predominantly male, as the most obvious example. You could try to argue that this is somehow natural, although the evidence suggests that actually computer science and software was a lot more popular wi…
That is absurd. Anyone who thinks that “the privileged” respond the way that they do out of fear is seriously delusional. Activists who think that way will never accomplish their goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand the problem.
It's only fear for a minority of far-right activists. For everyone else it's just gate keeping.
Re: Announcing the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't know what kind of conferences you attend, but I've never attended one where people got black-out drunk, nor have I attended any with my partner. I've certainly seen numerous examples of this behavior around technical conferences. There are often runs to local bars or other establishments where its socially normal to drink. In fact, that's a common complaint about tech! > On the other hand, I have attended c…
> And did anyone write a long, statistics-citing rant about how unnecessary it is to warn people about this? I suspect the answer is no, and in fact no one did. You're getting the sides of the issues confused here. The conference organizers' statement about pick pockets was essentially victim blaming. They were telling people how to behave in order not to become victims of a crime. The equivalent statement within the…
I can cite statistics to create absurd conclusions and minimize points I don't like to. It's called, "being disingenuous." It is not a laudable thing simply to cite them. Statistics do not lend truth, they illustrate relationships and convey points.
> My point was that there tends to be outrage about this kind of victim blaming when it comes to rape, but not when it comes to other crimes. SJWs (for lack of a better term) don't feel the need to gang up on people who give advice to tourists to avoid getting mugged; they don't feel the need to call the conference organizers from my example "mugging apologists". Why is that?
Because rape is a heinous crime violating fundamental human rights, and yet here you are suggesting it's no more consequential than being pickpocketed.