Comment by shrimp_emoji
1 year ago
All of this is true.
But we love laziness; it saves energy when there's too much information to process. :p That's a bad heuristic in theory but often excellent in practice.
If someone is stirring up woke drama to get smart people canceled out of a tech project, I won't listen (because it already screams "misaligned priorities and energy" -- my brain concluded this in its experience over the last 15 years of online culture war). If I learn they're a "plural system", I'll even bother declaring how it's not worth listening in the comments here.
I would bet a lot of money that my time and attention is steered well following this lazy heuristic every single time.
One person's stirring up woke drama is another person's holding people accountable for bad behavior.
Look. It's 2024. Leadership in the hacker community doesn't look like RMS or ESR anymore. The culture is queer, trans, furry, neurodiverse. The smarter and more talented the hacker, the more likely they are to be one or more of the above, especially in the millennial and younger demographics. Which means the most talented among us are also the most vulnerable. This is why we have less tolerance for abuse or harassment than we used to, and why we implement codes of conduct to deal with such abuse or harassment. That, and it's the right thing to do.
I suggest you modify your attitude. Or you will find yourself unable to participate in programming communities. Or the internet at large, if some plural system with root on a hop between you and the backbone decides the world would be better off with your packets null-routed.
> The culture is queer, trans, furry, neurodiverse.
Only a small fraction of (often) loud and angry people are IMO. Also it seems a bit silly that my comment higher up which merely screenshotted a mastodon profile mentioning some of these things somehow got flagged and removed.
> the more likely they are to be one or more of the above
I have noticed this as well, not sure how I feel about it.
> the most talented among us are also the most vulnerable
I'm not sure that is necessarily a prerequisite for being talented, I think vulnerable people are vulnerable simply because they don't know how to properly handle it, not because of how smart they are. To me it doesn't even make sense to call truly "smart" people vulnerable.
> why we implement codes of conduct to deal with such abuse or harassment
Sometimes yes, but lately it has also been misused as a weapon to silence opinions they don't like, which has been spilling over into real life as well, including violence. To me I find it hypocritical to call for inclusion while also not allowing speech that you do not agree with, I think this is called the "paradox of inclusion".
> it's the right thing to do
Highly subjective by definition though... I don't agree that most projects should have a CoC for example. People can govern just fine without it and always have IMO. It being there in the first place can't prevent things like corruption anyway, they're still not going to listen to you or have consequences brought upon them if that's the case.
> decides the world would be better off with your packets null-routed
I consider this unrelated, childish retaliation and it has already been happening way too much, even with tier 1 ISPs null-routing US legal websites. I think the recent Net Neutrality re-application may help to curb providers from interfering with content policing that is not their job.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/isps-should-not-police...
RMS and ESR are neurodiverse. And they're both very smart and quite unusual men. They're basically the queer trans furries of the previous generation.