The actual dictionary seems to disagree with you. Also, your argument that I was not worldly if the definition of political extremist did not encompass every possible definition of the words was a strawman. It is a similar sounding argument that is false. Your contention that you attacked my argument directly is also a strawman, my argument would have remained sound if I had meant "absolutely", you were attempting to kill the messenger.
See 2. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/political
No, it is pointing out that individuals who push political agendas into areas which are objective and by nature unrelated to politics are acting in an extreme manner. The current CoC debates are one set of extremists attempting for codify their political views into rules of behavior on technical projects. Holding views that are extreme might make you an extremist but depriving people of free will and attempting to subjugate them to your views over their own is an extreme act, particularly when those views have no relevance to the goals, objective, and nature of the group you are imposing them on.
This doesn't only apply to politics, for instance a business owner that wants to impose their religious views on their employees by selecting a healthcare plan which doesn't cover birth control is an example of a religious extremist.
That aside you may have trouble convincing anyone you aren't an extremist when you go around using terms like "left-wing" and "right-wing." If you are not a political moderate then you are a political extremist.
I probably do come off as more "right-wing" these days. That isn't because I lean right, especially socially. It is more that the large social issues the left has advocated for had reached the point where it was all but extinct like the measles with discussions about minor things like the slight legal differences between living together as domestic partners with contracts and wills vs legal marriage and a possible pay gap we debated was even statistically significant (which doesn't even automatically mean significant or not going away on its own). After all, gender is randomly distributed and a 5-10% shift in the overall economy is going to have a much more dramatic impact than the gap being debated regardless of genitals. The boys will be boys concept had been reduced to an actual legitimate empathy for males being male and human.
Then suddenly about three years ago everybody lost their minds and everyone started seeing rapists, nazi's, and privilege everywhere. A drunken idiot in a bar getting a little handsy suddenly became sexual assault and a sex crime instead of socially unacceptable and inappropriate behavior. Boys will be boys suddenly became code for men abusing and raping women and people pretended that was something present in our society. There were always people like that but most people saw them as extremists until recently. If there is an increase in that extremism on the right it seems to be reactive to me and it really doesn't look much different than it did before whereas lefthanded extremism seems to be growing to the point it may well be the majority now. The danger with left extremism is that most people agree with the underlying concepts and don't want to associated those who actually are extreme in ways counter to those principles. Those extreme groups do exist, and should exist, in our society because we have a healthy democracy and even extreme camps sometimes have something to contribute.
Lately the extreme left seems to having escaped being a small pocket and is growing mainstream. That is dangerous. Very dangerous. The extreme right does not seem to have escaped, they are just being over-reported on left leaning media (though the longer this imbalace exists the more I'd expect that segment to begin to grow). Perhaps being a moderate makes me extreme right wing to you. Personally, my only hope is that the majority group (women) split back into normal and reasonable factions that actually have something to do with them as individuals.
He was not debating me. He attempted to look superior by using a strawman (that words have a singular all encompassing definition) to make me look inferior. At the same time he attempted to cloak the attempt as a good faith effort to spread knowledge. It's pathetic, it is nothing but arrogance to presume you know better than the speaker himself what he means.
Even if he'd been technically correct it would have been nothing but pointless pedantry. The common mistakes in grammar and usage are nothing but a delay in reference books to catch up with common usage. It is the reference books which ultimately change in response to usage not the other way around. See "doh", "aint", and "yall" for modern examples.
Life is more complicated than that and group dynamics could play a factor that impacts how I would respond. Am I going to engage in a childish name calling battle with you? No. If a group dynamic is such that name calling would sway the audience against the target on that basis I'd remove myself from the group or word to undermine and transform that environment. More likely any weight carried by your name calling would be found in the mistake I'd made, an intelligent and productive response would establish the accusation of being a "stupid, braindead motherfucker" was incorrect. Ignorance is not stupidity, failing to own and learn from mistakes, failing to seek out criticism and those who will help you find them so you can learn from more mistakes, that is willful ignorance which arguably is stupidity. A definition of stupidity with regards to capacity isn't really consistent with modern science.
My ego and self-confidence are not so fragile as to be harmed by your words either explicit or your suggestion of cowardice. Such things harm the speaker and only impact the target if they are insecure and afraid they are true. If you try to strike me on the other hand you can certainly expect a response. Sticks and stones my friend, sticks and stones. I am not some dumb ape who must pound his chest in response to you snarling and pounding yours. Such games are for children and animals incapable of utilizing the capacity for higher thought.
"The fact that he anticipated your assumption and went out of his way to deny it is somehow proof that you were right?"
What seems more likely, he anticipated a random and by your assertion of my crazy and backwards interpretation unreasonable assumption or his comments are exactly what they seem in the context of having been the victim of "people who criticise my 'white cis male' behaviour, while at the same time cursing more than I ever do."
Okay, you are obviously trolling but you are doing a good job of it and people are modding you up.
"So you are saying he was forced to apologise by the criticism he found hypocritical and pointless?"
By the people doing the criticizing. SJWs.
"Yep, SJWs definitely got to him, forcing him to NOT apologise for being a straight white male."
Are you suggesting this is a random unrelated denial? SJC criticism and commentary is of a nature that he feels pressured to apologize for being a straight white male. That alone establishes feeling threatened, he has been attacked so strongly and rabidly he feels the need to explicitly state he won't apologize for simply having been born.
"And the truth comes out. He noticed his behaviour was similar to some pretty awful people whose views he regarded as "truly nasty" and decided that he should change it."
No, he didn't say that. He said he was tired of SJWs deciding his behavior was similar to pretty awful people and suggesting he was like them. There is nothing wrong with having views and opinions similar to nasty people so long as you aren't one of them. For instance the Nazi's were opposed to smoking and had quit smoking campaigns, if you believe similarly about smoking perhaps you should change your stance regarding smoking immediately.
CoC's are to boot spammers and overt trolls. You dust them off to find some excuse in the legalese to boot them and otherwise leave the terms buried and enforce roughly on the order of jaywalking. Nobody wants or needs a hall monitor in a software development project.
Okay, something like a code of conduct is supposed to be some print you bust out so you have an excuse to boot someone who is getting in the way of productive interaction like an overt troll or spammer. Normal users should never need to read it and it should never be applied to them even if they technically violated it.
Seriously, stop being douches. For the most part all this crap people are pushing has nothing to do with software development. Code is objective, it works or doesn't work. See ReiserFS for why we shouldn't care about the nature of the developer. Sure he might be a murderer but his code doesn't care.
Agreed and anyone who is trying to emphasis a CoC beyond "the mods can boot obvious trolls and spammers" in software development projects is by definition a political extremist.
"Also, the code of conduct says nothing about merit because code quality already has its own rules. If your code sucks, the patch gets rejected, doesn't matter how politely you ask. "
If your code is amazing you'll get rejected or never even seen under this new policy because someone found the dancing hola girl in your sig offensive. Rejecting someone's patches for reasons that aren't contained in the patch lowers the quality of the result. Rejecting and silencing those who produce the best code does so on a more permanent basis. This is an open source project, maybe someone will fork but that is a lot of extra work on top of what they are already doing. A few will try to conform and grit and bear it. Many will likely just leave and the kernel will be the worse for it... along with the what 80+% of electronic devices in your home running it under the hood these days?
You could argue that people are being deterred and I'm sure there are a few but frankly there is a very strong correlation between being arrogant and having talent to be arrogant about in the development world. Someone who runs away when they get a harsh response to poor code is far less likely to be an asset than someone who moves on because they don't want to waste brain cycles they could use their work on tip toeing around the sensitivities of the former.
"Yeah, I'm having a real hard time imagining him kicking someone off the kernel team because they didn't properly conjugate some personal pronoun invented two weeks ago."
Linus you say? You mean this crushed soul who caved on issues exactly like that and abandoned his principle that the code comes first? This entire story is about his return after having given up on neutrality and reason.
"Let's look at the Linux one you're so upset about. What does it prohibit? * Sexualized language, imagery, and unwelcome advances * Trolling * Insults and personal attacks * Harassment * Doxing * "Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting""
I think you'll find the issue is less about the rules than the interpretation. Also, not one of those things is about ability to perform.
"Linux might not be a for-profit business, but it's a large enough, and important enough, project that it needs people who are professionals, not assholes."
It's important enough to be blind to those issues which have no impact. Large publicly traded companies rightly have policies like this in order to avoid prejudice impacting someone's ability to live in accord with their merit. The idea isn't to get rid of the assholes, the idea is to enable people the assholes don't like to have the opportunity to prove their merit. There is no need for that in the effectively anonymous setting of open-source development, your work output can speak for itself.
"Instead of a 'common goal', you end up with horrible fighting between different 'in-groups'. It's very polarising, and both sides love egging the other side on. It's not even a 'discussion', it's just people shouting at each other. That's actually the reason I for the longest time did not want to be involved with the whole CoC discussion in the first place. That whole subject seems to very easily just devolve and become unproductive. And I found a lot of the people who pushed for a CoC and criticised me for cursing to be hypocritical and pointless. I could easily point you to various tweet storms by people who criticise my 'white cis male' behaviour, while at the same time cursing more than I ever do."
And again here:
"So that's my excuse for dismissing a lot of the politically correct concerns for years. I felt it wasn't worth it. Anybody who uses the words 'white cis male privilege' was simply not worth my time even talking to, I felt. "And I'm still not apologising for my gender or the colour of my skin, or the fact that I happen to have the common sexual orientation. What changed? Maybe it was me, but I was also made very aware of some of the behaviour of the 'other' side in the discussion. Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour."
It is fair to paraphrase this as his reputation and integrity, his life's work, and his achievements being threatened by unsubstantiated and invalid comparisons to "low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour."
Were you looking for threats of violence (which frankly are less alarming and damaging overall than attacks on the character and structure of society). There are groups of SJWs advocating violence toward Nazi's... when random straight white males are being invalidly equated to Nazi's that means general advocacy of violence toward straight white males. This is no different than advocating violence against all Muslims and equating them all to terrorists or considering any who won't disavow Islam to be terrorists.
That isn't entirely true. Feelings serve an important function. We feel hunger, thirst, and cold far before we have logical basis to support those needs and we'd never have survived long enough to understand those impulses if we hadn't acted on feelings. It was sentiment that caused people to put a stop to slavery, genocide, resist imbreeding, and resist cannibalism. It was much much later that we had the understanding and the science to explain why those were bad in cold logic.
Our brains and bodies are biological super-computers but their native language is not cold logic even in the coldest of us, they are pattern recognition systems which and we recognize vague patterns even without understanding the reasons. That isn't to say they are error free or there isn't a greater or deeper pattern to recognize. Even a logical argument will first "feel" logical or illogical which leads to you examining it more closely. The advantage of cold reasoning is that either feeling leads to closer examination and self-doubt along with a set of rules to examine it with. This develops a cycle of self-neural training on the argument, the patterns that trigger the feeling, and the logical rules themselves.
Indeed. In my experience the most sound logic applies in applying philosophical charity to strengthen and remove emotion from the arguments and comments of others so that you take the most value from it. There might be little value in bursting with emotion but there might be logical value in the argument or concept underlying the emotion. Especially if someone with a conflicting view is trying to find it and reconcile it with their own viewpoint. Doing otherwise blinds you to that value and runs the risk of getting caught up in emotion yourself either in outrage or empathy.
It is generally better to leave others to judge themselves on such things alongside constant self-analysis. Even the most arrogant are prone to self-doubt, a calm and rational response which integrates the strengths in their outburst without the emotion is disarming and may stand as a chilling non-offensive contrast that may lead to self-analysis. It also leaves everyone in a position to self-correct without losing face or judgement. A true lack of merit isn't being ignorant or incorrect yesterday, it is in the inability to grow beyond where you were yesterday.
"Straw man. Nobody suggested walking on eggshells. They suggested being professional and courteous. If you can't express yourself while being those things, the problem is you and your inadequate vocabulary."
Having to stop and expend effort on avoiding offense rather than putting your thought on the actual message your communication is meant to convey, particularly because of fear of social outcry and your words being twisted, is walking on eggshells. To suggest anything that amounts to that, is walking on eggshells. You achieve a far more professional and tolerant result by applying the principle of philosophical charity to the speaker than rescinding it and demanding the speaker cater to unknown, changing, conflicting, and fickle sensitivities of the audience. Note, I'm not defining which speaker, what message, or what audience. The logical principle is sound agnostic of those considerations.
You can extract value from logically sound arguments whether the speaker is biased or not. If the speaker is biased the result of applying philosophical charity will be to transform their invalid argument into a stronger and more valid one which does have merit. In this manner you do not need to fear the quality, merit, or agenda of the speaker because their argument carries it's own merits or lack thereof.
"Yes, that's right. That's why it's not appropriate for Linus to let his feelings run away with him, and cause him to abuse people unnecessarily."
Which is something for Linus to evaluate, judge, and decide for himself via self-analysis. For all the negativity applied to the idea of a double standard, the best result comes from a double standard wherein you apply logical charity and forgiveness to others and forgiveness alongside internal correction and analysis to oneself. It is not my or your place to correct or judge Linus' feelings, acting in a logical manner requires considering the validity of what is spoken not the speaker.
"[citation needed]"
Please refer to your own post here which is nowhere near as extreme but likely a good example of the concept with good intention:
"That's why it's not appropriate for Linus to let his feelings run away with him"
The question is not whether that is appropriate. In most cases I am not proud of letting my feelings run away with me as you'd say. But that is a judgement for Linus to make in self-analysis about whether he feels that is what he is doing. If we apply philosophical charity to his arguments the responses will contrast and highlight that to him because they will inherit the logical strengths of his perspective. If we instead apply judgement of him that only blinds us to the logical merit that came alongside any inappropriate sentiment he expressed alongside making him feel defensive and attacked making him lose face and more angry. Even worse, we might be wrong and he may simply have been ambivalent or ignorant of sensitivities and passionate about his point.
If enough people pass judgement like you have it undermines his ability to lead a technical project even if he is the best technical person to do so. It attacks his reputation and weakens his character. Further it makes it more challenging for him to grow and develop his character. This threatens his career and his family. It also threatens the entire project.
The group of roles for which it is more important what social values they represent than how well they function in their role is extremely slim. It feels like people are forgetting that and blurring the lines.
Thank you for the excellent example. Everyone who disagrees with the idea of an extreme problem that must be corrected even further at their own expense AND corrected in the manner the SJW demands is a sociopath. Just because you have feelings doesn't mean they rule your decisions and just because you have empathy for others doesn't mean you have to place their feelings above your own interests and concerns. Doing so does not make you a sociopath.
That kind of logic might be slightly more valid when considering a politician who actually has the job of putting the concerns of their constituents above others. Sociopathic or not their self-interest might conflict with what is best for their constituents.
"What evidence do we have that Linus was threatened"
Linus referenced it in his own statement. Linus Torvalds constitutes one of the most credible witnesses on the planet. He might be a jerk but his credibility certainly isn't in question.
There is nothing constructive about walking on eggshells. People should take ownership of their own feelings. Feelings are valid, in the sense you feel them, it doesn't mean they are reasonable, appropriate, or fair. Even if they are reasonable and appropriate and fair they are still your responsibility and concern not those of others. If a person isn't feeling hateful and you feel they are hateful just because they are harsh, rough spoken, or insensitive, it is you who is wrong.
People who are so thinned skinned they get upset about any of your examples (outside of being disappointed in themselves for producing a poor result) are the ones who need training. They have problems with emotional stability.
"Linus will probably fall back to somplece between #1 and #3. And if you don't think thats a choice, you don't understand what that word means and have never had your family threatened by other people for what you SHOULD say."
SJW are threatening you and and your family for what they think you SHOULD say. Do you want to talk about actual emotional trauma, how about walking around terrified under constant threat of having your name and family being equated to the most genocidal monsters in human history? Every moment of every day any minor slip of SOMEONE ELSES inner thoughts and whimsical feelings potentially able to destroy your career and ability to provide for your family.
By the time an actor from that era is old enough for this to have a point that quality will be even worse, analog scales up where digital really doesn't.
All this is true and it all comes down to the spam wars and a concerted effort to hinder end-to-end encryption of email. But for certain types of business it might be worth investing in, it can still be managed reasonably easily by one dedicated "tech guy" in a company of 100 or so employees. Especially since most businesses aren't 24/7 operations.
Sure he'd be on call all the time but calls in an org that size would be infrequent if he is doing his job well. In fact that is the beauty of that type of gig. If your dedicated admin is running around crazy all the time he really sucks. What you want is someone you never see or hear from and are never quite sure what he does. Is he fucking of on your dime? Absolutely. But he can only get away with it because he is good enough at making the tech in your business run so smoothly that is possible. Of course the other possibility is your admin is busy because you interfere with his technology purchases and decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
The actual dictionary seems to disagree with you. Also, your argument that I was not worldly if the definition of political extremist did not encompass every possible definition of the words was a strawman. It is a similar sounding argument that is false. Your contention that you attacked my argument directly is also a strawman, my argument would have remained sound if I had meant "absolutely", you were attempting to kill the messenger.
See 2.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/political
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/extremist
No, it is pointing out that individuals who push political agendas into areas which are objective and by nature unrelated to politics are acting in an extreme manner. The current CoC debates are one set of extremists attempting for codify their political views into rules of behavior on technical projects. Holding views that are extreme might make you an extremist but depriving people of free will and attempting to subjugate them to your views over their own is an extreme act, particularly when those views have no relevance to the goals, objective, and nature of the group you are imposing them on.
This doesn't only apply to politics, for instance a business owner that wants to impose their religious views on their employees by selecting a healthcare plan which doesn't cover birth control is an example of a religious extremist.
That aside you may have trouble convincing anyone you aren't an extremist when you go around using terms like "left-wing" and "right-wing." If you are not a political moderate then you are a political extremist.
I probably do come off as more "right-wing" these days. That isn't because I lean right, especially socially. It is more that the large social issues the left has advocated for had reached the point where it was all but extinct like the measles with discussions about minor things like the slight legal differences between living together as domestic partners with contracts and wills vs legal marriage and a possible pay gap we debated was even statistically significant (which doesn't even automatically mean significant or not going away on its own). After all, gender is randomly distributed and a 5-10% shift in the overall economy is going to have a much more dramatic impact than the gap being debated regardless of genitals. The boys will be boys concept had been reduced to an actual legitimate empathy for males being male and human.
Then suddenly about three years ago everybody lost their minds and everyone started seeing rapists, nazi's, and privilege everywhere. A drunken idiot in a bar getting a little handsy suddenly became sexual assault and a sex crime instead of socially unacceptable and inappropriate behavior. Boys will be boys suddenly became code for men abusing and raping women and people pretended that was something present in our society. There were always people like that but most people saw them as extremists until recently. If there is an increase in that extremism on the right it seems to be reactive to me and it really doesn't look much different than it did before whereas lefthanded extremism seems to be growing to the point it may well be the majority now. The danger with left extremism is that most people agree with the underlying concepts and don't want to associated those who actually are extreme in ways counter to those principles. Those extreme groups do exist, and should exist, in our society because we have a healthy democracy and even extreme camps sometimes have something to contribute.
Lately the extreme left seems to having escaped being a small pocket and is growing mainstream. That is dangerous. Very dangerous. The extreme right does not seem to have escaped, they are just being over-reported on left leaning media (though the longer this imbalace exists the more I'd expect that segment to begin to grow). Perhaps being a moderate makes me extreme right wing to you. Personally, my only hope is that the majority group (women) split back into normal and reasonable factions that actually have something to do with them as individuals.
He was not debating me. He attempted to look superior by using a strawman (that words have a singular all encompassing definition) to make me look inferior. At the same time he attempted to cloak the attempt as a good faith effort to spread knowledge. It's pathetic, it is nothing but arrogance to presume you know better than the speaker himself what he means.
Even if he'd been technically correct it would have been nothing but pointless pedantry. The common mistakes in grammar and usage are nothing but a delay in reference books to catch up with common usage. It is the reference books which ultimately change in response to usage not the other way around. See "doh", "aint", and "yall" for modern examples.
Life is more complicated than that and group dynamics could play a factor that impacts how I would respond. Am I going to engage in a childish name calling battle with you? No. If a group dynamic is such that name calling would sway the audience against the target on that basis I'd remove myself from the group or word to undermine and transform that environment. More likely any weight carried by your name calling would be found in the mistake I'd made, an intelligent and productive response would establish the accusation of being a "stupid, braindead motherfucker" was incorrect. Ignorance is not stupidity, failing to own and learn from mistakes, failing to seek out criticism and those who will help you find them so you can learn from more mistakes, that is willful ignorance which arguably is stupidity. A definition of stupidity with regards to capacity isn't really consistent with modern science.
My ego and self-confidence are not so fragile as to be harmed by your words either explicit or your suggestion of cowardice. Such things harm the speaker and only impact the target if they are insecure and afraid they are true. If you try to strike me on the other hand you can certainly expect a response. Sticks and stones my friend, sticks and stones. I am not some dumb ape who must pound his chest in response to you snarling and pounding yours. Such games are for children and animals incapable of utilizing the capacity for higher thought.
"The fact that he anticipated your assumption and went out of his way to deny it is somehow proof that you were right?"
What seems more likely, he anticipated a random and by your assertion of my crazy and backwards interpretation unreasonable assumption or his comments are exactly what they seem in the context of having been the victim of "people who criticise my 'white cis male' behaviour, while at the same time cursing more than I ever do."
Okay, you are obviously trolling but you are doing a good job of it and people are modding you up.
"So you are saying he was forced to apologise by the criticism he found hypocritical and pointless?"
By the people doing the criticizing. SJWs.
"Yep, SJWs definitely got to him, forcing him to NOT apologise for being a straight white male."
Are you suggesting this is a random unrelated denial? SJC criticism and commentary is of a nature that he feels pressured to apologize for being a straight white male. That alone establishes feeling threatened, he has been attacked so strongly and rabidly he feels the need to explicitly state he won't apologize for simply having been born.
"And the truth comes out. He noticed his behaviour was similar to some pretty awful people whose views he regarded as "truly nasty" and decided that he should change it."
No, he didn't say that. He said he was tired of SJWs deciding his behavior was similar to pretty awful people and suggesting he was like them. There is nothing wrong with having views and opinions similar to nasty people so long as you aren't one of them. For instance the Nazi's were opposed to smoking and had quit smoking campaigns, if you believe similarly about smoking perhaps you should change your stance regarding smoking immediately.
"If that's really how you define political extremism - you need to expand your worldview a bit more."
I think that is at least one reasonable definition of political extremism. Who are you to presume to correct me?
CoC's are to boot spammers and overt trolls. You dust them off to find some excuse in the legalese to boot them and otherwise leave the terms buried and enforce roughly on the order of jaywalking. Nobody wants or needs a hall monitor in a software development project.
Okay, something like a code of conduct is supposed to be some print you bust out so you have an excuse to boot someone who is getting in the way of productive interaction like an overt troll or spammer. Normal users should never need to read it and it should never be applied to them even if they technically violated it.
Seriously, stop being douches. For the most part all this crap people are pushing has nothing to do with software development. Code is objective, it works or doesn't work. See ReiserFS for why we shouldn't care about the nature of the developer. Sure he might be a murderer but his code doesn't care.
"WTF does a CoC have to do with software?"
Agreed and anyone who is trying to emphasis a CoC beyond "the mods can boot obvious trolls and spammers" in software development projects is by definition a political extremist.
"Also, the code of conduct says nothing about merit because code quality already has its own rules. If your code sucks, the patch gets rejected, doesn't matter how politely you ask. "
If your code is amazing you'll get rejected or never even seen under this new policy because someone found the dancing hola girl in your sig offensive. Rejecting someone's patches for reasons that aren't contained in the patch lowers the quality of the result. Rejecting and silencing those who produce the best code does so on a more permanent basis. This is an open source project, maybe someone will fork but that is a lot of extra work on top of what they are already doing. A few will try to conform and grit and bear it. Many will likely just leave and the kernel will be the worse for it... along with the what 80+% of electronic devices in your home running it under the hood these days?
You could argue that people are being deterred and I'm sure there are a few but frankly there is a very strong correlation between being arrogant and having talent to be arrogant about in the development world. Someone who runs away when they get a harsh response to poor code is far less likely to be an asset than someone who moves on because they don't want to waste brain cycles they could use their work on tip toeing around the sensitivities of the former.
"Yeah, I'm having a real hard time imagining him kicking someone off the kernel team because they didn't properly conjugate some personal pronoun invented two weeks ago."
Linus you say? You mean this crushed soul who caved on issues exactly like that and abandoned his principle that the code comes first? This entire story is about his return after having given up on neutrality and reason.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12791359&cid=57518841
"Let's look at the Linux one you're so upset about. What does it prohibit?
* Sexualized language, imagery, and unwelcome advances
* Trolling
* Insults and personal attacks
* Harassment
* Doxing
* "Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting""
I think you'll find the issue is less about the rules than the interpretation. Also, not one of those things is about ability to perform.
"Linux might not be a for-profit business, but it's a large enough, and important enough, project that it needs people who are professionals, not assholes."
It's important enough to be blind to those issues which have no impact. Large publicly traded companies rightly have policies like this in order to avoid prejudice impacting someone's ability to live in accord with their merit. The idea isn't to get rid of the assholes, the idea is to enable people the assholes don't like to have the opportunity to prove their merit. There is no need for that in the effectively anonymous setting of open-source development, your work output can speak for itself.
Linus Torvalds on the code of Conduct.
"Instead of a 'common goal', you end up with horrible fighting between different 'in-groups'. It's very polarising, and both sides love egging the other side on. It's not even a 'discussion', it's just people shouting at each other. That's actually the reason I for the longest time did not want to be involved with the whole CoC discussion in the first place. That whole subject seems to very easily just devolve and become unproductive. And I found a lot of the people who pushed for a CoC and criticised me for cursing to be hypocritical and pointless. I could easily point you to various tweet storms by people who criticise my 'white cis male' behaviour, while at the same time cursing more than I ever do."
And again here:
"So that's my excuse for dismissing a lot of the politically correct concerns for years. I felt it wasn't worth it. Anybody who uses the words 'white cis male privilege' was simply not worth my time even talking to, I felt. "And I'm still not apologising for my gender or the colour of my skin, or the fact that I happen to have the common sexual orientation. What changed? Maybe it was me, but I was also made very aware of some of the behaviour of the 'other' side in the discussion. Because I may have my reservations about excessive political correctness, but honestly, I absolutely do not want to be seen as being in the same camp as the low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour."
It is fair to paraphrase this as his reputation and integrity, his life's work, and his achievements being threatened by unsubstantiated and invalid comparisons to "low-life scum on the internet that think it's OK to be a white nationalist Nazi, and have some truly nasty misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic behaviour."
Were you looking for threats of violence (which frankly are less alarming and damaging overall than attacks on the character and structure of society). There are groups of SJWs advocating violence toward Nazi's... when random straight white males are being invalidly equated to Nazi's that means general advocacy of violence toward straight white males. This is no different than advocating violence against all Muslims and equating them all to terrorists or considering any who won't disavow Islam to be terrorists.
That isn't entirely true. Feelings serve an important function. We feel hunger, thirst, and cold far before we have logical basis to support those needs and we'd never have survived long enough to understand those impulses if we hadn't acted on feelings. It was sentiment that caused people to put a stop to slavery, genocide, resist imbreeding, and resist cannibalism. It was much much later that we had the understanding and the science to explain why those were bad in cold logic.
Our brains and bodies are biological super-computers but their native language is not cold logic even in the coldest of us, they are pattern recognition systems which and we recognize vague patterns even without understanding the reasons. That isn't to say they are error free or there isn't a greater or deeper pattern to recognize. Even a logical argument will first "feel" logical or illogical which leads to you examining it more closely. The advantage of cold reasoning is that either feeling leads to closer examination and self-doubt along with a set of rules to examine it with. This develops a cycle of self-neural training on the argument, the patterns that trigger the feeling, and the logical rules themselves.
Indeed. In my experience the most sound logic applies in applying philosophical charity to strengthen and remove emotion from the arguments and comments of others so that you take the most value from it. There might be little value in bursting with emotion but there might be logical value in the argument or concept underlying the emotion. Especially if someone with a conflicting view is trying to find it and reconcile it with their own viewpoint. Doing otherwise blinds you to that value and runs the risk of getting caught up in emotion yourself either in outrage or empathy.
It is generally better to leave others to judge themselves on such things alongside constant self-analysis. Even the most arrogant are prone to self-doubt, a calm and rational response which integrates the strengths in their outburst without the emotion is disarming and may stand as a chilling non-offensive contrast that may lead to self-analysis. It also leaves everyone in a position to self-correct without losing face or judgement. A true lack of merit isn't being ignorant or incorrect yesterday, it is in the inability to grow beyond where you were yesterday.
"Straw man. Nobody suggested walking on eggshells. They suggested being professional and courteous. If you can't express yourself while being those things, the problem is you and your inadequate vocabulary."
Having to stop and expend effort on avoiding offense rather than putting your thought on the actual message your communication is meant to convey, particularly because of fear of social outcry and your words being twisted, is walking on eggshells. To suggest anything that amounts to that, is walking on eggshells. You achieve a far more professional and tolerant result by applying the principle of philosophical charity to the speaker than rescinding it and demanding the speaker cater to unknown, changing, conflicting, and fickle sensitivities of the audience. Note, I'm not defining which speaker, what message, or what audience. The logical principle is sound agnostic of those considerations.
You can extract value from logically sound arguments whether the speaker is biased or not. If the speaker is biased the result of applying philosophical charity will be to transform their invalid argument into a stronger and more valid one which does have merit. In this manner you do not need to fear the quality, merit, or agenda of the speaker because their argument carries it's own merits or lack thereof.
"Yes, that's right. That's why it's not appropriate for Linus to let his feelings run away with him, and cause him to abuse people unnecessarily."
Which is something for Linus to evaluate, judge, and decide for himself via self-analysis. For all the negativity applied to the idea of a double standard, the best result comes from a double standard wherein you apply logical charity and forgiveness to others and forgiveness alongside internal correction and analysis to oneself. It is not my or your place to correct or judge Linus' feelings, acting in a logical manner requires considering the validity of what is spoken not the speaker.
"[citation needed]"
Please refer to your own post here which is nowhere near as extreme but likely a good example of the concept with good intention:
"That's why it's not appropriate for Linus to let his feelings run away with him"
The question is not whether that is appropriate. In most cases I am not proud of letting my feelings run away with me as you'd say. But that is a judgement for Linus to make in self-analysis about whether he feels that is what he is doing. If we apply philosophical charity to his arguments the responses will contrast and highlight that to him because they will inherit the logical strengths of his perspective. If we instead apply judgement of him that only blinds us to the logical merit that came alongside any inappropriate sentiment he expressed alongside making him feel defensive and attacked making him lose face and more angry. Even worse, we might be wrong and he may simply have been ambivalent or ignorant of sensitivities and passionate about his point.
If enough people pass judgement like you have it undermines his ability to lead a technical project even if he is the best technical person to do so. It attacks his reputation and weakens his character. Further it makes it more challenging for him to grow and develop his character. This threatens his career and his family. It also threatens the entire project.
The group of roles for which it is more important what social values they represent than how well they function in their role is extremely slim. It feels like people are forgetting that and blurring the lines.
Thank you for the excellent example. Everyone who disagrees with the idea of an extreme problem that must be corrected even further at their own expense AND corrected in the manner the SJW demands is a sociopath. Just because you have feelings doesn't mean they rule your decisions and just because you have empathy for others doesn't mean you have to place their feelings above your own interests and concerns. Doing so does not make you a sociopath.
That kind of logic might be slightly more valid when considering a politician who actually has the job of putting the concerns of their constituents above others. Sociopathic or not their self-interest might conflict with what is best for their constituents.
"What evidence do we have that Linus was threatened"
Linus referenced it in his own statement. Linus Torvalds constitutes one of the most credible witnesses on the planet. He might be a jerk but his credibility certainly isn't in question.
There is nothing constructive about walking on eggshells. People should take ownership of their own feelings. Feelings are valid, in the sense you feel them, it doesn't mean they are reasonable, appropriate, or fair. Even if they are reasonable and appropriate and fair they are still your responsibility and concern not those of others. If a person isn't feeling hateful and you feel they are hateful just because they are harsh, rough spoken, or insensitive, it is you who is wrong.
People who are so thinned skinned they get upset about any of your examples (outside of being disappointed in themselves for producing a poor result) are the ones who need training. They have problems with emotional stability.
"Linus will probably fall back to somplece between #1 and #3. And if you don't think thats a choice, you don't understand what that word means and have never had your family threatened by other people for what you SHOULD say."
SJW are threatening you and and your family for what they think you SHOULD say. Do you want to talk about actual emotional trauma, how about walking around terrified under constant threat of having your name and family being equated to the most genocidal monsters in human history? Every moment of every day any minor slip of SOMEONE ELSES inner thoughts and whimsical feelings potentially able to destroy your career and ability to provide for your family.
Who has the content?
By the time an actor from that era is old enough for this to have a point that quality will be even worse, analog scales up where digital really doesn't.
On your own mail server you don't have to make assumptions like that.
All this is true and it all comes down to the spam wars and a concerted effort to hinder end-to-end encryption of email. But for certain types of business it might be worth investing in, it can still be managed reasonably easily by one dedicated "tech guy" in a company of 100 or so employees. Especially since most businesses aren't 24/7 operations.
Sure he'd be on call all the time but calls in an org that size would be infrequent if he is doing his job well. In fact that is the beauty of that type of gig. If your dedicated admin is running around crazy all the time he really sucks. What you want is someone you never see or hear from and are never quite sure what he does. Is he fucking of on your dime? Absolutely. But he can only get away with it because he is good enough at making the tech in your business run so smoothly that is possible. Of course the other possibility is your admin is busy because you interfere with his technology purchases and decisions.
I don't, but I certainly would before spending $499.
At that point it has no purpose.