Boundaries are imho critical to give structure to society. The advances in technology and more so the pervasiveness and persistence of communication is eroding the previous boundaries between groups, places and time.
Past transgressions now have an impact today often way beyond the statues of limitation. In most of these discussions the reason these statues exist are ignored. Discussions in one place affect another place. Behavior that is questionable in a classroom becomes national news. Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software.
When boundaries are torn down cultures clash. Some of it may be healthy. But without boundaries would there be culture?
> Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software.
Okay. Under my real name/identity, I was once upon a time a substantial contributor to the Drupal project, a PHP-based CMS/web dev framework.
Earlier this year, we had a kerfluffle where someone had a grudge against Larry "Crell" Garfield, a core developer, liaison to the wider PHP community, and just general pillar of the Drupal community for over a decade. This person shared activity that Crell had done in the "Gor" (kinda BSDM plus fantasy cosplay) community, which, IIRC, included private forum posts, a dating site profile, and a slideshow deck he had presented from a convention. All of this stuff was from private web sites; eg, ones where you'd have to at least sign up for an account to get access to.
The person with the grudge, who, as far as I know, has yet to be identified, provided this material to the Drupal Association as evidence that Crell, a typical SV leftist in most respects, was actually a closeted unrepentant misogynist who needed to be kicked out of the community. Battle lines were drawn, with some agreeing that he was trash while others felt that his out-of-community behavior had no effect on all the hard work he had done and could still do within it. And bickering happened instead of collaboration and coding.
Ultimately the Association came down on the side of the agitators and disinvited Crell from his speaking position at the next Drupalcon, where he had always been prevalent. Expectedly, he became quite bitter about this and has somewhat voluntarily withdrawn further from the community.
So now a talented developer and decade-plus community member has been effectively kicked out of the community for personal, private kinks he, by all accounts, took great care to keep private and separate from this community.
Due to this and other reasons, I now use pseudonyms when joining new communities, and now some of my best OSS work is being done under a pseudonym I have taken care to keep air-gapped from my real identity - not great for my career, but I know that I, as a human, have quirks and kinks as well that others would just love to judge me by, and it's apparently what we have to do nowadays in order to be judged by our work rather than our pasts and out-of-community activity. And, frankly, I'm so disgusted by what happened to Crell that I too have disengaged from the community and no longer use Drupal as my framework of choice (though there are other reasons as well for the latter).
So, no. Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature only affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software if you make it so.
> Boundaries are imho critical to give structure to society.
Looking at history I would even say that boundaries, as in the "need" to give a superior moral position to a favored class, whether an economic class, intellectuals, a military class, or priesthood, was always where these boundaries were. The thing you can't see is that your/our "boundaries" are no different.
And every single time, those boundaries turned out to be, not "for trade" (e.g. the Roman Empire), "for the military" (e.g. the second Islamic dynasty), intellectuals (e.g. the French revolution - the first part, or Communism in Eastern Europe) or "for morality" (e.g. the West in the middle ages). I mean, I'm sure there was a period of, say, a decade, where they actually did what it said on the label. It never lasted.
Every single time, those "boundaries" served to guarantee the comfort of a favored class. Firstly, to safeguard their positions of power and comfort, their fortunes, but later even their ideas and egos.
The real boundary we are wanting to impose is that "we are right".
And it's real, real simple. There is a tiny little issue:
We
Are
Wrong
Boundaries do impose structure. The structure does not change, and the world does. That's fundamentally why the boundaries are wrong and the structure will not hold.
I do not know how or where exactly we are wrong, but we are wrong (although I have some ideas: any 5 year old, old enough to talk intelligently, but not old enough to be assimilated yet, will tell you when you walk with them through any city what we are terribly wrong about. There's plenty, I might add).
And that sucks. If it turns out that we are most catastrophically wrong about a moral issue, it will suck REAL bad. And that's happened before. Plenty of times.
It is funny how you see the bay area aging. When we started out, most were in our late teens, early twenties at best. And of course we all felt the same: society is VERY wrong. In all sorts of ways. For instance, women are not different, and certainly not inferior. We KNEW that 20 years ago. But now we're 40, and we feel that, dammit, we're right. And these kids, who seem to prefer economic gains over social issues. Lazy bastards !
And, like the rich 30 years ago, we've decided (whilst having pretty much every creature comfort we like) that moral issues (that just happen to keep our place in society safe and secure) are real important. And these upstart youngsters (who do not in fact enjoy many of our creature comforts), they're bad, mmmkay ! Dammit ! They MUST be stopped.
They will, of course, defeat us. Nothing can stop them.
And they will clobber more than some of our ideas.
And, they will abandon some of our morals.
The thing is, this is a good and healthy thing to happen.
The young aren't always right. Respect for due process, and freedom of speech, are absolutely not values that should be abandoned, even if it seems many of the young are in favor of that. I say this as one of the young.
What are the ideas and morals that you think will be abandoned?
> What are the ideas and morals that you think will be abandoned?
Well, for example, certainly authoritarianism has been on the rise. When it comes to democratic ideals like separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers there seems to be zero interest from younger people (see the Poland, Hungary, Austria and Czech situations). Also, when talking to Chinese, I notice that there is very little interest in making China democratic.
Freedom of speech has a very bad rap outside of America, mostly undeserved. Now I get that this is hard to see in the middle of the US, but 7.1 billion people don't have freedom of speech (roughly) and 300 million do. The thing is, those 7.1 billion mostly don't want it.
Even in America people don't uphold it very well imho. Obviously in the Bay Area high profile events have shown that private and, to some extent, government actions against free speech are tolerated.
So I think that freedom of speech and generally freedom will be abandoned to an extent. Why ? Simply because that has advantages.
> Now I get that this is hard to see in the middle of the US, but 7.1 billion people don't have freedom of speech (roughly) and 300 million do. The thing is, those 7.1 billion mostly don't want it.
Yes, as one of those poor 7.1 billion, I can barely contain my envy. Now let's have a look at the ranking of the US in, say, the World Press Freedom Index of 2017 (https://rsf.org/en/ranking). Could you please explain why the US, being (supposedly) the only country in the world that has freedom of speech, hasn't even made it in the top 40 of that ranking?
I don't see this obsession with America-style "freedom of speech". Sure, you can't go out in the streets and yell that you think that '<minority> are subhuman scum that deserve to be rounded up and transported to extermination camps' in most places (although I imagine that won't make you very popular in the US either, even if would technically be legal), but if you live in the nicer parts of, say, Europe, you won't go bankrupt when you need a hospital, you won't be living in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, you don't have a two-party system, your vote isn't worth more or less depending on where you live, etc. Also what's this "free speech zone" thing?
Freedom of speech isn't black and white, there are many shades of gray. If everybody feels they can speak their mind except for some people advocating genocide... well suffice to say I won't be joining Evelyn Hall in her fight to the death.
The value boundaries provide is shorter feedback loops. Until you have experienced organizations that lack them you will not appreciate the disasters that can be prevented that way.
Boundaries are also essential for freedom. Without boundaries there is interference. Would you like to house anyone in your place? Would you like anyone to have a say how you spend your money? Do you understand the role of budgeting in an organization and the freedom that is bestowed to the budget holders?
This is a question worth discussing. But I'm not sure I like the implicit assumption that a "community" is a discrete entity entirely divorced from all other such entities. If you're contemplating a person's activities outside a particular social group, you aren't asking "does this affect my social group?", but rather "what impact does this have on society at large?" I can't see that it's controversial to suggest that someone may act in one context in a way that should have consequences for their activities in another context - we quite happily accept, for instance, that a violent drunk ought not to be permitted to teach children, even if they have never been drunkenly violent towards children. I don't see that a software development project should be any different from any other subset of human society in this respect.
Software development projects are somewhat different in that they frequently include a large number of people from very disparate cultural backgrounds and little in-person social contact. The lack of the sort of social cohesion that we see in more traditional social groups is part of the reason that open source projects are increasingly adopting explicit behavioural guidelines, but the risk there becomes that those guidelines are considered the totality of what should be taken into account when determining whether someone does more harm than good within a community. Coming up with a more formalised set of considerations for external behaviour would help there.
I don't think this is peculiar to software development though. The same is true of discussion fora, gaming organisations, multinational businesses - the extent to which it's an issue in the modern connected world is greater, sure, but it's not a direct result of wider communication. I'm willing to bet it was an issue thousands of years ago in busy trading centres too.
edit: this is an interesting aside: "Coming up with a more formalised set of considerations for external behaviour would help there."
Isn't this to some extent what religions have been trying to do for millennia?
The same is true of those other groups, but the goals and incentive structures are somewhat different there. The prevalence of codes of conduct in open source projects and relative rarity of them in other online groups suggests that there's some sort of difference in how people view them.
> Coming up with a more formalised set of considerations for external behaviour would help there.
I think this is backwards – the more formalized such considerations are the more conflict there will be. Formal rules invite 'lawyering' and lobbying and now your project or community becomes another battleground for never-ending political conflict. Empirically (but not rigorously, by me anyways), the best groups seem to regulate themselves informally.
Could you elaborate on how the given postulate of "very disparate cultural backgrounds" correlates with the assumed authoritarian outcome of convert to a set of religious purity laws and rituals and (very long) list of groups and opinions that must be hated and shunned, at the point of a sword, or die? Am I missing the chronological component, perhaps today's revealed truth is permitted goodthink, but converts from historically variable backgrounds are permitted as long as there is absolutely no variation in current opinion, sorta a sinners redemption argument?
"very disparate cultural backgrounds" should mean more than "how many angels dance on the head of a pin" level of disagreement between authoritarian fundamentalist sects, or in the context of the actual demographics of software development, which ivy league school a young wealthy urban coastal left wing white male attended. In a field suffering from a demographic crisis of non-diversity, it seems weird to propose a religious purity test to kick out the non-believers as some kind of inherent good, because the result of implementing a religious purity test can't possibly be good for diversity. The argument seems to be "If we just get rid of everyone who thinks differently than us using ever more elaborate formalized and authoritarian religious purity tests, then we'll have all the benefits of diversity with none of the costs" but I don't think the real world works that way.
Historically trying to strengthen a dying movement by radicalizing it even further from mainstream has generally failed to revive the movement. Its an interesting chicken vs egg problem where dying ideologies and radicalization usually correlate, and the question is causation, which causes the other? I'm assuming, given your support for radicalization, you're on the team that sees dying ideology as a cause of radicalization. I realize using logic in a discussion about religion is irrational in and of itself, but thinking purely logically, if you see the legacy ideology as dying, then why not "switch over" ahead of time and be ahead of the pack if the legacy view is going to die out and be replaced anyway? Or do you see it as, yes 99% of the time, historically radicalization has destroyed the movement, but this time radicalization is the occasional rare situation where it'll work? And if so, why this time with this movement? There doesn't appear to be any observable reason to think today's movement is unusual.
I think having online anonymity and a reasonable ability to create pseudonyms to keep your communities separate is important and often overlooked. I think it’s not OK for one community to be the moral authority over aspects of ones life, most especially a community in which you are volunteering and contributing in good standing.
As with a lot of things, I believe in a balance. I agree that anonymity in a lot of areas are crucial; oppressive regimes, whistle-blowing, private/sexual preferences, whatever have you.
But as we've seen in the last year, complete anonymity and untraceability everywhere can have bad consequences; astro-turfing, smurfing, attention-ddos:ing, FUD, anti-net neutrality-comment identity theft.
In some of these cases a central e-ID (which a lot of nations have) could have mitigated those issues, in others, not so.
Ideas should live on their own merit, in which case the identity of the source is irrelevant, but (pardon my French) idiots make the case that logic and merit of ideas don't take center stage. In those cases I believe it's kind of relevant to know if you're buying into group think that is 80% bots, 5% trolls, 5% adversarial agents, etc.
Anonymity is one solution to the problem of being able to keep dissenting opinions, but a solution with severe side effects. Transparency with a strong protection of freedom of ideas is another route.
I guess to put it succinctly: I don't need to know the names or faces of the people I carry conversations with, only that they're real, unique people. It shouldn't matter, but recent history shows otherwise.
Great perspective. Without question there are definitely risks that anonymity introduces. But there is an effective tyranny of free expression when parties are forced to use their names.
The protections of liberty afforded on paper don’t always play out in real life. In theory we have protections of free association, freedom of religion, free speech and we’re all entitled to equal protection under the law - this doesn’t always play out.
Too often mob rule has resulted in oppression of dissenting views and oppression of classes of people. Privacy, private communication, anonymous communication and pseudonymous communications are all essential for healthy society and discourse and cannot be written off because some would use them for nefarious purposes.
A growing challenge that communities face is where an activist minority act against a member based on an agenda that is not representative of the larger community yet influences as if it were.
Problem with these sorts of discussions is that they torture the meaning of the word “community.” Most of these aren’t.
Rephrase as: when should your public reputation among one set of people affect your public reputation among another set of people? When should that latter effect result in consequences?
And then the answer is obvious: whenever the latter set of people find your public behavior to be unwelcome, regardless of which context you chose to unveil it in.
I see your point but you didn't really tackle the problem at hand.
To detach the situation from current feelings, let's take a time trip back to hypothetical year ~1975.
Let's say it's illegal to register a NGO, company or anything that has a rule of "no sexual group X allowed". Now let's say that there is some guy who is absolutely brilliant at playing the violin, but has at some point allegedly done some homosexual approach to straight guy. Which any gay would have just brushed away, but now it was taken as harassment.
We have obviously created a situation where it's impossible for that violinist to take part in any orchestra. No "only gays & women orchesta" is allowed by law. Society completely wastes that human resource. Some male musicians somewhere possibly have slightly better work security. But the cost is that millions of people never hear the recordings of that great violinist.
You have to pick:
A. Allow organizations to be completely self selecting. This would have a set of short term problems and it's currently not kosher at all.
B. Allow alleged transgressors to somehow wipe their record clear. Seems practically impossible during internet age and click headlines.
C. Force people to be cool about people who have allegedly transgressed in some way in some other social setting. But now you lose productivity of whole teams, not just some individuals here and there.
D. Lose a lot of human resources. And probably for petty reasons. If allegation is enough, you can destroy too competitors easily. As shown by the red scare, Stalins purges, etc.
This was originally a case about a programmer allegedly groping some women. Seems like if you could start a company of "former sexual harassers inc", you could soon hire lots of splendid talent dirt cheap. Then you just need to somehow hide the origin of the products being made to the consumers. But soon even that won't matter much if there is anything to be learned from the music industry.
It used to be that you interacted almost exclusively face-to-face, within a small community. One of the better consequences was a sort of instant feedback loop, where your actions that hurt others were quickly reflected back onto you: abandoned your ailing grandmother? The local grocer will stop giving you credit.
These were social feedback mechanisms. They have the benefit of being much more subtle than the criminal justice system, and kicking in much earlier.
It’s ridiculous how some in the tech community pretend these mechanisms don’t exist, or that they should not exist: every time you have decided who to invite to your birthday party, or who to sit with at lunch, you have taken such considerations into account.
People are social animals. They use social cues to reward beneficial actions, and punish even slight misdeeds. This is necessary to establish standards of behavior, or basic human decency.
There should be limits to this process, the most important of which is time. No one should be forced to reveal to his neighbors that he is a “sex offender”, ten years after drunkenly taking a piss in a public park. Nor should your teenage shenanigans be the top hit in google for eternity.
But standing a front of a synagogue on a Saturday, with a torch, a gun, a swastika flag? Yeah, you better believe your friends and coworkers will look funny at you come Monday.
Behavior outside a community should have consequences inside it when it has consequences inside it.
If your behavior outside of a community causes an uproar and crisis inside the community when it becomes known, it has already had a consequence inside the community. It will already have future ramifications. All you can do at that point is decide whether you want the future ramifications to include a commendation, condemnation or silence from the community.
Communities are not hermetically sealed environments. In my opinion it is silly and childish to pretend they are.
When "it becomes known" is a matter of one person going on a moral crusade to destroy the other person's reputation and position because of something about them, wholly unrelated to the project, which they personally dislike--is it still valid for there to be "consequences" within the community?
If so, it seems like only a matter of time for all of us, because surely all of us do things or hold opinions that someone else in a community we participate in would find unacceptable. Therefore, all that is required for anyone to destroy anyone else is to "cause an uproar and crisis" about them.
What will you say when someone causes an uproar and crisis about you?
Unrequited love sucks. Losing an election sucks. Being kicked out of a community sucks. Losing your job sucks.
Doesn't matter if you "deserve" it or not. Still sucks.
Maybe it sucks more when there's malice in the revelation, than if someone just sent an email to the wrong mailing list or if two people unexpectedly ran into each other somewhere neither expected the other to be.
But the bell has been rung. What do you want people to do, to treat their feelings like jurors, "that evidence has been obtained improperly, you are instructed to disregard it."?
> What do you want people to do, to treat their feelings like jurors, "that evidence has been obtained improperly, you are instructed to disregard it."?
You seem to be saying that the feelings of anyone in a community should serve as a veto on anyone else's membership in the community. Am I understanding you correctly?
This is one of the issues with this debate. As you mentioned if your behavior has caused an uproar/crisis, then it already has and will have consequences. People might quit, they might get angry and so forth.
When people seem to talk about consequence in this manner they seem to mean that 'People should stop caring about what other people have said or done', even if it means ignoring things like how a person believes you are literally a lesser human being due to some trait you were born with. 'Diversity of Thought' as a statement has been latched onto as being an excuse rather than its original purpose.
I'm going to upvote this, even though it's another in a long line of "I don't understand classical liberalism or the roots of our modern secular society" posts by various authors, both famous and not.
At the heart of a lot of this is the simple question: is our larger world supposed to be one big social group? Some folks think yes. For those folks, if you have a small community, it's a legitimate question as to how much "control" you should have on members when they are outside that community.
To me this is an answered question and the answer is no, small groups and large groups of people are completely different things. Trying to shoe-horn experiences and ideas about one group into the other group leads to nothing but heartache and disappointment.
But since so many folks are struggling so much, it's a conversation that needs to continue for a while. Hopefully it will lead somewhere positive.
ADD: I will, however, admit to having much frustration watching my tech friends struggle so much with concepts that should have been part of their early education. Speaking humorously, I reserve the right to buy an inflatable copy of "On Liberty" and start beating a few of them about the head with it if things don't change.
AFAICT, the guy went a little too far out of his way to say that lots of rape accusations are fake? But the guy still has job and status, right? Just some social ostracism?
Behavior outside a community should very little consequences inside of it. Of course there are some extreme cases where this might be a problem however those cases are extremely rare and should not generally be used for the basis of creating a Code of conduct or rule set
The wider political climate in world today is making have to be that simple.
While the article talks about more extreme cases like actual physical sexual assault, today far far far too many communities are using simple political disagreement and criticism and framing that as "harassment" using that "harassment" as method to remove any political dissenters from their ranks
I have seen it attempted (some times with great success) in several open source projects.
Personally I dislike the very concept of Codes of Conduct and I generally oppose most of the terms in many of the more modern Code of Conduct being pushed forward, likely as a result of my very libertarian political views. That said Codes of Conducts (should a community or project adopt them) should only be enforced based on actions WITH IN that community and/or toward people that are IN THAT community.
Not generalized actions of people taken in other communities with a different set of conventions and rules.
Code of Conduct should be seen as a contract of Behavior that all people agree to when voluntary associating with the community to treat all other MEMBERS of that community based on that code of conduct, it should not apply to conduct when interacting with people not a part of that community and thus never agreed to the code of conduct.
I completely agree, the code of conduct has been used multiple times as a trojan horse in the sense that it only contains things nobody could reasonably disagree with (because who would not want a welcoming environment), only to then be used to shun /outcast people based on views particularly on gender and diversity. This is one of the issues Sam Altman referred to in his blog that simply cannot be talked about in Silicon Valley currently.
I think this article doesn't take a broad enough view of the question. As stated, it's a very large (and non-trivial) question.
For example, as stated, the question includes questions like: - Should America care if somebody is convicted of a crime by a foreign nation?
- Should a school care if a candidate to be a teacher was discovered viewing child pornography?
- Should a job care if/why you got fired from your last job?
- Should you care why your ex's last relationship failed?
The answer to all of these is obviously "depends on the specifics." It's tempting to draw hard boundaries so as to prevent people from weaponizing politics. Unfortunately, I just don't think hard-boundaries are coherent here.
There's a difference between behavior and speech, though it can become a fuzzy line (is a large donation behavior or speech?).
One thing some of the comments have touched on is the notion of "beyond the pale" - a term that somewhat ironically (for this discussion) refers to occurrences outside the bounds of British law. There are opinions that fall outside the standards of decency, and this can, legitimately, make organizations reluctant to work with some people.
Many issue positions, over time, can go from widely accepted, to controversial, to widely discredited, to beyond the pale, essentially and uncontroversially indecent. If this is the case, it's almost certain that we're going through this process right now. Unfortunately, there is also a strong political tendency to scold and smear and be as uncharitable as possible to the other side. In aggregate, people get accused of being on the "wrong side of history" at least twice as often as they actually are, since these accusations go in both directions on virtually every controversial topic.
The answer is clearly "never" --- the attitude expressed in the article leads toward totalitarian control over people's personal lives. Toleration, as Europe took hundreds of years to painfully discover, is the way you build a cohesive society around people who disagree. When you ban cooperation among people with divergent political opinions, you not only lose out on any positive-sum productivity gains from the interaction, but also intensify these political differences and turn them into real rifts in society.
I am disappointed in the contemporary trend to invest imaginary "harms" and propose remedies that, in the end, boil down to persecuting people for their beliefs. Altman is definitely right about the social atmosphere in tech. Imagining that we should, say, ban contributions to an open source project from someone who also participates in 4chan is part of the problem.
I still think the answer here is 'never', communities should be as self contained as possible and not try and take over personal lives. To do otherwise reminds of those schools that try and punish students (and sometimes teachers) for actions done in their free time; an absolutely ridiculous overreach that makes things worse rather than better.
And I stick by that for communities I run. On every site I'm an admin/founder, the rule is that (legal issues excepting), we won't punish you for things done outside of the community. It's not our place to do so, and we have no interest in witch hunting or trying to find reasons to deplatform people for things they do in their free time elsewhere.
Well, when the inner community relies heavily on trust, such as a company where you handle peoples' money, or even teach them about money, I think integrity is such a highly valued quality, that you would be extremely sensitive to any sign that an individual lacks it ( ie acting differently in different situations, or cheating on their spouse, for example ). "If a spouse can't trust a person, why should I trust them as their boss?" -Dave Ramsey
This whole question really stems from a sad and pervasive tendency for 'intelligent' people to overestimate their general expertise, and then apply their value judgements to individuals in their social circle, regardless of its utility or relevance.
Examples of this:
Alan Turing -- father of Computer Science shunned, at the time, because everyone had value judgements regarding his homosexuality (completely irrelevant to Computer Science).
The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).
This, of course, continues further, with things such as Hollywood blacklisting (today) Conservatives, and formerly Communists.
The solution is simple:
Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their contributions and value within that community.
If I am deeply opposed to gay marriage, but a fantastic coder, that should not affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused.
If I strongly believe in UFO visitations, and disbelieve climate change, but am a great graphic designer, that should not affect my reputation as an artist.
Everyone is not expected to be right, or agreeable, about everything, with everyone else. Aiming for this is pointless.
This inability to separate emotions and passions from cooperating on a shared focus with others, of differing emotions and passions, but equal interest in the shared focus (community) is deeply damaging.
There are enough problems and difficulties getting skilled people together to work on something great -- there is no use at all in reducing that crowd of people further by limiting it to those who share ones views in any number of hot button issues.
Leave politics to your political circles, make your own impressions of people before making personal judgements from reputation, find every reason to work together, not any excuse not to.
The Brendan Eich situation is really interesting. I've personally cited it as a gross overreach into his personal life. But it has been really fruitful to play out scenarios with it and explore my own ethics system, perhaps exposing some gaps.
I personally tend to break conservatively in my views, but I would be equally outraged if a liberal were fired for supporting, say, communist revolution. I certainly understand why people who hold certain views would want that person fired, but I have no problem separating that from their work. I wouldn't want them running my country, but Mozilla is fine.
I ultimately arrived at the outcome that in order to be consistent, I don't think it's OK for any _position_ someone takes to be considered for work performance. Actions, sure, but a position must have absolute freedom. So, if my CEO were to consider people who vote for republicans subhuman (not an entirely unlikely scenario today), but otherwise conducted themselves fairly, I'd be OK with it.
So, did Eich take a position, or an action? Are you really allowed to have a position if you aren't allowed to support it?
I'll say action, despite my bias urging me to say position. Was this action taken to support his desire to preserve something, or to deny someone else of something? If you're one of the people impacted by this action, does it matter?
These questions make it easy to see the tough position Mozilla was in. I'm not sure what conclusion I'd have reached in their shoes, despite my from-the-hip decision that he did nothing wrong.
>So, if my CEO were to consider people who vote for republicans subhuman (not an entirely unlikely scenario today), but otherwise conducted themselves fairly, I'd be OK with it.
So, lets pretend you work for Mozilla, you like the mission statement* and seriously believe in it/that your work is helping that cause. You also think it is a relevant part of your branding.
You really wouldn't have a problem with your CEO saying repub voters are subhuman? No clash between "open and accessible to all" and "subhuman"?
You wouldn't be upset at that violation of the creed/mission statement?
You wouldn't think it to be harmful to your companies branding? (And therefore to your company)
You wouldn't think it harmful to the "team spirit"/motivation?
I find that surprising, to be honest. ("Reason to fire" questions aside)
*
"Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent."[1]
> You really wouldn't have a problem with your CEO saying repub voters are subhuman?
If Brendan Eich has ever described gay people as subhuman, post a link. If he hasn't, this is a terrible and misleading analogy, and a violation of the Principle of Charity.
No. It's too difficult to get into disagreements that are essentially arguing over the definitions of terms. You just shouldn't police beliefs, period.
They wouldn't say they consider republicans subhumans anyway, they'd find some existing objectionable term and rationalize the expansion of that to include mainstream republican views.
Okay, not the poster above, but lets get you a more concrete example:
You are the CEO of Bread Inc. You make bread. You sell bread. As the CEO of Bread Inc., you make statements in the public about bread being terrible, that no one should eat it, and how you're only selling it because you like taking money from carb-loving hyper-idiots.
Would you consider removal from your post as justified in that situation?
This model, like nearly all of them, loses many details of reality in order to be satisfying.
Of course that CEO is working counter to his organization's goals. That's the perfect cleanliness of having organizational goals that are not subject to the religion, decade, loneliness, or stomach contents of the person currently interpreting them.
If your "mission" is nearly unusable as a mission, in that probably even the people in your organization can't uniformly agree on its application, the model breaks down. That's what you signed up for with fundamentally subjective pursuits.
So, if the CEO of Freedom, Inc said she hates freedom, that's bad optics and fire-able. If she applies her understanding of freedom in a way I don't agree with, that's a tough shit moment for me. And these are the situations we debate.
Sure. That's why it's a model. It is used to isolate an element of the factual situation for analysis.
In this case, you concede the point that if what a CEO does causes bad optics, that is potentially fireable. To loop this back to the parent comment, this means sustaining an objection to Eich's firing, you would need to conclude that what Eich did was bad optics.
I hope you recognize that this position is contradictory with your previous statement: "You just shouldn't police beliefs, period."
A CEO saying "people shouldn't buy our product" ("no one should eat it") isn't just a belief, or just bad optics. That's a CEO doing the exact opposite of their job (selling the product).
1) I don't agree that a CEO's job is "selling the product". That's literally the job of the sales team. But that doesn't really matter.
2) It is obviously the apex of bad optics. My initial point is to demonstrate that the position that "You just shouldn't police beliefs, period" isn't founded in reality. Obviously you should. No one will defend the CEO of Bread Co.
Since we've established at the apex of bad optics that removal is permitted, the rest of the discussion isn't about whether or not removal is an option, it is a discussion of where along the spectrum of bad optics should it be permissible to remove an executive.
This makes the honest question to be explored "When should you police beliefs". At that stage of discussion, the context that we're complaining about removing matters. It doesn't at the level I'm criticizing.
The action/belief dichotomy is illusory. You're never going to police something inside someone's head, so the reaction will be in respect of an action and what it signals.
Yes, I'd just written that myself as an edit. It's impossible to police beliefs, since we only know other people's beliefs through their actions. We're always policing actions.
What does it mean, then, to say we shouldn't police beliefs? I'd say it means we shouldn't police actions that are only expressions of personal belief.
"Personal" is important when we consider people, like CEOs, who speak for the company. The board has a right to expect the CEO to speak for them, and the shareholders, in turn, to elect a board that speaks for them. A CEO who officially says "bread is terrible, no one should buy it" has failed to perform that job. A CEO who says the same thing unofficially, or before being hired, won't be able to credibly perform the job.
A salesperson would have the same problem. The job demands saying "you should buy bread". Saying the opposite makes it impossible to perform the job, if the people you're dealing with learn about it.
OTOH, if a bakery worker or secretary, for example, says "bread is terrible, no one should buy it, I only work here because I need the money", I would defend their right to express their beliefs. If they were fired I'd consider that unjust.
I think I'm probably 95% on board with this, and I agree with the conclusions and most of the framework, with one exception. A personal belief held by a public representative is still a personal belief. So, the personal nature of the belief alone isn't what exempts it from scrutiny or action. There have to be other factors as well.
There's some productive digging to be done there, but I've got work to get back to! Maybe another time.
> A personal belief held by a public representative is still a personal belief.
I agree with that, but I also think a public comment about a personal belief can interfere with a job that involves speaking on behalf of others. When ones publicly known personal beliefs conflict with the beliefs one expresses while doing ones job, it causes a severe credibility problem, at least.
I'd say the other factor you mentioned is the conflict between "personal" statements and "official" statements. Some people do seem to be able to manage that, in part by avoiding uncompromising statements like "bread is terrible, no one should buy it". In your example, the conflict was so obvious and so provocative that it would be untenable and render the job of CEO impossible.
More specifically, I said that in a situation constructed to make the somewhat orthogonal point you're making, it works, and falls apart nearly everywhere else.
My point in making the example isn't to establish a framework for evaluating the Eich situation, but to indicate that it can be evaluated in the first place by showing an example in which a clear judgement can be made. This is contrary to your original emphatic position that "you just shouldn't police beliefs, period"
Defending Eich requires you not believe with enough conviction that his actions harmed the organization sufficiently to warrant removal. That's fine. You can fiddle with the conviction and harm knobs according to your beliefs. It does not, however, preclude anyone else from doing the same and coming to a different conclusion, which your policing argument would do, oddly enough.
If you want to go a different route and instead justify non-firing on completely separate grounds - that censuring political positions is, if consistent and widespread, noxious to society, or perhaps that the ambiguity in applying these standards is too high and might cause a chilling effect, etc - that raises different issues, but not those I was discussing.
>If she applies her understanding of freedom in a way I don't agree with, that's a tough shit moment for me.
And if said application of understanding is strongly disagreeable not just for you, but with a significant part of both the customers and the workforce?
It's worth noting that opposing gay marriage is not substantially different than opposing any other sort of human rights. Would you have been fine with Brendan Eich donating in support of an anti-miscegenation law, or funding an effort to revoke women's suffrage? If so, that's at least consistent, and I suppose I can respect that. But too many people acted like gay rights are just a minor thing, not worth getting fussed about, compared to other human rights.
There's no difference between an "action" and "taking a position". If speech were meaningless, had no effect on peoples' lives–why would anybody care about free speech?
There is clearly a distinction that can be made, and arguably making it has great value.
If speech is either not distinguished, or is indistinguishable from action, then there can be no free speech... or else initiating violence could not be a crime. It could get worse too. You could end up with no free speech and with initiation of violence by elites being legal or effectively legal. These cannot be desirable outcomes! Of course, if you don't value free speech at all, then you might not see a problem with these outcomes.
The distinction is obvious: you don't have to listen to a speaker, but you don't get a choice if they throw a punch your way. The distinction is about freedom on your part.
That said, we're all constrained in what we can say because we cannot stop others from judging us based on our speech, then acting on their judgements.
Imagine a CEO who never once behaves inappropriately at work, but on social media says that they have no problem with what Weinstein did (for example). Now how can subordinates not feel uncomfortable in that CEO's presence? Maybe we should say "tough", but real damage will have been done (to the company's brand, to its culture, and so on). The board of directors surely would have a cause to replace the CEO.
It is a fact of life that the higher one's social position, the more constrained (by the Overton window) one's speech is. But that's not the same as saying that speech is not distinguished from action. If there's an Overton window as to acceptable actions, it surely changes much more slowly than the Overton window for speech -- perhaps that's the real distinction to be made?
Can a vegan work with someone with a non restricted diet?
Can an atheist work with a muslim?
In either case, the answer is the same: if the individuals behave professionally, yes.
If the married gay couple are the ones freaking out at work about my hiring someone who posted against gay marriage on his blog two years ago, they are behaving unprofessionally and should be let go.
If it is the anti-gay marriage advocate who is making snide comments about his colleagues at work (or, in the context of a non work environment, in a shared community forum), then it is he who should be excluded.
Again, not the same thing. As far as the atheist is concerned, that belief is ridiculous. You're conflating belief with action. A better example would be an atheist working with someone trying to impose religious law.
It seems like you're analyzing all of these situations assuming that one side is correct. If you already know everything then obviously you're going to be a benevolent dictator.
There's no obvious delineation between belief and action and a the gist of what I was replying to was along the lines of 'can people work with each other even tho they have strong and significant differences in their beliefs or opinions'.
There's no way to even know a person's beliefs without some action on their part.
Take Brendan Eich – he donated to a group that was engaging in 'speech'. Are you claiming that all 'speech' is action? So how exactly is someone stating that they're a Muslim not an action in the same way? Are you saying it would be fine if Eich believed that gay marriage should remain illegal as long as he never expressed that belief in any way to anyone?
>It seems like you're analyzing all of these situations assuming that one side is correct.
I don't believe I've made any assumptions about who is correct. I simply stated that there is a difference between working with someone who holds a belief, and someone who actively lobbies for that belief to be legislated. I think that's true irrespective of what those beliefs are, and the question of whether or not I agree with some specific belief or not is separate from "holding a belief" being distinct from "lobbying for that belief".
>There's no way to even know a person's beliefs without some action on their part.
Indeed, and this is one of the most vital distinctions between "discrimination" based on belief and aspect. You cannot not express your race or gender, or perhaps you can, but it requires expending significant effort. This is not true for beliefs, you can always not express a belief, even a strongly held one. I do it all the time.
>Are you claiming that all 'speech' is action?
I'm willing to claim that a donation to a lobbying group is an action. Would you disagree?
>So how exactly is someone stating that they're a Muslim not an action in the same way?
Does you being a Muslim convey any kind of information to me about the opinion you hold of me? Does you stating that convey any information to me? On the other hand, does you stating "I hate people with the username joshuamorton" convey any information? I'd say no, no, yes. That's the difference.
>Are you saying it would be fine if Eich believed that gay marriage should remain illegal as long as he never expressed that belief in any way to anyone?
I mean I absolutely do think that would be alright. I by no means think that people should be forced to express their views, so yes I would have zero problem with Eich choosing not to express his views.
> Do you think someone can really work effectively with their gay married co-contributors in this case?
I would expect so, yes.
Firearms are a huge part of my life, as is political advocacy for self-defense rights. I've worked with many people who disagreed with me on that issue to the degree that I expect that many people disagree with gay marriage. For the vast majority of them, it wasn't an issue.
It feels qualitatively different to argue that “he and I disagree on firearms but we continue to work together” is the same basic concept.
Imagine you’re a gay man, happily married. You work at Mozilla.
Don’t you think it would be difficult to go into work, and report to your CEO, knowing that he had donated against gay marriage? That he feels your way of life has no place in America?
Mozilla is an outspoken champion of net neutrality, anonymity, free speech, open standards, and several other ideologies that emphasize freedom. How can you clap at an all-hands meeting when your CEO stands in front of the company and talks about the importance of these freedoms, while knowing that he also feels so strongly that your private relationship with your husband is so abhorrent that he thought it was a good use of $1000 to try to ban it?
If the liberals “win”, and guns are banned tomorrow, like they are in Australia, are you so committed to your firearm rights that you’ll consider moving to another country, or suicide because life just isn’t worth living? Do you think it’s ludicrous that gay people might consider those options?
Firearms are a choice. Being gay is not. Judgement against gay marriage is judgement against who you are. Judgement against firearms is judgement against a hobby.
Take the argument back 50 years. Do you think a white boss who donated money against equal rights could/would treat black employees fairly?
Imagine that you’re a gay employee at Mozilla. You’ve been gunning for a promotion into upper management, and someone else wins the position. Are you never going to wonder, “Does his skin crawl when we shake hands? Would I have won the position if my Facebook didn’t have pictures of me and my husband on it?”
Have you ever wondered if your love of firearms has impacted your professional career?
> It feels qualitatively different to argue that “he and I disagree on firearms but we continue to work together” is the same basic concept.
I get that it feels different to you - but I'm telling you in good faith that it doesn't to me.
> Don’t you think it would be difficult to go into work, and report to your CEO, knowing that he had donated against gay marriage?
Certainly. I've quit jobs because of similar issues. If someone feels about gay marriage the way I do about guns and the right to self-defense, it sounds entirely reasonable to me for them not to financial support people who actively work against their political interests.
> If the liberals “win”, and guns are banned tomorrow, like they are in Australia, are you so committed to your firearm rights that you’ll consider moving to another country, or suicide because life just isn’t worth living?
Yes. Five years ago when I was choosing a place to move from rural Arkansas to further my career as a developer, California, Illinois, New York, and several other states were out of the question because of their gun laws. Now that I'm more established, I'm moving back to Arkansas and a large part of that is the political climate here in Virginia.
Given the choice between disarmament and emigration, I'd emigrate. Given the choice between disarmament and death, I would fight. It's that serious of an issue to me and to far more people than you'd believe unless you've lived somewhere surrounded by people who share this view.
> Firearms are a choice. Being gay is not. Judgement against gay marriage is judgement against who you are. Judgement against firearms is judgement against a hobby.
Respectfully, you're completely wrong here. Firearms are not a hobby for me, they're symbolic of my entire cultural perspective. It is no more a choice than religious affiliation.
> Have you ever wondered if your love of firearms has impacted your professional career?
Of course it has. I'd be making significantly more money right now if I'd moved to San Jose, New York City, or even Portland.
---
I'm re-reading my comments above, and hesitating to submit them because I'm concerned that they might easily be seen as justification to lump me in with the GOP. Let me be clear about that - I don't consider myself a Republican, and I don't consider myself a conservative. I'm an extreme libertarian. I have no animosity towards homosexuals, and it doesn't matter to me how someone presents themselves or structure their personal relationships. "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
The main point I'm trying to make is that online communities in particular are made up of people with drastically different perspectives on life. Some of those differences are obvious, but some are not. Some of them are expected to be respected while it's socially acceptable to disregard others out of hand. That's not right.
> I get that it feels different to you - but I'm telling you in good faith that it doesn't to me.
I think there's a very obvious difference:
(hopefully) Your views on guns and personal liberty are based on ethics and under the system you believe is ethical, personal liberty and firearms are important. You do not hold a code of ethics because it allows you to use firearms, but you believe you are allowed to use firearms due to the ethical system. (I may be mistaken here, but allow me to overstep and state that I'd find anyone who developed an ethical system to support their use of firearms downright scary).
For someone who is gay, there's nothing like that. They find different people attractive. No ethical systems to it.
In other words, "I love people of my same sex" is an axiom, "people should be allowed to use firearms" is a conclusion.
I never said anything about importance. I said they were different, and I believe that they should be treated differently because they are different, not because one is more important than the other.
You've raised some excellent points with regards to firearms, though I had never considered them in this context as comparable to other minority groups, you have changed my mind.
One thing though, having recently been in the Portland area I can tell you firearm rights are not as badly abused as the general Portland stereotype would suggest. Portland itself has a few silly gun laws, but Oregon as a whole has a decent CCW law which overrides those of the city. It's a surprisingly gun friendly place to be.
Although I wish ranged weapons were not prevalent in my city so I can run away from a assailants, and although if it were up to me, I would make it illegal to carry guns outside the home / firing ranges / etc. because then we wouldn't have gun homicides the size of the Paris attacks every 6 days in the USA, even so...
I respect that we live in a country where people have different political beliefs and we should engage with them. And I respect that a large part of the country feels strongly about owning guns. And I also understand that the Constitution has the second amendment -- and even though the first explanatory clause is invariably ignored by gun activists ("A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state") I leave it up to the Courts to make this decision. Incidentally, after McDonald vs Chicago it's likely that ALL cities including New York may eventually be forced by the federal government to allow open carry and concealed carry on the street!
That is why I upvoted this comment to counteract knee jerk downvotes.
To everyone who thinks Brendan Eich's support for Prop 8 is "different" than supporting a ban on guns, you have to ask yourself if you have a huge double standard.
>> and even though the first explanatory clause is invariably ignored by gun activists
It is not ignored, it is misrepresented and misunderstood by anti-gun activists, but I am not about to go into all the details of that here...
> Incidentally, after McDonald vs Chicago it's likely that ALL cities including New York may eventually be forced by the federal government to allow open carry and concealed carry on the street!
People with Licenses are not a concern, and should not concern anyone. Gun Violence against others is committed by criminals. Most "Gun Violence" committed by Legal Gun Owners is suicide which I believe should be legal anyway and not considered "Violence"
> I would make it illegal to carry guns outside the home / firing ranges / etc. because then we wouldn't have gun homicides the size of the Paris attacks every 6 days in the USA, even so.
Once you account for other sources and caused of Gun Violence (i.e the War on Drugs, and other government actions) the "threat" from legal gun owners is a statistical abnormality
If you want to reduce gun violence focus less on the tool (i.e the gun) and more on the causes of violence in general. Put that effort in toe Drug Abuse reform, decriminalization of Drugs, better mental health systems, reduction in poverty, inner city out reach and educational programs, about 1,000 other things that would be more effective at ending a lot of violence including gun violence than attempting to ban guns from law abiding people
> People with Licenses are not a concern, and should not concern anyone. Gun Violence against others is committed by criminals.
Of course they concern people including myself! Just because someone has a license doesn't mean they won't do something stupid. That includes a license to drive cars. There are lots of restrictions such as speed limits, traffic lights and so on. And everyone is a "law abiding citizen" until their very first homicide.
>Once you account for other sources and caused of Gun Violence (i.e the War on Drugs, and other government actions) the "threat" from legal gun owners is a statistical abnormality
I am well aware that half of all gun violence is suicide, and I specifically exclude it from my estimates when I say that the USA has gun HOMICIDES the size of the Paris attacks every 6 days.
Just to be clear - mass shootings account for a tiny percentage of those, and the issue is not with assault weapons. It is with GUNS. More guns means more chances for regular people to get into spontaneous gun violence over altercations in a bar or on the street. Nevermind gangs and so on.
Yes I am NOT talking suicides.
My point, however, is that just as we are discussing things now, you should discuss about gay marriage and other things. And not just knee jerk fire someone when they don't bring their political views to work.
>>>And everyone is a "law abiding citizen" until their very first homicide.
Really? Everyone is law abiding until they commit a murder...
>I specifically exclude it from my estimates when I say that the USA has gun HOMICIDES the size of the Paris attacks every 6 days.
It is completely absurd to compare a nationwide static about violence where many many many many individual events unconnected to each other occur to one organized event.
> Nevermind gangs and so on.
This is the core problem with your aurgument, France does not have the same Gang problem we have in the US, France does not have the same Aggressive Policing as we do in the US.
You can not simply "never-mind" the gangs, as the gangs are what account for the statistical differences between the US and France, if you remove Gang Related Homicides you get a comparable level of Violent crime between France and the US
>>>My point, however, is that just as we are discussing things now, you should discuss about gay marriage and other things. And not just knee jerk fire someone when they don't bring their political views to work.
I agree with this, Free Speech is under attack, not by government but by people that believe they have the right to not be offended, not be confronted with opposing views, to live their life in a echo chamber bubble where only people that agree with them exists.
When a Tweet or facebook post that some one finds "offensive" results in a national boycott to get an individual fired we as a society have lost all connection with the concept of Free Speech
>>>>And everyone is a "law abiding citizen" until their very first homicide.
>Really? Everyone is law abiding until they commit a murder...
Fine, if you want to be that pedantic before you address what I say, I meant "everyone WHO MAKES THEIR FIRST HOMICIDE is not a killer until their first homicide". So the phrase "law abiding citizens" doesn't mean you have "nothing to worry about".
>It is completely absurd to compare a nationwide static about violence where many many many many individual events unconnected to each other occur to one organized event.
It's not absurd at all if the other country (France) doesn't have gun homicides the rest of the time! And it's doubly not absurd when the President tweets this:
>So the phrase "law abiding citizens" doesn't mean you have "nothing to worry about".
If you look at the criminal history and actions of most murders, homicide is not their very very very first crime. There is normally a pattern of behavior often time resulting in them losing their legal right to own a gun well before their first homicide
This of course does not apply to "crimes of passion" but Gun Control will do very little to prevent those murders it will just not be gun that is used to kill the person
>>but you chose to comment on the stuff we disagree on to pick a fight? :)
I am not picking the fight, nor did I bring gun control into it. I will however defend my right to defend myself using what ever tool I choose to including a gun. I will defend this right to self protection in all venues and at all times.
For many communities, guns are not just a "hobby". They are an integral part of life and culture. The fact that people don't take the time to understand this is a huge issue.
I know a number of gay and gay-friendly people who disagree or oppose gay marriage laws to various degrees, for a variety of reasons. So, huh, of course yes I think they can!
Important: disagreeing with or opposing a gay marriage law is really not the same as being against inclusivity, diversity, or gays. Some people will have both traits; the problematic (for lack of a less polite word) one is the latter, not the former.
They of course supported gay rights! However some disagreed with the "marriage" word; some disagreed with the need for a law to allow it, rather than removing any existing law or clause that denied it. Those are the two arguments that stuck with me, there were others (different countries, different takes). It was definitely food for thought.
> However some disagreed with the "marriage" word; some disagreed with the need for a law to allow it, rather than removing any existing law or clause that denied it.
This is a minor technical point that distracts from the main discussion, and doesn't really support the implication from your earlier comment that some gay people are against gay marriage rights. Saying method 2 is better than method 1 is not the same as opposing method 1.
You, and I, consider it a minor technical point, but they do not. In some cases it is important enough for them to have not married despite over a decade of being together. Again, that should be food for thought.
The implication does not exist unless you want to put it there. I even added a second, longer sentence to emphasize that being against a particular law is not the same as being against gay rights. The fact that you insist the implication is there despite all that is precisely my point.
Some people oppose the very concept of Government regulating interpersonal relationship and want to see "legal marriage" abolsihed out right
No adult should have to seek permission from government to form, codify, or have a relationship "recognized"
At most you should be required to file civil contract declaring a partnership has been formed between 2 or more adults, what the terms of that partnership are from a financial and property stand point, and should include a disillusion process.
That is a radical shift from what we have today, but "Family law" is a complete mess and needs to just be completely abolished and replaced with Voluntary Agreements and Civil Contracts outside the control of government.
One may be natural law theory (and within that context, you have e.g. the perverted faculty argument, among others). Unfortunately, given the poor state of philosophical literacy, I don't imagine that convincing supporters of gay marriage without the requisite education. And even then, liberal doctrine has become increasingly averse to reason, preferring to elevate private desires to the status of ultimate authority.
In evolutionary biology, there is no notion of correct or incorrect usage of a faculty. In fact, the opposite is the case. Evolution often occurs by modifying and reusing some functionality in a new way or in a new context. It has no specific goals or purposes. Things that survive and reproduce stick around and things that don't die off, no matter the details.
The sexual organs don't have a pre-ordained purpose. The argument falls apart at the very first premise.
If the actual concern is that all of humanity will turn gay and then we will go extinct, well, it's safe to say I'm not too worried about that.
Natural lawyers generally don't appeal to evolutionary biology to ground their moral claims, and would probably universally cry that to try and do so, would be folly. Note...I'm not endorsing NL here, I don't find it very convincing, but...
The parent's point about philosophical literacy is apropos here. Natural law and its underlying metaphysics is very technical and deep. It is definitely not falling apart by pointing out the obvious, that biology varies over time. In some respect, NL has dealt with that "problem" since the time of Aristotle. (For a start: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/)
> The parent's point about philosophical literacy is apropos here. Natural law and its underlying metaphysics is very technical and deep.
This may be true, but such endeavors must reconcile with modern scientific understanding one way or another, or they can lose validity/usefulness. I haven't seen any convincing efforts to do so.
Note, this would be less of an issue if they didn't make certain specific claims or rely on certain specific premises that the natural sciences directly touch. E.g. the "purpose" of sexual organs.
One relevant idea that has been growing stronger for me is that a philosophical endeavor needs some sort of strong, tangible connection to reality in order to have meaning or usefulness. Without such grounding, it is far too easy to end up with something that seems reasonable on the surface but may actually be nonsensical or illusory.
Part of being a professional is working with people you disagree with. If he can't manage that, then yes he should be let go, but that wasn't the logic at work in this case.
I can understand working with people you disagree with; I do that all the time. But there's a difference with disagreeing with someone, and that other person believing you don't deserve the same rights as other people.
Even if he can manage to separate out his professional life from his personal life, that sort of belief poisons the well for people that have to work with him.
So then, in your opinion, what jobs should be open to people who oppose gay marriage? There is a limited number of lighthouses that haven't been automated.
The alternate question is: How far are people able to ignore personal beliefs before they refuse to work with/under someone? If you asked a gay person, there are a fair amount of people who would refuse to work with someone that opposes gay marriage. If you asked a black person, I imagine the majority would walk away from a job if it turned out one of the highest level employees was a Grand Dragon of the KKK.
When those views become part of the public sphere they're put under scrutiny. Each person has their own individual limit for what they're willing to put up with, and a community in turn has a collective limit. There are some companies that might be more friendly, but I would imagine if you held an opinion like that in say, Seattle you might have a bit of trouble if it was well-popularized.
What jobs should be open to racists? What jobs should be open to pedophiles? The current social construct is built on at least trying for equality of opportunity; there's nothing to be gained bending over backwards to accommodate people who believe other humans to be some how lesser.
I know this is a popular way to phrase it, but opponents of gay marriage are not saying gays shouldn't have the same rights as other people. Not being allowed to marry a person of the same sex is a universal law, it doesn't just apply to gay people. It does only affect them though, but that is not the same,especially when people are using this argument (as you do) to insinuate that people opposing gay marriage think gay people are lesser beings or something like that.
You're drawing a distinction without difference. You can phrase basically any rule that discriminates against a subgroup as a rule on the larger group that only affects the subgroup. For example, I don't think anyone would say, "It isn't discrimination against women to forbid all people from doing something without a Y chromosome." The fact that the phrasing doesn't say "women" doesn't make it not discrimination, because it specifically targets attributes of women.
>It does only affect them though, but that is not the same,especially when people are using this argument (as you do) to insinuate that people opposing gay marriage think gay people are lesser beings or something like that.
Actually to the best of my knowledge, it is the same, at least under US law. De facto discrimination is still considered discrimination.
If you want to be inclusive, you have to be inviting towards other opinions, too, only that's the same difficulty as including the opposite site. Sure everyone has the right to their opinion, but whoever brings it to the workplace or other professional environment has to stand for it.
This is difficult to discuss in the work place, because this makes it topical.
So because the guy might have problems with his co-workers all his co-workers should definitely have problems with him? Shouldn't he be judged on his actions towards his co-workers not by your stereotype of a anti-gay marriage supporter?
Could you not flip the argument, and ask "Do you think a gay-married person could really work effectively with somebody who 's made a donation..." and thereby flip who we fault for the alleged incompatibility? I think both ways of framing it are equally preposterous.
That's a false analogy because it presumes that marriage between gays is even possible. Those with the strongest arguments against gay marriage hold that:
- marriage is a natural institution that the state recognizes (the state, technically, does not marry people)
- marriage is ultimately rooted in the intrinsic capacity (though not necessarily the successful exercise e.g. impotence does not render marriage invalid) for sexual reproduction and the complementarity of the sexes
Therefore, they hold that there simply is no such thing as gay marriage, and you cannot deny what does not exist.
Yes, people with opposing personal views have worked together for the entirety of human civilization, if that was not possible we would have no civilization.
When people with opposing personal views stop working together is when the problems occur. Echo Chambers and Mono Cultures lead to extremism in most instances. This is true no matter what your political or personal world view is.
Peaceful Collaboration in one area of life even with people that in other areas of life you disagree is essential to a functional society.
Yes, but that’s not relevant to the conversation at hand. No one is saying it’s reasonable to have a CEO who has announced a campaign to eradicate all homosexuality, in an official or unofficial capacity. They’re saying that, when not so extreme as violence, and not expressed in an official capacity, privately held controversial opinions shouldn’t be used to assess an employee’s eligibility for a job.
Opposition to or support of unimportant things have real consequences, too. Just smaller ones, typically, but the butterfly effect can be a real bitch.
All political movements have real consequences, so you are effectively saying that a person can not have political opinions you disagree with, and if they do they should be fired from their job.
It does not matter what side of the issue you are on, or what your nuanced position is on the issue, if you disagree with my position you should fired. That is what you are saying.
> The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).
He was fired as CEO, not as CTO or any other technical position. The CEO is meant to represent the organisation. Denying rights to individuals goes against Mozilla's ethos and detracts from its campaign goals. Put simply, if the CEO isn't supported by their org then they are an ineffective CEO.
> The CEO is meant to represent the organisation. Denying rights to individuals goes against Mozilla's ethos and detracts from its campaign goals.
This implies Mozilla is intrinsically a political organization, because that’s an explicit stance on a political topic. I can buy your argument here about a CEO’s personal views being incompatible with their position, but it means we need to accept that the reason for that incompatibility is the organization must have political opinions.
Does Mozilla describe itself as a political organization anywhere? I can’t immediately find a statement of its principles/values.
> This implies Mozilla is intrinsically a political organization ... Does Mozilla describe itself as a political organization anywhere? I can’t immediately find a statement of its principles/values.
> 2. The Internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible.
> 4. Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
> 9. Commercial involvement in the development of the Internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical.
No, it presumes marriage is a right. Or rather it presumes that this isn't an area where the government should assert its control over people's personal lives.
>> goes against Mozilla's ethos and detracts from its campaign goals.
Mozilla violates its ethos and detracts from is stated goals all the time. From DRM Embedded in the browser, to Cliq Spyware, to the latest Adware forced installed on all users.
The idea that Mozilla is a virtuous organization fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised is long dead
I think an issue is that by including some people you are by necessity working to make other groups unwelcome: the choice to be apolitical is a political choice.
No, the only people you are making unwelcome are either:
1) those who don't know the time and place for their non community relevant outbursts ('meat is murder', 'homosexuality is a sin' are both irrelevant to 99% of tech or other industry community/work discussions) -- leave that for your vegan blog, or your church group.
2) those who are unable to behave courteously in the presence of someone they know holds differing views in some area they are passionate about. Just because I have read Jennys vegan blog, and know and disagree with her 'meat is murder' sentiment doesn't mean I can't work effectively with her.
People need to be able to separate their general leanings and passions from their commitments to a job or other community.
Being a minority is not a general leaning or a passion. Knowing your superior wants you dead(white supremacists) or psychologically tortured(conversion therapy) or inherently doesn't believe in your competence(sexism, racism, what have you) is not something one just shrugs off.
Choosing to to be apolitical is a political stance. It would be nice if we could magically divorce people's work from their stance, but their stance will affect how they treat their peers and juniors- this is how patterns of oppression become systems. If a person has beliefs that women are inherently less capable of work, they will be unlikely to volunteer women for promotions or even see their women coworkers as having performed the work done. If a person has beliefs that black people are more violent or thuggish, they are unlikely to view that black coworker asserting that a technology requirement is utterly stupid in the same light as a white coworker asserting the same.
I should emphasize these are not conscious, malicious behaviors. We are taught things about our peers and these teachings change our views on the context of the work of our peers. People rarely consciously, maliciously try to prevent the advancement of a disenfranchised group. Instead, their beliefs of that group prevent them from seeing that a member of the group deserves advancement.
People do not differentiate from the contexts of their pervasive views on how they view every other person around them. They do not cease being sexist because their workplace claims to be apolitical. It merely means they no longer have repercussions within their workplace for their beliefs, regardless of the countless absolutely unprovable ways these beliefs bleed into work.
For each of the questions you have listed, there is opposite viewpoints of some (questionable) legitimacy:
White supremacists would argue that it is multiculturalists who seek the abolition of the white race through introduction of millions of high birth rate other demographics into white countries.
Pro-conversion therapy anti gay people would argue they are saving the individuals from mental problems, social difficulties, and other negative side effects of what they believe is a consciously modifiable behaviour.
"Racists" and "sexists" would argue that being aware of mean average behavioural differences in different demographics is not a negative thing.
However invalid these arguments may, or may not, be, it is not our job to attempt to generalise our expertise and judge anyone who holds a differing view.
Simple statistics says that there is at least one or two major issues which you are extremely passionate about, but simply mistaken. Same for me, same for anyone else.
That does not matter. As long as my opinions do not measurably affect my behaviour within a specific community, then it is not relevant. People should be judged by their individual actions within a given 'organism'/community/company/etc, not their viewpoints on tangentially related subjects shared with others in other communities.
Your logic is exactly what led to the exclusion of gays, blacks, communists, non christians, and other groups, in the 1950s and before.
You risk going so far in the other direction that you become exactly what you opposed.
All of your given examples are false equivalencies, as they assume that the desire to control the disenfranchised groups is the same as the real harm done to the disenfranchised group as a result of being controlled.
A person can change beliefs about how you should treat gay people. A gay person cannot change their homosexuality to accommodate anti-gay people, and trying actively harms them.
" As long as my opinions do not measurably affect my behaviour within a specific community, then it is not relevant."
I am arguing that, in fact, opinions supporting the disenfranchisement of minorities affects the behavior of a specific community. Please see my previous example that someone who believes black people are inherently violent is more likely to view a black coworker asserting that a technical spec is stupid differently than a white coworker doing the same. Also see my previous example that a person who believes women are less capable in code is more likely to overlook achievements of their women coworkers.
I don't understand what you mean by my logic excluded other groups, and then you lumped in inherent traits (race, sexuality) with beliefs about how governments should form (communism). Race, sexuality, and gender are not leanings or passions. They are things that people cannot change about themselves, things that they cannot avoid the brunt of any oppressive belief or behavior regarding.
> A person can change beliefs about how you should treat gay people. A gay person cannot change their homosexuality to accommodate anti-gay people, and trying actively harms them.
I think your claim here has a high likelihood of inviting a very unproductive (and potentially offensive) debate. I'm going to try to counter it in a different way while explicitly acknowledging this fact.
I think your focus in this claim is on the wrong subject. I don't think the parent's argument relies on your claim about the capability of changing beliefs versus sexual orientation being false. From my perspective, people have the right to personal beliefs which can be considered repulsive. People do not have the right to engage in violent opposition or oppression. I think that, if an individual is not actively campaigning for violence against another group, their personal beliefs about that group should be an inalienable right, no matter how ugly or wrong we think they are. If they are making people uncomfortable in the office, this becomes an issue of professional conduct, not one of personal beliefs. Frankly, I would consider virtually all political discussion one way or the other to be inappropriate in an office setting, and an unfortunate practice which only persists because generally only the opinions politically expedient for the organization are actually expressed.
If we step back from the problem of gay marriage and abstract this to opposing beliefs, it becomes very difficult to allow some beliefs and disallow others while retaining fairness and real diversity of opinion. We can stop people from engaging in violence against others or from using the office to discriminate against others. But we cannot cultivate an environment that filters out all the Wrong opinions while allowing all the Right opinions.
> Knowing your superior wants you dead(white supremacists) or psychologically tortured(conversion therapy) or inherently doesn't believe in your competence(sexism, racism, what have you) is not something one just shrugs off.
Those examples indicate a violent agenda or an inability to separate private views from the workplace. That’s not the scenario the parent is talking about. The parent is talking about a situation in which someone has nonviolent, extremely opposite views from your own, and does not soapbox these sentiments in the workplace.
I submit that this isn’t a qualitative difference, it’s a categorical one, and that your examples aren’t comparable to “merely” politically controversial or unsettling opinions.
Please read the rest of my post regarding how sentiments supporting the disenfranchisement of minorities does affect the workplace even if one does not soapbox it. While I agree that minor differences such a diet and similar should not affect the workplace, I believe the op is too broad in their approach and net implications they may not desire which I am pointing out. Unfortunately I believe that based on their response they also do not mind what I’ve pointed out.
>> It would be nice if we could magically divorce people's work from their stance, but their stance will affect how they treat their peers and juniors-
This isn't necessarily true. People have for years been able to divorce personal or politic beliefs from their work and not let them impact their professional life.
Many (most?) religious believers believe that non-believers, or people of different faiths, will be justifiably tortured for eternity (or maybe just a really long time).
Well, sure, if you already know you're right then you can just safely ignore everything that's wrong.
Obviously I was writing from the POV where it's not obvious what's correct (and indeed I personally don't think either belief is obvious).
If any of the religions that believe in hell is true, then the actual torture of conversion therapy is literally nothing in the face of divine damnation.
One thing I have noticed in several tech companies is that what is or isn't the time or place for a non community relevant outburst is determined to a surprising degree by the contents of the outburtst. A VP of Engineering making anti-Trump comments (in a context without other relevance to the business or matter at hand) at a company all-hands is deemed relevant. A person of similar rank making pro-Trump comments would have been treated very differently.
People are very bad at separating the personal from the professional. Indeed, many people seem to think it's their right to use the one to advance the other.
I felt alienated by that VP's comments. Not because of their contents, but because he felt so free to abuse his position.
Off topic, but could you explain where that vegan hate is coming from? I‘ve met lots of vegans, and none of them have ever said anything like your quote, and none of them have ever told me that I should stop eating meat.
I respectfully disagree. I think this idea is one of the subtle evils at the root of this damned politicizing of everything.
I believe it can come from a good place, but it's at its heart a deliberate agitation step designed to create this friction. That's seen as a good thing, for now, until the prevailing societal winds decide to blow another direction, then we'll all realize it was a bad idea to force neutral parties into the fray.
I think it's perfectly fine to expect a gay man and someone who has antiquated ideas about gay men to be professionals, and equally fine to terminate either one if they can't be.
Do executives get to have private views? It’s unfortunate, but the media seems to love using personal actions by executives as representative of the company they work for. So in Eich’s case I think Mozilla had a legitimate concern that his personal views would be perceived as the company’s stance.
The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).
Probably quite relevant to his position as CEO of an organisation that employs (and would like to hire) LGBT people.
You might believe he did that. Brendan Eich likely doesn’t believe that, or he doesn’t believe those specific rights are fundamental, or he has a different interpretation of those rights.
When you frame his behavior the way you just did, you immediately position your perspective as right and the other perspective as wrong, but the parent’s point is that this isn’t relevant either way. His behavior was not expressed in the workplace, and he was not pushing a violent agenda. He doesn’t need to be correct in all of his personal views, he just needs to be capable of working with people of differing lifestyles, and he needs to segregate his own beliefs from the workplace.
> Within a community, individuals should only be judged based on their contributions and value within that community.
I would add that for contributions outside of the community, they should be judged if they relate to that community.
For instance, if a a security expert, goes out to conferences telling people to use MFA, but privately tells people not to use it because it is "too complicated" that person would rightly be judged by the community. (Note: I mean they regularly make that reccomendation privately, not a one-off because they don't want to tell their grandparent to use MFA).
> The Mozilla CEO fired for his personal donation in opposition to gay marriage. (Again, completely irrelevant to his relationship with the Mozilla project).
This is complicated for roles like CEO, they don't have a specific _technical_ role. Their role is the define the vision and direction of the company. I believe that part of the CEO job to define the values and mores for the organization, if this is wrong, let me know as that is kind of fundamental to my point.
In that case, wouldn't it be right that that a CEO is fired for their values? Their values and what they want is the reason a CEO was hired at an organization. If the CEO's personal values do not match the values for the organization, it's a bad fit and they should part ways.
I think basically he is saying there is a bit of a dichotomy in stating that communities overestimate their abilities to apply value judgements and then at the same time state that they should only judge people based on their contributions and value to that community.
As much as you might like, you can't really separate some specific technical ideal of "value" or "contribution" from a person's actions on the whole. People are people, and communities are collections of people with human interactions and interpersonal relationships.
I'll also add that the false equivalence between excluding Allan Turning because he was gay vs. excluding people who express homophobic attitudes because they want to exclude people who are gay is just another way of stating "in order to embrace tolerance we must be tolerant of intolerance". Can we all finally accept that for the fallacy that it is?
Within a given group value is reasonably correlated to expertise.
As much as I wouldn't give any time to sociologists valuing Alan Turings genius within mathematics, computer science, etc., I'd have equally little time for mathematicians judging his sexuality.
The issue is statistically you aren't a fantastic coder. At least not so much so that any organization can't find an equavalent person who isn't on the wrong side of history.
The paradox comes from the fact most people (and it seems even more than most in this industry) believe themselves "special" or "above average" when in reality that can't be the case. You don't get to (or at least shouldn't) "buy out" of the social contract just for being spectacular (and again, odds are very poor as to whether you actually have anything unique to add).
This can result in tragedy, as in the case of Turning, or justice, as in the case of the laundry list of sexual predators falling from grace currently. Pretending everyone you disagree with is just "politics" ignores the fact that no man is an island and everything is connected. Once you realize you aren't special; the world/society doesn't owe you shit life will get a lot easier.
>>If I am deeply opposed <<a particular cause or ideology>> [but don't let it affect with how I interact with people in my role], but a fantastic coder, that should not affect my standing within a community that is entirely code focused.
> This, of course, continues further, with things such as Hollywood blacklisting (today) Conservatives
Hollywood does not blacklist "conservatives". Hollywood (finally) blacklists people who have outright abused their positions, sometimes for decades, to rape women.
If we are talking about an individual contributor, who only contributes code, who doesn‘t talk to press or customers, then I agree, their political beliefs shouldn‘t get them fired.
But if someone represents an organisation, whether internally or externally, their political beliefs are relevant; their actions are reflected as actions of the company.
Humans don‘t differentiate between personal and official life as much as you think they should, so unfortunately companies and organisations can‘t ignore what their representatives do in their spare time.
The post by cs1717p seems somewhat reasonable on the surface but causes a massive visceral backlash in my gut as I read it. So, while I haven't given it enough thought to figure out why, I vehemently disagree.
I disagree about the Mozilla CEO comment specifically. If something is antithetical to you and other community members, regardless of the original "purpose" of a community, so be it.
> The post by cs1717p seems somewhat reasonable on the surface but causes a massive visceral backlash in my gut as I read it. So, while I haven't given it enough thought to figure out why, I vehemently disagree.
I just wish you could hear yourself. Were you writing in a different context, I'd think you were writing satire. It's the same reasoning that actual bigots used against people of different races: they had no rational reason to discriminate against them, but they had learned a massive, visceral backlash reaction, and rather than challenge themselves to overcome it, they just went with it and acted on it. Rationalizing away the cognitive dissonance, racism lived on. So, we got Jim Crow, etc.
I feel you. Once again I'm finding HN's culture very reminiscent of the "techbro" epidemic that we are only pretending to be against.
Can people here just not imagine what it would be like to be gay and also be working for someone making political donations to anti-gay groups? Would you not think that would feel fucking awful???
Eich wasn't “virtually lynched”. Serious questions about his credibility in adhering to values some people expected of Mozilla were raised, creating a PR issue for Mozilla which he was evidently incapable of managing. Mm
This is in no way similar to a lynching, and one must be extraordinarily sheltered to find them similar.
> Twitter and the media went nuts, demanding he be fired.
Demanding someone be fired by the people with the authority to do so because you perceive that they are unsuitable for a particular role isn't lynching. It may be, in some cases, unjustified by he facts, but what makes a lynching a lynching has nothing to do with whether the accusations made are unjustified.
> It exactly is
I don't think you understand what a lynching is, because none of what you have described resembles one in any meaningful way.
> It may be, in some cases, unjustified by he facts, but what makes a lynching a lynching has nothing to do with whether the accusations made are unjustified.
I agree with this statement. A lynching is a lynching regardless of why it is done.
> I don't think you understand what a lynching is, because none of what you have described resembles one in any meaningful way.
I don't think you understand what a lynching is, otherwise you would recognize that a mob of people reacting emotionally to harm another person is exactly that. e.g. Webster, 1913: "To inflict punishment upon without the forms of law." That is literally what happened.
I am so tired of people bringing up the Brendan Eich thing as if it was unfair. Let's be clear; he wanted to deny civil rights to LGBT folks. That's not ok for a CEO of a large organization. It's not like he was ousted for wanting to abolish the estate tax.
He monetarily donated to support a position that half of America supported. One simply can't expect demand that level of moral purity in a free society.
What rights? I'm serious. It's not a mantra. It's a very radical claim, to say the least, that gay marriage is a right. I have yet to see an argument for its recognition as bona fide marriage.
No, displaying those passions or emotions does not belong in any work environment.
One should be able to hold whatever views they like, and even share them with others in other communities without it affecting their work life, or status in a community without a direct interest in the controversial topic in question.
You should not be able to hold whatever views you like and participate in the community. There is no form of bigotry that belongs in software.
The problem is not that these are just controversial topics - They're beliefs and actions that directly infringe on others ability to lead their best and healthy life. Tolerating hatred by disguising it as 'diversity of thought' is just a way of masking and shielding people who need to be brought into reality. You cannot be an moral participant in our profession while believing that others lifestyles don't belong.
> You should not be able to hold whatever views you like and participate in the community. There is no form of bigotry that belongs in software.
The problem with this philosophy is that it has a significant potential (and likelihood) for abuse. You feel very strongly that your view is the Correct View about the rights of gay people. Maybe you are! That specific example doesn’t matter here - what matters is that the passion you feel is not a valid heuristic.
Take a moment to put aside your very strongly held personal belief about gay rights to consider this dispassionately: aside from the fact that you feel right in your views, what is materially different about your suggestion from the suggestion that people should not be allowed to eat meat and participate in the community, because eating meat is unethical? What would your reaction be if I was advocating this position as strongly as you’re advocating yours?
I posit that we should begin only with the axioms that 1. outright violence and advocation of violence should be impermissible, and 2. advocation of any controversial agenda does not belong in the workplace, violent or otherwise. Adding more to that has the insidious side effect of being used to suppress opinions which are actually diverse. Therefore, when an opposing perspective does not violate one of these axioms, we should consider it with a principle of symmetry: both parties feel very strongly about their views, and your personal feeling that you’re correct is not unique.
You can be effectively intolerant of violence, but I do not consider it plausible that you can construct a framework for tolerating diversity of opinion without tolerating some opinions you find personally abhorrent. That implies the person who implemented that framework has only Correct Views and no Incorrect Views, which seems extremely unrealistic.
I'm not comparing people who don't eat meat and people who are gay. I'm comparing the strength of nonviolent opposition towards both those groups, which can be absolutely equivalent. I stand by what I said - when we're talking about nonviolent personal beliefs, passionate investment in your own belief is not a sufficient reason to bar those with opposing views from participating in the community if they can do so peaceably.
There is no heuristic which will let a given party or organization accept only the Correct Views while disallowing all the Wrong Views; as a practical matter, for the sake of diversity, you should limit your shunning to those who espouse violence and those who discriminate in the workplace.
You absolutely are. You can't compare the nonviolent opposition towards both groups without considering the basis of those groups come from. Right here:
>Take a moment to put aside your very strongly held personal belief about gay rights to consider this dispassionately: aside from the fact that you feel right in your views, what is materially different about your suggestion from the suggestion that people should not be allowed to eat meat and participate in the community, because eating meat is unethical? What would your reaction be if I was advocating this position as strongly as you’re advocating yours?
Is your point in comparison. You're saying that there is no effective difference between someone saying 'People who eat meat shouldn't be allowed in our community' and 'People who are against gay marriage shouldn't be allowed in our community'. Your entire argument hinges on this false equivalence.
And again, I'm not drawing any comparison or equivalence between people who eat meat and people who are gay. As clearly shown in the portion of my comment you quoted, I am comparing the beliefs and suggestions about which beliefs are allowed in the workplace. The equivalence I'm drawing is that both sets of beliefs have the capacity to be deeply controversial and eminently nonviolent, not that the respective lifestyles are qualitatively equivalent. If you disagree with my actual comparison, attack that one, not the one you think I (or want me to have) made.
In point of fact, my entire argument relies on the axioms I explicitly and specifically outlined in the previous comment, which are:
1. nonviolent personal beliefs should not determine eligibility for employment, but violent activity, or endorsement of violent activity, may; and
2. nonviolent personal beliefs should only determine eligibility for employment if they are used for discrimination or advocation in the workplace, which is a matter of inappropriate professional conduct.
I'm happy to entertain an argument against those axioms or the actual comparison I made, but don't just keep replying insisting I've made a false equivalence about two things that I'm not even comparing.
And I will repeat myself. You comparing suggestions about which beliefs are allowed in the workplace is a false equivalence. They both have the ability to be controversial, but you're ignoring the context and assuming that they can both be the same level of controversial. To make a mockery of your statement:
>>Take a moment to put aside your very strongly held personal belief about gay rights to consider this dispassionately: aside from the fact that you feel right in your views, what is materially different about your suggestion from the suggestion that people should not be allowed to play League of Legends and participate in the community, because playing League is unethical? What would your reaction be if I was advocating this position as strongly as you’re advocating yours?
That statement is fundamentally equal to your previous statement. But the levels of controversial and how it actively affects people on a day-to-day basis vastly differs. Now to address your axioms:
>1. nonviolent personal beliefs should not determine eligibility for employment, but violent activity, or endorsement of violent activity, may; and
This depends on the collective community's beliefs. Note I am using the word community here, not just drawing a comparison to job-related activities. A company that advertises itself as being pro-LGBT hiring someone that espouses views like 'Transgender people don't exist', despite being a non-violent statement, goes against their overall goals. When a company hires someone like that, the end result is that people start leaving because people have a limit as to who they're willing to work with. Not all bigotry is violence and as an aside I have met people in tech who believe black people are inferior.
>2. nonviolent personal beliefs should only determine eligibility for employment if they are used for discrimination or advocation in the workplace, which is a matter of inappropriate professional conduct.
Often the two go hand-in-hand. We live in a world where what you do both outside and within the company represents them. The smarter people use multiple accounts and properly separate their work and personal lives. However when the two connect it becomes a matter of passive advocation in the workplace. A company allowing someone that believes black people are inferior to continue working at their company is not only a PR disaster in waiting (especially if they intend to promote him to higher positions) but it's also a tacit approval of his opinions. These views often subtly alter your perception too, and allowing said person to be a part of the recruiting process is, again, a PR disaster waiting to blow up.
> They both have the ability to be controversial, but you're ignoring the context and assuming that they can both be the same level of controversial.
No, I'm not ignoring any context. I'm asserting that they can both be the same level of nonviolent. Just as I haven't made a comparison about lifestyles, I also haven't made a comparison about how controversial the beliefs about those lifestyles are. At this point the discussion is just getting pedantic.
You drew up a bad point of comparison and you keep attempting to shift away from it. To assert they can be the same level of non-violent is also incorrect considering as I brought up, there can be various levels of non-violent opinions that can be highly damaging to a community. Believing that transgender people don't exist is one, or believing that being gay is something that someone can fix.
It's materially different because militant vegans don't try to infringe upon my rights. The difference is that if you were advocating for veganism as strongly, I can point to the fact that nobody is being hurt by that advocacy. If you're strongly advocating that gay people don't deserve equal rights (at best) or don't deserve to be alive (at worst), then it's very clear your position shouldn't be tolerated.
That's the problem with this whole argument chain - there are clear material differences between advocating strongly against gay people, versus advocating strongly against eating meat.
There is no diversity in opinion that includes bigotry - that's just a way racists, sexists, and other hate mongers hide in communities. Your axioms completely ignore the idea that there are opinions which cause harm without any introduction of violence - something anyone in a marginalized or oppressed group can and has experienced.
Diversity of opinion does not mean accepting opinions which directly and indirectly cause harm to others.
What kind of ridiculous nonsense is this? People say opposing gay marriage causes harm because it does. There have been multiple instances and examples of gay couples not being able to see their loved ones in the hospital because they're not recognized as a 'real' couple. They died alone as their partners were turned away for the sole crime of being gay.
Your attempt to justify your bigotry is disgusting.
Opposing gay marriage causes harm because it's active oppression, and because it's a argumentative shield for people who have direct opposition to gay people themselves. There are no strong arguments against gay marriage beyond bigotry.
You don't have to pretend that you're not a bigot - opposition to gay marriage is bigotry.
Members of a community should be allowed to hate each other, so long as they can leave each other alone. Worst case, they might have to be separated, with other community members acting as intermediaries.
It is simply not practical to exclude a community member whenever they have a passionate disagreement with someone else, even if that topic is highly relevant to the community, because every two people are going to find something they disagree about.
Part of being a mature person is being able to work together with someone you'd rather not interact with, because you realize that in that moment, your interests are partially aligned.
That's a false equivalency - members of a community hating each other is not the same as members of a community conspiring to oppress other members of a community.
The idea that two reasonable human beings will find something they don't have in common is not equivalent to finding out that the coworker next to you doesn't think you should have human rights.
Part of being a mature person is being able to realize that some members of a community hold positions that are fundamentally incompatible, even if they represent a net positive from a work standpoint.
It doesn't matter if your coworker has partially aligned interests with you if some of their other interests infringe on your human rights - that's when you choose not to interact with them, and to exclude them from the community until they change their ways.
How does excluding the coworker help you? It certainly won't make them suddenly realize that you do deserve human rights after all. Why not make the best of the situation and create something of value to both of you?
Reform is not the intent, although it is the criteria for re-inclusion. The intent is to create a community that respects all of it's members rights. Excluding the co-worker helps me because I don't have to worry about whether the fruits of my labor are going to a effort that will cause me harm either in the present or in the future.
Social interaction and software development go hand in hand - The idea that someone with a fundamentally hostile viewpoint is needed to create something of value for both of us is not applicable. There are many software developers who don't wish harm upon others, and they will be more willing to work with you.
The best outcome in this situation is not the product that gets created. The best outcome is an environment in which members of the community don't feel like their basic rights are in question.
How does excluding that person ensure that they won't use the fruits of your labor for an effort that will you cause you harm? If you think that was the ultimate reason for them to work on the same thing as you, they can still make use of your work indirectly. If you think that they are not just a one-dimensional character, and just happen to enjoy some of the same things as you; then excluding them deprives them of that enjoyment, but it doesn't really help you, does it?
Your second paragraph seems to assume a fixed number of developers working on a project, and in that case there is no downside in replacing them. But what about an open-source project where they keep sending PRs for bug fixes and features that all have technical merit? Would you ignore that and redo the work? If I'm working on the same project, should I avoid merging their work to accommodate you?
While I agree that a community where everyone can feel comfortable is something to strive for, I think that does not require excluding some members for the views they hold. It is enough when they don't push those views onto the others.
You're right - you can't ensure that they won't use your work for bad, that's true. You can try to lessen the impact by making sure they're not part of your organization or community. Excluding them does help me, because I don't have to put up with someone who is actively trying to make my life worse.
I think if you manage an open source project you should feel comfortable taking a stand on contributors who have/advocate for actively discriminatory positions. Just because you organize a community project that may be used by people you fundamentally disagree with doesn't mean you have to check your sense of morality at the door.
If someone submitted a PR to my project who held openly racist positions, I would deny the PR. No amount of genius or technical merit makes up for that.
One could come up with a hypothetical of an open source project that is important enough to require any help it can get, and also somehow obscure enough that only a handful of developers are working on it. Nonetheless, I don't really think most open source projects (or even for-profit projects) fall into that category. At the point where work becomes so important that you need to compromise other parts of your character in order to finish it there are probably bigger things to worry about.
> If someone submitted a PR to my project who held openly racist positions, I would deny the PR. No amount of genius or technical merit makes up for that.
In contrast, I, and many other people, would evaluate it on its technical merits and merge it if it was good. It's just code; it inherits no sin from its writer.
But you discriminate against code--not even a person--based on your personal dislike of its writer. Isn't that bigoted?
Not at all - I don't read Orson Scott Card anymore, because he's a bigot. That is a decision that doesn't touch upon whether or not his books are any good. When it comes to code, there's no piece of code or software product that can't be replaced by someone who behaves morally.
Ultimately, you can't, and shouldn't decouple someone's work from the person themselves. We ought to feel ashamed when we support someone who's beliefs and actions are reprehensible.
> Ultimately, you can't, and shouldn't decouple someone's work from the person themselves.
This is a bizarre and grossly impractical idea. Do you interrogate everyone who sells you anything? Who prepares and serves your food at a restaurant? Who delivers your packages? If you don't, you are being a hypocrite. And if we all did that, society and economy would grind to a halt. You are truly an extremist and a totalitarian.
> We ought to feel ashamed when we support someone who's beliefs and actions are reprehensible.
By that logic, I would feel ashamed to support you. Nevertheless, I would accept your code if it were well-written, because I am tolerant of views differing from my own.
Of course not, because that's grossly impractical. There are easy ways of dealing with that - You can first work with the assumption that most people are fundamentally good human beings who don't carry hatred or bigotry around in their heart. This is not too much of a stretch. Additionally, you can try and have conversations with those who are wrong in their beliefs. This is not always successful, but it's a reasonable thing to do.
The thing is, to a large degree society and economy do already do this. If you're outed as a sexist, or a racist, you lose your job. We mostly operate under the assumption that people are not those things. We're just currently in the phase where we're defining additional boundaries to what is and is not acceptable in the workplace.
After all, everyone who starts a development job nowadays does several things that are akin to what you're describing: You voluntarily confirm that you will not harass or discriminate, and when you break those rules you get kicked out.
What is your basis for "rights"? The idea that there is a right to having a gay marriage recognized as a marriage by the state is very novel. How did that novel determination happen exactly? It can't be the will of the people because then rights are not recognized so much as commanded or agreed upon (in which case, it's possible that the will of the people can change and poof go your supposed rights).
P.S. My impression is that you believe that opposition to gay marriage is bigoted, that it's not possible to have intelligent and powerful arguments against the idea.
> "Yikes my dude - a trip through your comment history shows me you're not going to be an enjoyable debate partner."
Please don't do this. If you think having a discussion with a particular individual is going to be problematic, choose not to have it, or engage as constructively without calling them out like this. You're already involved in a contentious discussion. If your goal is to actually move the needle in some meaningful way, doing this is counterproductive. Regardless of how wrong you may feel someone else is, you have an obligation to raise the bar yourself, even more so when discussing topics such as these.
> My belief is that opposition to gay marriage is indicative of an objection to the idea of gay people themselves, since nobody who has any issues with gay people being gay has issues with gay marriage. It's just a thin veneer of respectability bigots put on in order to appear more civil.
So what would you say to the gay people who oppose government recognition of gay marriage? Are they bigoted against themselves?
In the case of Mozilla's CEO, did he push his views at work or do someone go through campaign donation records, find his name, and out him? Many people do have a problem with keeping their politics to themselves at work but we also have a McCarthy type of social climate right now where people's views outside of work are injected into their workplace not by them but by those intolerant of that particular political view in an effort to harm them professionally and economically.
Mere opinions do not cause harm. The idea that mere ideas can be literally harmful --- that speech is violence --- is at the root of much of the social acrimony of the past few years. Long experience shows that attempting to police thought and speech generally backfires, and dressing up the idea of censorship with avoiding "harm" doesn't obviate these lessons. Every censor everywhere has done the job in the name of the good: that doesn't make the action beneficial.
Sure - but this has long surpassed 'ideas and opinions'. Oppression of gay people, minorities, and other marginalized groups is not founded in 'opinion' - it's a fact and representation of life. Gay people are currently in a situation where someone is trying to actively oppress them. When you donate to anti-gay causes, you're directly enabling harm.
This doesn't have anything to do with censorship - it has to do with letting people know that taking an active participatory position in oppression is not acceptable.
> This doesn't have anything to do with censorship - it has to do with letting people know that taking an active participatory position in oppression is not acceptable.
Censoring and oppressing is literally what you are advocating. You have become the monster you hate.
There is no room for hate speech and bigotry in tech. They cause harm now, and promote harm in the future. You're using censorship as an attempt to wring a personal grievance on the behalf of people who would hide behind their hate speech as ideological differences and not what it really is: the verbal expression of actions they're already taking.
Bigots, sexists, racists, and hate groups of all stripes use free speech and the idea of censorship as a way to distract from the fact that they're putting into action what they pretend to only debate.
> Bigots, sexists, racists, and hate groups of all stripes use free speech and the idea of censorship as a way to distract from the fact that they're putting into action what they pretend to only debate.
This action/position thing is really tired by now. It was all the rage when Eich was being lynched. I was there, I remember. It wasn't logical then, and it isn't logical now. You would deny your political opponents the ability to effectively participate in the political process. That's undemocratic.
> There is no room for hate speech and bigotry in tech
By that logic, there's no room for you in tech. You should really do some serious reflection.
That's the thing though, you're calling someone being forced out because they hold a bigoted position 'lynching'. You're equivocating what has historically been an act of racially provoked murder with the removal of a bigot - there's no justice to be found there.
Political opponents ought to (and are, in most cases) barred from effectively participating in the political process when they hold oppressive and bigoted view points.
> This inability to separate emotions and passions from cooperating on a shared focus with others, of differing emotions and passions, but equal interest in the shared focus (community) is deeply damaging.
However, I see people's personalities informing how they behave in their occupation all day, every day. The notion you can subconsciously remove all of your biases before undertaking a project is, surely, inherently flawed?
We also deal with associations - the body of your work will be judged based on its context. Its context comes from who you are, what you believe, and your values (both work and personal based). Of course an artists' work will be looked at differently if they're a UFO believer or not. Of course people will question whether someone championing an inclusive organisation can really not support gay marriage. Of course people will look at the works of Roman Polanski through a different lens because of allegations. It's not enforced "political correctness" it's default behaviour of humans to make these links, correct or not.
Personally, I'm tired of the "leave politics to your political circles" response - politics has an impact on your worldview and thus influences your work.
I'm not claiming everyone should hold the same views, but the expectation that people with diametrically opposed outlooks on the world should "just get along" for the sake of a project seems absurd to me. It's why most companies have values, and is pretty much the only non-BS use of "company culture".
>...but the expectation that people with diametrically opposed outlooks on the world should "just get along" for the sake of a project seems absurd to me. It's why most companies have values, and is pretty much the only non-BS use of "company culture".
Replace 'outlooks' with 'skin color' and you can see why some people think that people should, in fact, "just get along".
My point wasn't that they shouldn't work together, but that just expecting that person, in your example, a closet racist, would lay that at the door when working with someone of another skin colour on a project seems fantastical.
There will always be friction between people based on their views - expecting everyone in a project to only be giving one part of themselves (only the bit relevant to the project) is ridiculous. I guess a roundabout way of saying you need to take people as the wholes that they are, not just cherry pick the parts you like and expect the rest to have no impact.
It goes without saying that this is a false equivalency, and yet here I am.
There is no way someone's skin color, in isolation, can impact me. If I know someone's views though, that means that they must have already taken some action that expressed those views.
>There is no way someone's skin color, in isolation, can impact me.
That is empirically false, and one's skin color is never in isolation so its irrelevant. Everyone is subject to unconscious implicit bias (not just racial). http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40124781
I'm well aware of implicit bias, and making a totally orthogonal statement.
I'm specifically talking about how another person's skin color would affect me, not how I might change my behavior of them based on their skin color. Their skin color does not affect me. Their skin color might affect how I treat them, and my skin color might affect how they treat me, but their skin color does not affect me.
"I'm specifically talking about how another person's view would affect me, not how I might change my behavior of them based on their view. Their view does not affect me. Their view might affect how I treat them, and my view might affect how they treat me, but their view does not affect me."
For me to know your view, you must have expressed it in some manner. That implies an action on your part. For me to know your gender or race, you simply need to exist, and must actively work to hide either.
Expressing their view took action, and their actions can affect me.
If you're convicted of pedophilia (or rape) in a country, you should not be allowed to be alone with kids (or women) in another (like Polanski in the western world, but other examples exist). Should you?
But if you think that "passive" political action (i.e just being present at a rally, not being a speaker) outside a community should not have consequences inside the community, i think i agree with you (for now, i don't have put much thought into it, my opinion is not definitive).
The first part is a separate issue, that of forgiveness and redemption, and if they should be allowed in a society. The second part is about if judgements about smaller issues should spread beyond their original contexts.
I think for most people, the lines are determined by the magnitude of the crime, but where those lines lie is a personal and communal preference. At what point is an injustice so great that it cannot be overlooked even in different contexts? And at what point is it so great that it cannot ever be redeemed in thr future?
>If you're convicted of pedophilia (or rape) in a country, you should not be allowed to be alone with kids (or women) in another (like Polanski in the western world, but other examples exist). Should you?
No, but what does pedophila or rape have to do with software? You don't let convicted child molesters hang out with kids for obvious causal reasons but no such relationship exists with software.
You're mistaking a claim that a group of people based on their ethno-religious background is either worthless or to be blamed for multiple world issues (which historically led to killing them) with an opinion we can be respectful about.
I wouldn't expect you to be respectful of their opinion should it ever turn up in the course of your dealings with them as part of engaging in the community. But if it doesn't come up, you have no cause to be exclusive to such a person.
The pilot's opinions are a perfectly good example, must communities shun that airline as religiously impure if an individual pilot disagrees in any way with current authoritarian enforced doctrine?
Not really "never". I get where you're coming from, but sometimes, the behaviour outside the community does have consequences for the community; at least in those circumstances, it is appropriate - imperative, even - for the community to react and weigh in on the consequences. And you can easily imagine other cases, too (e.g. where behaviour outside community raises reasonable suspicions about behaviour inside the community - there should at least be the consequence of "increased oversight")
Let me give an example: Justine Sacco is one famous case of a person that was fired from InterActive Corp. for a completely-not-work-related tweet.
Setting aside the question of "should Internet have reacted like it did" - the reality is that her employer had little choice, given the circumstances. Yes, it was "outside-the-community behaviour", but the business impact was immediate & considerable, I argue that for the employer there was only one reasonable/rational way to handle the crisis.
[edit] Or to take a somewhat extreme hypothetical example - I presume that if you found out that, for whatever reason, a prominent Mozilla exec was secretly funding anti-Net-Neutrality lobby (i.e "out of the community behaviour"), you would expect Mozilla to talk about it and "handle the issue", not just say that "sorry, his own money, his own personal time, he can do whatever he wants to".
I'll bite. Let's say I'm in charge of a FOSS project to which you and I are both contributing to. If I find out you are posting white nationalist propaganda on Twitter, I'll kick you out of the project, simply because I don't like white nationalists and don't want the project to appear welcoming to them.
What if you find out that the other other person supports strong enforcement of existing immigration laws? What if supporters of that policy are being labeled as a "white nationalists" by others? Is that really evidence of "white nationalism"? What if that person simultaneously supports significant changes to the immigration laws that would result in more legal immigration?
In those cases, I would still ask myself the same questions. Namely, am I fine with being associated with a person with these views? and am I fine with them being associated to my project?
If the answer is no, I would kick them out just the same and that's ok.
I guess kicking out one of the top contributors would hurt your FOSS project more than the indirect connection to white nationalists. And if it helps against white nationalists, I think that's debatable.
This is what is simple: people who have demonstrated a willingness to act in a deceitful or otherwise destructive way cannot be trusted, at least until they have demonstrated rehabilitation. Community does not complicate this simple fact.
This is precrime. And how do you rehabilitate them without giving them the opportunity to participate in the community? Deal with problems when they occur.
> This is precrime. ... Deal with problems when they occur.
Here's an example situation: you know that a person trying to join a project related to managing money has a history of defrauding employers, starting mlm/Ponzi schemes, scamming people, selling personal information. Do you let them get involved with the project and wait until any problem occurs, because all the problems so far were caused outside of this community?
Exactly - a lack of trustworthiness can be demonstrated long before any crime has been committed.
> And how do you rehabilitate them without giving them the opportunity to participate in the community?
Your use of 'community' in this argument precludes there being an inside and outside, so it is not relevant to the question posed in the article's title. Furthermore, there is an answer - rehabilitation starts in environments where the risk is limited.
And when public opinion changes so that your political opinions are out of fashion, that same "precrime" argument will be used to lock you out of society.
Authoritarian liberals seem to forget that what goes around, comes around.
My mistake - I took 'precrime' to mean simply an act that does not or has not yet amounted to a criminal act, but I see it is a term of art for punishing people on the basis of what they might do. There is nothing very wrong, IMHO, in choosing who you put your trust in and with who you associate on the basis of what they have already done. The first three words of the article are "free software communities...": its not about society as a whole, or any situation where exclusion could reasonably be considered punishment.
I don't think this holds up. If you take any crime organization they are almost built on substantially differen behaviors vs group members over non-group members.
That is so, but I would not trust a member of a crime organization to necessarily follow that code in a circumstance where they thought they could get away with it.
This is rich coming from someone who has been banned from as many communities as you have. I've seen at least 3 cases of you joining a community and then getting banned for poor behavior and would think no less of any community choosing to prevent you from joining in the first place.
It's very easy to not read the article, isn't it? Then drop in a sweeping generalisation that says it's completely fine to have a murderer write your filesystems.
Why do you care if a murderer wrote your filesystems?
I care about the security and correctness of the code. I only care about the author who wrote it if they are someone known for low-quality, insecure, or malicious code.
If Linus Torvalds is convicted of genocide and child abuse tomorrow I'm going to continue using Linux as usual.
That's fine for you.
But other people can have objections to it as is their right to.
If you're part of a group and a chunk of them decide to leave, there's no point saying "why do you care about X? It doesn't affect the group."
It's their right to leave.
The other side is that who you associate with defines that group. So if it was a murderer that wrote a file system, then the software project gets defined by that.
It becomes hard to attract contributors when the project gets defined by the actions of one of its participants. Project leaders then have to make a decision since inaction is also a decision.
"It becomes hard to attract contributors when the project gets defined by the actions of one of its participants."
I'm unaware of anyone ever making a decision about contributing to a software project based on secret police level surveillance of current team members political or religious opinions. Even classified DoD stuff I've been involved in isn't that creepy.
Its important to focus discussion on extremes such as murders when the actual goal is to make sure Republicans are unemployable.
You're changing the contents of the article though; it's about "communities", not software products. It's much easier to separate code from persons; strip off the committer name / email and you're left with code which rarely contains anything behavioural besides maybe inappropriate jokes / puns which are usually easily fixed. Not so with communities, which are much more about people and interactions.
I read the article, thank you. It is completely fine to have a murderer write your filesystems. Accepting patches from someone who writes good code and treats everyone involved with respect is the right approach.
Devil's advocate on this - what if the general population of your customers don't want to support a company that pays the salary of a murderer? Then it affects your bottom line. Would you still be ok with it?
Fraud is very different from murder, and I understand why someone would be worried about accepting contributions from a known fraudster.
I would not give their contributions extra attention (you should be suspect of all changes, regardless of the author) and I would not ban them from contributing unless they became disruptive or subversive to the project.
They served their time; you don't need to punish them further. They are probably even less likely to commit fraud when their employer is aware of a previous fraud conviction.
The worst fraudsters don't come with a "convicted of fraud" warning—they have evaded being caught and will seem just like any other contributor.
> They served their time; you don't need to punish them further.
It is not about punishing them, it is about reducing the risk of others. Having served time is, at best, no indication of whether a person will revert to their former behavior.
> The worst fraudsters don't come with a "convicted of fraud" warning—they have evaded being caught and will seem just like any other contributor.
This is no reason for not using what information you do have.
Note: I see that you have edited your original post to address these points, but I think they still stand, as expanded on in the continuing discussion below. Your statement "they are probably even less likely to commit fraud when their employer is aware of a previous fraud" seems to be in agreement with what I have been saying.
It's a reason to be equally suspicious of all code changes regardless of the publicly known reputation of a contributor, as it always comes down to the code itself.
You are still arguing against using the available evidence. You never have the time and resources to fully validate anything of use, so you have to use your judgement as to how best to go about it. If you learn that a person responsible for some aspect of security has been found guilty of defrauding his church's charity drive, it would be prudent to take a second look at his code.
Absolutely. Then again, code review is never perfect and it is easy to miss hard to see cosequence of something subtle. Especially if I tentionally hidden. So, trust matters. If you have track record of doing such things, then accepting your pull request comes with higher risk.
Past transgressions now have an impact today often way beyond the statues of limitation. In most of these discussions the reason these statues exist are ignored. Discussions in one place affect another place. Behavior that is questionable in a classroom becomes national news. Postings in a closed online forum of sexual nature affects standing in an online collaboration community working on software.
When boundaries are torn down cultures clash. Some of it may be healthy. But without boundaries would there be culture?