SJW trouble at Linux

[Moonbeam]

Because being a dick in the abstract is bad. Its much easier for me to have the conversation at that level.

Are you going to have a rational discussion again, or, will you do what you did before?

Having the discussion in the abstract plays to bigotry. Once you call something bad and allow that assumption to become the unconscious bedrock of any analysis on the topic so abstracted you immediately feel completely justified in your position. X is bad so my arguments against it are self-justifying. In fact, as I see the argument against meritocracy, it isn't that sill isn't important, that skill isn't bad, but that the consequences of an overemphasis on skill lead to other bad things, exclusion of other people, for example, who also can contribute.

For this reason we need a very precise definition of what bad we are actually arguing against. We want to have a logical argument, not one driven by your unconscious associations of something with your attitude toward evil.

To your question, I am happy to continue the rational discussion I began regardless if your inability to see it has and will be so. Remember, If there is something I am trying to tell you that you do not want to hear, you will find a way to be deaf to it by whatever means you find convenient to tell yourself.

Furthermore, in thinking about how you argue in these threads and why you stir up so much resentment, I believe the mistake you are making is that, having a point of view that you believe in, you challenge what other people say to lead later in follow up posts in the right direction. I call that technique trying to herd cats or chickens. They never go in the expected direction. The remedy to this, I would suggest, is to always lead by stating what you believe. I think you confuse being a director with being an instructor.

I, myself, am deeply interested in this Linux thingi because I see the same tensions everywhere in the left right divide. I think, as I said above, it's related to empathy and the notion of whose ox gets gored. Does one care about victims or does he feel like one.

 

[Moonbeam]

I experiened this last year. New CIO/VP of Development was hired. she was headhunted from a very large company here in Denver. Long story short she was a dick. her direct reports hated her with a passion. she was a tyrant in meetings and publicly embarrassed people. These were very good people and a few held the patents to components our company manufactured. she got after me once in a meeting and I almost lost my professional cool. anyway long story short she lasted 6 months. people had enough, complaints flowed in from all departments and from all levels. one Friday morning HR and her boss intercepted her as she entered the building took her in a conference room and gave her walking papers and walked her out. god damn that was a good day. you felt the black cloud immediately lift when she left the building for the last time.

That's how I feel about Trump minus the backup of universal agreement among the other employees. My asshole boss has a lot of support from people full of a similar need to see other people get hurt.

 

[realibrad]

Having the discussion in the abstract plays to bigotry. Once you call something bad and allow that assumption to become the unconscious bedrock of any analysis on the topic so abstracted you immediately feel completely justified in your position. X is bad so my arguments against it are self-justifying. In fact, as I see the argument against meritocracy, it isn't that sill isn't important, that skill isn't bad, but that the consequences of an overemphasis on skill lead to other bad things, exclusion of other people, for example, who also can contribute.

No it does not. Talking in the abstract allows us to understand things from different perspectives. I have a limited working memory so trying to juggle all of the details becomes harder and harder as more information is discussed. Going up a level allows me to stay on topic and not be oversaturated by details.

I really don't want to get off topic here though.

Skill is not the argument here, output is. As flawed as the methods are, the goal should be judging the code and nothing else. The quality of the person should not matter. That is how we deal with bigotry. You judge what people do, and not what you think they are. To do otherwise is what causes the negative outcomes, not arguments in the abstract.

For this reason we need a very precise definition of what bad we are actually arguing against. We want to have a logical argument, not one driven by your unconscious associations of something with your attitude toward evil.

Not the topic.

People are flawed and we should do our best to understand it, and try to work around it. The goal should be to judge the code, and not the people.

Furthermore, in thinking about how you argue in these threads and why you stir up so much resentment, I believe the mistake you are making is that, having a point of view that you believe in, you challenge what other people say to lead later in follow up posts in the right direction. I call that technique trying to herd cats or chickens. They never go in the expected direction. The remedy to this, I would suggest, is to always lead by stating what you believe. I think you confuse being a director with being an instructor.

What makes you think I am trying to herd anyone? My goal is to have my questions answered. The reason I usually do not start with my opinion is because it influences people. The goal is to remove as much bias as I can, and so I ask questions to see how people answer and what their answer is. Why should my stance matter?

I, myself, am deeply interested in this Linux thingi because I see the same tensions everywhere in the left right divide. I think, as I said above, it's related to empathy and the notion of whose ox gets gored. Does one care about victims or does he feel like one.

Why can it not be both? I care about suffering, and I think code should be judged independently of people. I think people's suffering should be remedied in other ways.

 

[Vic]

It’s entirely okay to fire someone for being a dick. People who act like assholes make everyone else’s work environment bad and that leads to lower employee morale, turnover, etc.

You don’t have a legal duty to be nice but they also don’t have a legal duty to employ you.

It just never ceases to amaze me how 'conservatives' champion at-will employment, but then freak out when employers decide to at-will them.

 

[realibrad]

It just never ceases to amaze me how 'conservatives' champion at-will employment, but then freak out when employers decide to at-will them.

Imagine what would happen if you fired them for being religion x.

 

[Moonbeam]

Imagine what would happen if you fired them for being religion x.

SJWs have managed to place some forms of discrimination as out of bounds in hiring and firing. This Linux thingi looks to be a movement to extend what kinds of discrimination are allowable in employment furthering social justice.

All bigots feel discriminated against when they are told they can't practice their discrimination willy-nilly.

 

[realibrad]

SJWs have managed to place some forms of discrimination as out of bounds in hiring and firing. This Linux thingi looks to be a movement to extend what kinds of discrimination are allowable in employment furthering social justice.

All bigots feel discriminated against when they are told they can't practice their discrimination willy-nilly.

What happens when those sjws start paving roads with good intentions. I believe it leads to a destination that we do not want.

 

[Moonbeam]

What happens when those sjws start paving roads with good intentions. I believe it leads to a destination that we do not want.

Are you referring say to the present day conservative SJW's attempts to impose authoritarian rule and roll back racial, gender, religious, and sexual orientation protections?

 

[realibrad]

Are you referring say to the present day conservative SJW's attempts to impose authoritarian rule and roll back racial, gender, religious, and sexual orientation protections?

At first I was going to say no, as those are things that the Right is doing, but, really the answer is still yes. That same group that fights against those things, also tries to prevent people from being hurt in any way. That makes any damage that they receive far worse.

Its like an immune system that, because its never been used is underdeveloped. When it eventually does encounter something, it either is unable to deal with it, or overreacts.

So, as I said... the idea that they are protecting people is ultimately making them unprepared to deal with things. They are not striving for balance, but rather to do away with all things they deem harmful. The outcome is harm.

 

[Moonbeam]

At first I was going to say no, as those are things that the Right is doing, but, really the answer is still yes. That same group that fights against those things, also tries to prevent people from being hurt in any way. That makes any damage that they receive far worse.

Its like an immune system that, because its never been used is underdeveloped. When it eventually does encounter something, it either is unable to deal with it, or overreacts.

So, as I said... the idea that they are protecting people is ultimately making them unprepared to deal with things. They are not striving for balance, but rather to do away with all things they deem harmful. The outcome is harm.

I once suggested to a Genentech PhD biochemist I had a casual conversation with who was in search of a cure for HIV in which he told me of an immune system in the body the function of which was unknown. He seemed quite surprised, coming from a nobody, when I offered the suggestion that it might be because whatever it was against to which it was purposed to defend, had, because of that very protection, simply had gone extinct. He told me that was a popular best guess theory. You should also know that I am a great subscriber to the notion we are in emotional prison because we fear feeling how worthless we feel, that we experience a catch 22 prison situation thereby. We fear feelings which we feel but are actually lies we would know are lies if we felt them. There is, on the other hand, little benefit I can see from constantly taking a poke in the eye. The answer for me is that you can feel anything you want but if you act out your pain by bring your pain to others you cross a line that opens you to retribution.

There is harm that can't be avoided and harm that is intended intentionally. The latter one has a right to resist with force if need be. The former wisdom will accept.

 

[realibrad]

I once suggested to a Genentech PhD biochemist I had a casual conversation with who was in search of a cure for HIV in which he told me of an immune system in the body the function of which was unknown. He seemed quite surprised, coming from a nobody, when I offered the suggestion that it might be because whatever it was against to which it was purposed to defend, had, because of that very protection, simply had gone extinct. He told me that was a popular best guess theory. You should also know that I am a great subscriber to the notion we are in emotional prison because we fear feeling how worthless we feel, that we experience a catch 22 prison situation thereby. We fear feelings which we feel but are actually lies we would know are lies if we felt them. There is, on the other hand, little benefit I can see from constantly taking a poke in the eye. The answer for me is that you can feel anything you want but if you act out your pain by bring your pain to others you cross a line that opens you to retribution.

There is harm that can't be avoided and harm that is intended intentionally. The latter one has a right to resist with force if need be. The former wisdom will accept.

No. Life is filled with suffering. You can avoid all suffering by death. You should not seek out pain, but, just because it's intentional does not make that pain worth while.

Also, it's quite telling that you gave advice to a biochemist.

 

[whm1974]

No. Life is filled with suffering. You can avoid all suffering by death. You should not seek out pain, but, just because it's intentional does not make that pain worth while.

Also, it's quite telling that you gave advice to a biochemist.

Yes it is also quite telling that he thinks that we all feel "worthless". Well I certainly don't.

 

[Moonbeam]

No. Life is filled with suffering. You can avoid all suffering by death. You should not seek out pain, but, just because it's intentional does not make that pain worth while.

Also, it's quite telling that you gave advice to a biochemist.

Hang on. I went realibrad on you. You said:

"Its like an immune system that, because its never been used is underdeveloped. When it eventually does encounter something, it either is unable to deal with it, or overreacts." I simply did what you do, introduced you to the fact that while the concept has general plausibility and we work with as a reasonable assumption, I am going to take a side trip and explain to you that in fact you can't always make that argument because in fact there is in fact a known immune system within us that while a part of our genetic code has never been used, has not degraded to any known degree and is still there ready to protect us, but from what we have no idea. I simply suggested to the biochemist that the answer as to that mystery might be that whatever pathogen it is there to protect us from has gone extinct. He seemed to be impressed because I am a nobody but a nobody who once upon a time might have been a biochemistry major at Berkeley who got an A in chemistry without opening a book before he decided to become a nobody. You can take that as a cautionary tale that just because people change the directions of their life doesn't mean their intellectual reasoning capacities disappear completely without use. The point, of course, is that while none of this story has to be true, the principle still applies. What you got wrong here is that I was giving the biochemist advise when I wasn't, I was only thinking out loud as to what might explain why the real function of that particular immunity has not been discovered, because what it is supposed to protect against is no longer present in the world.

So yes, life is filled with suffer real and imagined and you can avoid all suffering by death but your last sentence in that paragraph does not relate to what I said: You should not seek out suffering but you should seek out why you suffer when that suffering arises out of the acceptance of lies that lie in the unconscious. I believe this because I do not suffer this kind of pain, having died to all that was within me in the form of imaginary sacred cows. I am not normal. I had an insight that set me free. Now you can feel my muscles if you wish. You can't hear without your competitiveness coming front and center, right? Hehe. And what we suffer was never consciously intended because even the cruel who wish others to hurt do so without real knowledge of what motivates that hate.

I know what you do not, that you do not know what you feel, that you have sacred cows to protect yourself from feeling worthless. Now, how do you think I know and why would I be certain I am right? It could not be, you must be so so sure, because I can read you like a book and we are all the same.

 

[Moonbeam]

Yes it is also quite telling that he thinks that we all feel "worthless". Well I certainly don't.

Hehehehe, I remember a day long ago when I thought my suffering was so great I might seek professional help and the psychologist I went to see told me I was being defensive. I told him that I wasn't being defensive. There is one outstanding difference one can detect between wheat and flour. The wheat has not yet been ground to dust. Fear not. Did you but suffer you would not suffer.

 

[realibrad]

Hang on. I went realibrad on you. You said:

"Its like an immune system that, because its never been used is underdeveloped. When it eventually does encounter something, it either is unable to deal with it, or overreacts." I simply did what you do, introduced you to the fact that while the concept has general plausibility and we work with as a reasonable assumption, I am going to take a side trip and explain to you that in fact you can't always make that argument because in fact there is in fact a known immune system within us that while a part of our genetic code has never been used, has not degraded to any known degree and is still there ready to protect us, but from what we have no idea. I simply suggested to the biochemist that the answer as to that mystery might be that whatever pathogen it is there to protect us from has gone extinct. He seemed to be impressed because I am a nobody but a nobody who once upon a time might have been a biochemistry major at Berkeley who got an A in chemistry without opening a book before he decided to become a nobody. You can take that as a cautionary tale that just because people change the directions of their life doesn't mean their intellectual reasoning capacities disappear completely without use. The point, of course, is that while none of this story has to be true, the principle still applies. What you got wrong here is that I was giving the biochemist advise when I wasn't, I was only thinking out loud as to what might explain why the real function of that particular immunity has not been discovered, because what it is supposed to protect against is no longer present in the world.

So yes, life is filled with suffer real and imagined and you can avoid all suffering by death but your last sentence in that paragraph does not relate to what I said: You should not seek out suffering but you should seek out why you suffer when that suffering arises out of the acceptance of lies that lie in the unconscious. I believe this because I do not suffer this kind of pain, having died to all that was within me in the form of imaginary sacred cows. I am not normal. I had an insight that set me free. Now you can feel my muscles if you wish. You can't hear without your competitiveness coming front and center, right? Hehe. And what we suffer was never consciously intended because even the cruel who wish others to hurt do so without real knowledge of what motivates that hate.

I know what you do not, that you do not know what you feel, that you have sacred cows to protect yourself from feeling worthless. Now, how do you think I know and why would I be certain I am right? It could not be, you must be so so sure, because I can read you like a book and we are all the same.

Oh I see. You once got an A in chemistry.

 

[Moonbeam]

Oh I see. You once got an A in chemistry.

No at Berkeley, you know how hard it is to get in there, and a A without reading the text book. No need to, it was so easy. But I warned you, the story could be made up. You make so many unwarranted assumptions I just feel it isn’t fair to act pretentiously myself. I warned you that you would react competitively. I also invented a weapon system in forth grade years before it was actually thought up and created years later by the military industrial complex. So add that to the list.

 

[realibrad]

No at Berkeley, you know how hard it is to get in there, and a A without reading the text book. No need to, it was so easy. But I warned you, the story could be made up. You make so many unwarranted assumptions I just feel it isn’t fair to act pretentiously myself. I warned you that you would react competitively. I also invented a weapon system in forth grade years before it was actually thought up and created years later by the military industrial complex. So add that to the list.

It's not competitive. It's highlighting your arrogance. Also, again you made the mistake of thinking you understand when you don't. I'm starting to see why you so often ramble incoherently. When you try, you don't do well.

 

[whm1974]

Maybe I just have thick skin from being cussed at from I used to worked at for about decade and being cussed at for poor work performance is certainly the norm in many fields, but this doesn't excuse anyone from being an asshole.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

Another thread where super nerds choose the oddest fucking hill to die on.

This is nothing more than essentially saying that its possible to create an environment when high quality code is produced without acting like a dick. Linux doesn't need to be run like Uber was.

disclaimer: I was a coder for 15 years

Your Uber comment is spot on.

All this talk about "quality"...who defines that quality? Who defines what a "good" coder is? Who has defined the whole programmer culture?

Meritocracy....just another word for old boys club.

OP, get a clue. Brogrammer culture needs to die, fast.

 

[realibrad]

disclaimer: I was a coder for 15 years

Your Uber comment is spot on.

All this talk about "quality"...who defines that quality? Who defines what a "good" coder is? Who has defined the whole programmer culture?

Meritocracy....just another word for old boys club.

OP, get a clue. Brogrammer culture needs to die, fast.

So how do you judge code?

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

So how do you judge code?

Outcomes.

 

[Moonbeam]

It's not competitive. It's highlighting your arrogance. Also, again you made the mistake of thinking you understand when you don't. I'm starting to see why you so often ramble incoherently. When you try, you don't do well.

No, you don't get to define reality according to your opinions. You have to demonstrate what I don't understand when I think I do. That would be like me saying you are obviously projecting. Psychologically sophisticated people would pick up on that immediately, but I took the time to explain to you where you went off the rails. I made the effort full well knowing that because my words were directed at you, you would fail to understand them. Tell me, can you see that you are arrogant, that what you see in me is true of yourself? Surely you have put arrogance in the generalized category of 'bad" creating a barrier thereby to deny you that you are..... Highlighting my arrogance is you competing at core and you would see that had you any real understanding.

I don't have a problem with arrogance for two reasons. One is that I am worried about being arrogant and two I can chose to be in order to trigger your competitiveness. I can be arrogant intentionally in shout, because I'm not hung up about it like you are.

So where we left off, I believe, is that you are wrong in your attempt to simplify the discussion by using the generalized term bad and for reasons that I explained. Bigots assume that bad is evil, a totally rational point of view, but go from there with the claim that anything they falsely assume examples of evil via ignorance, propaganda they have absorbed, or notions obtained. say from some sacred text that self claims itself to be authoritative, automatically take on the assumption of truth because bad is a bad thing. You have stated that so called attacks on meritocracy such as we have read about with Linux are evil because meritocracy is good. But the real issue is all about whether meritocracy as practiced traditionally in the Linux coding community is good or evil. We first, before we conclude as you have, must critically examine the claims that it is in fact good and should be preserved. We have in this thread numerous people saying there is no objective validity to saying one code is better than another, but rather that those sorts of judgments depend on a wide range of factors and some of which are not being considered as valid based on personal tastes or how bid of a dick you are. So why not take your focus on my sweet little ass and lay out our opinion as your personal take on the matter afresh please.

 

[Vic]

Imagine what would happen if you fired them for being religion x.

Being a douchebag who won't work nicely with their co-workers affects the company's bottom line, being religion x doesn't.

 

[realibrad]

Outcomes.

Then you are against the people that pushed for the change as that is a merit system. They want code judged by the person. You will likely think that must be wrong as it's to stupid to be true. Yet, if you go to the founding document and follow the link that the new COC is based on it literally states that a merit system is inherently a problem because it further disadvantages those that are behind.

Take a look.

 

[realibrad]

Being a douchebag who won't work nicely with their co-workers affects the company's bottom line, being religion x doesn't.

Oh yes it can. There are some really stupid religions out there.

Point was that the people that cry about being victims because people don't like their asshole beliefs are same that try and force their beliefs on to others.