It is, for example, perfectly possible for pro-life and pro-choice advocates to collaborate on a software project. They just have to leave their opinions about abortion at the door, and this should not preclude them from freely sharing those opinions on social media without fear of disciplinary reprisal
I wonder if this is true. Richard Stallman said, regarding an abortion joke in glibc:
GNU is not a purely technical project, so the fact that this is not strictly and grimly technical is not a reason to remove this.
I asked this:
must one have the same political views as Stallman to be part of the GNU project? What if we simply believe in the four software freedoms, is that not enough? Should members who are against abortion be excluded?
and he replied to every single post in the thread except mine, so I don’t know what the answer is.
It happens all the time in the general workplace. The South has one of the most heated histories you’ll find in things like race and gender issues. We mostly get along anywhere from tolerance to being friends. My government class was mostly split 50/50 on abortion debate with most staying friends after within days. Reading from people pushing CoC’s for political reasons, you’d think that was impossible. Yet, we do it every day in any places where peoples’ differences are tolerated. So, they’re wrong about that part. That simple.
The author’s concerns about discrimination are my concerns given I’ve watched almost every group in a dominant position down here reward members of their own group and discriminate against others. Non-whites or non-males were no exception. Their acts of racism and sexism just don’t make the news or waves on social media. Those that didn’t do this were rare, truly-inclusive folks that went out of their way to care about and understand people that were different. I love those people even if their beliefs or political moves piss me off at times. Many get along with or love me, too. I’ve learned a lot from them.
The tech industry, esp in Silicon Valley, is just strange to me vs what I normally encounter in general workplace. They seem to think only young, white males are capable of anything while preaching meritocracy and saying/doing anything without consequences. Then, the other haters, err activists, opposing them seem to think all white males are overprivileged people to minimize while giving opportunities and social dominance to every other group. Well, many of them even bring in just select groups (esp white women) ignoring other groups. Plus, carefully controlling speech and action in all forums with assumption every human is too weak to co-exist with those that disagree. With these factions, it’s as if there’s nothing else possible aside from these extremes despite massive number of counterexamples mostly outside of tech but also some in it. That includes the millions of minority members that seem to have a different opinion about minority or diversity issues.
Note: This is a tech site. I’m talking general trends. If you’re an exception, you know who you are. :)
So, I keep talking about it to try to shake people out of this binary, extremist thinking on opposite ends. For now, I don’t know what else to do given the beliefs are deeply social and emotional. That traditional and social media keeps putting them in bubbles seeing only people they’ll like the most or piss them off the most isn’t helping. One of best things I ever learned to do is keep people who oppose or aggravate me on social media. I watch their reactions to every hot topic, reading what evidence they post. Very enlightening. Plus, keep bringing the counterpoints in nice-as-I-can way to folks on the other side targeted to their perspective and terms rather than mine. Think on theirs carefully. I don’t what else to do about the herd or extremist mentalities many are about.
Btw rain1, I don’t know if you were back in time for the last thread on this but it was more interesting than most political ones. I experienced a jaw-dropping surprise or two there.
One of best things I ever learned to do is keep people who oppose or aggravate me on social media.
Be careful with this. Like cultists, an entire generation of pundits have developed that take advantage of psychological weaknesses we all possess. They use the “you have to listen to all sides!” argument to claim a right to your cognition, when doing so opens yourself to manipulation via framing or even simple repetition (and if these have emotional impact, like being aggravating, they’re more effective). Listening to many sides is in general very beneficial, so you have to constantly identify if the person is arguing in bad faith or not. This can be hard to do, and I won’t offer any strategies here because they tend to be extremely personal and subjective.
Critical thinking doesn’t make you immune to this. At the risk of using an engineering analogy, a logically secure input parser is still susceptible to denial of service. So keep your eyes open and try to get input from a variety of sources, but make sure you understand their biases and whether they’re arguing in bad faith or not.
“They use the “you have to listen to all sides!” argument to claim a right to your cognition, when doing so opens yourself to manipulation via framing or even simple repetition (and if these have emotional impact, like being aggravating, they’re more effective). “
This is a weak argument. You can always be tricked by any side, especially your own since you trust them more. The result is you still have to listen to different people. Further, you should look at evidence they present more than what you speculate about their biases, bad faith, etc. If evidence looks wrong or especially badly-intentioned, then you might start ignoring that person or group a bit more. You might still glance at their info in case something useful comes out. Totally ignore them when noise ratio is too high. That way, we get to your last sentence without censoring those that disagree with us based on bad assumptions about their motives or whatever. That’s often just ad hominem for political gain disguised as something reasonable.
Looking at the political stuff, the people on the left are often citing sources that are full of shit. The people on the right do that as well. I know each set of mainstream sources are intentionally biased trying to tell their audience what they want to hear to keep their advertising revenue up. For others, it might be book sales, numbers on social media, status/image, and so on. Then, there’s sources that are pretty honest with just human biases. They can get more dishonest if they get emotionally charged, though.
The irony of your warning is that you probably use some of those sources that are definitely operating in bad faith to support your political beliefs. I do, too, but that fits the model I just described of assuming everyone has error or agendas sifting the wheat from the chaff. For instance, I’ve read a Huffington Post article followed by a Ben Shapiro video on a topic since I knew both would have numbers useful to me. Then, I had to check every claim since both are full of shit. The good news is the bullshit itself is often repetitive since they aim for talking points that will spread virally. As in, the claims you have to fact check go down over time until getting good info out of semi-reliable sources is fairly efficient or not as bad at least.
For helping to filter out those acting in bad faith I found it helpful to sometimes ask yourself “what if they are right” and then research on the topic. Pulling up surveys, studies, essays, etc.
That does make you able to recognize these arguments more easily while also increasing your literacy and giving you ammunition.
Generally I think it’s most beneficial if people would ask themselves that more, esp. if they are in one of the political extremes. To try to imagine what the other side thinks and feels. Empathy and understanding are something the world lacks these days.
(Also be careful to not throw political centrists under the bus by simply throwing out “you have to listen to all sides”, we’re usually quite nice people even if we’re not always on your side!)
Of course, I also feel that the most important issue is that we learn to work together more. Plenty of people disagree politically on a number of issues and work together. That can be whether or not Fiber Internet should be subsidized or not up to much more controversial statements. I don’t think such disagreements are a reason not to work together. If they bring that sentiment to work and poison the team effort by splitting the team over it, then of course, stop working with them.
be careful to not throw political centrists under the bus by simply throwing out “you have to listen to all sides”
I’m saying listen to most sides, not all sides. Like the record in GEB that destroys the record player itself, our sense of fairness and aversion to hypocrisy can be exploited and destroyed with the right arguments. This happens in the real world, more often over time, and we should recognize it before we’re stuck in endless mental gymnastics trying to break out of political nihilism.
I am very positive this is true. Granted, the own Weltanschauung truly reflects in one’s coding style in most cases, however, both pro-life and pro-choice advocates can have e.g. a profound desire for simplicity in their designs regardless of their opinions.
Things like this, in my opinion, are more rooted in self-discipline and habit, which is more or less not correlated with one’s opinion.
The use of discrimination to meet quotas at the expense of merit is exactly the opposite of what made diversity initiatives laudable in the first place.
This is exactly the type of novel, interesting, and may I add brave writing that I have come to expect from Quillette.
I wonder if this is true. Richard Stallman said, regarding an abortion joke in glibc:
I asked this:
and he replied to every single post in the thread except mine, so I don’t know what the answer is.
It happens all the time in the general workplace. The South has one of the most heated histories you’ll find in things like race and gender issues. We mostly get along anywhere from tolerance to being friends. My government class was mostly split 50/50 on abortion debate with most staying friends after within days. Reading from people pushing CoC’s for political reasons, you’d think that was impossible. Yet, we do it every day in any places where peoples’ differences are tolerated. So, they’re wrong about that part. That simple.
The author’s concerns about discrimination are my concerns given I’ve watched almost every group in a dominant position down here reward members of their own group and discriminate against others. Non-whites or non-males were no exception. Their acts of racism and sexism just don’t make the news or waves on social media. Those that didn’t do this were rare, truly-inclusive folks that went out of their way to care about and understand people that were different. I love those people even if their beliefs or political moves piss me off at times. Many get along with or love me, too. I’ve learned a lot from them.
The tech industry, esp in Silicon Valley, is just strange to me vs what I normally encounter in general workplace. They seem to think only young, white males are capable of anything while preaching meritocracy and saying/doing anything without consequences. Then, the other haters, err activists, opposing them seem to think all white males are overprivileged people to minimize while giving opportunities and social dominance to every other group. Well, many of them even bring in just select groups (esp white women) ignoring other groups. Plus, carefully controlling speech and action in all forums with assumption every human is too weak to co-exist with those that disagree. With these factions, it’s as if there’s nothing else possible aside from these extremes despite massive number of counterexamples mostly outside of tech but also some in it. That includes the millions of minority members that seem to have a different opinion about minority or diversity issues.
Note: This is a tech site. I’m talking general trends. If you’re an exception, you know who you are. :)
So, I keep talking about it to try to shake people out of this binary, extremist thinking on opposite ends. For now, I don’t know what else to do given the beliefs are deeply social and emotional. That traditional and social media keeps putting them in bubbles seeing only people they’ll like the most or piss them off the most isn’t helping. One of best things I ever learned to do is keep people who oppose or aggravate me on social media. I watch their reactions to every hot topic, reading what evidence they post. Very enlightening. Plus, keep bringing the counterpoints in nice-as-I-can way to folks on the other side targeted to their perspective and terms rather than mine. Think on theirs carefully. I don’t what else to do about the herd or extremist mentalities many are about.
Btw rain1, I don’t know if you were back in time for the last thread on this but it was more interesting than most political ones. I experienced a jaw-dropping surprise or two there.
Be careful with this. Like cultists, an entire generation of pundits have developed that take advantage of psychological weaknesses we all possess. They use the “you have to listen to all sides!” argument to claim a right to your cognition, when doing so opens yourself to manipulation via framing or even simple repetition (and if these have emotional impact, like being aggravating, they’re more effective). Listening to many sides is in general very beneficial, so you have to constantly identify if the person is arguing in bad faith or not. This can be hard to do, and I won’t offer any strategies here because they tend to be extremely personal and subjective.
Critical thinking doesn’t make you immune to this. At the risk of using an engineering analogy, a logically secure input parser is still susceptible to denial of service. So keep your eyes open and try to get input from a variety of sources, but make sure you understand their biases and whether they’re arguing in bad faith or not.
“They use the “you have to listen to all sides!” argument to claim a right to your cognition, when doing so opens yourself to manipulation via framing or even simple repetition (and if these have emotional impact, like being aggravating, they’re more effective). “
This is a weak argument. You can always be tricked by any side, especially your own since you trust them more. The result is you still have to listen to different people. Further, you should look at evidence they present more than what you speculate about their biases, bad faith, etc. If evidence looks wrong or especially badly-intentioned, then you might start ignoring that person or group a bit more. You might still glance at their info in case something useful comes out. Totally ignore them when noise ratio is too high. That way, we get to your last sentence without censoring those that disagree with us based on bad assumptions about their motives or whatever. That’s often just ad hominem for political gain disguised as something reasonable.
Looking at the political stuff, the people on the left are often citing sources that are full of shit. The people on the right do that as well. I know each set of mainstream sources are intentionally biased trying to tell their audience what they want to hear to keep their advertising revenue up. For others, it might be book sales, numbers on social media, status/image, and so on. Then, there’s sources that are pretty honest with just human biases. They can get more dishonest if they get emotionally charged, though.
The irony of your warning is that you probably use some of those sources that are definitely operating in bad faith to support your political beliefs. I do, too, but that fits the model I just described of assuming everyone has error or agendas sifting the wheat from the chaff. For instance, I’ve read a Huffington Post article followed by a Ben Shapiro video on a topic since I knew both would have numbers useful to me. Then, I had to check every claim since both are full of shit. The good news is the bullshit itself is often repetitive since they aim for talking points that will spread virally. As in, the claims you have to fact check go down over time until getting good info out of semi-reliable sources is fairly efficient or not as bad at least.
For helping to filter out those acting in bad faith I found it helpful to sometimes ask yourself “what if they are right” and then research on the topic. Pulling up surveys, studies, essays, etc.
That does make you able to recognize these arguments more easily while also increasing your literacy and giving you ammunition.
Generally I think it’s most beneficial if people would ask themselves that more, esp. if they are in one of the political extremes. To try to imagine what the other side thinks and feels. Empathy and understanding are something the world lacks these days.
(Also be careful to not throw political centrists under the bus by simply throwing out “you have to listen to all sides”, we’re usually quite nice people even if we’re not always on your side!)
Of course, I also feel that the most important issue is that we learn to work together more. Plenty of people disagree politically on a number of issues and work together. That can be whether or not Fiber Internet should be subsidized or not up to much more controversial statements. I don’t think such disagreements are a reason not to work together. If they bring that sentiment to work and poison the team effort by splitting the team over it, then of course, stop working with them.
I’m saying listen to most sides, not all sides. Like the record in GEB that destroys the record player itself, our sense of fairness and aversion to hypocrisy can be exploited and destroyed with the right arguments. This happens in the real world, more often over time, and we should recognize it before we’re stuck in endless mental gymnastics trying to break out of political nihilism.
IIRC he was strongly of the opinion that the joke was not about abortion, but about censorship.
I am very positive this is true. Granted, the own Weltanschauung truly reflects in one’s coding style in most cases, however, both pro-life and pro-choice advocates can have e.g. a profound desire for simplicity in their designs regardless of their opinions.
Things like this, in my opinion, are more rooted in self-discipline and habit, which is more or less not correlated with one’s opinion.
The requirement that even racially underrepresented people only count if they’re American does strike even me as weird.
This is exactly the type of novel, interesting, and may I add brave writing that I have come to expect from Quillette.