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Comment by LiterallyDoge | Hacker News Reader

Is it really this complicated to treat other people with respect?

When all the complex array of emotions you try to convey are filtered through a handful of letters, numbers, and symbols, it is very complicated.

On top of that add:

- instant communication promoting brisk communication

- multicultural participation, and different approaches to communication

- reward for snarky comments (karma points/likes/dislikes/retoots/retweets/etc.)

- age differences

- language barrier

- lack of netiquette training after the smartphone boom (second Eternal September)

- lack in education and proper grammar

- trolls

Excellent communication is never a trivial matter.

Why is it such a dog whistle?

What's mindblowing is the rage that seems to pour out of, mostly, non-contributors when this stuff comes up. There is a more fundamental insecurity or just a fundamental disrespect that some of these folks seem to have for others. I've heard claims that there have even been planted "social justice warriors" that have intentionally engaged in conflict to change projects. When you have guys like Eric Raymond saying that sort of thing, what do you expect?

It's become a "dog whistle" issue because there is a perception that some activists may use CoC-type documents to deny contributors' ability to freely engage in political speech in other, unrelated, contexts. The worry is that this in turn will lead to either witch hunts or chilling effects, which are viewed as at odds with modern Western political free speech culture.

Many people feel uncomfortable with this as a concept, regardless of whether they agree with the ideas in question. They point out that this effect may well reduce the contributor pool in much the same way that a particularly harsh technical culture (eg LKML) might do, i.e. it ends up substituting one disincentive to participate with another for no net gain.

On the other side, some people argue that the speech they are concerned about is not "political" and that it is right that it should be punished beyond simple disagreement.

At first blush, this might seem rather tangential to the issue at hand. But there are some high profile examples of this actually having happened - see [1], or the example of Brendan Eich at Mozilla.

[1] https://github.com/opal/opal/issues/941

Eich's "speech" (his donation to the Prop 8 campaign that would ban gay marriage in California) was telling all of his LGBT employees that he did not believe that they were entitled to the same basic human rights as he was. This is not a simple political disagreement; this is telling those people that he believes they are second class citizens. As a result, many of those employees, as well as other organizations that worked with Mozilla who highly valued inclusion did not feel they could effectively work in such an environment. They wished to exercise their freedom of speech by deciding to no longer associate with Mozilla. Eich chose to step down, recognizing that such actions would be very bad for Mozilla.

As I said, some people disagree that this type of speech is purely "political" - many others take the opposite side and would say that these viewpoints are legitimate political ones (even if they disagree with those viewpoints) which, when expressed in an entirely separate context, should not affect the workplace. I was trying to explain where people disagree.

Not that it's necessarily wrong that he left, but I think it is important to acknowledge that there were people at the time (and now) who felt that this was unfair and that it may have had an impact on certain people's likely participation in political speech, or put some people off contributing/working for Mozilla who otherwise wouldn't have been.

The dividing line between "workplace" and "personal" lives has been blurring for a long time which throws up many of these issues. Many people would like to undo some of that blurring - anti-discrimination laws in effect protect some of this but not all. This becomes even more problematic as the line between "volunteer community" and "workplace" is also increasingly being blurred in Open Source projects.

In the case of Eich, I would perhaps say it would be more accurate to say that he was hounded out - as the context was something coming to light that he'd done years earlier and not in a workplace context, when opinion polls showed the majority of the country agreed with him (and even President Obama agreed with him before Obama changed his mind).

Respect is earned not given. Treating others with common decency is expected in a professional environment, and that's a two way street where both parties need to have a common understanding of what decency is. Finding that commonality becomes harder the more "diverse" the community involved is. People's cultural, religious and political beliefs clash and have for thousands of years, and no we're not going to be the generation to solve those issues. There are fundamental differences in how women socialize versus men. This stuff isn't as easy as "be kind to each other". Your "kindness" might be rude to me, and my "kindness" might be rude to you. Therefore I argue that the moment you start enforcing social justice you've kicked productivity in the nuts and stifle productivity for everyone involved. Instead you're going to spend your time checking off boxes about people's immutable physical traits and filling quotas of identity groups within an organization and everyone loses. The employee, the consumer, even the bystander.

Maybe 10% of women in software is just fine. Maybe women aren't being shooed away, and are just choosing other things to spend their time on. Maybe forcing women to go into STEM and SE is wrong. Maybe leaving people to make their own professional choices and not punishing people for some ideological virtue is the good thing to do.

Respect implies holding someone in high regard, as special. Or to refrain from interfering with. It's fair that in this context it's the latter that's primarily being referred to. That means respect comes with hard work that can be shown and proven. A strong track record. Being the best, having what it takes to rise out from the others. No everyone deserves respect because, frankly most people aren't special or rock star material. I'm not. If I was you'd know.

Kindly, your local reactionary.

Why is respect earned, not given? The way you've stated that sounds like an axiom.

It called me to contemplate, and realize that I hold the opposite axiom – that all beings, including humans, deserve respect fundamentally. Some people might behave in ways that call this into question and modify the degree to which I feel I can truly hold respect for them, but that only happens with more information about how they are organized or disorganized.

I think part of the problem is that everyone has different definitions of respect.

For example, some people find it disrespectful to correct someone if they use a word wrong, but I find it disrespectful if someone doesn't correct me.

What if they don't know to correct you, do you feel disrespected in that case, as well?

Yes. Respect is a tricky concept. Even people who know better frequently fail at it, often spectacularly. There's no reason to expect it to be easy.

Easy and simple are different.

"Treat other people with respect" has been (in various forms and phrasings) a foundational principle of major moral frameworks around the world for thousands of years.

But espousing a principle, and abiding by that principle, are two very different things. Overwhelming empirical evidence suggests that getting the people who do the former to also do the latter is quite difficult, yes.

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