Poop: Peacefully Opposing Oppressive Puritanism | Hacker News Reader

Poop: Peacefully Opposing Oppressive Puritanism

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38 pointspoop-person22 comments

While I sympathize with this sentiment--I agree a lot of people today overreact and fail to suspend judgment in the absence of hard evidence against someone--this isn't likely to go anywhere or do a lot of good because it lacks a solid philosophical foundation. It's only based on a sentiment, effectively: "we don't like xyz", instead of a moral or philosophical statement: "we oppose xyz because [good, solid, coherent reasons]".

Don't get me wrong: I think there are very good reasons to support the general sentiment (though how this page expresses it is inflammatory and unfortunate), but in their absence there's little discussion to be had (and personally, I'm not interested in bringing them up here).

Setting aside this project implementation, it is interesting to think about the current social movement in terms of an American Great Awakening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening

"The Awakenings all resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt and of their need of salvation by Christ."

Spot on.

This is great if you hate virtue signaling so much that you want to virtue signal about it.

I despise racial discrimination in all its forms, and the Dutch.

This whole thing is a load of nonsense, but this bit jumped out at me:

> Preferentially accept contributions based on the group identity of a contributor.

This is a straight-up straw man; nobody is "demanding" this or anything remotely resembling this.

If I saw a poop badge on anything, I would assume that it's a pile of crap that's not worth my time

Yeah, this is either terrible marketing by people that support standing up to the mob; Or brillant marketing by the mob to get their opposition to label themselves as POOP.

Sorry, but if you publicly make ignorant statements on social media about a group of people then you and your project/community/whatever deserve to be called out for not being inclusive.

If you want to foster an environment of inclusion and collaboration I'd recommend not making statements that prove the exact opposite.

I appreciate the marketing, though. It'll help me know what projects to avoid.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

-- Voltaire

Why do people post that quote like it's a physical law rather a personal opinion? I doubt you or most people who do would actually die to defend any and all speech with which they disapprove.

Also, Voltaire never actually said that.

I can't tell if this is supposed to be an argument against what I said, but free speech does not insulate you from criticism or consequences. Go ahead, be homophobic/transphobic/racist/whatever in public (really, feel free!), but don't be surprised when people don't like you and don't want to support your project or community.

Interestingly, the parent can be interpreted as embodying or contradicting this quote, depending on your perspective.

Man, people are really concerned that their freedom to be dicks to other people is going to be infringed.

Genuinely curious, what is "oppressive puritanism"? For example, would you add this to your repo if you decide you won't change of a product like Rubocop to remove references to "cop", because:

> Apologize or give penance for perceived moral transgressions, especially those involving nothing more than words.

https://github.com/rubocop-hq/rubocop/issues/8091

That looks like the exact kind of scenario POOP is talking about.

Man, this looks like a real trainwreck.

You know how all those famous people did that open letter against Cancel Culture recently, and the majority of them backed away from it realizing it made them look dumb?

This is the exact same thing, but for programmers. Stop doing this and just accept your deserved criticism when you include slurs in your code comments.

The cases of backout that I saw were because they didn't like being on the same side of an issue with people they otherwise disagree with [1]. Nothing to do with the statement.

[1]: https://twitter.com/JennyBoylan/status/1280646004136697863 (Archive: http://archive.vn/7IYxP)

Unfortunately, statements are intrinsically tied to their usage, as a natural result of the concept of context, and proponents govern usage. If I say "it's OK to be white" in some totally innocent way, and then suddenly realize that 90% of the people saying the same thing are using it to express hatred, I am not unprincipled or hypocritical to rescind, clarify, and find a different way to say what I was originally trying to say. This is unavoidable in communication and rational to account for.

Which language from the letter is being used by others in a way to express hatred?

That makes it worse actually. Thanks for sharing.

> the majority of them backed away from it

I'm going to need a source here.

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