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Comment by tschwimmer | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. Each conference has their own goals, but I'd think that a general thread that underlies all of them is the exchange of ideas. If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas.

I think preventing attendees from criticizing people ("Joe Schmoe is dumb") is perfectly fine, but that's clearly not what happened here.

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Like I said: it's a surprising norm for a conference. But if it's clearly communicated, it's fine. It's just that kind of event. Here, it wasn't clearly communicated; if the author had seen the norm, they'd have presented something else, or not at all.

What I reject is the idea that all spaces are somehow required to make space for criticism. There are spaces where that rule doesn't make sense.

We're unlikely to find people to argue that the conference handled this well, or that the author did anything wrong.

I have trouble imagining why anyone would want to go to a conference where any and all criticism is banned. Is it even possible to say something meaningful without implicitly criticizing the opposite of whatever you are saying?

However I agree with you in as much as, if some folks who think its a good idea all get together and communicate it clearly, there's nothing wrong with that. I probably wouldn't go, but there's a lot of conferences in the world I don't "get" and have no desire to go to, and that's ok.

> What I reject is the idea that all spaces are somehow required to make space for > criticism. There are spaces where that rule doesn't make sense.

There are spaces where it doesn't make sense - for you -. Any forum where criticism is not acceptable should be classified as advertising or possibly propaganda.

I've been at conferences where the organizers strongly emphasize CoCs but have had presenters who were almost virulently critical of companies if maybe not explicitly individuals (though obviously execs by definition). And these were presentations that the same organizers consistently have praised. Maybe it's something about punching up vs. down.

I've also seen someone asked to cover up a company T with an IMO utterly innocuous joke on it (at a different event).

But, yeah, if you want to run a conference with a CoC that basically says we'll ask you to leave if anyone is offended by you for any reason, just please let me know so I can choose not to attend.

Leaving aside whether this'd be a good policy for a conference, this argument doesn't really check out for me.

You can exchange ideas without making judgements on other ideas. Like, let your ideas speak for themselves, marketplace of ideas etc, or even make comparisons without saying your ideas are _better or worse_ than other ideas.

I'm sure you wouldn't run out of useful and engaging conference content even with some hypothetical arbitrary rules like "don't say idea X is bad", "don't say person X is wrong about idea Y", like, at worst you'd have to make some minor edits to your slides and reword things to be less personal, unless your entire gimmick is that your presentation is a callout post.

Some ideas have demonstratively poorer outcomes, or more succinctly: "bad". Some ideas are demonstratively at odds with the observed behavior of the world: "wrong". If you can't say "person X is wrong about idea Y" what kind of discussion can you have? How would you advise Galileo to present his paper on an experiment that demonstrated that the leading academic voice (Aristotle) was wrong?

Research is literally predicated on showing results that are better than the state of the art. Without that judgment on other work there can be no progress in research!

You can talk up your cool new thing without explicit criticism of the old thing. Like, that's probably not a good rule for every conference in general, but it's a rule you could have for a specific conference without immediately disqualifying all possible good talks.

I like your example. I can see why, on the scale of...

“Joe is dumb” .. “Joe is wrong” .. “Joe is wrong about X” .. “Why I think Joe is wrong about X”

...anything but the final one feels unduly confrontational. That’s how I felt, reading your comment.

The 4th implies the 3rd. If I think you're wrong, I'll say you're wrong--with reasons. Adding some additional words like "in my oh so humble opinion I think" doesn't change the fundamental meaning. (And I have absolutely criticized well-known people's opinions on public stages.)

It absolutely changes the meaning. Perhaps, in some cultures or subcultures, showing humility has a weakening effect but I tend to avoid those places nowadays, or at least push back on them.

...I think [and am willing to be proven wrong.]

A subtle feature of language, at least in English, is that prefacing things with "I think" or "I feel", while displaying humility in personal conversations, has the effect of devaluing your own argument if done in excess. If you are perceived to be forever apologizing for your own opinion, nobody is going to take you seriously, because what you ultimately lack is confidence - and if you're not confident about what you're saying, why should I be?

It is, and should be, OK to actually strongly state a position you hold, especially if you can back it up, and especially if the person you are responding to is going to take your criticism well (which the author did know).

"Joe is an idiot" is very different from "Joe is wrong" especially when Joe is definitively and demonstrably wrong (which he was in this case, the author demonstrated clearly and succinctly how to do something Joel said was difficult to do).

Adults are (or should be) also capable of determining when a talk is a string of personal attacks, or a mature but critical response (critical meaning evaluation, not negative). If every other phrase was "Joel has his head in his ass" then NumFOCUS would have certainly had a case; that wasn't the case here.

Do you forsee a circumstance where forthrightly saying "The state of the world is X" implies "The state of the world is X but I don't believe it"? That seems like a difficult state of mind to achieve.

I'd buy that there are subcultures where prefixing "I think..." is a gesture of respect. But the CoC's I'm familiar with generality don't demand that the speaker aligns with a specific culture. Often they encourage accepting multiple cultures.

Indeed, I'll go as far as saying that a big part of conferences is encouraging different subcultures to listen to each other.

I often find myself using the phrase when something clearly is a matter of opinion rather than an absolute fact. I'm not going to say "I think the earth is a spheroid." But I might say "I think we're going to see more heterogeneous computing." But it's mostly an anti-pattern and I often edit them out when I'm writing.

I like the third one as well as the forth. Frankly the second is a bit edgy, but it could be used as a headline.

None of it is rude, bullying, or any kind of -ism, or anything that needs to be fixed. It is in fact confrontation, which is a fine thing. And whether it needs to be so "unduly" direct or not should simply shape the reader/listeners opinion of the writer/speaker.

It shapes my opinions when I see/hear/read so many people who conflate directness or disagreement with bullying. If you cannot stand criticism, your really ought not try to say anything.

"If you can't criticize ideas ("Joe Schmoe is wrong about X"), then I'd say you're not doing a great job of exchanging ideas."

But, the example you give is one that criticizes Joe Schmoe, not X. How about just "X is wrong", and leave Joe out of it so that the discourse is about the rightness or wrongness of X.

If Joe Schmoe is a very public proponent of X, then everyone will make that connection themselves.

Also, if Joe Schmoe and Alice Shclalice have different, but aligned, support of X, it can be useful to your audience to identify different parts of your criticism as "this is how I disagree with Joe" and "this is how I disagree with Alice".

Which still uses language that criticizes the people: "how I disagree with $PERSON". To keep a discourse civil, don't allow it to become personal.

In my view, the discourse from the conference was already civil. Can you explain your point of view a bit more?

If your talk is in response to another talk by someone else, and you're taking slides and content from their talk and reacting to them, it's important that your audience know what the initial talk was. They have to have the context of the debate, including who is on each side, to fully investigate both sides and reach their own conclusions.

Well, maybe don't do that then. You could address the ideas from that talk instead of the talk specifically, and have a slide, like, "My talk is a response to this other talk by this person and I encourage you to check it out".

Like I'm not saying that I think you _should have to_ do this, but you could do it without compromising the thing you say is important.

Saying "Joe Schmoe is wrong about X" doesn't imply "Joe Schmoe is wrong about everything". In fact it helps advancing and encouraging debate when someone can say "Joe Schmoe is wrong about X" AND admit "Joe Schmoe is right about Y".

It isn't sensible to rebut an abstract that nobody claimed. He could claim that notebooks are wonderful, but that would be less intellectually useful because it puts the onus on the listener to find and compare alternative opinions. He is, as speakers really should be encouraged to do, providing an easy reference to strong competing ideas and also providing a specific case of why he thinks they are wrong.

It is a horrible mistake to bring people in and give them attributes they don't have (eg, "Joe Schmoe is an idiot who is wrong about X" is objectionable). It is good practice to reference where mistaken claims are being made (as in this case "Joe Schmoe said X and that is wrong" is helpful to the listeners).

I am very doubtful that Joel Grus' identity is so tied to his jupyter-scepticism that this talk represents a personal attack. It is completely routine debate and possibly quite fun for all involved.

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