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Comment by chmod775 | Hacker News Reader

It was clearly a mistake for him to even play along, especially if he was emotionally exhausted already.

The best you can do when people are being stupid like this is ignore them. They hold no power over you unless you let them.

This whole CoC thing is sadly fraught with virtue signaling psycho-sadists who enjoy playing tribunal.

The people who actually cared about fostering inclusive human communities got bullied out of positions of power long ago, so that aforementioned people could run their own little Stasi.

I'm not sure whether he had to play along with their absurdist play, but next time maybe he will be able to laugh, hang up, and block future calls from their numbers.

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They absolutely do have power over you, that's exactly the problem.

People who get "canceled" don't just get a nastygram that they can throw in the trash. They are typically banned from speaking, fired / put on probation / "contract not renewed", their reputation is both privately and publicly tarnished such that #1 google result for your name will be that you were banned for CoC violation, damaging your career prospects etc.

Sure some people's lives are bullshit-proof but for many others witch hunts like this are nothing to laugh about.

It's the #1 Google search because he wrote about it, right?

The smart thing to do is to "respectfully" disagree and make sure you never speak or attend this or a related event now or in the future or to work with any of the individuals involved. Of course, personally I'd probably lose my temper and say some things I'd regret and tell way too many people about it.

If you just keep quiet, to a first approximation no one knows that you were chastised behind the scenes for something that, if they knew, most people would think was silly. It's not like you're being forced to wear a scarlet C.

The guy founded Fast.ai. I'd argue he's head and shoulders above JupyterCon. It was stupid of them to pick this battle. I think they will lose.

Since this is on HN with 700 upvotes and nearly 600 comments supporting the author I’m inclined to agree.

The only people who get "canceled" are people who allow it to happen to them.

Every single person who has claimed to have been "canceled" not only brought the entire situation upon themselves, but then immediately turned around and cry foul and try to become the victim in the situation.

Its pretty entertaining and bewildering to see these people –who almost universally bemoan "victim culture"–immediately fallback to those same "tropes" when they do something socially unacceptable.

>This whole CoC thing is sadly fraught with virtue signaling psycho-sadists who enjoy playing tribunal.

Reminds me of this snippet from Nietzsche's essay, The Tarantulas:

In all their lamentations soundeth vengeance, in all their eulogies is maleficence; and being judge seemeth to them bliss.

But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Conference talks are marketing that you do to make money.

The tribunals wielding CoCs have the power to hit speakers in the wallet. Outside of violence that's pretty much as much power as you can have over a person.

I'm sure that applies to a lot of speakers, but I don't think it applies to him specifically:

> I’ve tried to make myself available for public speaking events when I can, in order to support the community. However, the potential cost is too great, and there is no real upside for me personally, so I don’t expect to be accepting invitations in the future, at least not for quite a while.

Doesn't seem like he's in any way depended on giving these talks.

So the solution is not to bet your life on dozens of conference committees that can cancel you out of your job.

The solution is to get the opinion of the community and colleagues (if you’re employed) prior to giving a talk so you don’t act in a way that could be seen poorly.

Also known as "walking on eggshells".

You can be shamed and fired over something as innocuous as a dongle joke told in private and overheard.

https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spirale...

The only sure way not to lose is not to play. That, or be invincible like Bob Martin or Linus Torvalds.

This article is an example of the many situations where that would not have helped

I don't know. If I offend someone, I like to know why. Maybe there was a good reason I was blind too. I would have a difficult time refusing to "play along" unless I knew what I was rejecting.

I think I would have a very easy time rejecting any further interaction until they tell me what the problem is.

> psycho-sadists

That's what it actually seems to be: People that want to be sadistic aggressors can be sadistic aggressors in the name of "the law". I believe that's also part of why the USA has such a big problem with out of control power tripping cops. Who exactly is attracted by the possibility to legally put people in their place with guns and tasers?

Agree. I wonder what would the reaction be if Joel Grus was a woman.

I would hope that it would be similar. Let's note that the author asked Joel to use his slides, talked to him about the talk beforehand.

I can only dream of giving a good enough talk that people want to give a talk explaining why I'm wrong, but if that did happen I'd really appreciate the concern that Jeremy (i think he's the OP) showed here.

> The people who actually cared about fostering inclusive human communities got bullied out of positions of power long ago

This claim is made elsewhere in these comments. What is the actual story here? Who bullied who? When?

The people currently in charge of this in many organisations (perhaps not most, but certainly the ones you hear about) are bullies. When a bully comes up against an unprepared non-bully, the bully wins.

> This whole CoC thing is sadly fraught with virtue signaling psycho-sadists who enjoy playing tribunal. > > The people who actually cared about fostering inclusive human communities got bullied out of positions of power long ago, so that aforementioned people could run their own little Stasi

It sounds like you include yourself in this group of people who care about building inclusive human communities?

Generalizing to whole groups of people who support an amorphous thing, calling them "psycho-sadists", and saying they want to "run their own little Stasi" is...not exactly how I would foster an inclusive human community.

Like, it sounds like you very much do not want "those people" in your community.

Just saying.

All I can say is I've only seen and heard code of conducts be used for bullying and to exclude people from communities without any wrongdoing. Examples include the various Stack Overflow Monica incidents, the post we've just read, and a meatspace event I've been to.

I think CoCs, while a great ideal, unfortunately tend to attract power-tripping, virtue-signalling bullies who seek to enforce it for the greater bad.

Technically, the Monica incident didn't involve a CoC; that was a pretext (well, post-text). The people who made the decision were just out of touch, and pattern-matched the information they had available to the “powerful, respected individual is hurting people who can't fight back” story – not realising that they'd caused that story, with Monica as the one who got hurt.

I'm still not sure why they doubled down on it, breaking long-standing traditions of how-moderation-is-done in the biggest possible way (defaming in the press) but (at least) some of the people involved (e.g. Sara Chipps, the face of the Big Bad… the person who introduced Jon Skeet to Stack Overflow) weren't sadistic abusers, so I'd prefer to assume ignorance than malice. (There might've been more than a little over-correcting for “we mustn't let ourselves defend the ones in the wrong, even if we like them”, but that's just speculation on my part.)

And that situation was complicated. A lot of people were telling themselves they were doing the right thing, but ended up hurting innocent bystanders all the more, e.g. whoever released that poorly-redacted list of which moderators were LGBTQ+ (presumably to try to get back at Stack Exchange in some way or other). We still don't know who that was, which is as it should be; you don't talk about moderation decisions on Stack Exchange unless their target is part of the conversation (and even then, only usually if they bring it up).

The whole thing goes to show (at least, to me) how important it is not to act how the story says you should; you might have the story wrong.

> Like, it sounds like you very much do not want "those people" in your community.

I absolutely do not want "those people" in any community I might be part of. They are the ones that forced RMS and Linus out of their roles. And RMS and Linus can be eccentric and unpleasant, but they have made my life much more easier through their contributions in a real and concrete way.

"Those people" are worse than the people they prey on. They are dementors, ghouls that suck life, intelligence and innovation out of every space in which they crawl.

Dehumanization and essentialism are dangerous ideas to be considered carefully. Have you considered that those people might be most people if in the right circumstances?

No. There is a special kind of self-ointed person that thinks they have the right thoughts and the right behaviour and are willing to impose that to everybody else because is for the Good. They are the worst people you can meet, because they commit their crimes tirelessly in the name of Good. They were the Pharisee, the Priests that condemned infidels in the Middle Ages, the sans-culotte in the French Revolution, the revolutionary communists in the USSR, and the nazis in Germany... and they are now the SJW. They will cancel, abuse, exile, banish and even kill those who don't agree with their worldview, because for them their worldview is more important that any human being.

Fortunately, most people care more about other human beings that about ideologies, so no, most people won't behave like that in any circumstance.

Like, it sounds like you very much do not want "those people" in your community.

I do not want people who make no material contribution but merely sow strife and discord. Somehow we have allowed ourselves to be colonised by them and cowed into submission.

>Generalizing to whole groups of people who support an amorphous thing, calling them "psycho-sadists", and saying they want to "run their own little Stasi" is...not exactly how I would foster an inclusive human community.

Please be mindful that chmod775 didn't talk about about everybody who is (at least publicly) in support of CoCs. But rather the very vocal minority of people who try to push CoCs everywhere, then viciously start insulting people who express dissent or even just some concerns about such CoCs, and once they get their way start abusing the CoCs to start witch trials and kangaroo courts seeking not to inform people of their (alleged) mistakes and give them opportunity and help correcting their behaviors (if correction is deemed necessary by the larger community), but seek to outright banish people without due process[1].

You saw some of those people act when you were at mozilla I'd think, when it came to Brendan Eich and gerv[2]. I am not talking about people rightfully disagreeing with or criticizing Brendan Eich and gerv, I am talking about people slinging mud and insults only and trying to banish them from public life at all cost.

And as you were mozilla at the time (right?), you probably remember the rift between mostly US and mostly European community parts over the proposed CoC at the time[5], with mostly the Europeans raising a lot of concerns about the CoC proposals and a CoC in general. Which is fine, and there were a lot of constructive discussions[6], except for the people who started accusing everybody who said a CoC (like that) is not necessary and could be actively harmful was a homophobic ass or sexist or whatever, trying to squash any discussion from the get go[7].

It's those latter people you do not want in your community. And a lot of them I'd describe as "psycho-sadists" as well, who become very giddy and outright ecstatic when they succeed in banishing people, instead of expressing dread that such steps had to be taken.

[1] Brendan Eich, Linus or RMS, or google Rod Vagg or Larry Garfield

[2] gerv was[3] another prominent member of the mozilla community from the UK. He also rejected "gay marriage", but from what I remember not the equal rights portion, "just" the terminology, arguing against it by saying it was a defined traditional religious term, and gay partnerships should have equal rights but should not be called "marriage". He was wrong on that one[4]. I remember people calling him every name in the book, and wishing him he'd die from cancer[3].

[3] Sadly he passed away after a long fight with cancer. I know at least one of the people who wished gerv to die from cancer was fully aware of his ongoing long battle with that disease.

[4] Yes, I said "wrong", don't CoC me please.

[5] Early proposals of the mozilla CoC e.g. suggested that to be compliant one has to endorse things like e.g. the right to be homosexual. Which sounds nice at first, until you realize that some of mozilla's community members are from countries that put people in jail for such endorsements.

[6] At least I for one thought I learned a lot about problems I wasn't even aware of both on the pro- and contra-CoC side.

[7] A lot of those not-very-nice people were not even mozillians, but people who just came to mozilla to "participate" in the CoC discussion.

I recall I left Mozilla before the same-sex marriage fight, but I'm familiar with it.

Just as I wouldn't call Brendan or gerv a psycho-sadist, I also wouldn't call the people who called for their resignations names, nor group them all together.

I think name-calling, especially of a large group which shares only one thing in common is antithetical to building inclusive human communities. Literally we're excluding people and calling them Stasi members because we disagree with them.

If you want people to be kind to each other, and if you're against cancelling people for their opinions, it's got to start somewhere.

I also want to speak to your two other examples, Linus and RMS.

WRT Linus, I personally know many talented people who wouldn't touch Linux development specifically because of him. It's cool that Linus has made your life better. He's also made a lot of people's lives worse. Where's their due process?

WRT RMS, I take issue with the idea that he was not given due process. In fact he was allowed to stay for years, despite harassing women and acting inappropriately in his position. The Epstein email was a last straw. But also: What makes you think he wasn't given due process? He says he was "pressured" by MIT and resigned. Do you think he couldn't have fought it? It sounds like he decided not to fight it. That's different than not being given due process.

Again with RMS, it's clear that his behavior was deeply upsetting to a lot of people. https://selamjie.medium.com/remove-richard-stallman-appendix... Where's their due process? How do they factor into your calculus of who's worthy of our compassion?

>I recall I left Mozilla before the same-sex marriage fight, but I'm familiar with it.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure about that timeline. I just remember you left early-ish.

>Just as I wouldn't call Brendan or gerv a psycho-sadist, I also wouldn't call the people who called for their resignations names, nor group them all together.

You must have skipped the comments from the community and outside then that included gems such a wall of "FUCK YOU"s or the literal wishes for gerv to die of cancer.

I also remember the side-dramas e.g. over the term "homozillians" which was claimed to be homophobic and prompted similar vitriol (nevermind that it was the name a group of LGBTQ+ people within mozilla gave themselves)

[Another edit: to be clear, not everybody who demanded or favored their resignation falls into the psycho-sadist stasi group, either.]

>I think name-calling, especially of a large group which shares only one thing in common is antithetical to building inclusive human communities. Literally we're excluding people and calling them Stasi members because we disagree with them.

No, we're excluding them and call them sadists and stasi because they act with the same mindset of stasi: observation, propaganda, demagogy, and the stated goal of "destroying" other people, and because they joyfully celebrate whenever one of their perceived enemies gets banished, not dreading the anguish that was caused (maybe unavoidably) but enjoying the pain and anger they caused. I've seen plenty such giddy stasi-sadists rummaging around in everything RMS ever wrote and celebrating victory when he resigned from the FSF (some going so far to publicly wishing him to become homeless and freezing to death in the next winter).

This is where we should draw the line and where the "paradox of tolerance" actually makes sense: at the extreme fringes, be it racists and white supremacists on one side, and yes, as hurtful at this truth is, the extremes of what we both probably would consider our side as well.

>WRT Linus, I personally know many talented people who wouldn't touch Linux development specifically because of him.

That's fine. Their decision. I know a lot of people I wouldn't want to work with either.

>[Linus has] also made a lot of people's lives worse.

Utter bullshit and baseless allegation. Why would you say such a thing without providing any shred of evidence?

>Where's their due process?

Due process? For what? Perceived offense? Unsettling remarks somebody made? "Wrong" opinions somebody holds? There is none and there won't be and there shouldn't be.

And as you may or may not know, people criticized him for his erratic behavior, and while it took quite some time, he tried to improve his manners (not just since the Sharp-thing). But no matter how much or little he has and/or will change, there will be always people who want his head.

The "due process" is (where we didn't cross into criminality): you criticize people for their behavior in a constructive way, if they listen and work on themselves great, if they don't then they don't and it's up to you to decide if you want to work with them or if their behavior is too much.

> In fact he was allowed to stay for years, despite harassing women and acting inappropriately in his position

Again bullshit. Even worse bullshit, as it perpetrated the lie he was a major harasser.

>But also: What makes you think he wasn't given due process? He says he was "pressured" by MIT and resigned. Do you think he couldn't have fought it? It sounds like he decided not to fight it. That's different than not being given due process.

Right, you go ahead and demand due process and stand your ground when the internet mob comes for you with pitchforks. This is naïve thinking. at best. It's outright victim-blaming at worst. "Why didn't he just answer long and public why he had a matress in his offide? Why didn't the rape victim answer long and public why she thought it was OK to wear sexy clothes and makeup?"

>The Epstein email was a last straw.

You mean the Minsky email, where he called Epstein a criminal, and suggested that Minsky himself might not have known what was going on?

[Edit: Yes it was an uneasy read, and maybe rather flawed thinking, and deserving of criticism (not his head) but many people claimed he defended child abuse, which he did not]

>Again with RMS, it's clear that his behavior was deeply upsetting to a lot of people.

So he is a weird guy and can put people in unease. He has had a mattress in his office, and he awkwardly hit on some women because he is a bit of a social retard. Big fucking whoopdie-doo. Some of the bullshit that blog post (and others) accuse him of isn't even first-hand experiences, just off remarks like the "if he hits on you, say you're a vi user" remark. What's the conclusion here? That because RMS is awkward in social interactions he better not try to date ever, he doesn't deserve relationships and a sex life because he might make people unwelcoming of his initial advanced uneasy?

>It's cool that Linus has made your life better.

> But also: What makes you think he wasn't given due process?

By the way, now you're putting words in my mouth I never spoke or wrote.

>>[Linus has] also made a lot of people's lives worse.

> Utter bullshit and baseless allegation. Why would you say such a thing without providing any shred of evidence?

Are you actually saying, without irony, that it's bullshit and baseless that Linus Torvalds, one of the most famously abusive OSS maintainers in history, had made people's lives worse by way of these actions?

Linus himself has said that he recognizes he hurt people.

> [RMS] awkwardly hit on some women because he is a bit of a social retard. Big fucking whoopdie-doo.

Not a big deal to you. Cool.

Suppose it was a huge deal to other people. I mean, it's not a hypothetical, I've provided citations.

Are the feelings of other people illegitimate when they disagree with you?

>Are you actually saying, without irony, that it's bullshit and baseless that Linus Torvalds, one of the most famously abusive OSS maintainers in history, had made people's lives worse by way of these actions?

Yes, at least on any scale that matters. He might have (temporarily) upset some people, but that doesn't even come close to what I'd consider "made lives worse".

> one of the most famously abusive OSS maintainers in history

Nice ad hominem by the way. Also bullshit. He was outspoken to the point of being considered rude sometimes, and he was what I would consider abusive in his language on some occasions (like the infamous "abortion" rant; if you never had a bad day and said something regretful, feel free to cast the first stone).

You however make it sounds that he raped a lot of people. Or murdered his wife (hello Hans). Or at least was like this all the time (which he was not, he was mostly polite and professional if maybe a little to direct for some cultural backgrounds).

Get a grip. Some feelings were hurt, some egos got nicked, he crossed the line verbally on a few occasions, got criticized for it, learned from that it seems, some people - which, again, is perfectly fine - decided not to work with him. Linux lost some contributors maybe. In order words: life.

If you expect utter perfection from everybody always, you'll be in for a big surprise.

>Suppose it was a huge deal to other people. I mean, it's not a hypothetical, I've provided citations.

You provided some one-sided hearsay, from mostly anonymous stories, nothing that even amounts to harassment either, let alone sexual harassment. That's the evidential standard of a kangaroo court and the kind of "crime" dictators use to silence their most outspoken dissidents, not due process (which you seem really fond of by mentioning it all the time).

Regardless, that RMS made some people uneasy - while a bit problematic and surely something he could and should have improved - does by far not warrant the way people punch down on him, destroyed his reputation and negated his entire life's work, called him names, fabricated false allegations such as that he was defending Epstein. Where is your empathy for his humanity and plight? Or is that reserved to people who are slightly irked out and/or offended to see he had a mattress in his office (which he used to sleep on, because he was essentially living in his office, btw)?

>Are the feelings of other people illegitimate when they disagree with you?

Their feeling are legitimate - which by the way does not mean they always have legitimate cause to feel that way, nor does it mean they never have a legitimate cause - but matter a lot less than facts or actions.

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