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Comment by throw3456548 | Hacker News Reader

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now.

Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked with him on a project as a student and said half the team dropped out due to his behavior. He would call the remaining team at 2am or 3am to yell at them sometimes (according to my friend).

I'm not sure how I feel about this coming out. I don't get the feeling that he's doing this on purpose. I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it. At the same time, he's been making people feel like shit for decades. Academia used to be a place for misfits who don't understand social conventions. What if not understanding social conventions comes off to others as bullying, though?

Racket could be better off without him. He might be brilliant, but he is so difficult to work with, he hurts his own project.

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> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it.

Perhaps, but usually bullies are only bullies when they are in a position of power and are perfectly capable of behaving different to people who have power over them.

How often to you hear about employees calling their boss and screaming at the boss at 3 in the morning? Strangely this rarely happens.

> What if not understanding social conventions comes off to others as bullying, though?

If you know who you can bully and who not to bully that means you do understand social conventions.

I know a lot of people like that.

I'm from a culture which is perceived as abrasive, harsh, critical, and aggressive in the US. That goes up, down, and sideways. We're often perceived as bullies until we learn to code-switch.

African Americans get a pass here, since most people are familiar enough with African American culture and mannerisms to know how (or at least that) people use language differently, body language differently, and raised tones mean different things. Immigrants don't get that pass. I'm from a culture most Americans wouldn't recognize as a distinct culture -- there just aren't enough of us here.

For my culture, what you described would be a fine litmus test -- if someone is harsh downwards, they're a bully. If someone is harsh up and down, it's a cultural difference. There are other cultures which are more hierarchical there, though.

One of the key things to remember is that people condition to cultural communication styles growing up. When someone yells at me in contexts where an American would totally feel bad and bullied, I don't feel that way. The emotional meaning of expressions and communication styles changes. The same tone-of-voice can convey loss-of-control in one culture, aggression in another, and excitement in a third.

Coincidentally, without cross-cultural background, we perceive Americans as insincere, plasticity, dishonest, and political. Everyone smiles all the time, even if they hate you, and even the most common question, "How are you?" results in a lie.

I'm firmly convinced that the way to inclusiveness is on the receiving end -- it's a lot easier to learn to interpret that an American isn't being dishonest with fake smiles and constant white lies designed than it is to change how one speaks. Receiving end also doesn't mean adopting one cultural style over another.

Yeah, but assuming the GP's anecdote is true and not just hearsay, is it a cultural norm anywhere to wake people up in the middle of the night to be abrasive, harsh, critical and aggressive with them?

May you reveal what culture is it?

Form their description, most likely one of the Slavic branches.

Bingo.

Good cultural fluency!

If you're trying to equate "fake smiling" to "waking people up at 3am" then you're presenting a great argument against cultural relativism.

Why don't we just not yell at each other?

Because it's oppressive and stifling to be forced to culturally code-switch 100% of the time.

You try answering honestly anytime someone asks "How are you?" for a few weeks ("Not so well; I was fighting diarrhea last night, and got no sleep."). Or try following Middle Eastern norms on gender relations. Or raising your child Korean-style with after-school academic programs where your child spends more time in academics than Americans do awake.

Or if you want a simpler exercise, try mirroring Indian body language: nod sideways for yes. So how much cognitive load there is to a simple nonverbal communication change like that.

I'd advise trying to adopt African American communication mannerisms, but you'd be steamrolled for cultural appropriation (which is a very American concept).

As a footnote: Yelling is a normal, natural way to express excitement, anger, urgency, and a whole slew of other things. It's like forcing a dog to never bark. I understand how central not yelling is to some cultures (white/Western, Japanese, and a few others), but I don't think it's healthy or natural.

In those cultures, would you also call your boss at 3 in the morning and yell at them?

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience.

There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible.

A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a path around them. Keep the professor who makes students cry but don't require anyone to take his classes, ensure that there's a path to a degree that goes around him.

We should keep in mind that there may be no correlation between being a douchebag and being talented but there's also no correlation between being nice and being talented.

>Training them to play nice may not be possible.

I'm autistic. It is possible for the socially inept to learn to be less of an asshole and to have better interactions with other people. I did it and we should expect everyone to make an effort to be kinder.

I’m autistic too, and I think what happens is that autistic people who also happen to be brilliant are not expected to learn how to interact well with others to the same extent that autistic folk of average intelligence are, so it ends up being on them whether they care enough about being kind and gentle to others to learn how to interact congenially. I know a lot of autistic people and most of them are nice but some of the more clever ones are indeed rude and socially inept. They also invariably believe that their rudeness is an inescapable aspect of their brilliance, but knowing a lot of brilliant people, autistic and not, this is just untrue.

The other side of this is that some of us do end up trying to fit in, hiding it but not well enough... Just come off as assholes or socially inept and hurting peoples feelings a lot more than if you were obviously on the spectrum,

Yeah I mean I still mess up sometimes but everyone does. Developing a reputation for being an asshat requires carelessness or malign intent.

On the one hand, people should try to fit in with society.

On the other hand, society should try to be more tolerant and understanding of people who find doing so significantly more challenging than the average person does.

I worry that this conversation seems to be focusing on the first point and not paying as much attention to the second.

There's a difference between finding it challenging to fit in and being a bully though, and let's try not to collapse that.

What is "bullying"? Here's one definition [0]: "Bullying is an ongoing and deliberate misuse of power in relationships through repeated verbal, physical and/or social behaviour that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm."

Was Felleisen's behaviour a "deliberate misuse of power... that intends to cause physical, social and/or psychological harm"? I don't know this guy personally and all I've read is some stories about him on these blog posts, but I'm not sure if he was deliberately intending to hurt other people, or merely doing so inadvertently out of social incompetence, deficits in cognitive empathy, emotional dysregulation, theory of mind deficits, difficulties in perspective-taking, etc? Individuals with neurodevelopmental and other psychiatric disorders can sometimes exhibit all of those inadvertent sources of interpersonal harm. (I'm not saying Felleisen has any such disorder – maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, I have no idea, so I must assume he might.)

[0] https://www.ncab.org.au/bullying-advice/bullying-for-parents...

I don’t mean to be crude but it’s kind of irrelevant what the specific definition of bullying is, and it’s definitely irrelevant what his intentions were. Many people find his behavior extremely unpleasant, belligerent, mean, etc, as evidenced by the thread on Butterick’s original post, and the OP in this thread, describing being yelled at and insulted. Having a disorder may be a partial explanation for why someone behaves a certain way. It’s not an excuse for behaving in a way that other people find antisocial, and it certainly doesn’t bind others to tolerate that behavior.

Ultimately even if you actually could not act any differently because of a disorder, others would still not be required to tolerate you. This is a consequence of being social animals, we set expectations for behavior and we enforce them. If you can’t play the game, you can’t exactly expect people who can to stop playing for your sake.

> I don’t mean to be crude but it’s kind of irrelevant what the specific definition of bullying is, and it’s definitely irrelevant what his intentions were.

Why are intentions irrelevant? If someone is hurting me (or others), I do consider the question of whether they are doing so intentionally or inadvertently to be highly relevant to my judgement of their behaviour and how I am going to respond to it.

I think you're mistaking the relevance of his intentions as an excuse for him to continue being toxic. That's not the case at all. I think its very relevant why a person does the things they do. He still has to change and become less toxic no matter what.

If a person bullies because they have some kind of social ineptitude that makes them not realize they were bullying. That person is still a bully. However, its important to recognize if this was the case because the alternative is that he knew better and did it anyways because he knew he could get away with it.

Fair point.

>On the other hand, society should try to be more tolerant and understanding of people who find doing so significantly more challenging than the average person does.

I agree completely. It took me a while to find a place where people didn't just treat me like I'm weird. Kindness, patience, and forgiveness are important things for everyone to work on.

Why don't we just assume that everyone with such an abrasive personality is very high functioning spectrum. Should we cut everybody slack, now? Is there a line where we let some have a pass and others not?

People are simply saying he might have social issues, not declaring it as a fact.

Its a realistic and common possibility in this industry and there's nothing wrong with mentioning it. My parent comment that yours falls under specifically mentions that even if he does have such issues, its no excuse to spend the rest of his life being toxic to people.

I think its probably more likely that he knew what he was doing and did it because he could get away with it as the leader of that project. However, I can't entirely dismiss the possibility that he has social issues because as I mentioned its a common problem.

Who’s “we”? Everyone has their own standards, and they’re in their right to stick by those standards. It’s whether “we” accommodate those standards that makes the difference.

I totally get that and it happens to me too. But I'm just talking about making an effort and the guy from OP didn't sound like he was making an effort at all.

Its possible that if he has social issues like some of us do that he didn't realize how bad his behavior was because everyone was afraid to tell him. But now that he knows I hope going forward he tries to get his anger under control a little more.

Kindness and understanding works both ways. We should also expect people that are naturally good at stuff like empathy and social skills to be patient and forgiving if they see that we try and fail.

Yes, this is really difficult problem. From my experience, doing these three things when being critical puts you in the not an asshole category by the vast vast majority of people: 1. don't raise your voice or yell, 2. don't insult people personally (say "this code is bad" instead of "you are bad for writing this code"), 3. if it is your first time critiquing someone, explain your style of criticism and note that it should not be taken personally.

Of course, there are very sensitive people, and you can't please everyone, but in my experience people will try to be accommodating if you tell them your situation.

It's not actually a hard problem. We're not short of brilliant people who are also nice or at least not generally toxic. We don't need to exile the brilliant monsters; we just need to not make allowances for them. If they can learn to meet norms of civility, we can welcome them; if not, we can ignore them.

How many brilliant people have we lost access to because they were driven out of the field by someone like Felleisen? All we have to do is not tolerate their bad behaviour.

Everyone who met Felleisen and walked away is to be celebrated for not coddling his terrible behaviour; everyone who makes excuses for him should be shamed for enabling him.

> We're not short of brilliant people who are also nice or at least not generally toxic.

We absolutely are, especially with the all-encompassing definitions of toxicity that are popular lately.

Is there a shortage of people with CompSci PhDs to staff universities and do research? Is there a shortage of people to present at conferences?

Just because you feel like cancel culture is cancelling people who don't deserve it, doesn't mean we need those people to fill open positions. Every time we make excuses for people like Matthias, we're filling a chair that could have someone else who's not toxic in it.

Not to mention: if we have a shortage of brilliant people, why aren't you asking how many brilliant people are driven out of the community by people like Matthias? What's the opportunity cost in brilliant people that Matthias represents?

If 2 or 3 people who could make comparable contributions to the community leave because of him, we're already in a net-negative situation wrt smart people advancing the field and community. Even if Matthias is twice as smart as the next best, it only takes a few more for him to be a net negative.

> Is there a shortage of people with CompSci PhDs to staff universities and do research? Is there a shortage of people to present at conferences?

There's a shortage of people doing top-quality work that advances the state of the art.

> Just because you feel like cancel culture is cancelling people who don't deserve it, doesn't mean we need those people to fill open positions. Every time we make excuses for people like Matthias, we're filling a chair that could have someone else who's not toxic in it.

> Not to mention: if we have a shortage of brilliant people, why aren't you asking how many brilliant people are driven out of the community by people like Matthias? What's the opportunity cost in brilliant people that Matthias represents?

I absolutely do ask that. But the disproportionate number of brilliant people we see being cancelled lately makes me think that "toxicity" is practically a requirement for brilliance.

> There's a shortage of people doing top-quality work that advances the state of the art.

Ok. What do you have to back this up?

From my perspective, a PhD is defined by making a new contribution to the field, and we're graduating lots of PhDs. Part of Butterick's ire is directed at the many other prominent members of the Racket community who have passively enabled Matthias by ignoring his bad behaviour. If Matthias was hit by a bus, would Racket cease ongoing development? Of course not, there are many very smart people driving it forward in interesting ways. I would assert that Matthias isn't even necessary, now to the continuing advancement of the state of art with respect to Racket.

My perspective is that progress feels remarkably slow (despite minting an ever-increasing number of PhDs as you say), and Racket is one of a very small number of exceptions. I hope you're right that Matthias isn't necessary for Racket to keep advancing, because I fear we're about to find out.

As long as Matthias is alive, you're not going to find out. He's not going to be removed from Racket, as much as you and many others here seem to believe there's some huge problem of "cancel culture" coming for "everyone brilliant."

Someone doesn't immediately become a brilliant asshole. Both skillsets take time to evolve and solidify.

If we stop making excuses for people – "that's just they way they are, you know coders, they just don't have social skills, he's an asshole but the company would be in trouble without him" – then may be these people would get the feedback that they need before it becomes a problem of this magnitude.

Seriously, if you're that brilliant you can develop some basic social skills. And from what I'm getting from this thread, we are talking fundamental thinking before you engage in a social interaction skills.

It's ok not to be great at everything, but it's not acceptable to be toxic on the basis of your other skills. At the very least, sometimes that means the genius team member needs to just shut up and choose their battles.

And the first step for many of these type of asshole genius types can be to talk less. Once they master choosing their battles, they can work on how they approach the battles they choose to take.

Intelligence isn't unidimensional.

Neither is culture, for that matter, and social skills, what's toxic, and when to shut up is culturally-situated.

It’s generational as well. Particularly the “strong man” style of leadership. You could see it in the Biden / Putin summit.

> Seriously, if you're that brilliant you can develop some basic social skills.

I'm not entirely sure that this is always possible, since some of those people could possibly be on the autism spectrum, have Asperger's or perhaps other pathologies, that would impede their emotional intelligence. Obviously that's not always the case, but the assumption that it's always possible doesn't seem to be true.

> It's ok not to be great at everything, but it's not acceptable to be toxic on the basis of your other skills.

With this, however, i fully agree. I do find myself wishing that there was some socially acceptable way to call people out when their behaviour is not appropriate, without antagonizing them. For example, it would have probably been better to inform RMS in that way, rather than resorting to mob justice and "cancelling" him.

Autistic people are capable of following basic social protocol by not insulting or yelling at others. Anyone who says otherwise is just using their autism as an excuse for their toxic behaviour.

I think there are ways between "ignoring it completely" and "unperson anybody who isn't perfectly polite", and there are ways to provide feedback to people about them interacting in a bad manner without exiling them. I think most people would be amenable to such training - just as they learn other social norms. If the professor's management would be willing to employ such training - without choosing between "ignore it" and "lose the professor" - I think many douchebags would learn to keep their douchebaggery in check. Of course, it may require some effort from the management side...

> what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven?

Just do not take their behavior personally. So what if he insults you. It takes two to make an offense - one to give offense, the other to take offense. Don't take offense, and there is no offense.

> makes students cry

There's no crying in baseball.

If you live to be my age, you'll experience the death of people you love. Save the crying for that.

There is an incompatibility here between the set of people who act like Felleisen and the set of people who react like Butterick.

There is inevitably a message from the community to one side of "change or leave." Whether explicit from action or implicit from inaction.

There is both a pragmatic and a moral side to the decission. From the pragmatic point of view, a brilliant asshole might be worth more than the sum of all those offended, or not.

From the moral side of things, we can choose to set limits to behaviors even when the benefit of their contributions is net positive considering those who avoid the community.

Your argument seems to speak to the moral side of things; that Felleisen's behavior is not so odious as to cross the moral event horizon. What about the simple fact that there are people who will take offense at his behavior, and the community will therefore lose their contributions?

I used to think very much like WalterBright as I never took offense (was raised to just listen to what people try to say, not how they say it) (and if someone goes physical (some people, when they cannot hurt you with words, start shoving you etc) I punch them in the face).

But that way, usually, the bully just moves to someone else and, even though I am untouched, the person did not change. So now that I am older, I think both sides need to work on this issue: the abuser needs therapy and the victim needs to grow a backbone and thicker skin. It is very sad, but people who start crying from verbal abuse will always be victims: in school and in companies. Bullies sniff them out intuitively. If only to have a better life, I would recommend getting less sensitive through whatever means possible. But out the bully too: they need help or get fired imho.

Nobody here is excusing bullies.

I know you are not, but if you shrug off their bad ways, that will sustain them instead of stop them.

Going back to MB’s article:

> what all bullies crave: the silence of their targets.

>There's no crying in baseball.

I think at that stage in the movie Tom Hanks' character is not the best guy to look to for life examples.

I mean if we have to accept that some people are difficult and hard to get along with and we should try to accommodate them then I guess we should accept that some people are easily hurt and will cry and should try to maybe help them when they are hurt.

I notice there's still that fairly common trend in blaming the victim. They could have dodged the bullet, right? Well, I'm happy the society starts to point the abusers out - to their dismay and ironically also victimization.

What's the point of this comment? That crying is wimpy and that it's fine to abuse multiple young adults to the point of tears because it's their fault for "taking offense"?

We are not talking about whether tears are a sensible and productive response. We are talking about whether it is reasonable to tolerate someone who consistently provokes them. Perhaps both sides need to take some responsibility, but redirecting the conversation like that seems to me to be making excuses for bad behavior.

1. Don't allow other people to control your feelings.

2. Be forgiving of people who do not mean offense, but are simply inept at the social graces. It's not that hard. You get to choose whether to be offended or not. Choose the not.

BTW, sometimes I listen to celebrities when they deal with hecklers trying to get under their skin. It's fun to watch how they parry the verbal knives. I recall Prince Phillip once being interviewed by "60 Minutes". The reporter really tried to get under his skin. Prince Phillip effortlessly and deftly turned the dagger away each time. He's evidently had a lot of practice :-)

Howard Stern was fun to watch, too. He knew how to get the goat from his interviewees. Except Paul McCartney. McCartney was a master at this game. Watching those two verbally duel was great sport. McCartney got the better of it!

> making excuses for bad behavior

Not at all. I've had to ban people a couple times from the D forums for unprofessional behavior. Not because they made me feel bad, but because I have no interest in running a sewer. We've been fortunate that it's only been a couple, and usually a private word can set things straight.

That's all well and good but you're still directing your comments at the students. When there's multiple students all complaining about a single person, that's misdirected. Apply some systems thinking here.

1. Don't allow other people to control your feelings.

Isn't that a lot like curing depression by saying "why don't you just stop being depressed?" Different people are wired differently and humans are on the whole really bad at consciously controlling their psychological state.

You even said in the previous post that crying and being sad is OK in some situations (like when a loved one died). Why didn't you choose to control your feelings and not be sad then?

I agree with your rules generally, but they're not workable when there's a big power imbalance between the offender and the offendee. Professors and grad students, in particular, have a massive power imbalance. A grad student's success in their multi-year quest for the degree is heavily dependent on the whims of the professor. The student must care about what the professor thinks. Escaping a tyrannical prof could set back the student's career by years.

I considered graduate education after I got my BS, but the risk of ending up as some professor's dog wasn't worth it to me.

> Don't allow other people to control your feelings.

1. You offer this as an excuse for profound hostility and rudeness from someone in a position of power.

2. Every human has buttons that can be pressed and you are no exception.

3. Bullying behavior by someone who has power over others logically causes fear in the target of the bullying.

4. Bullying works. That's why people do it, even though it's a cheat. You are literally blaming the victim.

"Don't allow other people to control your feelings" as a response to a man with a career of bullying shows a profound and perhaps pathological contempt for the well-being of others.

It isn't blaming the victim any more than taking a self-defense class is blaming the victim.

Nor is it making excuses for bullies any more than locking your door at night is excusing thieves.

I mean you said that behavior that offends is partially the fault of the person taking offense, I don’t understand how that’s not blaming the victim here. Having a thick skin is important but I question your priorities when your response to somebody not wanting to be woken up by a screaming phone call at 3am is “there’s no crying in baseball.”

> you said that behavior that offends is partially the fault of the person taking offense

I did not say that. Please read more carefully.

> It takes two to make an offense - one to give offense, the other to take offense. Don't take offense, and there is no offense.

What else does this mean?

It does not mean the offendee is responsible for the behavior of the offender.

It means the offendee is responsible for the offendee's reaction.

Very, very different.

That’s true, but something should also be done to correct the behavior of the offender, which is what I think most of this thread is talking about.

At least one poster in this thread has attempted to bully me. He failed - and not because anyone tried to correct his behavior. It's because his insults do not affect me.

There are multiple ways to stop people from being bullied and harassed. We shouldn’t leave it on everyone to defend themselves, but set baseline standards of acceptable behavior. This is uncontroversial as far as government in general is concerned. For whatever reason, people seem to get upset about it when organizations try to enforce standards that are more stringent than the law.

In your comment, in response to what should be done, you replied "just [stuff the victim should do]'. That strongly implies that that is all that should be done. Very different message then is you had started with "One thing that hasn't been mentioned here is [the rest of your message]"

I suspect you are being misread due to that word choice, but to be honest I am not quite sure.

You're getting downvoted, but there is some truth to this. Many years later, when I was much more confident in my career, I took a very well paid but short contract gig with a horrible boss. I found that the best way to deal with his outbursts was to find them funny. Screaming at the team for not making an arbitrary deadline he never told anyone about -- there's something comical about that. HOWEVER I would never want to work with someone like that for more than a few months.

In the situation with Felleisen, I was around twenty, in a new city, new to the academic world. The student I mentioned was one of one or two female students in the entire class and already unsure of her place. Asking people in those situations to not take insults from their professors, famous people in the field, gatekeepers personally is to ask them to overcome human nature itself. I would describe that as a hard problem.

I want to distinguish between a hardass and an asshole. Some people are conflating them, and the middle section of their Venn diagram is not empty, but they are not the same thing!! There are more choices than cuddly "everybody gets a trophy" snowflakes and calling children worthless morons! Everyone should have a hardass professor or a hardass boss at least once in their life. These people have high standards and push you, they don't accept excuses. You learn to work. They don't insult you or throw a fit, though. Hardass professor: "This is not good work. These are the reasons your work is bad. I expect better from you next time." Asshole: "This is not good work. These are the reasons you are a stupid and worthless person."

On the other hand, there are drill sergeants and similar situations. I don't know how to work them into my model. Some people seem to thrive in an environment like that. I wonder what the difference is?

You bring up a good point - a third category. The hardass who pushes you to be your best. The other two:

1. the bully who enjoys hurting others

2. the socially inept person who means no harm

They're very different.

As for a hardass, there's a story about Chuck Yeager who was assigned to command an Air Force base during the Korean War. Upon arrival, he went out to the field to watch the airmen land. Afterwards, he laid into them for their sloppy landings. He got some paint and laid down two lines cross-wise across the runway, and said they were going to take off and land with the wheels touching down between the lines.

One of the pilots told him that was impossible and unreasonable.

Yeager then got into an airplane, took off, made a circuit and touched his wheels down dead center between the lines. He didn't get any more crap from the pilots.

Me, I'd want to work for a hardass like that. Yeager wanted his pilots to be successful, and that means demanding perfection. I don't want a cake and ice cream commander, I'd want one who was a hardass, and keep me and my buddies alive.

You might also want to read "With The Old Breed" by Sledge. He thought boot camp was unreasonable, the drill sergeants too harsh, etc. In his combat at Tarawa, which was horrific, he realized that what kept him alive was the hardass training he got in boot camp.

On a gentler note, one of my profs at Caltech was demanding and a bit harsh. Other students had a bit of a negative opinion of him, but frankly I thrived in his class because of that. Working with demanding and "no excuses" people brings out the best in me.

I think the honest, uncomfortable way of dealing with the Stallman and Felleisen fallout would be to ask "what can be done to offer non neurotypical persons an alternative career path that does not involve creating a living hell for other people by becoming managers" (saying this as someone who probably is in this category as well).

As long as there is no non managerial career (which is the case in all of academia), people will have to fake being a manager.

I don't buy the story that people who piss-off other people are "non-neurotypical" or "on the spectrum".

I piss people off quite often, and quite inadvertently. When it happens, I feel remorse. Friendships have failed terminally because of this.

But in general, people like me - they enjoy my conversation and my sense of humour.

The thing is, I'm rather blunt - I say what I mean. I don't like to lie, because once you start, things can get pretty tangled ("Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive"). This bluntness isn't because I'm on some spectrum or other; it's a consequence of experiences I've had through my life, philosophical views that I've integrated into my personality, and a whole slew of unconscious biases and preferences.

(When I say "unconscious" I don't mean "subconscious" or "repressed"; I'm aware of my biases and preferences, on the whole, I just mean that they come to operate automatically).

I've known and worked with aspies. I know that Asperger's is a real thing. I don't think I've ever known anyone who was autistic. But I think there is a trend for anyone who is a bit abrasive to get labelled "spectrum" (or to label themselves). This is particularly a thing in IT.

It is not a sign that you are "on the spectrum" if you get people's backs up. A habit of speaking directly doesn't put you "on the spectrum". A dislike of small-talk doesn't put you "on the spectrum". Not caring much whether others think you're a wonderful person doesn't put you "on the spectrum".

IT people tend to steer away from small-talk, and have a preference for nuts and bolts. Their job is dealing with machinery, and machinery doesn't usually work better just because you stroked its ego, or gave it a compliment (I find that swearing at machines is much more helpful!) That's simply their training; it doesn't make them "non-neurotypical", or psychologically unwell. they're in IT because they enjoy working with machines, which isn't weird or sick.

I desperately want to agree with this, but something sticks at the back of my mind:

This is not acceptable behaviour.

The way we define acceptable behaviour changes from circumstance to circumstance. What's acceptable for Steve Jobs isn't acceptable for the guy at the window of McDonald's (either side of that window). That's maybe just the way it is - but it probably isn't right.

But what if everyone around this guy got together and said: There is a minimum behaviour you must conform to. We won't accept you shouting at us, we won't accept you belittling us. If you do it again, we will say "You need to calm down or leave the room please". When you're told that, those will be your only two choices, or everyone else will leave the room. And we may not come back. Because this is not acceptable behaviour.

It no longer becomes a question of training. It becomes a question of priority, of data. He can see that he is hit with this phrase day in day out, and he can understand that his behaviour is toxic. Eventually either people will stop saying it because it isn't working, or they'll stop saying it because he is getting the constant negative reinforcement. If it's the former, at least someone has tried. My worry is that with too many people, the individuals are too scared (or scarred) to try.

I also worry about the concept of "a path around him". If part of your job description is the instruction of students, you need to learn to deal correctly with those students. If good behaviour is not part of your skillset, then you do not have the skillset for the job, and that should have repercussions.

I guess there's an issue with the concept of tenure. But I don't feel like saying "You have the option of entering into this abusive relationship" is the right solution (even if it was that bluntly worded from the outset, which it absolutely should be). And I certainly don't think you should be told "You've tried the abusive narcissist, now that you've suffered you're welcome to escape"

If he truly cannot change, then that is sad for him. It should not be the source of damage for yet more people around him though. And looking at the apology, he clearly hasn't understood the effect he has on the people around him.

It is also not acceptable for Steve Jobs but they can get away with it.

> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it.

It's an issue of power. If they didn't have power, nobody would say that. If a student behaved that way toward Felleisen, certainly nobody would say that to Felleisen.

Power corrupts.

Or it reveals?

I believe it rather corrupts.

I believe most people go to politics with genuine intentions to make things better. Then they face a situation in which they either have to sacrifice their ethics and win, or keep their ethics and lose. Guess which ones eventually prevail.

I'm from a post-communist country, and I've seen many former dissidents, who clearly had stellar ethics (often they were made to suffer for publicly opposing communism), who got into power after the revolution and their behaviour became more and more ethically questionable over time.

No more than opportunities to do good reveal. We all have good and bad in us. Today you have an opportunity - do some good!

I also had a bad experience with him years ago at a time I was considering going back to academia, which contributed in my decision to stay in the industry. I don't think the details are important but yeah, he wasn't the nicest person on the table, made several comments that where really out of place, none of the professors around said anything but a couple just left the table in a way that made think that this was a common behaviour from him. It surprised me that such an important character in the PL community could say such things and walk out like nothing. I believe most people could easily get fired from a company nowadays if they made similar comments. Anyway, it's good to see he's taking some time to analyse how he interacts with other people.

Ha. I had a CTO who was so bad that people literally hung up in the middle of a phone call with him and walked away from his project. With "I will not work with this guy ever again". Or a freelancer who, when renewing his contract put an extra clause in it, stating something like "I officially to refuse to work with this guy". Or he unknowingly blamed another guy for a work somebody else did in the past and he recommended him to leave the company. The later was out of pure malice. Or once in a month or so he went on a psychotic rage against someone. The list is longer.

Only a handful of people are capable of working with him over the years. And even that looks a bit like some weak form of servitude. Nobody really likes him. He's been having just one buddy in the whole company of ~150 people. And even this guy is a bit antisocial, lone standing figure. And the two don't work on the same project.

It's been perfectly clear, this guy has some personality disorder and once a colleague who was interested in psychology told us what it is. Some sort of psychopathy, IIRC.

that's just the way he is and you have to get used to it

No, normal civil behaviour is "the way it is", and he needs to get used to it.

> Academia used to be a place for misfits who don't understand social conventions.

When and where was that?

somewhere between richard stallman's office mattress and jeffery epstein's wallet, perhaps.

> I've heard from people close to him that that's just the way he is

I doubt this is true. I would wager that he doesn't treat those with power over him this way. He probably does it because he knows he can.

I met Richard Stallman’s lawyer several years ago, having made an appointment with him to discuss our open source framework, Qbix.

Eben Moglen had a nice office near Lincoln Center in NYC. Somehow on the way to the office, he had taken a look at our site and mistook something on it... by the time I arrived, he spent the entire time yelling at me and berating whatever he could find out about me. A very strange character.

Having said that, he did help me find out what I was after: how to make sure large corporations wouldn’t use my open source code while smaller ones could — we should use Affero GPL.

So, all in all it was a productive meeting. But still, it was pretty surreal.

Apparently he has done it with other people too: https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit...

There is more to this. A couple years prior he had encouraged four NYU students to start Diaspora, a similar project to ours...

Sounds like a difficult experience for you, but the other example you cite (https://observer.com/2011/12/in-which-eben-moglen-like-legit...) does not seem to reinforce your point that he's some sort of abusive individual. It belongs on one of those "Journalists Posting Their Ls" accounts on Twitter. The author comes off as an utter dolt, while Moglen's position is well-reasoned. It's hard to comprehend why some people are so allergic to the entire notion of personal responsibility; that changing the world starts with changing your behavior, not just bleating about it online and waiting for some regulator to fix your problems (whose incentives are likely not aligned with yours anyway).

> The author comes off as an utter dolt, while Moglen's position is well-reasoned.

It's interesting that I read the same reporting as you, and to me Moglen comes off as a zealot who is unable to see anyone else's point of view.

I think this is best shown by this exchange:

"Me: Well just for me personally right now, the utility seems to—

Mr. Moglen: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no! You see that’s not true....."

> all in all it was a productive meeting

Maybe this is the reason. Some people are Result-driven, and would take anything "appreciate" to get the result. Even when the word "appreciate" is at it's lowest standard (Like, "The goal is reached, and no body is dead/jailed because of my action").

I said that because I'm a Result-driven person myself. And I (and many others, not rare, really) have this sociopathic ability to completely disconnect myself from other people's emotions while still remain rational. In that mode, I'm capable to say and do a lots of awful things without feeling even a slightest of guilt, in fact, I wouldn't feel anything emotional (That is, I can be yelling while completely emotionless). Of course, I can switch it back and immediately become empathic. For me, it's all by choice.

Trying to put myself into his shoes, I guess maybe he thinks it's OK because "Things still gets done", maybe it's a compatibility test on whether or not he will still be "Accepted" after all that, or maybe it's a warning to show the bar of his tolerance.

Personally, I wouldn't think too much of it, because the goal is reached (Oh wait...)

Apparently you’re not the only subordinate he’s loaded off in academia. https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html

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