I am reminded of an early cartoon of a dog sitting at a computer saying 'On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog!'
There’s obviously a case to be made for both, but they’re independent and unrelated.
That’s what HTML and the browsers did. They accepted humans are terribly bad at following instructions when you want to cater to a broad audience, and as such embraced error correction. The end result is that the early days were awesome because everyone knew how to build websites.
Perhaps in the current day and age, where people hardly write hand-written HTML anymore, this can be reconsidered. But a new, more restrictive format would have to show real benefits, because it’s precisely as I say: people don’t really write raw HTML anymore so it’s kind of a moot point.
You do care, otherwise you would not even have thought about it twice, let alone comment.
The most striking argument against this line of reasoning is that there is no possibility for you not to act politically. By ignoring the issue of systemic discrimination (“don’t care don’t personally discriminate”) you actively contribute to and participate in the systemic discrimination.
It’s a choice, and I find it important to leave you the choice, as I do not believe forcing anything on you will actually make you see, but it is true nonetheless that you cannot escape your responsibility: The ability to respond. “You can not not communicate.” Not responding and deciding to remain ignorant about it is also a response, and a highly privileged one.
It would be easy to at least passively support anyone’s attempt at trying to reduce systemic discrimination, but speaking out against it turns it even more into a political act supporting discrimination than doing nothing and by that delegating it to others.
Specifically, for tech, if you happen upon a code written by someone called "didgetmaster" on github, and the author makes no comment about who they are as a person, how does this contribute to discrimination? Isn't this the whole point of anonymous resumes and such to fight discrimination against minorities for employment?
But is that not the goal? Is there some kind of discrimination which is "good", and should go on?
Should I accept technically perfect PRs if they contain comments and messages with hate speak?
When most Americans are running on pure ideology and a (quite unearned imho) sense of moral certainty and superiority, they assume their worldview is the objectively correct one, and everyone who disagrees with them is "a bigot."
Both sides of our divide have some psychotic people who do things like murdering people. But absent actually harmful acts like that, disagreeing with you doesn't make someone intolerant. It could be that your framing is wrong, or that there isn't one black-and-white objective universal right way of framing an issue.
This is not a very good argument, it would make the words "political" and "systemic" simply meaningless. First of all, it's implicitly assuming that the only way of effectively addressing the issue of systemic discrimination against X is to actively care about whether X is involved in the stuff we personally use. But "personal" and "systemic" issues and approaches are mutually contrary; that's what "systemic" means. Also if every social action is "political" by definition, what's even the point of resorting to the word "political" to begin with? It's not saying anything of relevance.
To illustrate, say you live inside a fenced-off city. You say you don’t discriminate, anyone is welcome to come and talk to and trade with you. Somebody points out that there are people outside the city, behind the fence, that aren’t able to come talk to you. You are free to act or not act on that, but speaking out against the one that merely points it out and tries to change it means you take an active position to support the current discriminatory situation, rather than a passive, opportunistic one that supports whatever the political situation happens to be.
All positions are valid positions to take. They do however reflect an active choice and an active act. All of them are political. All of them come from a position of privilege, being inside the city, not outside.
What is being "spoken out against" is the idea that taking the moral (or political) action within whatever circle you feel able or willing to support is insufficient, or even discriminatory in itself. After all, this is exactly how this conversation started. Good for you if you want to change the world - let's not forget 3rd party discrimination against other 3rd parties! For many of us, it's one of numerous pressing problems to be addressed. If you wish to bring privilege into it, having the freedom to make fighting any and all discrimination a primary concern is a sign of privilege that few have.
Shame that those same religions and people in power forget this core part I suppose. I think that the forgetfulness might be on purpose but I basically hope we can treat literally everyone others the way we wish to be treated ourselves, with dignity and respect.
Of course, some people who are clearly bad shouldn't be treated this way but I hope you can get what I mean by the general sentiment of this idea I guess.
This is often called The Golden Rule because it is one of the most common tenets of every religion and ethical framework ever made
Now hearing it, I remember hearing something similar but thanks for refreshing and thanks for letting me know
Now that we are talking about golden rule, I often wonder, if this is the case, then why not skip all the other aspects of religion which were meant in tribal times or have issues which still persist to put more emphasis on this "golden rule"
Is this what humanitarianism is (sort of?)
I just do not believe it anymore when it is used exclusively to shut up people who want to say an unfairness exists.
That's quite the characterisation to make, and a bit difficult in the context of discrimination which is based on lumping people together based on one trait and making assumptions about everyone in that group.
No, we just left the Democratic party once you guys stopped being serious. Judging people based on the color of their skin instead of by the content of their character is just as toxic and evil no matter what your claimed motivation is.
Most people don't really endorse Trump or endorse everything the radicals on the right are known for, but I can see that it appears that way to the people pushing DEI and race-and-gender-based everything -- because a clear plurality have indeed rejected the Democratic party, resulting in them losing even when running against a corrupt buffoon.
I do care when other people in tech insist that I should care, and that I should make decisions based on the identity of certain individuals.
Silence is violence?
https://vipinbhasin.com/2024/10/21/the-impact-of-silent-trea...
https://www.royalblueheating.co.uk/08-164491-silent-treatmen...
etc.
Unless you force people to acknowledge your are a dog.
The internet doesn't run on "tolerance"; it runs on actual, real neutrality, which enforces tolerance by making anything else impossible. You cannot possibly stop gay people accessing your website any more than you can prevent homophobes or drug dealers or AI startups or North Koreans or fascists. You can ban behaviour but it's impossible to ban classes of people without real-life action.
I may not know who on the internet is a dog, but I'm glad those dogs are out there and if somebody is a proud supporter of puppy genocide I'd rather not encourage/enable their misguided crusade so that does factor into my choices.
It isn't something that can always be avoided, or even something that needs to be avoided entirely 100% of the time (I still read Lovecraft for example) but I do think it's worth some consideration.
Capitalism is about choice. If my local greengrocer is rude to me, I can choose to take my business elsewhere.
If the author of a text editor doesn't share my sentiments on whether to ban tobacco adverts, I can choose not to use their software.
People can make the choices which make them happy. I'm happy to use a slightly worse text editor if it means I am not supporting someone I don't like.
I also don't the sweat the small stuff. Hideki Kamiya has been accused of being a xenophobic ass and maybe he is, but people are entitled to their bad takes and internet drama isn't going to stop me from enjoying games he's worked on.
Agreed but honestly sometimes I wonder about the funding sides of things, I love tinkering with software and making (right now LLM based but I know it can be a crutch, I use it to just "test" ideas tbh) but basically my question is, I wish to do more stuff on the web but as someone from a third world country, even 30k $/year are enough to me right now.
I am extremely frugal, most of it might just go into my savings/ETF world funds but basically I worry that if I cannot earn that amount, or even if I do, I am subjected to some very high risks which scare me as I have seen its costs first hands
I want to build software which some people might even work on full time but I just don't know how to make money out of it. If I can't make money out of it, I just open source some half assed implementation of it and literally noone knows about it.
I don't know too much about marketing and monetization perhaps. I don't know how to monetize, I hate ads and don't wish to push them, most of my servers/services I create can be abused so there is an issue the server provider might block me and I don't know if people are willing to pay for the software.
I am in a unique position but honestly what most people do is that they create growth right now, then sell it or smth or take VC funding etc which might include enshittening in the future for profit.
Like I just want to build, and a sustainable/profitable business with a profitable business model but the web just lacks this ability and I think I try to see it from my lens where I am frugal so I expect everyone is so its :/
The internet is interesting if people participate from different nations but that means that I just feel like what I might do will always be risky and I always need a job to fall back upon I guess.
Maybe an compromise I think I will do is work in very adjacent industries and contact them directly and work for 30-40k$ so I can get paid "enough" for my country and basically be good to go I guess.
The thing I get worried about is that if any such business goes bad, I would be on the chopping block and that its inherently more riskier than any business here who will try to extract 10x more value out of me and be the middleman...
I wish to be a software engineer here out of my own passion but since literally everyone wants to be here, my talent literally means jackshit in colleges or their applications so Genius and innovation can come from anywhere but opportunities can have an inequality which I hope I can fix for myself and hopefully help others in solving too one day I guess Idk.
Like, it's cool and great that you personally are in a position where most of the ideologies of hate aren't affecting you, right now, personally, but is it too much to ask that you spare a thought for the people it does affect?
That's exactly the message that some people tried to push during the heyday of wokeism but the rest wouldn't listen.
But that makes you a bigot and you know what happens to bigots so put on the shirt, label in your bio and change your speech or HR will have a field day with you. Welcome to the "tolerant" side.
Do you think these people will be able to do good technical work if they're constantly beset by this kind of thing? Or do you think they will retreat to somewhere where they don't have to do with that?
And secretively hiding who you are is not a solution. No photographs. No video meets. No YouTube videos. Can never discus anything personal. No conferences.
It depends whom you ask! There are certainly some people both off- and on-line who seem to think that uniformly slurring all white, male, cis-sexual, whatever folks as "oppressors" - and even occasionally suggesting, apparently as a serious political proposal, that "Whiteness" (whatever that means) is something that should be forcibly done away with - is an effective way of advocating for diversity.
I will say that I'm not on Facebook, Instagram, or tiktok though, so I might be missing a cultural moment.
I have seen people point out that the concept of "whiteness" has shifted over time, and doesn't really have an immutable meaning.
Maybe you could look it up instead of dismissing it out of hand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_theory
Feel free to disagree afterwards, but the words do have meaning. And not knowing them is not an argument against it.
"Ending whiteness" does not mean "killing all white people" or "eradicating all European cultures" or whatever the parent comment was implying. (Or am I reading too much into it?) Though perhaps you can find some moron calling for that on Twitter.
Or do you mean that sociologists who speak about "abolishing whiteness" secretly mean "abolishing the behavior and identity of white people"? No I wouldn't agree with that. I think they mean what they say, and when they tell you their definition of "whiteness", that's what they're referring to. Not some other thing.