Comment by mwfunk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mwfunk | Hacker News Reader

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No, seriously. This is a common theme in just about everything ESR writes. For example, for some inexplicable reason, the Jargon File used to have an entry stating that hackers tend to be libertarian. This, of course, was written when ESR self-identified as a libertarian. Later on (post-9/11), he decided that he was a neocon instead. Strangely, the entry in the Jargon File was then updated to state that hackers tend to be neocons.

That's just one particularly egregious example. There are a gazillion others. Pretty much everything the guy has ever written has similar implications, where he defines a hacker as being whatever he sees himself as at the time. He really really wants to believe that there is a very specific hacker subculture (in his words, "our tribe"), and that they have a shared culture, heritage, and beliefs about things, and that they have some sort of meritocracy where certain members of that subculture are universally agreed upon as being wise and correct about everything (in his words, "the elders of our tribe"), and of course, that he is one of those people at the top of the imaginary meritocracy in this imaginary subculture.

Also, for bonus douchebaggery points, as if he needed them: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=208

> For example, for some inexplicable reason, the Jargon File used to have an entry stating that hackers tend to be libertarian. This, of course, was written when ESR self-identified as a libertarian. Later on (post-9/11), he decided that he was a neocon instead. Strangely, the entry in the Jargon File was then updated to state that hackers tend to be neocons.

The current entry:

> Formerly vaguely liberal-moderate, more recently moderate-to-neoconservative (hackers too were affected by the collapse of socialism). There is a strong libertarian contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both paleoconservatism and ‘hard’ leftism are rare. Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them day-to-day.

archive.org says this was the same in 2003. (Possibly it changed and changed back, but I assume not.)

From march 2000 (v4.2.2 at http://jargon-file.org/archive/ which I selected somewhat at random, I didn't try to find the earliest "politics" entry):

> Vaguely liberal-moderate, except for the strong libertarian contingent which rejects conventional left-right politics entirely. The only safe generalization is that hackers tend to be rather anti-authoritarian; thus, both conventional conservatism and `hard' leftism are rare. Hackers are far more likely than most non-hackers to either (a) be aggressively apolitical or (b) entertain peculiar or idiosyncratic political ideas and actually try to live by them day-to-day.

ESR in 2008 ( http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=301 ):

> I am not and have never been a conservative. Much less a “neocon”, whatever that means.

"Hackers tend to be libertarian" and "hackers tend to be neocons" are not sentiments expressed by either variant. "He decided that he was a neocon" just seems to be plain false. Whatever the merits of the changes he made, I claim that you are being uncharitable towards him.

I'm not necessarily defending ESR himself, I just think that you're attacking someone who isn't ESR and calling them ESR. And I think this is a common theme when people talk about ESR.

Before 2001 it was "vaguely liberal-moderate... strong libertarian contingent... anti-authoritarian", when ESR identified as a libertarian.

After 2001 it was "formerly liberal-moderate... moderate-to-neoconservative", when ESR had gone full-on warblogger. Around the same time he also added heavily politically biased definitions for terms like "fisking" and "idiotarian" to the Jargon File.

He claimed not to be a neocon in 2008 when "neocon" had become a dirty word. I don't think that changes the fact that he was a fervent supporter of the "War on Terrorism", a neocon project.

It sounds to me like you're agreeing with the parent -- he changed the description of a "hacker's" politics to fit whatever his particular political stance was at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisking points out that the style of rebuttal had been common on Usenet for years, there just wasn't a word for it until 2001. I don't think most people are familiar enough with Fisk to give it any political connotations.

I agree he should stop trying to make "idiotarian" happen and it's completely out of place in the File.

From the ESR Jargon File: "Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment." He was "deserving" because warbloggers like ESR hated him.

> After 2001 it was "formerly liberal-moderate... moderate-to-neoconservative"

I'm pretty sure ESR identified as a libertarian when he made this change. Why did you delete the "... strong libertarian contingent... anti-authoritarian" from this bit?

> I don't think that changes the fact that he was a fervent supporter of the "War on Terrorism", a neocon project.

The parent said he identified as a neocon. Admittedly, I don't know why he would use the word in 2001 if he didn't know what it meant in 2008. But I don't think it's true. I don't think there is any time (within relevant history, probably ever) when ESR thought he was a neoconservative, even if other people would call him one.

> he changed the description of a "hacker's" politics to fit whatever his particular political stance was at the time.

I'm not saying he didn't do this, but I think it's much less obvious that he did this than the parent (and yourself, to a lesser extent) made out. The parent said that when he identified as a libertarian, the jargon file said that hackers tended to be libertarian (which it didn't); and that when he identified as a neoconservative (which he never has) it changed to say that hackers tended to be neoconservative (which it doesn't).

If ESR is actually doing bad things to the jargon file, we should be able to point at them instead of telling falsehoods. Maybe the "liberal-moderate" to "moderate-neoconservative" change was in fact a bad one. I do consider it plausible that it was a politically-motivated change with no basis in reality. But if so, we should say things like "I don't think there's any evidence that hacker politics actually changed in the relevant time period", or better yet, "I have evidence that they didn't". Instead we have things like "ESR decided he was a neocon and updated the jargon file to say hackers tend to be neocons", which is a great soundbite if you want to make him look bad, but it's not true.

(I'm not defending "fisk" and "idiotarian". But the parent didn't mention them. The parent made one specific accusation about ESR, which was not true, and I pointed out that it was not true. The fact that what the parent said, and what actually happened, can be interpreted in the same light, does not mean that I agree with the parent.)

I deleted the "strong contingent" part because it didn't change. When ESR made that change, he had very visibly aligned himself with the neoconservative war movement. It doesn't matter if he referred to himself as a neocon (the parent never said that), simply that he backed the neoconservative project.

I don't think ESR's evaluation of what a "hacker" is means anything, so I don't think there's any measurable way to say whether "hacker politics" changed. That's the point: ESR identifies a "hacker" as someone like himself, and that definition changes with him.

So I'd like to step back, because these arguments have a tendency to start to miss the point.

My general claim here is "people treat ESR uncharitably". In this thread, that started with people choosing an unfavourable interpretation of you are not a master of C until.... When I pointed out that this was uncharitable, people said "this is a common theme in ESR's writing". I think that what they meant was something like "it's okay to take the uncharitable interpretation, because ESR often writes things similar to the uncharitable interpretation, so it's probably correct".

mwfunk gave a specific example of ESR acting similar to the uncharitable interpretation. I pointed out that the example was simply not true. It made three verifiable claims, and all of them were false. I call mwfunk uncharitable for this.

The example was "ESR took action Y". You said my evidence showed that ESR actually took action Z, and Y and Z are both instances of ESR taking meta-action A (updating the jargon file to say hacker politics match his own). And if ESR has done A, then uncharity becomes more justified.

But to interpret Z as A is much easier if we accuse ESR of being a neoconservative. This, too, is uncharitable: he has said that he is not and has never been a conservative, and that conservatives are villains. He did align with neoconservatives on one issue that a lot of people fervently disagreed with neoconservatives about, but that doesn't make him a neoconservative. And if ESR isn't a neoconservative, and merely aligns with them on one issue that people care a lot about, then Z is much less strongly an instance of A.

You have leveled accusations against ESR that I think stand by themselves. But they're far less damning than we started with, and in the meantime, this thread has been filled with examples of uncharity, which is exactly what I'm objecting to.

(On a broad level, I think what we have here is uncharity piled upon uncharity. ESR says something, and people interpret it uncharitably, because the uncharitable interpretation is how ESR acts; and they know this, because of uncharitable interpretations of previous things that he's done. But those interpretations are justified because...

And perhaps this tower bottoms out with something that is not uncharitable, but every level of uncharity makes the next one less justifiable.)

Fair enough. I really appreciate hearing your views on this.

I think ESR's claims not to be a "neoconservative" stink of protesting too much. What he identifies as being at any given time doesn't mean a whole lot to me -- people can call themselves whatever they want. After seeing him dance and dissemble around his support of "race realism" for years I think it is overly charitable to take anything he says about his political categorization at face value.

If it helps, look at the other end of his change: he changed the description to say "formerly liberal" at the same time he was actively jumping into the fray as a "warblogger" and "anti-idiotarian". If he didn't change the definition to explicitly include his own politics (I believe he did) at the very least he changed it to exclude his political opponents.

All of the changes we've talked about here follow one pattern: altering work under his control to say that a "hacker" (which ESR believes to be a title of honor) is someone who resembles him more and resembles people he dislikes less. His commentary in the linked article follows the same pattern of self-aggrandizement by identification with an idealized and lionized hacker.

This is a lot more than I had hoped to ever write about ESR. All that said, if you told me I had to have dinner with him, Linus, or RMS, I'd choose ESR in a heartbeat. He also is a pretty good writer and evangelist and seems to be an effective organizer.

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