- https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5534...
- https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5534...
Gee, I can't imagine how that mailing list could ever be toxic.
Identitarianism is a cancer, that has been fed via social media algorithms. We seem to have invented a machine for rewarding all of the wrong incentives. Who would have thought that phenomena like audience capture & polarised thought bubbles would be in the palm of the hand, directing thoughts and forming unbreakable opinions on an array of issues that otherwise wouldn't even be on the radar?
I don't think that this is a left, right or in between thing. Identitarianism had infected the entire political spectrum.
BTW: Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't take the Wikipedia definition of "identitarian movement" and identitarianism. I'm thinking entirely about identity politics. "If you're associated with person X you must be Y", or "If you believe A you must be a B". Highly policed thought bubbles. Ostracism. Cancelling.
As a result, today, with technology that can enable mass communication of thought, there are important conversations that can no longer happen in society.
Unfortunately with that perspective, I end in in the same camp as unabashed bigots and real Nazis.
But here's the problem. This whole phenomenon is most prevalent in western style democracy. You cannot take that person's vote. You can engage with them and try to change their mind (but also be open to having your own mind changed too, otherwise it's a disingenuous enterprise). Or you can eject block and cancel. If anything, that just drives them further from your social/political group. Hence the person who you blocked and cancelled starts to look around at the other "so called evil people" outside the bubble, and realise that many of them might be refugees from pleasantville , just like you. You can only see your former bubble after your pushed or pulled out of it.
Bubbles can suck people in, but they can also push people out into the gravitational pull of other bubbles.
Edit: do they all like the letter X, too? I think in this list it's just a coincidence, but maybe?
Edit because I can't post a new comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46608061
Some of the things you say in these threads might be "right" but I can assure you that many of them are not effective, which is counterproductive to the goal you are trying to achieve.
A culture where people are expected to constantly self-censor to avoid bad-faith interpretations is unhealthy and corrosive.
Just because you have a belief about something doesn't make it right to always assume the worst from people and that you always have the best answer.
I tend to avoid people that don't come from a place of good faith. And I feel that attacking people because you might be right about something is coming from a place of bad faith and isn't always the best course of action. There is a place for that, when it comes to your freedom being violated or something, but when it comes to having discussions with people, we are all human. Ego can be a determinant.
Again, as we are wondering into tumblr style debates here (ie not listening and just saying what you think they said)
There is a difference between being "right" and being "effective"
Or to put it another way: "perfect is the enemy of good"
However I will break it down a bit more. You agree with me that there is such thing as a horizon of "acceptable opinion" for people? Some have larger windows, some much narrower.
If we agree on that, I would ask, what happens if someone goes in hard (rhetorically) with a viewpoint that is outside of "acceptable opinion"? You begin to discount their opinion, regardless of evidence. Or it requires a much high bar to accept _any_ opinion from that person.
Which leads back to the original point, you may be correct, but you are unable to persuade anyone else that you are correct, because you are not speaking the same language and gently pulling them to your viewpoint.
Hence the "you can be right, or you can be effective"
I think it’s a category error and an ad hominem attack to bring it up in a debate with someone. It doesn’t mean your wrong or can’t still beleive they were virtue signaling, if that’s what you mean by standing by what you said, but more than one thing can be true and that being your reaction is not honest engagement with the criticism… I don’t care think it’s about the joke very much, it’s not especially funny but not all humor has to be, and I don’t love their reaction to it either, but I think you’re confusing the feedback you’re getting here and there and probably elsewhere that your opinions should change… a sibling comment spoke of being right vs effective, and there’s something to that, but there’s also being right vs having a growth mindset, about being open to genuine conflict that sometimes brings new perspective or insight… But that doesn’t happen when one side shuts down the other with ad hominem attacks or uncharitable assumptions. To be fair, it doesn’t happen online in mailing lists or discussion forums at all very often. Maybe you only get these kinds of reactions here and when people seem more real to you in person you engage differently… I know most people engage differently online than in person, and different pseudonymously than using real names. Someone else here compared you to Linus, and there’s probably something there? There’s no doubt you brought some vision and insight to both these projects, as he did, but something changed for him some years back that was a growth moment and caused him new perspective on how he engaged with people online. The same could still happen for you, and it wouldn’t mean you were giving in to a “woke mind virus”, it would mean you were growing.
I was in the midst of obviously baseless allegations being made against me, not because of anything I actually said but because some very nasty[1] people disagreed with a naming decision I had made.
If you ever find yourself in that situation you are way past the principle of charity.
I'm not saying I couldn't have handled it more gracefully and probably would today, remember this was an obscure mailing list post from 3 years ago that someone dug up.
[1] This is not to suggest that everyone who disagreed with my decision behaved badly, it was a small minority
This is grim.
If you stand by it I'd say good.... luck, yeah, good luck, you're singlehandedly the gravest enemy of the project.
If you think a specific statement was wrong, harmful, or dishonest, then explain why. I'll wait.
That is what is wrong with it.
"The woke mind virus" really? You used that non-ironically? This is not something a serious or sane person would say for real.
Dude like this asshole would be fine with us keeping drinking fountains and lunch counters segregated, because thats how we've always done things.
Remember folks, there’s no such thing as “too much perspective” and when you get it wrong you look like this silver -haired, privileged , rich as fuck bigot.
