People are going to feel all kinds of things. Asking whether or not they should feel them is a dead end in the context of public forums, because nobody controls anybody else's feelings, or how each individual reacts to a feeling.
Sincere, productive conversations are mostly going to take place in more private forums like group chat or face to face. Public discussion threads are better suited for identifying friends and enemies, playing and joking around, and signaling status.
It's not a dead end, because public forums are not natural phenomena. They are things we design, build, maintain, and police. Personally, I want experts to be able to talk about their work without feeling abused, harassed, or threatened. I want it not just for myself, but so that we can have a society based on truth, not just on who can shout the loudest or who can be the biggest jerk.
> I want experts to be able to talk about their work without feeling abused, harassed, or threatened
Most experts are idiots (specifically “intellectual yet idiot“). Protecting bad ideas (expert or not) against criticism is an immense danger to society.
If your ideas and findings can’t stand on their own, I can’t help but think they must not be very strong.
Oh and if you think that what you post on the internet is you, and it’s you personally that’s being attacked when people respond to your words…
Your inability (or, more likely, refusal) to distinguish between valid criticism of ideas and abuse, harassment and threats is a fine example of a core problem of online dialog.
abuse, harassment and threats targeted at people are illegal. I agree that they're unacceptable.
Ideas have no such legal protection, for good reason. If they are stupid or poorly presented, they can be dunked on for cool points. This is one kind of activity people enjoy doing and spectating on public forums, and it's a net positive to society.
> I want experts to be able to talk about their work without feeling abused, harassed, or threatened
> Should someone feel they have to self-censor just to avoid this?
You keep mentioning feelings. This is what I'm responding to. I get the impression that you want the law to step in and silence other people when you feel bad. In public, such an arrangement is stupid. Conversely, it can be beneficial in private spaces where participants consent to community guidelines, formal or informal, at the outset.
If we agree that policing public speech based solely on what people feel is a bad policy, then this whole conversation has been sound and fury, signifying nothing.
And if we disagree, all I can leave you with is this: what if whatever harmless, perfectly legal thing you say makes somebody else feel bad? Should you be silenced?
Anecdote: I know a guy who works solo and throws every project away (usually games) at least five times, often more like ten.
According to him, each iteration tends to go smoother and faster than the last.
Edit:
There’s probably some nuance to whether this approach is a good idea based on type of software, size of team, experience level, personal and/or team skill set, etc…
I have two friends. One lives by “Don’t be a drip, ‘real artists ship’”. He’s got ~20 products shipped. The other friend drips hard, with a comparable number of projects abandoned over a comparable timeframe.
Both spent about two decades living in near poverty and only recently experienced financial success.
I don’t believe telling either of them to switch strategies would have been helpful.
We could infer from these two cases that “don’t give up” is the unifying factor, and that that’s helpful advice. I think history is littered with counter examples. Giving up may not be psychologically healthy (or advisable), but advising somebody “don’t give up” can still be cruel and unhelpful. Resisting the urge to give advice may be kindest.
I suspect most advice broadcast on the internet does more to inflate the author’s reputation than to help the audience. Even if this is true, it doesn’t rule out the possibility of a small quantity of exceptional advice having an outsized positive impact that outweighs the over abundance of reputation inflating advice.
Since this is so longwinded, here’s a language-model-generated summary from kagi.com:
- Being anti-mimetic means having the freedom to counteract negative forms of mimetic desire that lead to unhealthy obsessions and never-satisfied striving.
- Anti-mimetic actions are a sign of contradiction to a culture that likes to float downstream.
- Scheduling activities at off-peak times can make experiences less stressful and more enjoyable.
- Reading books that challenge your views can broaden your perspective.
- Filtering feedback and only taking what you need helps you move forward, not live in the past.
- Investing in deep silence can help people embrace their purpose and reduce chasing bad ideas.
- Setting up an environment away from mimetically popular locations can help escape negative forces of mimesis.
- Speaking the truth, even when inconvenient, is foundational to living an anti-mimetic life.
- Developing the skill of de-escalation is important but rarely possessed.
- Discovering and living out your personal calling helps you navigate the mimetic noise of the world.
Looking over the points, it almost feels like the source material might have been generated by a language model in the first place. It’s a bunch of buzzwords and typical listicle-style advice tied to “anti-memisis” :/
> A giant car is probably the most harmful-to-others luxury indulgence you could pick
Some people are simply refusing to harm themselves when they choose a large vehicle.
Getting in and out of a "regular" sized car routinely injures me. The injuries are painful, immobilize me for weeks at a time, and occur several times per year.
I also know several people for whom being in a compact car causes anxiety or panic.
Do cases like this enter into your calculus, or do you just assume everybody you see in a large vehicle doesn't much care for the rest of humanity?
> Getting in and out of a "regular" sized car routinely injures me. The injuries are painful, immobilize me for weeks at a time, and occur several times per year.
Seek medical assistance, immediately. This is not a joke, I am not intending to offend you- you genuinely should seek medical assistance as in: right now.
> I also know several people for whom being in a compact car causes anxiety or panic.
Now I will intend to offend: Yes, lets make the problem worse! Humans without cars should feel even more anxiety and panic! Especially tiny ones which you can't even see.
My friend is 6’4” and drives a Honda fit without issue.
There is definitely middle ground - frankly, I don’t believe you are interested in hearing it because you have already decided that obscenely large cars that kill children easily are the only way you can feel like you're experiencing comfort.
I’m 6’ and I barely fit inside a Lotus. The solution, for me, is simple: I don’t have one.
But sustaining so significant injuries from getting into a car larger than a Lotus or a Mini Cooper is concerning enough to warrant medical attention - we simply shouldn’t get damaged so easily.
I simply refuse to believe that an ordinary sized european car (that is no problem for countries with comparatively higher average heights) are "immobilizing [you] for weeks at a time".
I think you're being disingenuous, I have no obligation to be kind to your face when you spin such dramatic falsehoods.
> Getting in and out of a "regular" sized car routinely injures me. The injuries are painful, immobilize me for weeks at a time, and occur several times per year.
I'm tall. The doors are too low to the ground and small, so I injure my back getting in and out.
Edit, more context: I've routinely gotten in and out of small sedans all my life. When I was younger, this wasn't much of a problem, but now that I'm in my thirties, it's become very frustrating and dibilitating.
- Social software requires designing for group success, not just individual success.
- Software developers need to consider the sociology and anthropology of the group that will be using their software.
- Human groups are committed to individual identity and group membership, which can lead to groups becoming their own worst enemy.
- Group structure exists to keep a group on target, on track, on message, on charter, to keep a group focused on its own sophisticated goals and away from sliding into basic patterns.
- Large groups require different design considerations than small groups.
- The responsibility for defining value and defending it should be put into the hands of the group itself, rather than trying to describe everything in the software up front.
- A core group arises that cares about the community as a whole and takes care of the social environment by encouraging good behavior and discouraging bad behavior.
- Reputation systems are not always effective in human situations.
- Ease of use should be designed for the group, not just the individual.
- Conversations require dense two-way conversations, and human interaction doesn't scale up like a balloon.
That it be licensed with an open source license, yet folk are acting like they've never heard of security clearances, or that the license will somehow supercede all of our other laws regarding document security.
Then again I wouldn't be surprised if the same voices on hearing freedom of information being proposed to raise similar "but military secrets" objections that were completely divorced from reality.
Sincere, productive conversations are mostly going to take place in more private forums like group chat or face to face. Public discussion threads are better suited for identifying friends and enemies, playing and joking around, and signaling status.