Re: [PATCH 0/4] remote-hg: more improvements

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: May 14, 2014, 20:19 UTC
Message-ID: <5373cfb744982_57c3bfb300a0@nysa.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <CAGK7Mr7jhpizoHuA9NDnyNPy_rr8_R0m8-hCFO3CDn2Hbh3_pQ@mail.gmail.com>

Philippe Vaucher wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> >> I'm sorry that my words aren't clear enough for you to infer the point
> >> I'm trying to make. Let's try something simpler: what I was saying is
> >> that bad behavior will get you into trouble when contributing (and
> >> thus it's important to behave nicely), where Felipe usualy says bad
> >> behavior is irrelevant because only truth/quality is important.
> >
> > Do you feel Felipe is in control of what you label bad behavior?  Do you
> > feel you are in control over how you react to his behavior?
> 
> I feel that Felipe cannot control this (or decided not to),

I am pretty much in control of my behavior. Those who know me personally know that I *never* get angry.

The problem is that what you label as "bad behavior" I do not. For example the atheist billboard that said "You KNOW it's a Myth. This Season, Celebrate REASON!" caused a lot of furor, and people all over U.S.A. said "you cannot say that!", "that's offensive!", "it's a war against Christmass", "that shouldn't be tolerated in modern society", and so on.

Of course, it should be tolerated in a modern society, and it should not be offensive, those are facts. Of course people can disagree with those facts (but those people are wrong).

The atheists are not engaging in bad behavior, it's just that the majority constituted by religious and bend-over-backwards-liberals have a different definition of "bad behavior" (a wrong definition).

So if somebody convinced me that my behavior is indeed bad, I would certainly change it, but I do not think it's "bad". Just the same way nobody has convinced many atheists that their behavior in those billboards is bad. And they can't convince them, because they would need logic, reason, and evidence, and the atheists have them.

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> > Yesterday my girl friend bought back a mare she had sold two years ago
> > because its owner did not manage to get along with it.  It's a
> > temperamental animal that learns and performs amazingly well for its
> > comparatively compact build.  But it's highest in rank "or else", and so
> > in the end it got locked up in its stable box most of the time in order
> > to avoid injuries to other horses.  Now it's back here at the riding
> > school, and there is little question that there will be some injuries
> > before things settle down again even though most of the horses here know
> > it already.
> 
> I think that is the point: behave properly or be isolated to avoid
> harming others. Wether you control your behavior or not has little to
> do with it, it's your behavior that counts. That's how it works in
> pretty much any communities I know of.

Except the largest and most important communities; countries. In the vast majority of countries what is labeled as "bad" (a.k.a. illegal) has had much more consideration (millenia) than in most online communities (barely decades). Saying something is stupid might be considered "bad" to some people, but not all, so you can't get thrown in jail for doing that, even though some peple thing it's "harming others". For example, saying "religion is stupid". In order to be thrown in jail you have to do something _truly_ bad, something we all agree is harming others.

In online communities facts don't matter, if the majority thinks you are doing something bad (even if you are not), you get thrown to jail (or virtual jail).

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> > It may be that distributed version control systems offer more
> > possibilities for organizing cooperation in a manner leaving graceful
> > escape paths when things don't work out.  It's not what one want to have
> > to rely on permanently but it may be worth thinking about ways to make
> > consequences from difficulties less "inevitable" and/or grave.
> 
> Sure, I believe my proposal of acting on bad behavior earlier would
> prevent incidents like this one, because it would defuse situations
> before they settle in. But that's just a proposal, I'm just an
> observer here.

What you label "bad behavior" started *because* of Junio's decision.

Junio made an important (to me) decision based on a *TECHNICAL* reason he never explained. My "bad behavior" basically consisted in pointing out Junio's bad behavior.

In this case I'm not very dissimilar to Edward Snowden. Snowden did somethig "bad" in the eyes of many people, but he did it *because* of something deeper and more important. It was the government that caused Snowden's actions, and it is the government's bad behavior that is important. But if you look at the mass media, they don't concentrate on the government's actions (that's risky), they concentrate on Snowden.

This might have changed after Snowden gained support, but at least initially it was this way.

You are doing exactly the same as the mass media. Instead of looking at the actions of Junio, namely his *TECHNICAL* decision which *triggered* my "bad behavior", you look at me, the easy target, and ignore the real problem.

Wait, wait! Before focusing on deciding whether leaking documents is "bad", and how exactly it was carried out, why don't you concentrate on the real issue; the fact that the government is spying on everyone. Nah! that's haaard. Let's obliterate the little guy.

-- 
Felipe Contreras