5 ms·

That's a fascinating take, but I don't think it's particularly related to what actually happened. I wasn't toxic because of some Microsoft FUD, I was toxic beca

by seebs 5y ago

That's a fascinating take, but I don't think it's particularly related to what actually happened. I wasn't toxic because of some Microsoft FUD, I was toxic because I was a teenager with low empathy who hadn't learned things yet. I grew out of it. Lots of people in open source were never particularly toxic, and there's no reason they should have been. Even granting the existence of the external stress (and it really was NOT that big a deal), not everyone reacts to stress by treating people badly. Furthermore, people who didn't grow up around those OSS advocates have exactly the same problems sometimes, for the same reason that people in every field of human endeavor have those problems sometimes.

boulos 5y ago
What, if anything, would you update in your post from a decade ago [1] on Steve Jobs, RMS, and empathy? (My guess is not much, other than maybe a personal preference on the empathy side?) [1] https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2011/10/11/why-steve-jobs-did-more-for-free-software-than-rms-did./ https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2011/10/11/why-steve-jobs-did...
- preommr 5y ago
  Is seebs someone that's particularly famous? The parent comment seems to imply they were part of the "Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al." And their profile just says "that seebs".
  - seebs 5y ago
    I don't know about "particularly" famous but I know that I've talked to people whose family members were programmers who reacted with "wait you know SEEBS!?!" when they mentioned me, so apparently some people have heard of me. I used to be fairly active in Usenet discussions of C, and I've published some stuff, most of it now lost to the mists of time.
- seebs 5y ago
  Haha, wow. I totally forgot I wrote that one. When I wrote that I was unaware of some of the Sort Of Creepy stuff. I recognize that some of the allegedly creepy stuff is sorta misquoted. I think that matters. But I don't think it changes my overall conclusions, which is that RMS was acting in a way that he could reasonably predict would hurt or distress people, and he didn't think it was important to change this. But I also note that, completely unaware of any of the allegations now being discussed, I thought he was bad for the development of free and open source software because he was bad at treating people in ways conducive to positive outcomes, and I knew many people who worked on free or open source software, or worked with the FSF or on FSF projects, who also felt that way. I believe quite a few of them had told him of these concerns. I wrote about the specific more-recent RMS stuff last year: https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2019/09/21/rms-minsky-and-the-search-for-truth/ https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2019/09/21/rms-minsky-and-the... Thomas Bushnell wrote about this, too, and honestly his post was much better: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84 https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa... It is perhaps worth noting that, maybe thirty years ago, I had some run-ins with Thomas Bushnell, and I thought he was sort of a jerk at the time, but when I called him out on an example of that, he acknowledged it and apologized and said he'd try to do better. Nothing external to RMS was preventing RMS from doing that if people said his behavior hurt or distressed them. The idea that we couldn't try to do better because we were being threatened by Microsoft is honestly sort of condescending and insulting in and of itself.
prvc 5y ago
>I was toxic because I was a teenager with low empathy who hadn't learned things yet. I grew out of it. Participation in political mobs can serve as a surrogate replacement for empathy. A change in political allegiance is far easier to enact in an individual than a change in personality.
- dguaraglia 5y ago
  Would you agree then that participating in the 'anti-anti' mobs is also a possible form of feigned 'empathy'?
  - prvc 5y ago
    >Would you agree then that participating in the 'anti-anti' mobs is also a possible form of feigned 'empathy'? You have misread the comment twice over. I wrote nothing that would preclude your scenario from being a possibility, and I also wrote nothing about assuming a false pretense. In my opinion, wrt "empathy", most of the mob participants are just fooling themselves, and the cynical drivers of these controversies tend to lean on empathy as an explanation less often, in favor of more opaque theoretical constructs.
    - dguaraglia 5y ago
      > You have misread the comment twice over. I didn't. > I wrote nothing that would preclude your scenario from being a possibility That's kind of my point: there's a lot of questioning the motivations of the 'cancel culture mob' around these parts recently, but very little questioning of the motivations of the 'anti cancel culture mob'. It almost feels like there's a gaping blind spot there. Unsurprisingly, a significant percentage of the 'anti cancel culture' controversy seems to be driven by a tiny fraction of people. One could even argue that both the 'cancel culture' and 'anti cancel culture' mobs are tiny. And yet, somehow, Hacker News seems to heavily favor the 'anti cancel culture' angle. Go figure, huh?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]

by seebs 5y ago

boulos 5y ago

What, if anything, would you update in your post from a decade ago [1] on Steve Jobs, RMS, and empathy? (My guess is not much, other than maybe a personal preference on the empathy side?) [1] https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2011/10/11/why-steve-jobs-did-more-for-free-software-than-rms-did./ https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2011/10/11/why-steve-jobs-did...

preommr 5y ago
Is seebs someone that's particularly famous? The parent comment seems to imply they were part of the "Stallman, Linus, ESR, et. al." And their profile just says "that seebs".
- seebs 5y ago
  I don't know about "particularly" famous but I know that I've talked to people whose family members were programmers who reacted with "wait you know SEEBS!?!" when they mentioned me, so apparently some people have heard of me. I used to be fairly active in Usenet discussions of C, and I've published some stuff, most of it now lost to the mists of time.
seebs 5y ago
Haha, wow. I totally forgot I wrote that one. When I wrote that I was unaware of some of the Sort Of Creepy stuff. I recognize that some of the allegedly creepy stuff is sorta misquoted. I think that matters. But I don't think it changes my overall conclusions, which is that RMS was acting in a way that he could reasonably predict would hurt or distress people, and he didn't think it was important to change this. But I also note that, completely unaware of any of the allegations now being discussed, I thought he was bad for the development of free and open source software because he was bad at treating people in ways conducive to positive outcomes, and I knew many people who worked on free or open source software, or worked with the FSF or on FSF projects, who also felt that way. I believe quite a few of them had told him of these concerns. I wrote about the specific more-recent RMS stuff last year: https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2019/09/21/rms-minsky-and-the-search-for-truth/ https://www.seebs.net/log/post/2019/09/21/rms-minsky-and-the... Thomas Bushnell wrote about this, too, and honestly his post was much better: https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-departure-of-rms-18e6a835fd84 https://medium.com/@thomas.bushnell/a-reflection-on-the-depa... It is perhaps worth noting that, maybe thirty years ago, I had some run-ins with Thomas Bushnell, and I thought he was sort of a jerk at the time, but when I called him out on an example of that, he acknowledged it and apologized and said he'd try to do better. Nothing external to RMS was preventing RMS from doing that if people said his behavior hurt or distressed them. The idea that we couldn't try to do better because we were being threatened by Microsoft is honestly sort of condescending and insulting in and of itself.

prvc 5y ago

>I was toxic because I was a teenager with low empathy who hadn't learned things yet. I grew out of it. Participation in political mobs can serve as a surrogate replacement for empathy. A change in political allegiance is far easier to enact in an individual than a change in personality.

dguaraglia 5y ago
Would you agree then that participating in the 'anti-anti' mobs is also a possible form of feigned 'empathy'?
- prvc 5y ago
  >Would you agree then that participating in the 'anti-anti' mobs is also a possible form of feigned 'empathy'? You have misread the comment twice over. I wrote nothing that would preclude your scenario from being a possibility, and I also wrote nothing about assuming a false pretense. In my opinion, wrt "empathy", most of the mob participants are just fooling themselves, and the cynical drivers of these controversies tend to lean on empathy as an explanation less often, in favor of more opaque theoretical constructs.
  - dguaraglia 5y ago
    > You have misread the comment twice over. I didn't. > I wrote nothing that would preclude your scenario from being a possibility That's kind of my point: there's a lot of questioning the motivations of the 'cancel culture mob' around these parts recently, but very little questioning of the motivations of the 'anti cancel culture mob'. It almost feels like there's a gaping blind spot there. Unsurprisingly, a significant percentage of the 'anti cancel culture' controversy seems to be driven by a tiny fraction of people. One could even argue that both the 'cancel culture' and 'anti cancel culture' mobs are tiny. And yet, somehow, Hacker News seems to heavily favor the 'anti cancel culture' angle. Go figure, huh?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]