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> ”I'll take an asshole over a pushover any day“ This is a false dichotomy. There’s no need to be an asshole to not be a pushover.
by grzm 8y ago
> ”I'll take an asshole over a pushover any day“
This is a false dichotomy. There’s no need to be an asshole to not be a pushover.
- tomp 8y agoIt's not even a dichotomy. The poster is just saying which one out of two negative situations s/he prefers.
- grzm 8y agoIt’s a straw man meant to excuse bad behavior as the only way to provide strong direction. Pushovers are not the under discussion here: Torvalds’ behavior is.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoOr perhaps an acknowledgement that people are imperfect and the world is imperfect and, if you want to accomplish things, x all-too-common defect is preferable to y all-too-common defect.
- grzm 8y agoIn other contexts, perhaps. I don’t read the comment I initially replied to as supporting that interpretation, even reading charitably. They explicitly separate people into (primarily) two groups: "I'll take an asshole over a pushover any day, and most of us are pushovers."
- DoreenMichele 8y agoWell, that's exactly what I see in the comment in question.
- staticassertion 8y agoThey very clearly are setting up a false dichotomy. They support one side by stating that it is preferable to the other (when there are no sides to begin with). You have to be willfully ignorant to read it otherwise. As blatant support of this, "People give up ability to say certain things in the name of inclusion, and then lose ability to think those things in the first place." This is a clear testament that there are two sides and you must 'give up' something (ie: become a pushover) to not be an asshole.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoYou have to be willfully ignorant to read it otherwise. This is a personal insult. Ironic given what you are arguing "for" in theory.
- komali2 8y agoI disagree that that level of asshole behavior is all-too-common. I've never encountered anybody like Linus professionally and if I did I simply wouldn't work with/for/over them.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoWell, that looks to me like moving the goal posts. Saying "that level of asshole behavior" isn't common is fundamentally different from what I said.
- icelancer 8y agoFortunately, plenty of other people managed to do so.
- coffeemug 8y agoActually, it isn't. For example in today's environment when someone suggests something stupid, it is no longer acceptable to say "this seems stupid to me" because it might hurt someone's feelings. So instead you walk it back and say things diplomatically (which is a tiny form of a white lie). Then people reply to your diplomatic statement with another diplomatic statement, and pretty soon nobody is saying the thing they want to be saying at all. Have you been to a corporate meeting? It feels like soul death for precisely this reason -- nobody is saying the thing they want to be saying at all. Tech/open-source was one of very few domains where people did say the thing they wanted to say. The culture selected for people who want to interact that way, and then encouraged that form of interaction. Now that's dead. Codes of conduct, inclusion, and caring about people's feelings are lofty ideals, but if people can't say "it's a stupid idea" when they think "it's a stupid idea" the whole thing will disintegrate into a dilbertesque nightmare along with the rest of the corporate America.
- int_19h 8y ago"Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best." That's Robert A. Heinlein, hardly known for being a social justice activist.
- coffeemug 8y agoThere are different ways to oil the machine, I'm not throwing out the baby along with the bathwater in naivete. Lots of cultures encouraged being direct, were insanely productive, and oiled the gears in a different way. The current cultural trend is just fashion, it will pass, but things will get worse before they get better.
- int_19h 8y agoAnd once again, being direct is orthogonal to being polite.