Needs a (2017). "It turns out talking about diversity, inclusion, and even just basic civil behavior can be controversial in technical spaces. I don’t think it

Needs a (2017). "It turns out talking about diversity, inclusion, and even just basic civil behavior can be controversial in technical spaces. I don’t think it should be, but I don’t get to make the rules." Yep. The three worst topics on HN are racism, sexism, and religious beliefs, precisely because it turns out that a lot of folks hold these beliefs and do not want to let them go, even in supposedly-technical fora. I think that part of the problem is the need to ask why certain cultural practices arise. After all, no cultural practice survives without some sort of practical use, even if it's minor and selfish. Therefore, upon being told that a particular arbitrary cultural practice is simply not done in a certain context, the natural thing to wonder is by what justification, by why, the practice is unacceptable. I think that this is the main reason why we cannot talk about racism, sexism, nor religious beliefs without having to explain why such beliefs are disprovable and incompatible with our modern scientific and empirical view of the world. People need justifications in order to be comfortable expanding their minds. "This sentence doesn’t push my morality on anyone. If they want to do whatever it is elsewhere, I’m not telling them not to. I’m just cluing them into the local culture and values." Uh, that's explicitly not the case. Morality is memetic and thus part of cultural values. A society might forbid playing in a river because it has a dangerous undertow; this directly leads to a moral lesson. Own your morality. Admit to being moral. To have morals is to opine that folks ought to do or not to do some certain things. Allow yourself to be part of your local culture.