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You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car

You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? The possibilities for that are endless and almost all of them are bad. These areas must not be political to prevent spirals of politicisation (remember, if this becomes the norm then it'd justify your political enemies doing the exact same thing). As far as I am aware, engineers do not inject politics into bridges or rail infrastructure or anything else, and though they do have codes of conduct and legal responsibility for what they sign off on that's not so much political as it is discouraging negligence. Nothing in my position is against engineers having political opinions, or campaigning for what they want, or resigning or whatever. I just think that that's not appropriate in terms of the actual service they concretely provide to society during their employment.

eyelidlessness 5y ago
> You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? It’s already political. Those targets are already used when people see fit to use them. What I want is for us to stop pretending that there’s a possibility of a multi-trillion dollar industry that can be absent political impact and conflict. It cannot happen. We need to be engaged politically because many of those impacts are or will be harmful like you say. We also need to be engaged because our neutrality determines what is and isn’t acceptable as a status quo. And yes, in certain very specific circumstances we need to decide whether our conscience rejects, accepts, even abides or joins certain demonstrative or material actions even if they’re generally out of bounds. We live in a world. It’s nowhere near so compartmentalized.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  # insert "{{President Biden's}} poor economic policies have led to..." into db “Error: PoliticalProtestInSQLModule error at or near ‘poor economic policies’ - Postgres has determined that you are ignorant and wrong, and includes this warning in the off chance you are open to listening to reason. Be thankful we still let you insert the string into the DB.” See the problem? Again, you're failing to distinguish between politics of protest at the point of service and elsewhere. Including this at the point of service is literally how you get these disasters like sabotage, but even before that it'd be absolutely unacceptable to have political messages in the software we use. Does the current war of aggression against Ukraine mean that it's okay to include 'Putin is a real piece of shit' in his wikipedia article? No, because obviously that's just a road to destroying its credibility and generating far worse outcomes for everyone.
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Look, I’m not new to this discussion. My interest in acts of protest is rooted in anti-colonialism. It predates the internet, electricity, and the majority of the British Empire. It spans centuries of wars and the rise and decline of organized labor. I’ve vandalized Wikipedia for sillier reasons, and it absolutely does deserve to briefly say that Putin is indeed a piece of shit, because he certainly is. I’m not failing to distinguish anything. We, humans, live on a planet with other humans. We make complex choices every day about how we participate and the compromises we do or don’t accept. Every technology that has any meaning for real people has a role in that. We cannot be neutral even if we wish to be, we don’t even know what neutral is. When I say that my interest is rooted in anti-colonialism, I’m trying to be very clear: people who were and have been regarded as non-existent rightly used disruption and even violence to be more seen and heard. It doesn’t have to be violent. It does have to be disruptive. You don’t get to determine the terms of that, you just have to accept that what’s neutral to you might not be neutral to others… and let your moral judgment be what it is. Edit: and yes I did see if I could edit the Putin page to say he’s a piece of shit, of course I could not. But I certainly would have.
    - hn92726819 5y ago
      > I’ve vandalized Wikipedia for sillier reasons, and it absolutely does deserve to briefly say that Putin is indeed a piece of shit What is your goal with doing this? Do you expect someone will be persuaded to dislike Putin because of this? Do you think it's acceptable for Putin supporters to vandalize Ukraine's Wikipedia page? You can say "politics is in everything", but that hasn't stopped Wikipedia from being a pretty good resource for information. Do you think everyone's protests should be kept up and Wikipedia be a wasteland of vandalism? Or are you relying on volunteers to spend their time taking down your vandalism? Wikipedia's rules for content seem pretty good. They take down blatant political bias. I would call that "no politics", but I presume you wouldn't call it that. Why not expect this in OSS?
ryukafalz 5y ago
> I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? I think I agree with you in some ways, but this is an odd example to give of something that’s not politicized. The prioritization of who gets protection in a light cycle, who the light cycle timing is optimized for, who gets detected to influence the signaling and who doesn’t… those are absolutely political choices. (And here in the US where I am they almost always prioritize the movement of cars above all else.)

eyelidlessness 5y ago

> You really want infrastructure to become political in the sense of the service that's actually provided? As an example, I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? It’s already political. Those targets are already used when people see fit to use them. What I want is for us to stop pretending that there’s a possibility of a multi-trillion dollar industry that can be absent political impact and conflict. It cannot happen. We need to be engaged politically because many of those impacts are or will be harmful like you say. We also need to be engaged because our neutrality determines what is and isn’t acceptable as a status quo. And yes, in certain very specific circumstances we need to decide whether our conscience rejects, accepts, even abides or joins certain demonstrative or material actions even if they’re generally out of bounds. We live in a world. It’s nowhere near so compartmentalized.

bigDinosaur 5y ago
# insert "{{President Biden's}} poor economic policies have led to..." into db “Error: PoliticalProtestInSQLModule error at or near ‘poor economic policies’ - Postgres has determined that you are ignorant and wrong, and includes this warning in the off chance you are open to listening to reason. Be thankful we still let you insert the string into the DB.” See the problem? Again, you're failing to distinguish between politics of protest at the point of service and elsewhere. Including this at the point of service is literally how you get these disasters like sabotage, but even before that it'd be absolutely unacceptable to have political messages in the software we use. Does the current war of aggression against Ukraine mean that it's okay to include 'Putin is a real piece of shit' in his wikipedia article? No, because obviously that's just a road to destroying its credibility and generating far worse outcomes for everyone.
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Look, I’m not new to this discussion. My interest in acts of protest is rooted in anti-colonialism. It predates the internet, electricity, and the majority of the British Empire. It spans centuries of wars and the rise and decline of organized labor. I’ve vandalized Wikipedia for sillier reasons, and it absolutely does deserve to briefly say that Putin is indeed a piece of shit, because he certainly is. I’m not failing to distinguish anything. We, humans, live on a planet with other humans. We make complex choices every day about how we participate and the compromises we do or don’t accept. Every technology that has any meaning for real people has a role in that. We cannot be neutral even if we wish to be, we don’t even know what neutral is. When I say that my interest is rooted in anti-colonialism, I’m trying to be very clear: people who were and have been regarded as non-existent rightly used disruption and even violence to be more seen and heard. It doesn’t have to be violent. It does have to be disruptive. You don’t get to determine the terms of that, you just have to accept that what’s neutral to you might not be neutral to others… and let your moral judgment be what it is. Edit: and yes I did see if I could edit the Putin page to say he’s a piece of shit, of course I could not. But I certainly would have.
  - hn92726819 5y ago
    > I’ve vandalized Wikipedia for sillier reasons, and it absolutely does deserve to briefly say that Putin is indeed a piece of shit What is your goal with doing this? Do you expect someone will be persuaded to dislike Putin because of this? Do you think it's acceptable for Putin supporters to vandalize Ukraine's Wikipedia page? You can say "politics is in everything", but that hasn't stopped Wikipedia from being a pretty good resource for information. Do you think everyone's protests should be kept up and Wikipedia be a wasteland of vandalism? Or are you relying on volunteers to spend their time taking down your vandalism? Wikipedia's rules for content seem pretty good. They take down blatant political bias. I would call that "no politics", but I presume you wouldn't call it that. Why not expect this in OSS?

ryukafalz 5y ago

> I heavily disagree with the focus on car infrastructure and the extreme amount of billions I consider largely misallocated. Does that give me the right to inject my politics into traffic signaling software? I think I agree with you in some ways, but this is an odd example to give of something that’s not politicized. The prioritization of who gets protection in a light cycle, who the light cycle timing is optimized for, who gets detected to influence the signaling and who doesn’t… those are absolutely political choices. (And here in the US where I am they almost always prioritize the movement of cars above all else.)