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We've pretty quickly decided to throw out decades of norms in favor of anti-Russia moves all the time. Not ideal.
by emodendroket 5y ago
We've pretty quickly decided to throw out decades of norms in favor of anti-Russia moves all the time. Not ideal.
- pie_flavor 5y agoThis is the culmination of about a decade of reinforcing the idea that political actions don't count as violating norms if the actions are against someone who violates other norms of yours.
- whatshisface 5y agoOr maybe just the culmination of internet libertarians who stick to principles being out-populated by more average people who stick to each other (that is a nice way of phrasing the practice of putting popularity before ideals but it's also true to its real nature).
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoInternet libertarians definitely also stick it to each other in dumb ways whenever they think their cause is right. Let’s not kid ourselves; an average person wouldn’t know how to wield open source for their personal political nonsense. It would precisely be a technocrat who thinks they’re enlightened.
- whatshisface 5y ago>an average person wouldn’t know how to wield open source for their personal political nonsense I am close to an average person in this regard because I am a free-rider on other people's enlightened steering: all I do is install stuff and in exchange I get privacy and security.
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoThe culture of those “average people” stems from the beliefs of Calvinist fanatics that fled England because it wasn’t radical enough.
- whatshisface 5y agoWhat's Calvinism got to do with Russia?
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoIt has nothing to do with Russia. It has to do with stuff like inherent sinfulness, the promotion of social righteousness, the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world, double predestination and whatever else Puritans and other Calvinists who became the American elite believed in and promoted. The views of those people who were considered fanatics back in Europe became the norm in the US.
- emodendroket 5y agoI think people get a little carried away with this. I'd bet money that the average American cannot even describe the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism besides something facile like "they have a pope." There aren't even any Protestants sitting on the Supreme Court. In a historical sense, it's very geographically dependent. Before states got rid of established churches, Virginia, for instance, established the Episcopal church, while Massachusetts established the Congregational church.
- mordero 5y agoI don't think his point was directly related to people's religious views today, but the type of people who originally came to the US and how their views and norms have impacted the culture up to today.
- emodendroket 5y agoWell I'd go a little further and say that it's getting too clever to act like the most important thing to understand how Americans think is the details of a dispute that happened before most of their ancestors came and that they can't even describe in broad strokes.
- jollybean 5y agoThis is disturbing to read. This notion that somehow 'FOSS' is a moral ideal that stands above others is rubbish. If you're helping Russians drop bombs on Mauripool that's a choice. You can also choose not to do that. That concerns an 'ideal'. There are issues at hand of much greater consequence and idealism that 'internet librarians' pretending that they are consequential in this context. 'More Average People', like accountants and teachers, are literally right now upholding their 'ideals' by learning how to use a weapon and defending their homes with their lives against literally the Russian Empire. That is an 'ideal' thankfully none of us will ever have to contemplate upholding.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- emodendroket 5y agoI think it is a little bit more complicated than that when you're taking sweeping actions like banning Russians from sport (something we managed to avoid in the Cold War but apparently not this time). I also wonder if you'd take the same line about someone seizing your bank account, because every American, by the standard we are now using, is culpable for the Iraq War.
- malka 5y agoIt's not that they are guilty. It is impossible to harm a state without harming its citizen in the process.
- emodendroket 5y agoHow is the state being harmed by stuff like people vandalizing shops for having Cyrillic letters on the storefront, I wonder.
- diordiderot 5y agoStupid people do stupid things all the time. Clearly not an educated tactic. No one with an anything above the brain stem would do that, and that's not what's being argued for. Racism isn't the point, crippling the Russian state is. Assuming anything else smells like bad faith.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago> We've pretty quickly decided to throw out decades of norms So did Putin. Dying isn't ideal.
- mardifoufs 5y agoYour comment is proving his point. We decided at some point that not all is fair in war, even if there is a war of aggression. "The Japanese started the war" wasn't a good excuse for Japanese internment. "The USA started bombing the middle east" wasn't an excuse for 9/11. "They are invading iraq" wasn't an excuse for torturing captive American soldiers or hurting American civilians. "Afghan civilians had it coming for harboring talibans" wasn't a valid excuse for droning them either. And so on. Not that this kind of pretty bad take hasn't been pervasive in the past month. It's just funny in a horrifying way to see a century worth of lessons just evaporating in 3 weeks. Just go on any social media and you will see the exact same argument used to justify and even promote literal war crimes against the russians because they started the war. But no, even an invading soldier does not deserve to be tortured.
- unionpivo 5y agoRight but some npm module deleting some files is not a war crime. So it a fair game, as far as international law goes.
- blub 5y agoIt is a cyber crime. I would assume that if the victimes were e.g in the EU there would be an attempt to prosecute. Which leads me to my next point: an essential attribute of a state under the rule of law is that the law is applied impartially, irrespective of who the victim and the perpetrator are. Doesn’t always work out, but it’s certainly what most people find fair and what we strive for.
- purima 5y ago
- obert 5y agoThat will keep happening if we build solutions on top of obviously unsafe platforms, ignoring incident after incident. It’s not like this is the first time and it’s not like people will now suddenly learn from this. Blind software updates like yarn upgrade, brew upgrade etc, happen every single day.
- ninth_ant 5y agoAlmost like “the norms” don’t apply when the situation is not normal? Authoritarians pursuing military conquest and territorial expansion hasn’t been “the norm” for the past few decades. The world is changing with Ukraine and Hong Kong, and soon Taiwan. Not saying these examples in the article are all models of how we should design things in the future. But the world is changing and norms will change alongside it.
- emodendroket 5y agoI guess this is the Mandela effect because I can remember a few instances in my lifetime of larger countries invading smaller ones in contravention of international law.
- diordiderot 5y agoYeah, I guess if someone gets away with something bad you shouldn't care about it ever again. Guy murders your kids anyone can murder anyone from now on, no big deal
- mardifoufs 5y agoYou missed his point. The original comment said that territorial wasn't exactly the norm and that it's pretty unique situation. The person you replied to then said that they can recall quite a few invasions, disoroving that assertion. Nobody is justifying anything, there is no need to be so defensive about it.
- Aeolun 5y agoI’ve seen that happen a few times, but not in a war of territorial expansion. Barring, you know, the current suspect.
- gruez 5y ago>but not in a war of territorial expansion. According to whom? According to Putin, they invaded ukraine to "denazify it". On the other hand "US invades country for oil" is a pretty popular narrative on the internet.
- a-dub 5y agoit's pretty gross if you ask me. i don't think that throwing stones at the people in a nation where the government is misbehaving helps much anything at all. on the contrary, all it can do, is harm.
- tracker1 5y agoI think it's just generally a bad idea to make victims out of those whose minds you most need on your side.
- Aeolun 5y agoI think it’s a bit counterproductive when you can probably safely assume that most of the people affected by this were probably already on your side. But putting pressure on people to make them do what you want is a fairly accepted strategy. Hell, Russia is following the same strategy, except they’re dropping bombs and missiles on cities, which also (even mostly) impacts civilians that have nothing to do with the war. As much as it sucks, it’s the only way to retaliate.
- a-dub 5y agoit is possible to put pressure on the russian government to stop the aggression while still discouraging xenophobic lunacy.