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I can't help but notice the contrast with the popular, Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct, which makes it abundantly clear its aim to enforce a set of beliefs

I can't help but notice the contrast with the popular, Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct, which makes it abundantly clear its aim to enforce a set of beliefs on its contributors, with no boundaries between professional and personal life.

logifail 4y ago
> a set of beliefs The elephant in the room in many current attempts to encourage "diversity" is that a genuinely diverse range of opinions and/or beliefs ends up being not welcome at all.
- fooey 4y ago
  Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    We need a new secular code-society, where we separate code from personal beliefs, and assign "societal points" only by merit. The problem with tolerance and intolerance is, that a few people (a loud minority) think they're the universal good guys, even in cases where their "good thing" is incompatible with itself.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Sounds like a license to be intolerant, if only you can convince people that your opponents were intolerant first.
    - tehjoker 4y ago
      Welcome to the messy uncodifiable reality of ethics and politics. You can pick a practical code with an exploit or you can pick one that lets you be cut down by anyone that doesn't go along with it.
      - FeepingCreature 4y ago
        Or you can try to fix the exploit. At least you can try to notice when people are exploiting it in the wild, which is to a first approximation "every time somebody cites the Paradox of Tolerance".
    - Natsu 4y ago
      The paradox of tolerance was aimed at those who would with "fists or pistols" prevent others from sharing their views and was premised on the right of self-defense. In historical context, it's seems squarely aimed at the paramilitary organizations of various movements popular around the 1930s or so who physically injured people for saying things they disliked.
      - philwelch 4y ago
        Which does not seem to justify preemptive intolerance of peacefully expressed dissenting views.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    That only works if you don't label half the population as intolerant.
    - doctor_eval 4y ago
      It's not about labels. Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant. In a just society, we simply ask that one makes one's point without throwing specific groups under the proverbial bus.
      - Tao3300 4y ago
        > Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant. I think most people can get on board with that. The trouble comes when people start berating others for using words/phrases like blacklist, sanity check, backlog grooming, master, and spaz - just to name a few. 99.9% of people who use these words do not possess the mens rea of bigotry or intolerance. E.g.: Right now, someone who read your comment is probably enraged on behalf of the people who have been hit by buses. Most of us know you mean no harm by it.
        doctor_eval 4y ago
        I’m glad you think most people would agree with me, but your follow up example seems a bit unfortunate. You might not believe that language affects thought or behaviour, but saying so directly might arguably be a better way of making your point than singling out others who disagree with you.
        worthless-trash 4y ago
        Doesn't any example single out a specific object ?
        Tao3300 4y ago
        I'm not sure what any of that is supposed to mean. You might be conflating my comments with someone else's because I'm not singling out anyone. Unless you're chafed at my use of your own words -- I assure you, it was meant as a kind word of caution and not as mockery.
  - generalizations 4y ago
    >> the developers are saying "we will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us" > in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance I have a lot more respect for people whose ethics are not conditional on the behavior of others.
    - kibwen 4y ago
      I find that somewhat short-sighted. Let's use a different example. Imagine you live in a society that allows personal gun ownership. Obviously, in such a society you still don't want people running around shooting each other willy-nilly, so you make a law: shoot someone, go to jail. Now imagine someone pulls out a gun and shoots you. Result: you're dead, they go to jail. However, you'd really prefer not to be dead. So imagine that someone pulls out their gun to shoot you, but then you pull out your gun and shoot them. Result: they're dead, you go to jail. It's what the law says, after all. This is undesirable to most people because it looks like you've been punished for defending yourself. So we'll change the law: if someone is pointing a gun at you, you can shoot them without going to jail. Now imagine that someone pulls a gun on you, then you pull a gun to defend yourself, but then they shoot you anyway. Result: you're dead, and they don't go to jail. It's what the law says, after all: you were pointing a gun at them. Oops, it's equivalent to having no law at all! This is the worst form of the law so far, and it's also the same thing as the paradox of tolerance. The way you solve this is the same way you solve the paradox of tolerance: you say that the initial aggressor does not receive any protections if their own weapons are used against them. This produces a result that matches people's intuitions. This also creates a lesser problem, where people try to toe the line of aggression and goad someone else into making the first move so that they can justly retaliate, but it's still a vast improvement on the situation that intuitively matches how people expect things to work, which just so happens to involve ethics that are conditional on the behavior of others. The condition in this example: violence is acceptable, if it's in self-defense. EDIT: I see this is being downvoted, would anyone care to explain their reasoning?
      - ARandomerDude 4y ago
        There's a 99.9% chance [1] any comment this long is tinfoil hat level crazy. 1. I've been on the internet.
  - BrainVirus 4y ago
  - Banana699 4y ago
    Ah shit here we go again. Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is widely misunderstood to be a licence to be intolerant yourself. For the last time : it is not. Popper was talking about a very specific case, where the intolerant exploit the tolerance of a society to physically take over that society and enforce their views. Until and unless you have evidence of that plausibly happening, there is no Paradox of Tolerance. You can perfectly tolerate people who hate women, who hate men, who hate gays, who hate the rich, who hate the poor, who hate any and every religion, ideology, way of life, identity, worldview or personality type. You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach. It's well known in software that a data structure can have infinite readers, but the presence of even a single writer either necessitates that the data structure is completely private to the writer, or an explicit and consistent writing policy needs to be devised to coordinate the writer with the readers and possibly other writers. Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is a restatement of this basic observation in the context of human societies. You can have infinite tolerance and diversity, as long as not a single ideology or group "writes" their conflicting views to society. If you have a group that does that, then you must choose whether you will cede all control of society to that group, or to set a strong writing policy that is much less permissive than infinite tolerance. Stop using an argument for tolerance as an excuse for intolerance.
    - mr_toad 4y ago
      > You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach. If you let them say whatever they want on an online forum without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat, or something similar. The intolerant views take over. Argue all the philosophy you like, practical experience shows that every time someone tries an unmoderated forum in any medium it ends up a cesspit of intolerance.
      - Banana699 4y ago
        > without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat, I didn't know about Voat, sad that it was closed down. I would have loved to try it. >The intolerant views take over. This sounds to me like a you problem. You can very well admit that you don't know how to argue and shout back (in whatever style necessary to win), or that your views are so unpopular that you can't defend them unless to a supportive audience, but don't make this some sort of universal law or inevitable tendency. There is nothing about any view that makes it inherently more popular or appealing. >a cesspit of intolerance. This usage of 'intolerance' hints that you don't really understand Popper's sense of the word. Popper wasn't talking about what offends you, Popper was talking about people violently forcing you out of a society. There is no intolerance on 4chan or 8chan or any similar platform, literally everyone is allowed there, everyone is just an anonymous unique number. Only your own offence prevents you from participating, which is not anybody's fault. Every single "bad" tech platform, the ones that allow speech that mainstream progressive-dominated US companies love to rave about, only suffer due to external pressures imposed on them, the audience of those services very much like it, and they don't seem to physically force reality or other people to like what they like. The only one doing the forcing here are the self-appointed tolerance defenders, who are so so worried about tolerance that they are willing to freely dispence intolerance left and right to protect it. It's like how pro-war folks say that war protects and preserves the peace: It's indeed very true in a certain narrow sense, but you can't be doing it willy nilly, or you will risk destroying the very thing you claim you want to preserve. I also don't understand why defending unlimited expresssion of views must imply defending unlimited expression of view without moderation. There is no reason why we can't moderate any ideology at all, see the subreddit r/themotte for example to see a place where everyone from radical feminists to white nationalists expressing their views in moderated threads.
  - kragen 4y ago
    Karl Popper was talking about Nazis and Communists organizing street brawls and putsches, not people insulting each other on Twitter: > I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. As long as nobody is bringing pistols to tech conferences or starting fistfights in the hallways, Popper would not support excluding attendees for having intolerant ideas. Perhaps if contributors to your open-source repository are doxing and SWATting each other, putting lives at risk, then Popper would exclude them. But as long as they're just making offensive comments, Popper would not "claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force." (It might still be better to decline their patches so as to avoid being associated with them.) I wouldn't go even as far as Popper, because his argument eats itself; as demonstrated in this thread, when people start applying his ideas, Popperism itself becomes an intolerant idea that, according to Popperism, we should suppress by violence. Moreover, any political position that advocates that the government take an action is advocating that some policy be imposed on the unwilling parts of the population by violence. Much more sustainable is to suppress the violent actors and protect those who are merely calling for violence, while remonstrating with them to change their minds.
    - gedy 4y ago
      > not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. Wow, this ironically sounds exactly like the people spouting off about needing to "fight intolerance" in the past couple years.
      - kragen 4y ago
        Excellent point.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    People misconstrue this idea. Popper is talking about people who respond to debate with “answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.” It’s about not tolerating people who make it impossible to have debate, not declaring arbitrary sets of views intolerable or beyond the pale.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      This is a misquotation. The entire quotation from Open Society is: > But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. Note that Popper is not claiming that "fists or pistols" are a necessary condition for not tolerating intolerance: they're a final stage of said intolerance. Popper explicitly says that we might reserve the right to preempt intolerance before it reaches the point of its followers resorting to violence.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        The whole paragraph makes it even clearer that he’s talking about people who would shut down free debate, starting with “denouncing all argument.” He’s actually talking about how progressives are today—ranging from declaring some topics beyond debate to “punch a Nazi.”
        woodruffw 4y ago
        I think this is the paradox's greatest weakness: whataboutism :-) Karl Popper is not talking about today's progressives, because he died in 1994. The closest extension we can reasonably draw does not include them either, because Popper exclusively identified totalitarian ideologies with reactionary beliefs[1]. It's very easy to use the PoT as a blunt weapon, and there are some embarrassing applications of it on the political left. But none are quite as embarrassing as suggesting that Popper might seriously entertain "free debate" with a Nazi. [1]: https://iep.utm.edu/popp-pol/ https://iep.utm.edu/popp-pol/
  - philwelch 4y ago
    What Popper probably meant was something more akin to, “don’t be a pacifist when people are starting to resort to violence”. At least that’s my reading. It’s also interesting that the more extreme version of the “paradox of tolerance” is very close to the legal reasoning used during the Red Scare to justify bans on communist parties.
- gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - logifail 4y ago
    > If you have a truly diverse group of people, they will not suffer fascists in their group Not sure why one has to jump straight to fascists. Shouldn't a truly diverse group of people always include people with views that you disagree with? Otherwise we're defining a diverse group as 'looking diverse ' yet all thinking the same.
    - LAC-Tech 4y ago
      I think it's helpful when seeing the word "fascist" in 2022 to not take it literally. It now simply means "people to the right of me".
      - gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
        It would be extremely naive to think that fascism only happened in the 1920s-1940s. Obviously, todays fascism looks nothing like that of the modern era, just as todays leftists are different. But it’s back, poisoning our democracies and pushing the world into a new hell. Putin is a neofascist. I could tell you which Americans are fascists, but you all get touchy when anyone brings it up.
        LAC-Tech 4y ago
        Ah yes, the crypto-fascism conspiracy theory - or the blackshirt scare. There's fascists everywhere. They don't call themselves that, they don't organise under that label, and their views aren't particularly similar to historical fascism - but it's a serious threat! It's so powerful that they have to keep it a secret because they'll be cast out of polite society... At least McCarthy actually found people spying for the USSR.
        gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
- rebeccaskinner 4y ago
  Let’s be blunt, when people complain about lack of a diversity of thought/opinion, it’s almost always a complaint that they can’t be a bigot. Of course nobody says that so directly- they use dog whistles so that people who are being attacked know to leave while the bigots retain a veinier of civility so they can radicalize others by saying “look how hostile and irrational that group got over my innocuous sounding statement.” Maybe you think spaces would be better if we allowed unmoderated bigotry in the name of free speech, but a practical consequence is that when the bigots move in, the people that they are targeting go away. The end result isn’t “diversity of thought” and it was never intended to be- it just ends up being one more space where people get bullied into leaving.
  - toomim 4y ago
    That's not my experience at all.
    - rebeccaskinner 4y ago
      What experiences do you have to the contrary? I’ve moderated a few community spaces and this has been the way it’s gone every single time it’s come up for me.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - account42 4y ago
        Have you reflected on the fact that all those community spaces have had one thing in common - you moderating them? Perhaps listening to peoples concerns about lack of diversity of thought instead of labeling them bigots would allow you to see things differently. Most people don't feel as strongly about controlling the discourse of others that they end up moderating any not to mention multiple spaces.
  - joannanewsom 4y ago
    "And so when I hear, for example, folks on college campuses saying, “We’re not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas,” I think that’s a recipe for dogmatism and I think you’re not going to be as effective." - President Obama, complaining he can't be a bigot. https://www.thefire.org/obamas-abc-news-interview-transcript-on-missouri-protesters/ https://www.thefire.org/obamas-abc-news-interview-transcript...
bitwize 4y ago
The Contributor Covenant is the gold standard for a reason: it is a response to the bigotry and harassment problems that were endemic to the open source communities. Alone it doesn't achieve much, but combined with a good faith enforcement board it helps keep a community a pleasant, joyful place to contribute to, for everyone. And that will increase software quality and attract quality people, aside from being, you know, the right thing to do. The SQLite developers (developer?) are not interested in inviting more contributors to the table and that's fine, but for a functional public community the Contributor Covenant or something like it is pretty much table stakes.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  With good modding, no code is needed. And with bad modding, the best code imaginable can achieve nothing. It is all down to the quality of the modding.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    The whole point of having a code is to be a thing those mods can point to to justify the banhammer when people complain. Everyone has a CoC, some people write them down.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      Well, I just think that's a bit misleading. The justification for the banhammer is "I think you should be banned." The CoC doesn't enable or permit the mods to ban you. The mods can ban you because they're the mods; "can ban you" is pretty much definitionally identical to "is a mod." At most a CoC can serve as a guidebook for users.
  - krainboltgreene 4y ago
    > With good modding, no code is needed This is nonsensicle and shows a lack of understanding. A code of conduct is just a guidebook for users to understand how your moderators will act, what to expect in a community. How does "good modding" remove the need for that?
Akronymus 4y ago
I personally see the creator covenant to be a huge detriment, if not even a danger, to open source.
madeofpalk 4y ago
> all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability This one seems to be just the same, for better or worse?
actually_a_dog 4y ago
That seems to be a blatant mischaracterization: > Scope: > This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event. https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct/ https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_con... What's your motivation here?
- thaneross 4y ago
  Up to version 1.3 the covenant didn't have a section limiting scope. 1.4 introduced it along with a loophole: > Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers. Eg, if you say something the maintainers don't like on your personal Twitter, all they need to say is "you're representing the project in a bad light" and it's fair game to ban you. Then in version 2.0 the text you quote appears, but changes > This Code of Conduct applies within all project spaces to > This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces but never defines what community spaces are. Is your personal Twitter account a community space? Well, once again that's up to the maintainers to decide. It's the same loophole as 1.4 but more cleverly disguised.
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    Have you raised your concern with anyone who can do anything about it? In any case, I fail to see how this is any worse than any other project. Do you expect some sort of due process before you're banned from any random OSS project? I wouldn't. If you don't like it, you can fork the project. That's how it works.

logifail 4y ago

> a set of beliefs The elephant in the room in many current attempts to encourage "diversity" is that a genuinely diverse range of opinions and/or beliefs ends up being not welcome at all.

fooey 4y ago
Paradox of Tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance > The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  We need a new secular code-society, where we separate code from personal beliefs, and assign "societal points" only by merit. The problem with tolerance and intolerance is, that a few people (a loud minority) think they're the universal good guys, even in cases where their "good thing" is incompatible with itself.
- FeepingCreature 4y ago
  Sounds like a license to be intolerant, if only you can convince people that your opponents were intolerant first.
  - tehjoker 4y ago
    Welcome to the messy uncodifiable reality of ethics and politics. You can pick a practical code with an exploit or you can pick one that lets you be cut down by anyone that doesn't go along with it.
    - FeepingCreature 4y ago
      Or you can try to fix the exploit. At least you can try to notice when people are exploiting it in the wild, which is to a first approximation "every time somebody cites the Paradox of Tolerance".
  - Natsu 4y ago
    The paradox of tolerance was aimed at those who would with "fists or pistols" prevent others from sharing their views and was premised on the right of self-defense. In historical context, it's seems squarely aimed at the paramilitary organizations of various movements popular around the 1930s or so who physically injured people for saying things they disliked.
    - philwelch 4y ago
      Which does not seem to justify preemptive intolerance of peacefully expressed dissenting views.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  That only works if you don't label half the population as intolerant.
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    It's not about labels. Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant. In a just society, we simply ask that one makes one's point without throwing specific groups under the proverbial bus.
    - Tao3300 4y ago
      > Speech that singles other people or groups out for different treatment or is otherwise racist, sexist, etc is intolerant. I think most people can get on board with that. The trouble comes when people start berating others for using words/phrases like blacklist, sanity check, backlog grooming, master, and spaz - just to name a few. 99.9% of people who use these words do not possess the mens rea of bigotry or intolerance. E.g.: Right now, someone who read your comment is probably enraged on behalf of the people who have been hit by buses. Most of us know you mean no harm by it.
      - doctor_eval 4y ago
        I’m glad you think most people would agree with me, but your follow up example seems a bit unfortunate. You might not believe that language affects thought or behaviour, but saying so directly might arguably be a better way of making your point than singling out others who disagree with you.
        worthless-trash 4y ago
        Doesn't any example single out a specific object ?
        Tao3300 4y ago
        I'm not sure what any of that is supposed to mean. You might be conflating my comments with someone else's because I'm not singling out anyone. Unless you're chafed at my use of your own words -- I assure you, it was meant as a kind word of caution and not as mockery.
- generalizations 4y ago
  >> the developers are saying "we will treat you this way regardless of how you treat us" > in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance I have a lot more respect for people whose ethics are not conditional on the behavior of others.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    I find that somewhat short-sighted. Let's use a different example. Imagine you live in a society that allows personal gun ownership. Obviously, in such a society you still don't want people running around shooting each other willy-nilly, so you make a law: shoot someone, go to jail. Now imagine someone pulls out a gun and shoots you. Result: you're dead, they go to jail. However, you'd really prefer not to be dead. So imagine that someone pulls out their gun to shoot you, but then you pull out your gun and shoot them. Result: they're dead, you go to jail. It's what the law says, after all. This is undesirable to most people because it looks like you've been punished for defending yourself. So we'll change the law: if someone is pointing a gun at you, you can shoot them without going to jail. Now imagine that someone pulls a gun on you, then you pull a gun to defend yourself, but then they shoot you anyway. Result: you're dead, and they don't go to jail. It's what the law says, after all: you were pointing a gun at them. Oops, it's equivalent to having no law at all! This is the worst form of the law so far, and it's also the same thing as the paradox of tolerance. The way you solve this is the same way you solve the paradox of tolerance: you say that the initial aggressor does not receive any protections if their own weapons are used against them. This produces a result that matches people's intuitions. This also creates a lesser problem, where people try to toe the line of aggression and goad someone else into making the first move so that they can justly retaliate, but it's still a vast improvement on the situation that intuitively matches how people expect things to work, which just so happens to involve ethics that are conditional on the behavior of others. The condition in this example: violence is acceptable, if it's in self-defense. EDIT: I see this is being downvoted, would anyone care to explain their reasoning?
    - ARandomerDude 4y ago
      There's a 99.9% chance [1] any comment this long is tinfoil hat level crazy. 1. I've been on the internet.
- BrainVirus 4y ago
- Banana699 4y ago
  Ah shit here we go again. Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is widely misunderstood to be a licence to be intolerant yourself. For the last time : it is not. Popper was talking about a very specific case, where the intolerant exploit the tolerance of a society to physically take over that society and enforce their views. Until and unless you have evidence of that plausibly happening, there is no Paradox of Tolerance. You can perfectly tolerate people who hate women, who hate men, who hate gays, who hate the rich, who hate the poor, who hate any and every religion, ideology, way of life, identity, worldview or personality type. You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach. It's well known in software that a data structure can have infinite readers, but the presence of even a single writer either necessitates that the data structure is completely private to the writer, or an explicit and consistent writing policy needs to be devised to coordinate the writer with the readers and possibly other writers. Popper's Paradox of Tolerance is a restatement of this basic observation in the context of human societies. You can have infinite tolerance and diversity, as long as not a single ideology or group "writes" their conflicting views to society. If you have a group that does that, then you must choose whether you will cede all control of society to that group, or to set a strong writing policy that is much less permissive than infinite tolerance. Stop using an argument for tolerance as an excuse for intolerance.
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    > You can tolerate each and every single one of them, you can tolerate infinite number of them, as long they don't try to make reality conform to what they preach. If you let them say whatever they want on an online forum without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat, or something similar. The intolerant views take over. Argue all the philosophy you like, practical experience shows that every time someone tries an unmoderated forum in any medium it ends up a cesspit of intolerance.
    - Banana699 4y ago
      > without any moderation you’ll end up with Voat, I didn't know about Voat, sad that it was closed down. I would have loved to try it. >The intolerant views take over. This sounds to me like a you problem. You can very well admit that you don't know how to argue and shout back (in whatever style necessary to win), or that your views are so unpopular that you can't defend them unless to a supportive audience, but don't make this some sort of universal law or inevitable tendency. There is nothing about any view that makes it inherently more popular or appealing. >a cesspit of intolerance. This usage of 'intolerance' hints that you don't really understand Popper's sense of the word. Popper wasn't talking about what offends you, Popper was talking about people violently forcing you out of a society. There is no intolerance on 4chan or 8chan or any similar platform, literally everyone is allowed there, everyone is just an anonymous unique number. Only your own offence prevents you from participating, which is not anybody's fault. Every single "bad" tech platform, the ones that allow speech that mainstream progressive-dominated US companies love to rave about, only suffer due to external pressures imposed on them, the audience of those services very much like it, and they don't seem to physically force reality or other people to like what they like. The only one doing the forcing here are the self-appointed tolerance defenders, who are so so worried about tolerance that they are willing to freely dispence intolerance left and right to protect it. It's like how pro-war folks say that war protects and preserves the peace: It's indeed very true in a certain narrow sense, but you can't be doing it willy nilly, or you will risk destroying the very thing you claim you want to preserve. I also don't understand why defending unlimited expresssion of views must imply defending unlimited expression of view without moderation. There is no reason why we can't moderate any ideology at all, see the subreddit r/themotte for example to see a place where everyone from radical feminists to white nationalists expressing their views in moderated threads.
- kragen 4y ago
  Karl Popper was talking about Nazis and Communists organizing street brawls and putsches, not people insulting each other on Twitter: > I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. As long as nobody is bringing pistols to tech conferences or starting fistfights in the hallways, Popper would not support excluding attendees for having intolerant ideas. Perhaps if contributors to your open-source repository are doxing and SWATting each other, putting lives at risk, then Popper would exclude them. But as long as they're just making offensive comments, Popper would not "claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force." (It might still be better to decline their patches so as to avoid being associated with them.) I wouldn't go even as far as Popper, because his argument eats itself; as demonstrated in this thread, when people start applying his ideas, Popperism itself becomes an intolerant idea that, according to Popperism, we should suppress by violence. Moreover, any political position that advocates that the government take an action is advocating that some policy be imposed on the unwilling parts of the population by violence. Much more sustainable is to suppress the violent actors and protect those who are merely calling for violence, while remonstrating with them to change their minds.
  - gedy 4y ago
    > not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. Wow, this ironically sounds exactly like the people spouting off about needing to "fight intolerance" in the past couple years.
    - kragen 4y ago
      Excellent point.
- rayiner 4y ago
  People misconstrue this idea. Popper is talking about people who respond to debate with “answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.” It’s about not tolerating people who make it impossible to have debate, not declaring arbitrary sets of views intolerable or beyond the pale.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    This is a misquotation. The entire quotation from Open Society is: > But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. Note that Popper is not claiming that "fists or pistols" are a necessary condition for not tolerating intolerance: they're a final stage of said intolerance. Popper explicitly says that we might reserve the right to preempt intolerance before it reaches the point of its followers resorting to violence.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      The whole paragraph makes it even clearer that he’s talking about people who would shut down free debate, starting with “denouncing all argument.” He’s actually talking about how progressives are today—ranging from declaring some topics beyond debate to “punch a Nazi.”
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        I think this is the paradox's greatest weakness: whataboutism :-) Karl Popper is not talking about today's progressives, because he died in 1994. The closest extension we can reasonably draw does not include them either, because Popper exclusively identified totalitarian ideologies with reactionary beliefs[1]. It's very easy to use the PoT as a blunt weapon, and there are some embarrassing applications of it on the political left. But none are quite as embarrassing as suggesting that Popper might seriously entertain "free debate" with a Nazi. [1]: https://iep.utm.edu/popp-pol/ https://iep.utm.edu/popp-pol/
- philwelch 4y ago
  What Popper probably meant was something more akin to, “don’t be a pacifist when people are starting to resort to violence”. At least that’s my reading. It’s also interesting that the more extreme version of the “paradox of tolerance” is very close to the legal reasoning used during the Red Scare to justify bans on communist parties.
gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
[flagged]
- logifail 4y ago
  > If you have a truly diverse group of people, they will not suffer fascists in their group Not sure why one has to jump straight to fascists. Shouldn't a truly diverse group of people always include people with views that you disagree with? Otherwise we're defining a diverse group as 'looking diverse ' yet all thinking the same.
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    I think it's helpful when seeing the word "fascist" in 2022 to not take it literally. It now simply means "people to the right of me".
    - gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
      It would be extremely naive to think that fascism only happened in the 1920s-1940s. Obviously, todays fascism looks nothing like that of the modern era, just as todays leftists are different. But it’s back, poisoning our democracies and pushing the world into a new hell. Putin is a neofascist. I could tell you which Americans are fascists, but you all get touchy when anyone brings it up.
      - LAC-Tech 4y ago
        Ah yes, the crypto-fascism conspiracy theory - or the blackshirt scare. There's fascists everywhere. They don't call themselves that, they don't organise under that label, and their views aren't particularly similar to historical fascism - but it's a serious threat! It's so powerful that they have to keep it a secret because they'll be cast out of polite society... At least McCarthy actually found people spying for the USSR.
        gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
rebeccaskinner 4y ago
Let’s be blunt, when people complain about lack of a diversity of thought/opinion, it’s almost always a complaint that they can’t be a bigot. Of course nobody says that so directly- they use dog whistles so that people who are being attacked know to leave while the bigots retain a veinier of civility so they can radicalize others by saying “look how hostile and irrational that group got over my innocuous sounding statement.” Maybe you think spaces would be better if we allowed unmoderated bigotry in the name of free speech, but a practical consequence is that when the bigots move in, the people that they are targeting go away. The end result isn’t “diversity of thought” and it was never intended to be- it just ends up being one more space where people get bullied into leaving.
- toomim 4y ago
  That's not my experience at all.
  - rebeccaskinner 4y ago
    What experiences do you have to the contrary? I’ve moderated a few community spaces and this has been the way it’s gone every single time it’s come up for me.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - account42 4y ago
      Have you reflected on the fact that all those community spaces have had one thing in common - you moderating them? Perhaps listening to peoples concerns about lack of diversity of thought instead of labeling them bigots would allow you to see things differently. Most people don't feel as strongly about controlling the discourse of others that they end up moderating any not to mention multiple spaces.
- joannanewsom 4y ago
  "And so when I hear, for example, folks on college campuses saying, “We’re not going to allow somebody to speak on our campus because we disagree with their ideas or we feel threatened by their ideas,” I think that’s a recipe for dogmatism and I think you’re not going to be as effective." - President Obama, complaining he can't be a bigot. https://www.thefire.org/obamas-abc-news-interview-transcript-on-missouri-protesters/ https://www.thefire.org/obamas-abc-news-interview-transcript...

bitwize 4y ago

The Contributor Covenant is the gold standard for a reason: it is a response to the bigotry and harassment problems that were endemic to the open source communities. Alone it doesn't achieve much, but combined with a good faith enforcement board it helps keep a community a pleasant, joyful place to contribute to, for everyone. And that will increase software quality and attract quality people, aside from being, you know, the right thing to do. The SQLite developers (developer?) are not interested in inviting more contributors to the table and that's fine, but for a functional public community the Contributor Covenant or something like it is pretty much table stakes.

FeepingCreature 4y ago
With good modding, no code is needed. And with bad modding, the best code imaginable can achieve nothing. It is all down to the quality of the modding.
- Spivak 4y ago
  The whole point of having a code is to be a thing those mods can point to to justify the banhammer when people complain. Everyone has a CoC, some people write them down.
  - FeepingCreature 4y ago
    Well, I just think that's a bit misleading. The justification for the banhammer is "I think you should be banned." The CoC doesn't enable or permit the mods to ban you. The mods can ban you because they're the mods; "can ban you" is pretty much definitionally identical to "is a mod." At most a CoC can serve as a guidebook for users.
- krainboltgreene 4y ago
  > With good modding, no code is needed This is nonsensicle and shows a lack of understanding. A code of conduct is just a guidebook for users to understand how your moderators will act, what to expect in a community. How does "good modding" remove the need for that?

Akronymus 4y ago

I personally see the creator covenant to be a huge detriment, if not even a danger, to open source.

madeofpalk 4y ago

> all current developers have pledged to follow the spirit of The Rule to the best of their ability This one seems to be just the same, for better or worse?

actually_a_dog 4y ago

That seems to be a blatant mischaracterization: > Scope: > This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include using an official e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event. https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct/ https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_con... What's your motivation here?

thaneross 4y ago
Up to version 1.3 the covenant didn't have a section limiting scope. 1.4 introduced it along with a loophole: > Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers. Eg, if you say something the maintainers don't like on your personal Twitter, all they need to say is "you're representing the project in a bad light" and it's fair game to ban you. Then in version 2.0 the text you quote appears, but changes > This Code of Conduct applies within all project spaces to > This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces but never defines what community spaces are. Is your personal Twitter account a community space? Well, once again that's up to the maintainers to decide. It's the same loophole as 1.4 but more cleverly disguised.
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  Have you raised your concern with anyone who can do anything about it? In any case, I fail to see how this is any worse than any other project. Do you expect some sort of due process before you're banned from any random OSS project? I wouldn't. If you don't like it, you can fork the project. That's how it works.