5 ms·

That’s a naive statement. People die in large numbers because of horrible governments. Software conferences should be restricted because of politics.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
Political pluralism should be the default. When an "us vs them" mentality is embedded in every aspect of society, those are the conditions that lead to horrible governments arising. It becomes more about protecting/promoting the "us" and screwing over the "them" than running a functional fair government.
- Xeamek 3y ago
  >Political pluralism should be the default. Agreed. But that doesn't mean that EVERY and ALL political view should be respected. You can have political pluralism in some restricted spectrum, but not accept things that are too extreeme. Not tolerating human rights abuse doesn't automatically lead to every aspect of life being overtaken by "us vs them" mentality. Claiming that it does is nothing more then a slippery slope fallacy
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    Sure, if the DjangoCon Africa organizers had a history of human rights abuses, maybe that would be a reason to not fund them. But having a conference in Tanzania seems like a non-issue. Imagine Tommy Tuberville was on the PSF board, and he stonewalls PSF funding for any conference held in a place where abortion is legal. (According to Tommy, legal abortion is a gross human rights violation.) Do you think this is going to be an effective or compassionate form of pro-life advocacy?
    - Xeamek 3y ago
      I would call that stupid because I don't agree with that view, but yes, he would have a right to not sponsor countries that have legal abortion. So what?
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
        Is that the sort of world you want to live in though -- a world where people are constantly trying to impose their politics on others in this way? I think we're all better off if we seek a little more compromise than that. It's like a prisoner's dilemma -- sure, you have the "right" to defect, but we're collectively better off if everyone cooperates. Imagine the warm fuzzy feeling of bonding over a shared love of Python with someone from a different country who looks different from you and may even have different values from you. That was the world the Internet was supposed to create. I think we can still work towards that world, if we decide it's the world we want.
        Xeamek 3y ago
        >a world where people are constantly trying to impose their politics on others in this way? You know that this is happening from the dawn of human societies, right? There are always some laws and some views that are imposed. It always has been that way, and it always will be
        0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
        Polarization is not a constant across time/space: https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-01-21/polarization https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-01-21/polarization
  - Narann 3y ago
    >> Political pluralism should be the default. > Agreed. > But that doesn't mean that EVERY and ALL political view should be respected. Exactly, the difference is called “relativism”.
- Ralfp 3y ago
  Political pluralism is nice when you are discussing things like tax levels or investment targets, but a lot of "us vs them" arises from discussions like "I just want to exist in the open without prosecution" vs "your very existence is a problem and needs to be prevented".
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    I would argue that one of the most effective steps you can take in a situation like that is to establish pluralistic institutions where people get to know each other in person, as fellow human beings.
    - richie_adler 3y ago
      And I would argue that where religious motivations are involved, reason and empathy utterly fail. Dogma trumps all.
    - Ralfp 3y ago
      What does this change? 100 years ago people were writing angry letters to the American newspapers about women suffrage being an obvious sign of mental disease spreading in the society. You think people writing those letters were isolated from women and didn't know them?
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
        I actually think it is quite possible that the people writing those letters, for the most part, didn't have any healthy relationships with women. Or healthy relationships with suffragettes, at least.
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  The question is where you draw the line. Day to day politics probably shouldn't be the focus of such an org. However care for human rights (maybe based around the UN's human rights charta or the European Charta on Human rights) might be a worthwhile foundation.
- danShumway 3y ago
  There's a really weird reversal happening here where there are a group of people who don't like LGBTQ identity, and a group of people who think it's fine, and the group that doesn't like LGBTQ identity passed laws saying they could be put in prison for life... But somehow it's the people pointing out that the environment isn't safe who are getting accused of being against pluralism? And not the government that is literally saying, "we reserve the right to prosecute and imprison you if you come here and we don't like your identity/politics." Taking politics out of Python should mean that whoever you are and whatever you believe and whatever your identity is, you are at least safe at a Python conference because Python conferences are not the places where we debate identity, they're places where we talk about Python. So it is not LGTBQ people who are injecting politics into Python when they point out that they can be imprisoned for their identity, that they can't go to a Python conference and just focus on the tech. It is not them who are abandoning the notion of "live and let live together." If this was a conversation about avoiding Tanzania just because some of the attendees might be anti-gay, sure, maybe we could talk about pluralism and decorum. But that's not at all the conversation. You want to take politics out of the equation, politics is the thing that throws people in prison for an aspect of their identity that they don't even control. Politics is the thing that decides that people going to a tech conference need to be on their best behavior to avoid being prosecuted by the government. Taking politics out of Python and embracing pluralism means saying, "if somebody wants to give a technical talk in drag then you don't get to complain about it as long as the tech talk is good." You can dislike it, you can have a political disagreement about it, but a global, officially sanctioned Python conference should be open to everyone. Of course it's not the fault of the organizers that their government won't allow them to put on a conference that meets that criteria. But it's also not the fault of the Python Software Foundation, they don't have any special input into Tanzania's laws. And while it's definitely important to try and be as inclusive as possible to global contributors and to recognize that they are not their government, ultimately if you want to have an apolitical inclusive conference for people from all walks of life, the Tanzania government will not allow you to do that. The Tanzania government (not the African organizers and not the PSF) is saying that the political will rule the technical and the Tanzania government is saying that a politically pluralistic conference is not allowed in Tanzania. The Python Software Foundation is simply recognizing that fact. Of course, if the Tanzania government wants to allow for a pluralistic apolitical tech conference, it could at the very least pass explicit legal guarantees for attendees that they will be at no risk for their orientation or gender identity. But I suspect it's not willing to do that for a tech conference, and I suspect (however good their intentions are) that the organizers do not have the political sway necessary to get that kind of concession from the government.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

Political pluralism should be the default. When an "us vs them" mentality is embedded in every aspect of society, those are the conditions that lead to horrible governments arising. It becomes more about protecting/promoting the "us" and screwing over the "them" than running a functional fair government.

Xeamek 3y ago
>Political pluralism should be the default. Agreed. But that doesn't mean that EVERY and ALL political view should be respected. You can have political pluralism in some restricted spectrum, but not accept things that are too extreeme. Not tolerating human rights abuse doesn't automatically lead to every aspect of life being overtaken by "us vs them" mentality. Claiming that it does is nothing more then a slippery slope fallacy
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  Sure, if the DjangoCon Africa organizers had a history of human rights abuses, maybe that would be a reason to not fund them. But having a conference in Tanzania seems like a non-issue. Imagine Tommy Tuberville was on the PSF board, and he stonewalls PSF funding for any conference held in a place where abortion is legal. (According to Tommy, legal abortion is a gross human rights violation.) Do you think this is going to be an effective or compassionate form of pro-life advocacy?
  - Xeamek 3y ago
    I would call that stupid because I don't agree with that view, but yes, he would have a right to not sponsor countries that have legal abortion. So what?
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
      Is that the sort of world you want to live in though -- a world where people are constantly trying to impose their politics on others in this way? I think we're all better off if we seek a little more compromise than that. It's like a prisoner's dilemma -- sure, you have the "right" to defect, but we're collectively better off if everyone cooperates. Imagine the warm fuzzy feeling of bonding over a shared love of Python with someone from a different country who looks different from you and may even have different values from you. That was the world the Internet was supposed to create. I think we can still work towards that world, if we decide it's the world we want.
      - Xeamek 3y ago
        >a world where people are constantly trying to impose their politics on others in this way? You know that this is happening from the dawn of human societies, right? There are always some laws and some views that are imposed. It always has been that way, and it always will be
        0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
        Polarization is not a constant across time/space: https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-01-21/polarization https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-01-21/polarization
- Narann 3y ago
  >> Political pluralism should be the default. > Agreed. > But that doesn't mean that EVERY and ALL political view should be respected. Exactly, the difference is called “relativism”.
Ralfp 3y ago
Political pluralism is nice when you are discussing things like tax levels or investment targets, but a lot of "us vs them" arises from discussions like "I just want to exist in the open without prosecution" vs "your very existence is a problem and needs to be prevented".
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  I would argue that one of the most effective steps you can take in a situation like that is to establish pluralistic institutions where people get to know each other in person, as fellow human beings.
  - richie_adler 3y ago
    And I would argue that where religious motivations are involved, reason and empathy utterly fail. Dogma trumps all.
  - Ralfp 3y ago
    What does this change? 100 years ago people were writing angry letters to the American newspapers about women suffrage being an obvious sign of mental disease spreading in the society. You think people writing those letters were isolated from women and didn't know them?
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
      I actually think it is quite possible that the people writing those letters, for the most part, didn't have any healthy relationships with women. Or healthy relationships with suffragettes, at least.
johannes1234321 3y ago
The question is where you draw the line. Day to day politics probably shouldn't be the focus of such an org. However care for human rights (maybe based around the UN's human rights charta or the European Charta on Human rights) might be a worthwhile foundation.
danShumway 3y ago
There's a really weird reversal happening here where there are a group of people who don't like LGBTQ identity, and a group of people who think it's fine, and the group that doesn't like LGBTQ identity passed laws saying they could be put in prison for life... But somehow it's the people pointing out that the environment isn't safe who are getting accused of being against pluralism? And not the government that is literally saying, "we reserve the right to prosecute and imprison you if you come here and we don't like your identity/politics." Taking politics out of Python should mean that whoever you are and whatever you believe and whatever your identity is, you are at least safe at a Python conference because Python conferences are not the places where we debate identity, they're places where we talk about Python. So it is not LGTBQ people who are injecting politics into Python when they point out that they can be imprisoned for their identity, that they can't go to a Python conference and just focus on the tech. It is not them who are abandoning the notion of "live and let live together." If this was a conversation about avoiding Tanzania just because some of the attendees might be anti-gay, sure, maybe we could talk about pluralism and decorum. But that's not at all the conversation. You want to take politics out of the equation, politics is the thing that throws people in prison for an aspect of their identity that they don't even control. Politics is the thing that decides that people going to a tech conference need to be on their best behavior to avoid being prosecuted by the government. Taking politics out of Python and embracing pluralism means saying, "if somebody wants to give a technical talk in drag then you don't get to complain about it as long as the tech talk is good." You can dislike it, you can have a political disagreement about it, but a global, officially sanctioned Python conference should be open to everyone. Of course it's not the fault of the organizers that their government won't allow them to put on a conference that meets that criteria. But it's also not the fault of the Python Software Foundation, they don't have any special input into Tanzania's laws. And while it's definitely important to try and be as inclusive as possible to global contributors and to recognize that they are not their government, ultimately if you want to have an apolitical inclusive conference for people from all walks of life, the Tanzania government will not allow you to do that. The Tanzania government (not the African organizers and not the PSF) is saying that the political will rule the technical and the Tanzania government is saying that a politically pluralistic conference is not allowed in Tanzania. The Python Software Foundation is simply recognizing that fact. Of course, if the Tanzania government wants to allow for a pluralistic apolitical tech conference, it could at the very least pass explicit legal guarantees for attendees that they will be at no risk for their orientation or gender identity. But I suspect it's not willing to do that for a tech conference, and I suspect (however good their intentions are) that the organizers do not have the political sway necessary to get that kind of concession from the government.