3 ms·

> any work you do is intertwined with politics. That simply is not true. Apolitical topics do exist, and it is incredibly annoying when people try to force pol

by bigstrat2003 2y ago

> any work you do is intertwined with politics. That simply is not true. Apolitical topics do exist, and it is incredibly annoying when people try to force politics into an apolitical topic (looking at you, Rust community).

moomin 2y ago
I mean, treating people with a modicum of respect shouldn’t be a political position, and it’s hardly the Rust community’s fault that it is.
- skeeter2020 2y ago
  no kidding - even if politics exist in the subject you are always free to not accept it and rise above.
bowsamic 2y ago
Can you give an example of an apolitical topic? EDIT: unfortunately I can’t reply to the comments as I have been banned EDIT 2: I have been banned to reply to the commenter, dang told me EDIT 3: dang has now wiped all the upvotes on this message and given me 2 extra downvotes and suddenly another comment I made mentioning him in a totally different thread has been mass downvoted
- dpkirchner 2y ago
  There isn't one. It's the very nature of politics that it affects everything we humans do.
- analognoise 2y ago
  Almost everything can be discussed in an apolitical way - you just don’t talk politics. It isn’t a logic puzzle.
  - bowsamic 2y ago
    Yes you can decide not to mention the politics inherent in the thing but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I’m wondering if the person I’m replying to can produce a thing where it truly isn’t there
    - analognoise 2y ago
      But you can say that about anything. There are people whose whole expertise is one area of, say, film production. You can talk about films and critically analyze them without doing a deep dive into how props are made. It’s OK to have separate contexts. It isn’t a “gotcha” that “everything is political” - it just doesn’t matter when trying to do most things. It’s distracting and pointless; it’s a null statement. You can talk about anything without having to include politics the same way you can discuss literature without examining types of paper.
      - bowsamic 2y ago
        It’s not null, it’s true and profound
        analognoise 2y ago
        In the “I’m 14 and this is deep” way, maybe. Nothing more.
- tim333 2y ago
  Providing memory safety in computer languages?
  - darkwater 2y ago
    You are making governments secret agencies work harder. So, not apolitical.
- nicolas_t 2y ago
  I don't think you've been banned. There's some mechanism to rate limit replies in HN to prevent flamewars so maybe that's what you're seeing?
- dang 2y ago
  I don't believe I told you that, because our software doesn't work that way. Your account is rate-limited though. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments and/or get involved in flamewars. That's probably what I told you.
polairscience 2y ago
While I agree that a community needs to focus on its central goal (developing the rust programming language in this case), I think I have a very good litmus test for what you think "apolitical" means: Let's say Lynn were a rust developer and felt as though the the tone of the community and the discussion of her work made her feel unwelcome. Let's say Lynn spoke out against that. Would you entertain that conversation? I imagine that is not too far from what happened at IBM when Lynn was fired. When is it "allowed" to be political in your mind? Intentionally addressing the ability of marginalized people to be a part of a community, in my mind, is precisely apolitical. If it's clear that anyone is welcome then you don't really need to talk about politics, do you.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  In that example, it seems politics were already allowed, if people were saying things to make Hypothetical Lynn uncomfortable. Presumably that kind of talk was about transgender issues and not some technical topic about rust which would make her uncomfortable. So, in that circumstance, it seems only fair that if a person can express their political opinion, so can another person. But,maybe the leader of the project should have shutdown whatever was making Hypothetical Lynn uncomfortable before she was forced to mount a response to it?
quantified 2y ago
Topics yes. Work is much more than a topic. Mathematical equations and solutions are apolitical (in the abstract). Teaching math and working in any communal research setting will be political, for example can you teach these things to that age group/population, how do you test, etc.
pornel 2y ago
Open-source projects depend on their community and contributors, and community management is inherently political. No matter what "neutral" thing you do, some contributors will approve of that, and some will see it as a red flag. Even saying "no politics!" will be seen by some people a political stance — as an approval of the status quo (which may be unfavorable to some groups of people), or even as a denial that certain social problems exist, and a red flag that you won't help them if someone discriminates against them. Even in a "no politics" environment the you will end up having to decide what is "political" and what isn't, and that is a political stance! Someone will have a Bible quote in their email signature — is that neutral or political? Then is Quran okay too, or rainbow emoji? And when you tell people to stop this circus, the "no politics" policy itself will be questioned as a political stance against free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc.
- skissane 2y ago
  > Open-source projects depend on their community and contributors, and community management is inherently political. No matter what "neutral" thing you do, some contributors will approve of that, and some will see it as a red flag. There's this saying some people have, "there's three things you don't talk about at work: sex, politics and religion". (I think an older version had "money" instead of "sex"–from the days when sex wasn't talked about so much that we didn't even talk about the fact that we didn't talk about it.) And it isn't necessarily bad advice. Do we really want heated workplace arguments about Israel-and-Palestine, Biden-vs-Trump, etc? We have to work with people who have completely different views from us on big picture political issues. Sometimes it is better we just agree to disagree and focus on what we have in common – airing those disagreements in detail can just produce negative feelings and disruption. But of course, every office, every open source project has politics. But that's the thing, people traditionally draw a distinction between "micropolitics" (the politics of our workplace) and "macropolitics" (national politics, geopolitics). You cannot escape micropolitics, it is everywhere, it is inevitable. But macropolitics, yes, we should avoid it at work whenever possible. Of course, people will then bring up "the personal is the political", and it is true. Transgender issues, for example: a big political controversy, but obviously for transgender people a very personal one. However, even there, I think there is a useful distinction. A transgender employee isn't breaking the "no macropolitics at work" rule by being transgender, or talking about their personal experiences, or so on. But, consider Lynn Conway's public campaigns against the psychologist J. Michael Bailey and the sexologist Ray Blanchard – even though that was obviously very personal for her, it wouldn't have been appropriate for her to carry it on at work. Well, she actually did use her UMich web page for those campaigns, but the norms about this are different in academia than in your average workplace. And politics is personal for all kinds of people: I remember back in 2010 when the Israeli military intercepted the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla", the team I was in at the time had some very heated discussion over it. Afterwards, a Jewish team member talked to me privately, and I could tell the whole discussion had made him feel rather uncomfortable, because it felt personal to him. And one of the other participants in the conversation was Palestinian, so it was obviously personal to him too. But still, in hindsight I wish the whole discussion had never happened, and I regret my own (rather peripheral) role in it. We broke the "no politics at work" rule, and it did pointless harm to our cohesion as a team.

moomin 2y ago

I mean, treating people with a modicum of respect shouldn’t be a political position, and it’s hardly the Rust community’s fault that it is.

skeeter2020 2y ago
no kidding - even if politics exist in the subject you are always free to not accept it and rise above.

bowsamic 2y ago

Can you give an example of an apolitical topic? EDIT: unfortunately I can’t reply to the comments as I have been banned EDIT 2: I have been banned to reply to the commenter, dang told me EDIT 3: dang has now wiped all the upvotes on this message and given me 2 extra downvotes and suddenly another comment I made mentioning him in a totally different thread has been mass downvoted

dpkirchner 2y ago
There isn't one. It's the very nature of politics that it affects everything we humans do.
analognoise 2y ago
Almost everything can be discussed in an apolitical way - you just don’t talk politics. It isn’t a logic puzzle.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  Yes you can decide not to mention the politics inherent in the thing but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I’m wondering if the person I’m replying to can produce a thing where it truly isn’t there
  - analognoise 2y ago
    But you can say that about anything. There are people whose whole expertise is one area of, say, film production. You can talk about films and critically analyze them without doing a deep dive into how props are made. It’s OK to have separate contexts. It isn’t a “gotcha” that “everything is political” - it just doesn’t matter when trying to do most things. It’s distracting and pointless; it’s a null statement. You can talk about anything without having to include politics the same way you can discuss literature without examining types of paper.
    - bowsamic 2y ago
      It’s not null, it’s true and profound
      - analognoise 2y ago
        In the “I’m 14 and this is deep” way, maybe. Nothing more.
tim333 2y ago
Providing memory safety in computer languages?
- darkwater 2y ago
  You are making governments secret agencies work harder. So, not apolitical.
nicolas_t 2y ago
I don't think you've been banned. There's some mechanism to rate limit replies in HN to prevent flamewars so maybe that's what you're seeing?
dang 2y ago
I don't believe I told you that, because our software doesn't work that way. Your account is rate-limited though. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments and/or get involved in flamewars. That's probably what I told you.

polairscience 2y ago

While I agree that a community needs to focus on its central goal (developing the rust programming language in this case), I think I have a very good litmus test for what you think "apolitical" means: Let's say Lynn were a rust developer and felt as though the the tone of the community and the discussion of her work made her feel unwelcome. Let's say Lynn spoke out against that. Would you entertain that conversation? I imagine that is not too far from what happened at IBM when Lynn was fired. When is it "allowed" to be political in your mind? Intentionally addressing the ability of marginalized people to be a part of a community, in my mind, is precisely apolitical. If it's clear that anyone is welcome then you don't really need to talk about politics, do you.

IncreasePosts 2y ago
In that example, it seems politics were already allowed, if people were saying things to make Hypothetical Lynn uncomfortable. Presumably that kind of talk was about transgender issues and not some technical topic about rust which would make her uncomfortable. So, in that circumstance, it seems only fair that if a person can express their political opinion, so can another person. But,maybe the leader of the project should have shutdown whatever was making Hypothetical Lynn uncomfortable before she was forced to mount a response to it?

quantified 2y ago

Topics yes. Work is much more than a topic. Mathematical equations and solutions are apolitical (in the abstract). Teaching math and working in any communal research setting will be political, for example can you teach these things to that age group/population, how do you test, etc.

pornel 2y ago

Open-source projects depend on their community and contributors, and community management is inherently political. No matter what "neutral" thing you do, some contributors will approve of that, and some will see it as a red flag. Even saying "no politics!" will be seen by some people a political stance — as an approval of the status quo (which may be unfavorable to some groups of people), or even as a denial that certain social problems exist, and a red flag that you won't help them if someone discriminates against them. Even in a "no politics" environment the you will end up having to decide what is "political" and what isn't, and that is a political stance! Someone will have a Bible quote in their email signature — is that neutral or political? Then is Quran okay too, or rainbow emoji? And when you tell people to stop this circus, the "no politics" policy itself will be questioned as a political stance against free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc.

skissane 2y ago
> Open-source projects depend on their community and contributors, and community management is inherently political. No matter what "neutral" thing you do, some contributors will approve of that, and some will see it as a red flag. There's this saying some people have, "there's three things you don't talk about at work: sex, politics and religion". (I think an older version had "money" instead of "sex"–from the days when sex wasn't talked about so much that we didn't even talk about the fact that we didn't talk about it.) And it isn't necessarily bad advice. Do we really want heated workplace arguments about Israel-and-Palestine, Biden-vs-Trump, etc? We have to work with people who have completely different views from us on big picture political issues. Sometimes it is better we just agree to disagree and focus on what we have in common – airing those disagreements in detail can just produce negative feelings and disruption. But of course, every office, every open source project has politics. But that's the thing, people traditionally draw a distinction between "micropolitics" (the politics of our workplace) and "macropolitics" (national politics, geopolitics). You cannot escape micropolitics, it is everywhere, it is inevitable. But macropolitics, yes, we should avoid it at work whenever possible. Of course, people will then bring up "the personal is the political", and it is true. Transgender issues, for example: a big political controversy, but obviously for transgender people a very personal one. However, even there, I think there is a useful distinction. A transgender employee isn't breaking the "no macropolitics at work" rule by being transgender, or talking about their personal experiences, or so on. But, consider Lynn Conway's public campaigns against the psychologist J. Michael Bailey and the sexologist Ray Blanchard – even though that was obviously very personal for her, it wouldn't have been appropriate for her to carry it on at work. Well, she actually did use her UMich web page for those campaigns, but the norms about this are different in academia than in your average workplace. And politics is personal for all kinds of people: I remember back in 2010 when the Israeli military intercepted the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla", the team I was in at the time had some very heated discussion over it. Afterwards, a Jewish team member talked to me privately, and I could tell the whole discussion had made him feel rather uncomfortable, because it felt personal to him. And one of the other participants in the conversation was Palestinian, so it was obviously personal to him too. But still, in hindsight I wish the whole discussion had never happened, and I regret my own (rather peripheral) role in it. We broke the "no politics at work" rule, and it did pointless harm to our cohesion as a team.