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Some part of me always assumes people are innocent. I think I just see too much of myself in others and when they commit some act I never would it seems genuine

by donatj 2y ago

Some part of me always assumes people are innocent. I think I just see too much of myself in others and when they commit some act I never would it seems genuinely outside reality. I remember vividly being a very tech-involved twenty year old, extremely excited about Reiser4 when this all came to light and thinking "There's no way he did it! They don't even have a body, they don't even know she is dead" right up until he lead the investigators to the body. Then I felt so dumb. The whole thing honestly lead to a lot of self reflection and questioning of my own instincts. Frankly, it made me a little more cynical about people overall. That said, I am still a perennial optimist.

mrweasel 2y ago
> Some dumb part of me that always thinks people are innocent. You're not alone. Hans Reiser is one of two people where I had the notion that "Why would he do that? That makes no sense." The other one is Peter Madsen (the Danish submarine guy), he had a few month earlier been part of a TV show about find some German WWII u-boat, where he was absolutely brilliant and entertaining. For ReiserFS a large part of the issue, which is also addressed here, is that there just wasn't that many developers that cared that much for the filesystem. The Namesys developered cared, in large part because they where paid. Obviously they also had bills to pay, so when no one wanted to pay them to work on ReiserFS it just feel apart. We see this with many of the project that thrown into e.g. The Apache Foundation, the code is thrown over the fence, but with no advocates, no developer resources and no money, so the code is just left to rot.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  Narcissists can be very charming. You don't know the inner lives of most people and it's impossible to judge them by their public persona when it's entirely under their control. Celebrity actors are notable specialists in this area.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > where he was absolutely brilliant and entertaining. When I was young and naive I thought con artists would be easy to spot: They would be obviously bad people and they would lie in everything they said. The challenge with successful con artists is that they tend to be very charismatic. They might also tell the truth 99% of the time. Telling mostly truths is the key to building trust, after which they can slip in a lie here and there and it will go unquestioned. This is a major problem in pop-culture science and health discourse right now. There are a lot of podcasters and bloggers who spend most of their time repeating simple and undeniable truths (exercise is good, you should eat more vegetables, getting sleep makes you feel better, going outside is a good idea) and therefore build up a lot of trust. Then they'll change gears to wacky alternative medicine ideas and slip them in between all of the obvious truths. For people who consume hours of their podcasts every week, those alternative medicine and pseudoscience claims are hard to identify among all the other simple truths.
bawolff 2y ago
There is nothing wrong with presuming innocence until the evidence proves otherwise beyond doubt.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
When I read about politics I have to accept that almost half of people either have a completely thought process from me, or mediated communication allows them to live in a completely different world Or, likely, they choose not to think
Aurornis 2y ago
> I remember vividly being a very tech-involved twenty year old, extremely excited about Reiser4 when this all came to light and thinking "There's no way he did it! Becoming involved with a person and/or their project has a way of clouding judgment. ReiserFS blurred the lines between person and technology, so getting excited about the file system in a way meant you were backing the person, too. None of us likes to imagine ourselves supporting a murderer, criminal, or other bad person. So when the accusations come out, the first instinct is to deny them. Admitting they have any truth would be equivalent to admitting that we supported a bad person, but denying them allows us to remain consistent. This plays out frequently with celebrities, internet personalities, and politicians. More recently (and without the crime, obviously) I'm reminded of the revelation that Andrew Huberman was not a great person in his personal or professional lives, and that his podcast content is full of misleading claims. The poor accuracy of his scientific content was well-known in the research community, but people didn't want to believe it because they liked Huberman and his personality. When the revelations about his personal and professional activities came out, people rushed to his defense and dismissal. Even today mentioning his name online will summon commenters who downplay the accusations or try to defend him. Listening to hundreds of hours of someone speaking charismatically has a way of charming people into denying any information that goes contrary to what they want to believe about that person.
karmakaze 2y ago
It seems there were cracks earlier in the software story: > Linus: As long as you call them ‘plugins’…I (and I suspect a lot of other people) are totally uninterested… > Uninterested, because they’re worried about the complexity, the stability, the long-term viability of Reiser4. They’re worried about his inability to collaborate, to compromise. They’re seeing a man who’s so focused on his own vision that he’s blind to the practical realities of working within a community, of releasing and maintain code at the scale of heavily used operating system kernel. > Alan-Cox: “It doesn’t matter if reiser4 causes crashes. It matters that people can fix them…and the code is maintainable.”

by donatj 2y ago

mrweasel 2y ago

> Some dumb part of me that always thinks people are innocent. You're not alone. Hans Reiser is one of two people where I had the notion that "Why would he do that? That makes no sense." The other one is Peter Madsen (the Danish submarine guy), he had a few month earlier been part of a TV show about find some German WWII u-boat, where he was absolutely brilliant and entertaining. For ReiserFS a large part of the issue, which is also addressed here, is that there just wasn't that many developers that cared that much for the filesystem. The Namesys developered cared, in large part because they where paid. Obviously they also had bills to pay, so when no one wanted to pay them to work on ReiserFS it just feel apart. We see this with many of the project that thrown into e.g. The Apache Foundation, the code is thrown over the fence, but with no advocates, no developer resources and no money, so the code is just left to rot.

kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
Narcissists can be very charming. You don't know the inner lives of most people and it's impossible to judge them by their public persona when it's entirely under their control. Celebrity actors are notable specialists in this area.
Aurornis 2y ago
> where he was absolutely brilliant and entertaining. When I was young and naive I thought con artists would be easy to spot: They would be obviously bad people and they would lie in everything they said. The challenge with successful con artists is that they tend to be very charismatic. They might also tell the truth 99% of the time. Telling mostly truths is the key to building trust, after which they can slip in a lie here and there and it will go unquestioned. This is a major problem in pop-culture science and health discourse right now. There are a lot of podcasters and bloggers who spend most of their time repeating simple and undeniable truths (exercise is good, you should eat more vegetables, getting sleep makes you feel better, going outside is a good idea) and therefore build up a lot of trust. Then they'll change gears to wacky alternative medicine ideas and slip them in between all of the obvious truths. For people who consume hours of their podcasts every week, those alternative medicine and pseudoscience claims are hard to identify among all the other simple truths.

bawolff 2y ago

There is nothing wrong with presuming innocence until the evidence proves otherwise beyond doubt.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago

When I read about politics I have to accept that almost half of people either have a completely thought process from me, or mediated communication allows them to live in a completely different world Or, likely, they choose not to think

Aurornis 2y ago

> I remember vividly being a very tech-involved twenty year old, extremely excited about Reiser4 when this all came to light and thinking "There's no way he did it! Becoming involved with a person and/or their project has a way of clouding judgment. ReiserFS blurred the lines between person and technology, so getting excited about the file system in a way meant you were backing the person, too. None of us likes to imagine ourselves supporting a murderer, criminal, or other bad person. So when the accusations come out, the first instinct is to deny them. Admitting they have any truth would be equivalent to admitting that we supported a bad person, but denying them allows us to remain consistent. This plays out frequently with celebrities, internet personalities, and politicians. More recently (and without the crime, obviously) I'm reminded of the revelation that Andrew Huberman was not a great person in his personal or professional lives, and that his podcast content is full of misleading claims. The poor accuracy of his scientific content was well-known in the research community, but people didn't want to believe it because they liked Huberman and his personality. When the revelations about his personal and professional activities came out, people rushed to his defense and dismissal. Even today mentioning his name online will summon commenters who downplay the accusations or try to defend him. Listening to hundreds of hours of someone speaking charismatically has a way of charming people into denying any information that goes contrary to what they want to believe about that person.

karmakaze 2y ago

It seems there were cracks earlier in the software story: > Linus: As long as you call them ‘plugins’…I (and I suspect a lot of other people) are totally uninterested… > Uninterested, because they’re worried about the complexity, the stability, the long-term viability of Reiser4. They’re worried about his inability to collaborate, to compromise. They’re seeing a man who’s so focused on his own vision that he’s blind to the practical realities of working within a community, of releasing and maintain code at the scale of heavily used operating system kernel. > Alan-Cox: “It doesn’t matter if reiser4 causes crashes. It matters that people can fix them…and the code is maintainable.”