2 ms·

> There are more libertarian views on here due to the DIY and inquisitive nature of the hacker community. Bluntly, it’s also the hacker community, or at least

> There are more libertarian views on here due to the DIY and inquisitive nature of the hacker community. Bluntly, it’s also the hacker community, or at least this hacker community, being kind of poor at generalizing things to an overall population and confusing their own emotions about something for a reasoned defense of it. We’re arrogant, overconfident in our ability to reason about things, undervalue others’ reasoning, experience, and history, regularly mistake our ability to reason through a technical issue for expertise in things outside our wheelhouse, and are profoundly gifted at self-motivated reasoning, so the idea that anyone else might have a valid opinion on why we shouldn’t do something we really want to do strikes us as tyranny.

BobaFloutist 2y ago
Also bombs and guns are "cool" and bureaucrats aren't, and most programmers are more likely to have been "harmed" (had their taxes collected) by a bureacrat than a bomb or a gun, so they automatically side with the guns and bombs.
giantg2 2y ago
I can kind of see that, but t I think the main thing is more along the lines of "this interesting thing shouldn't be banned just because some people can't handle it" and "the punishment should fit the harm". Regulations actually in place to protect people are fine. Most regulations on this sort of thing are overbearing. A lot of the licensing and recordkeeping are targeted towards companies and commercial producers and apply ham-fistedly to individuals. One example is distillation of spirits. It's illegal for me to distill. I'm not even allowed to get a license to do it because my property is residential and not commercial even though I want to do it for myself. There's really no valid reasoning for. The courts are starting to agree - there was one court that said making the permit impossible to get as an individual in a residential property is a violation of some right. The point is, we should challenge regulations that don't make sense. If there is a valid reason, then we learn. If there isn't a valid reason, then maybe we can correct some injustice. Even as hackers/programmers/etc, we miss edge cases and have to amend our code, it's really not much different for policies, probably even worse than the spaghetti code with of us has seen.

BobaFloutist 2y ago

Also bombs and guns are "cool" and bureaucrats aren't, and most programmers are more likely to have been "harmed" (had their taxes collected) by a bureacrat than a bomb or a gun, so they automatically side with the guns and bombs.

giantg2 2y ago

I can kind of see that, but t I think the main thing is more along the lines of "this interesting thing shouldn't be banned just because some people can't handle it" and "the punishment should fit the harm". Regulations actually in place to protect people are fine. Most regulations on this sort of thing are overbearing. A lot of the licensing and recordkeeping are targeted towards companies and commercial producers and apply ham-fistedly to individuals. One example is distillation of spirits. It's illegal for me to distill. I'm not even allowed to get a license to do it because my property is residential and not commercial even though I want to do it for myself. There's really no valid reasoning for. The courts are starting to agree - there was one court that said making the permit impossible to get as an individual in a residential property is a violation of some right. The point is, we should challenge regulations that don't make sense. If there is a valid reason, then we learn. If there isn't a valid reason, then maybe we can correct some injustice. Even as hackers/programmers/etc, we miss edge cases and have to amend our code, it's really not much different for policies, probably even worse than the spaghetti code with of us has seen.