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I feel the same way. There’s a big chunk of the FOSS community that has dedicated itself to the cultural left “omnicause,” which seems to require full agreemen

I feel the same way. There’s a big chunk of the FOSS community that has dedicated itself to the cultural left “omnicause,” which seems to require full agreement with the consensus as one of its membership criteria. The thing is, even though I agree with many (but not all) of its tenets on paper, I don’t really agree with the methods used or the insistence on full agreement. I also just despise ordinary politicking, and prefer slow procedure-driven decision making (like Debian) or projects driven by a visionary leader (like OpenBSD). This makes me an outsider by default. Projects that attract these people tend to engage in vicious struggle sessions any time there’s a serious disagreement. I think the biggest schism I have with these people is over identity. I prefer to have no identity. Anonymous (or pseudonymous), faceless. They want to enforce a strong identity, even if it’s a constructed identity. It can’t just be about trust, given how often identifiable people break each others’ trust. I suspect it’s about enforcing ingroup signaling as a criteria of membership, in order to make the group look stronger and drive out dissenters.

LoganDark 2mo ago
> I think the biggest schism I have with these people is over identity. I prefer to have no identity. Anonymous (or pseudonymous), faceless. Same here. I don't even have just one identity in the first place (thanks to DID), but not a single one identifies as a "real human". I suspect these people have some sort of idea of what constitutes a "real human" to them, and in this case it seems to be making a full canonical identity directly available. I don't do that; my life (and brain) is incredibly compartmentalized and I don't use the body's likeness online, nor do I make my personal email address available to the public, so even if I did identify with humanity I feel like I would probably still not be "real human" enough.
- iamnothere 2mo ago
  > I suspect these people have some sort of idea of what constitutes a "real human" to them, and in this case it seems to be making a full canonical identity directly available. That’s a great point. They want to be able to dig through your history to make sure that you’re co-aligned, and maybe to find something they can use if they need to influence or target you. To that I say, no thanks.
  - LoganDark 2mo ago
    In my discussion with Drew, it was framed as an issue of trust: "You've set yourself up in a position of not trusting your peers. They offer you this courtesy, but you deny it to them." To me, whether or not to trust others is a purely individual decision. If others choose to be trusting, that is their choice. It is likewise my choice not to give out trust so freely, and somehow that is treated as selfish and unfair. I want to contribute my thoughts and work to the community, but apparently, I am not trusting enough to be a part of it. I choose to support the inverse; that is, I will explicitly tell others that they have no need to trust me whatsoever. I try to make arguments, contribute work and generally conduct myself in such a way that any merit is self-evident, and that there is no need to trust me. It is not an issue when someone does, of course, but there is certainly an issue when they try to demand my trust in return. In my opinion, we live in a dystopia, and we should generally strive towards protocols and "cultures" that do not demand so much "trust". If full trust is required to participate, you will suffer from bad actors that pretend to trust, while excluding honest actors who do not. The same problem exists with things like ID verification, because bad actors have access to unlimited IDs, while honest people may not have access to, or be willing to surrender, any at all.
    - iamnothere 2mo ago
      Fully agree. Trust is earned, not given, and trust is also contextual. I’ve certainly known pseudonymous internet users that I came to trust for certain things, based on their reliability over time. Would I trust them in a different context? Probably not, at least until I got to know them in that context. I’ve been burned by freely giving trust when it wasn’t deserved, assuming that it would be respected and reciprocated. As you said, that’s just not the world we live in.

LoganDark 2mo ago

> I think the biggest schism I have with these people is over identity. I prefer to have no identity. Anonymous (or pseudonymous), faceless. Same here. I don't even have just one identity in the first place (thanks to DID), but not a single one identifies as a "real human". I suspect these people have some sort of idea of what constitutes a "real human" to them, and in this case it seems to be making a full canonical identity directly available. I don't do that; my life (and brain) is incredibly compartmentalized and I don't use the body's likeness online, nor do I make my personal email address available to the public, so even if I did identify with humanity I feel like I would probably still not be "real human" enough.

iamnothere 2mo ago
> I suspect these people have some sort of idea of what constitutes a "real human" to them, and in this case it seems to be making a full canonical identity directly available. That’s a great point. They want to be able to dig through your history to make sure that you’re co-aligned, and maybe to find something they can use if they need to influence or target you. To that I say, no thanks.
- LoganDark 2mo ago
  In my discussion with Drew, it was framed as an issue of trust: "You've set yourself up in a position of not trusting your peers. They offer you this courtesy, but you deny it to them." To me, whether or not to trust others is a purely individual decision. If others choose to be trusting, that is their choice. It is likewise my choice not to give out trust so freely, and somehow that is treated as selfish and unfair. I want to contribute my thoughts and work to the community, but apparently, I am not trusting enough to be a part of it. I choose to support the inverse; that is, I will explicitly tell others that they have no need to trust me whatsoever. I try to make arguments, contribute work and generally conduct myself in such a way that any merit is self-evident, and that there is no need to trust me. It is not an issue when someone does, of course, but there is certainly an issue when they try to demand my trust in return. In my opinion, we live in a dystopia, and we should generally strive towards protocols and "cultures" that do not demand so much "trust". If full trust is required to participate, you will suffer from bad actors that pretend to trust, while excluding honest actors who do not. The same problem exists with things like ID verification, because bad actors have access to unlimited IDs, while honest people may not have access to, or be willing to surrender, any at all.
  - iamnothere 2mo ago
    Fully agree. Trust is earned, not given, and trust is also contextual. I’ve certainly known pseudonymous internet users that I came to trust for certain things, based on their reliability over time. Would I trust them in a different context? Probably not, at least until I got to know them in that context. I’ve been burned by freely giving trust when it wasn’t deserved, assuming that it would be respected and reciprocated. As you said, that’s just not the world we live in.