Diversity, I think, is really important. Diversity of thought as well as all the other kinds of diversity. It's important to be able to work with people who come from different backgrounds, who have different beliefs. I see this on both sides (I see it more often on the left, but that's just because my filter bubble is a somewhat leftish one.. when I step out of that bubble, I see plenty examples of people on the right doing the same thing.) and it's... pretty terrible, I think, and especially on the left extremely hypocritical.
Yeah. If the only way you can get people to (pretend to) believe an idea (such as "gay marriage is a good thing") is by threatening their livelihood if they don't, it reflects poorly on both you and the idea.
As in, the position you're attacking (the idea of sanctioning him to get him to change his beliefs) wasn't what the anti-Eich crowd was advocating, by and large.
But at this stage, it's better to just give the topic a rest, please. Pretty much everything that could be said about it has been, by now. And baiting (or simply poorly reasoned) dialog (such as your statement above) simply adds to his lumps.
What Eich believes is irrelevant. But he didn't just "believe something". He did something. Beliefs don't have consequences, but it's absolutely reasonable and possibly necessary to attempt to enforce consequences for actions.
It's not true that all diversity of thought is good or acceptable. As obvious examples, the idea that people with black skin should be slaves, or that people who believe in Judaism should be rounded up and exterminated.
Saying that gay people should be denied the right to marry is not much different in my mind than advocating segregation for blacks, or denying Muslims various rights. (However, as long as Eich is no longer promoting that view, I think it's long past time for everyone else to move on. I hope my personal mistakes aren't remembered and rehashed industry-wide like that!)
So where to draw the line? A simple mnemonic I use: The only thing I don't tolerate is intolerance. It's a little trite, but it works and there is another good reason for it: The intolerent are parasites on the social contract of tolerance; they violate it and then claim they should have its protection.
You're in good company in your well thought out justification of not tolerating intolerance. Religious groups who themselves benefit from tolerance yet preach intolerance don't need to change their bigoted beliefs -- they are free believe anything they want, right or wrong. They only need to behave as if they were tolerant (by not actively trying to strip away the existing rights of others, like Brendan did), to get along in a tolerant society that has the right self preservation and the right to defend itself from those who would destroy its tolerance and institutions of liberty (like gay marriage).
Paradox of Tolerance [1]:
Philosopher Karl Popper defined the paradox in 1945 in The Open Society and Its Enemies Vol. 1.
"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
He concluded that we are warranted in refusing to tolerate intolerance: "We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
In 1971, philosopher John Rawls concludes in A Theory of Justice that a just society must tolerate the intolerant, for otherwise, the society would then itself be intolerant, and thus unjust. However, Rawls also insists, like Popper, that society has a reasonable right of self-preservation that supersedes the principle of tolerance: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."
In a 1997 work, Michael Walzer asked "Should we tolerate the intolerant?" He notes that most minority religious groups who are the beneficiaries of tolerance are themselves intolerant, at least in some respects. In a tolerant regime, such people may learn to tolerate, or at least to behave "as if they possessed this virtue".
There are a whole lot of issues I'm willing to accept "diversity of thought" on. But there's a line one crosses when they go from "I believe homosexuality is wrong, and therefore I will suppress any gay feelings I may have" to "I believe homosexuality is wrong, and thus I will attempt to make you into a second class citizen".
I don't have beef with Eich over his thoughts. But his actions were inhumane, and he hasn't acknowledged or apologized for that.
I hear this argument a lot, and since you seem sincere in making it I have a serious question. I'd honestly like to hear the answer from you or anyone who agrees with your sentiment.
Is it also important to be accepting of those who think black people should never marry white people? What about those who think black people shouldn't have the right reproduce? Or live in the same neighborhoods as white people? Or live? How about when they start taking action to make their views reality?
Is there a line where you stop being accepting of "diverse" views and instead oppose them to stand up for the people those views oppress? If so, where is the line? If not, why do you prioritize someone's "right" to oppress others because of their beliefs over the rights of the victims?
Let's use an example I face every day. I work in an industry that by in large doesn't hire women or black people. So yes, I'm around people who are very racist and very sexist every day -
It's pretty fucking important for me to be able to function socially around people who have political views I consider to be abhorrent - people who act on those beliefs every day.
Would a better course of action be for me to leave the industry? because that's what it would mean to cut all the racists out of my life.
Thanks for answering. The point you're bringing up -- the value of being able to function in a world among people with a wide variety of beliefs that conflict with yours when you have no choice and not much power to effect change -- is totally valid. I thought you were extrapolating from that to argue that we shouldn't take action when we can. In the case of Eich, the power happened to be social pressure, and it was used to oust him. I'm not crazy about the tactics, and such tactics can be abused, but the result in this case is that it's now known that at Mozilla, at least, homophobia isn't tolerated. I thought you were arguing against that result on the grounds that people should have had more "tolerance for diversity of thought," namely the thought that gay people shoudn't have full marriage equality, with a political action to support it. My entire response was based on that premise. If it was a misreading of your intent, I apologize.
> I thought you were arguing against that result on the grounds that people should have had more "tolerance for diversity of thought," namely the thought that gay people shoudn't have full marriage equality, with a political action to support it.
I do think that people should be able to have abhorrent political ideas, and should be able to take the legal political action they like, without fear of personal retaliation.
We have a process, a set of rules and laws for deciding what to do when you and I disagree on what is right for other people. This is what our political system is for; to solve these sorts of disputes in a organized way, without degenerating into war or lynching or what have you. I mean, it doesn't always work... but the political system is the tool for the problem, and while not perfect, it's a pretty good tool. Certainly, it's the best tool we have; people should be encouraged to use it rather than direct action, I think.
Actually, I think the anti-gay-marriage proposition is a good example of our political system working as intended. Sure, it passed, because embarrassingly, that's just how most people in my state feel. But... because we have several layers of laws specifically set up to prevent the majority from simply shitting on a minority, (and I thought the anti-gay marriage thing was especially ugly just because it was one of those laws that shat upon the minority without even bringing the majority benefits.) the law got struck down in the courts. In my opinion? this is exactly what should have happened.
Next, I really do think that diversity of ideas and diversity of values is a good thing, even ideas and values that I deeply disagree with. If you really want diversity of ideas, you're gonna need some religious people. I know it doesn't feel that way on HN, or even really in silicon valley, but atheists are the minority here, and while I certainly don't recommend believing any religion, I think that you need to understand religion and understand people who are religious to really understand humanity, and I think my life would be poorer if I excluded all religious people.
Religion has a lot of ugliness to it because humanity has a lot of ugliness to it. You understand humanity, you need to see this, to see the ugly parts and the beautiful parts and the parts that are just plain weird.
Now I'm not saying you shouldn't call people out for being sexist or racist... you should. And my own policy is to do so in person, as I see it. - I think a "hey, that's not acceptable" isn't so threatening as to make it so I can't work in industry, and I think it does have some corrective effect. It also means that I can continue having a relationship with the person in question.
As a matter of policy, I try not to do this in written media[1]. I'm not certain this is the right thing to do or not, honestly, but its a course of action that allows me to speak my conscience and still function in a world of diverse values.
[1]post-hoc edit: by 'written media' I mean any place that would get the person I'm calling out in actual trouble. Again, I don't know if this is the right thing to do or not, but we all make our choices.
second edit: my previous post, with the example, really only makes sense in the context that I think that you are more personally responsible for direct action you take than for political action you support... e.g. directly doing something evil is worse, in my belief system, than simply supporting a political cause that is evil.
I realize that not everyone accepts this, but I think that because the political system is fundamentally a system for discussion and dispute resolution, and has some built-in safeguards, I think that makes proposing terrible ideas less bad than simply implementing said terrible ideas on your own authority.
last edit:
I want to acknowledge the question you bring up here, which I read as: "Is this (accepting people who have abhorrent values) actually a good thing? or is it just something I tell myself so that I can function in society? Is this just my rationalization?"
To which I shrug and say that you have gotten too deep. I'm not sure I like the implications of either possible answer there.
Really appreciate this response. I think you're someone I'd like in person. I agree with most of the above, and have a similar attitude in many ways.
A few points I have key differences on. You'll probably get where I'm coming from, even if you don't agree.
> We have a process, a set of rules and laws for deciding what to do when you and I disagree on what is right for other people. This is what our political system is for; to solve these sorts of disputes in a organized way, without degenerating into war or lynching or what have you. I mean, it doesn't always work... but the political system is the tool for the problem, and while not perfect, it's a pretty good tool. Certainly, it's the best tool we have; people should be encouraged to use it rather than direct action, I think.
Well, back to your point about functioning in the real world, this process has all sorts of backdoors and "corruptions" which probably account for the majority of what actually gets done in the world. Campaign financing, backroom deals, organized community pressure, deals with powerful religious leaders, straight up bribes, and on and on. So losing your job in a public position of a very public company because of public outrage seems not only in keeping with the way the real politics work, but also on the tamer side of those workings. Had he been a rank and file programmer at a consultancy in SF, and somehow lost his job for the same reason, I'd agree that something wrong had happened. I think it's naive, though, even damagingly idealistic, to pretend that those situations don't have important differences.
> I want to acknowledge the question you bring up here, which I read as: "Is this (accepting people who have abhorrent values) actually a good thing? or is it just something I tell myself so that I can function in society? Is this just my rationalization?"
This really gets to the heart of the matter. Don't know about you, in particular, but I do think, in general, that the "I'm so tolerant I tolerate intolerance" position serves those with a bias against conflict and a blindness (often wrought of idealism) about just how steadfastly and unreasonably evil some people are (I'm not talking about Eich here anymore). It's disheartening to me that many who hold this belief are well-intentioned, intelligent, otherwise good people. Because I believe it does have pernicious consequences, in the "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" sense. Or, to take a game-theoretical perspective on it, as long as people can be racist or sexist or otherwise evil with little loss of social power, such people will continue to flourish. And, in an example of the tragedy of the commons, it takes only a very small percentage of them to wreak havoc.
Of course, there are gray areas here about what consititutes evil, but I don't think suppressing equality of basic freedoms is one of them.
>This really gets to the heart of the matter. Don't know about you, in particular, but I do think, in general, that the "I'm so tolerant I tolerate intolerance" position serves those with a bias against conflict and a blindness (often wrought of idealism) about just how steadfastly and unreasonably evil some people are
I think replacing civil political discourse with intimidation is in and of itself an evil thing. I think that destroying civil political discourse in exchange for a political goal is a long term loss for society, even if the political goal is a good goal.
> I think replacing civil political discourse with intimidation is in and of itself an evil thing. I think that destroying civil political discourse in exchange for a political goal is a long term loss for society, even if the political goal is a good goal.
When civil political discourse is a valid option, then sure, I agree. The point is that people exist in this world who:
1. Want to do evil things.
2. Cannot be reasoned with.
3. Are smart enough to take advantage of the goodwill of people who think they can be reasoned with, and use it against them.
It's hard for me to take seriously any position that doesn't acknowledge these facts. You can't just close your eyes and pretend that everyone is basically good, does evil only because evil has been done to them, and can be brought around to see reason.
Exactly what impact have Eich's personal opinions on stuff on the technology he creates ? I mean, everybody is free to choose the technology that they want to use based on whatever criteria they choose, but personal believes of the programmer have no impact on how good the program is.
What makes him a homophobe? All I knew about was a political donation. Homophobe implies a fear or hatred of homosexuals, I haven't seen evidence for that yet. Does this word apply here?
> There might be arguments from child-rearing benefits and social obligations
Since religious arguments trivially violate the 1st Amendment, these are the arguments that were tried in court and were found wanting. No need to rehash those cases here. The only remaining "argument" is an irrational fear or hatred of gay people, which we call homophobia.
For better or worse (mostly the latter) we pretend to have separation of church and state, but certainly do not.
Being reminded of this, manages to deeply offend many people on both sides. If we don't talk about it, its not a problem, right? (LOL)
So, like it or not, government marriage = Christian marriage and Christians are going to be really offended at the government redefinition of their religious institution. Just like Jews would be annoyed if the IRS enforced changes in the Bar Mitzvah or the FAA decided to enforce changes in the Mormon baptism for the dead ritual.
The gay marriage people really screwed up there, intentionally or not. Should have done it in two far less controversial steps, one step to get the government once and for all out of the church, and then once church and state are separated, there would be no religious component to changing the state definition of marriage, much as there's very little religious animosity on the topic of obscure trust inheritance law or modifications to building codes.
Gay people seem to have little empathy for religious people. I'm not religious and even I have more empathy for them than the gay people do. I can assure you Christians believe in their religion just as strongly as progressives believe in their religion of progressivism.
However, this conversation is about a new company he created, where employees are free to make decisions about whether to join it fully cognizant of any personal issues Eich has with them, unlike the Mozilla position where a homophobe was placed in a position of power above existing employees.
Eich was a co-founder of Mozilla, as mentioned in most articles about Brave. So he had a leadership position all along and didn't get the CEO position out of nowhere, and was CTO for the longest time. This whole argument doesn't fly at all.
Perhaps the homophobic donation stuff only gained focus because of the media attention around the CEO position, but then I think it's a case of "better late than never."
I think the web would be much better off without either of those. Without Javascript we would have got real programming languages on the web quicker (maybe tklets would have taken off). Without Mozilla we would have got a sensible box model quicker, a sensible way of embedding audio/video quicker, and more development on the open-source-from-the-ground-up (and, not coincidentally I think, higher quality code) KHTML sooner.
> Without Javascript we would have got real programming languages on the web quicker (maybe tklets would have taken off).
I can't find information on "tklets", but if you're referring to Tcl, no way. Tcl doesn't even have references. The "everything is a string" model is fine for small programs but is pretty dated; there's a reason why no language since Tcl has adopted it.
> Without Mozilla we would have got a sensible box model quicker
This is silly. CSS1, and its box model, was developed by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos, neither of whom were at Mozilla. -moz-box-sizing has been supported since Firefox 1.
> more development on the open-source-from-the-ground-up (and, not coincidentally I think, higher quality code) KHTML sooner
It's debatable whether KHTML is higher quality code. I'm no fan of XPCOM and XUL, for example, but I equally don't like many of the things WebKit does, like not having a holistic solution for DOM cycle leaks.
How soon people forget the Great TCL War of 1994. TCL/Tk was vying for a web position well before Java.
Apparently, not a lot of people remember Sun's unilateral announcement that they were going to make TCL the official web scripting language. (I can't even find a link to, unfortunately.) It triggered RMS's "Why you should not use Tcl" response [1], and the ensuing flame war [2].
There was a huge debate about what the official scripting language would be for the web, after Sun hired John Ousterhout [3] and made its announcement that pissed off RMS.
RMS's position was that it should be Scheme, not TCL, of course.
What TCL/Tk had going for it was not the TCL language itself, but that it had a nice GUI system with its own "canvas", much better than anything Java or JavaScript had years later.
It didn't go so well, so Sun changed their mind and decided to de-emphasize TCL, and then tried to make Java the "official web scripting language". And everyone knows how that went.
The only programming languages vying for a web position were those from Microsoft and Java. Yes, VBScript and Java are real programming languages. And no, I wouldn't have wanted either on the web. Having lived through those dark days, I think it's a bit myopic to think things would actually be better if those days were still in effect.
The percentage of sociopathy does not match the percentage of homophobes opposed to marriage equality, a number which has changed a lot in living memory.
That's disingenuous bullshit. The spirit of the constitution protects individual rights, and there is no constitutional reason why an arbitrary religious definition of marriage should be respected over the rights of individuals. It's not activism to say that discrimination based on sexual orientation is unconstitutional. Any feelings you have about the definition of marriage based on culture, tradition, or god's divine law are irreverent to the legal institution of marriage established by our secular government.
The spirit of the constitution protects individual rights
Do you support polygamous marriage?
It's not activism to say that discrimination based on sexual orientation is unconstitutional.
It's not bigotry to say that marriage is a societal institution and society can define it.
Any feelings you have about the definition of marriage based on culture, tradition, or god's divine law are irreverent to the legal institution of marriage established by our secular government.
You're projecting. I have no feelings about what the definition of marriage should be.
I have feelings about who should decide such definitions.
Furthermore, if you would like to take a few minutes to review my comment history to see if I have ever used "God" or religion as the basis for any argument, I'll wait. You're attempting to setup strawmen against which you can argue.
Like I pointed out earlier. In states where marriage was redefined legislatively, there was nothing like Proposition 8. Haven't you wondered why that is?
Two different things. Polygamy is prohibited based on the total number of individuals, gay marriage prohibition is based on the identity of the individuals; it's a critical distinction as far as the protection of individual rights are concerned. When you prohibit gay marriage you're saying "these types of people cannot be married" you must evaluate their individual identity to enforce the prohibition, when you're prohibiting polygamy you're saying "a marriage cannot exceed two individuals" where specific qualities of the individuals have no bearing on the application of the prohibition.
>It's not bigotry to say that marriage is a societal institution and society can define it.
No it's not, so lets just dispense with that strawman. What is said of marriage is irrelevant; bigotry is denying people the legal right to be married because of their sexual orientation. Period.
> You're projecting. I have no feelings about what the definition of marriage should be... Furthermore, if you would like to take a few minutes to review my comment history to see if I have ever used "God" or religion as the basis for any argument, I'll wait. You're attempting to setup strawmen against which you can argue.
Wrong. I am not projecting or setting up a strawman, I am heading off common arguments in advance of their appearance in the discussion, that is why I said "culture", "tradition" OR "god's divine word".
> I have feelings about who should decide such definitions.... Like I pointed out earlier. In states where marriage was redefined legislatively, there was nothing like Proposition 8. Haven't you wondered why that is?
It is the prerogative of the courts to weigh in on the constitutionality of the law. It doesn't matter if society wants to prevent gay people from being married, the constitution is pretty clear about protecting the rights of individuals from the government as well as from the tyranny of the majority.
Polygamy is prohibited based on the total number of individuals, gay marriage prohibition is based on the identity of the individuals; it's a critical distinction as far as the protection of individual rights are concerned.
So then, it's not discrimination that you oppose. You just want to be the one to decide the target of the discrimination.
Love is love, right?
I am not projecting or setting up a strawman, I am heading off common arguments in advance of their appearance in the discussion, that is why I said "culture", "tradition" OR "god's divine word".
None of which are among my justifications for my position.
It is the prerogative of the courts to weigh in on the constitutionality of the law.
That is true. It is also society's prerogative to overrule the courts via a constitutional amendment, if they so choose. However, this wouldn't be a concern if the underlying issue had been decided by the people in the first place.
It doesn't matter if society wants to prevent gay people from being married, the constitution is pretty clear about protecting the rights of individuals from the government as well as from the tyranny of the majority.
Don't delude yourself. Everything is subject to the tyranny of the majority, if two thirds of the elected officials can be persuaded.
Once again, prohibition of polygamy says marriages that consist of more than two individuals are illegal, it doesn't matter who those individuals are, black, white, man, woman, gay, straight; the law applies evenly to all peoples regardless of who they are.
Just like the prohibition on same sex marriage, the prohibition against polygamous or polyamorous marriage is about the imposition of arbitrary criteria placed upon what does or does not constitute a marriage.
You are fine with one but not the other. You are being hypocritical.
Which didn't happen
Prop 8 was an amendment to the California state constitution. It did happen and the judicial activist wing of the SCOTUS found the flimsiest of excuses to invalidate it.
The legalization of same sex marriage was the agenda behind both of President Obama's supreme court nominations.
Once again you're stating the obvious to no logical effect
The logic evades you, that isn't the same thing as it being absent.
Both kinds restrictions are arbitrary limits placed on the institution of marriage by society.
prohibition of poly marriage does not meet the definition of discrimination since the law affects all people equally without regard for their individual traits.
Completely arbitrary and immaterial. The institution of marriage belongs to society and society has the right to define it.
to suggest otherwise is like saying prohibiting black people from entering your restaurant is the same as prohibiting more than 10 people from entering your restaurant... Give me a break.
Not at all. I find it more akin to a baker refusing to bake a cake for a 3 person wedding.
In particular, to say that opponents of gay marriage were just getting fussy about judicial definitions is to say that the civil war was about states rights.
