Github's actions are entirely understandable - I agree. They are just trying to survive as a business.
But I don't agree that the resultant alarmism is mind boggling. Folks are becoming increasingly anxious at the ever increasing signalling costs being applied to innocent discourse; applied by people who have little to no institutional authority, and who certainly aren't recognised by folk AS authorities.
In response - folk are responding instinctively by upping their own application of signalling costs in retaliation. So you see folks saying things like: I'll never use GitHub again if they do this, instead of just remarking to themselves privately - gee, that was a bit harsh of Github, and moving along with their day.
What I personally find interesting is that I'm not seeing much discussion about what the real causes of these rising signalling costs are. I kind of expected Hacker News to be interested in that sort of thing - but here, as everywhere else, everyone is just getting caught up in the fever. We are all human I suppose.
My favourite explanation is one predicted by various game theoretic models about punishment in human groups. Game theory predicts that as human group sizes increases more people become "punishers" and apply higher signalling costs. I can link to research papers if people request.
With the internet - of course - group sizes have increased massively. Furthermore - the economic costs of signalling have dropped dramatically. So we are collectively applying much higher social signalling costs to compensate.
I haven't been able to find research that specifically tries to confirm this hypothesis - but various related hypotheses, as well as the game theoretic models that generated them, have obtained significant confirmation. Hence I set high credence for this particular hypothesis of mine (though it does need a much more rigorous formulation).
> So you see folks saying things like: I'll never use GitHub again if they do this, instead of just remarking to themselves privately - gee, that was a bit harsh of Github, and moving along with their day.
First of all, I assume that most people DO move along. After all you don't hear of those who don't say anything.
Secondly, perhaps those who do feel compelled to speak do so because they are afraid of being part of a silent majority and thus some group A imposing their standards on everyone because that group A is in conflict with group B.
Something like "I don't agree with B's behavior, but I don't agree with A's demands either. I just want to do whatever I do my own way. Please be tolerant, even of things that might offend someone out there".
But I don't agree that the resultant alarmism is mind boggling. Folks are becoming increasingly anxious at the ever increasing signalling costs being applied to innocent discourse; applied by people who have little to no institutional authority, and who certainly aren't recognised by folk AS authorities.
In response - folk are responding instinctively by upping their own application of signalling costs in retaliation. So you see folks saying things like: I'll never use GitHub again if they do this, instead of just remarking to themselves privately - gee, that was a bit harsh of Github, and moving along with their day.
What I personally find interesting is that I'm not seeing much discussion about what the real causes of these rising signalling costs are. I kind of expected Hacker News to be interested in that sort of thing - but here, as everywhere else, everyone is just getting caught up in the fever. We are all human I suppose.
My favourite explanation is one predicted by various game theoretic models about punishment in human groups. Game theory predicts that as human group sizes increases more people become "punishers" and apply higher signalling costs. I can link to research papers if people request.
With the internet - of course - group sizes have increased massively. Furthermore - the economic costs of signalling have dropped dramatically. So we are collectively applying much higher social signalling costs to compensate.
I haven't been able to find research that specifically tries to confirm this hypothesis - but various related hypotheses, as well as the game theoretic models that generated them, have obtained significant confirmation. Hence I set high credence for this particular hypothesis of mine (though it does need a much more rigorous formulation).