On 20/09/2018 19:46, Steve Litt wrote:
> For most of us, it's trivially easy to live within any of the CoCs
> I've seen.

Who is this "we" to which you refer? It seems to me to exclude many
reasonable and decent people.

It seems to me that CoCs and similar politically correctness are
commonly intended to hobble non-harmful freedom of speech. They are, in
short, a cancer on honesty and openness, with the perceived benefit of
helping people who have problems with the real world.

Some people fear and dislike honesty and openness and are now being
pandered to by political correctness. Note that nothing I am saying here
is a defence of intentional insult or offensiveness.

> If you call a person a "bonduxer" and the person
> objects, don't continue using the word, and if he's at all nice about
> it, apologize.

Well, no. That's not good enough in practice. You see, the problem is
that someone somewhere will take offence at almost anything. It Is NOT
necessarily reasonable to censor one's normal speech to pander to some
idiot or liar who has chosen to claim that he or she finds something you
said "offensive" or "insulting". It might be reasonable to do so, but
not necessarily.

"Showing respect" cuts both ways, doesn't it. While I agree that one
should not go out of one's way to offend another person, everyone also
has a responsibility to avoid taking offence or perceiving insult
unnecessarily or unreasonably. We cannot and MUST NOT pander to the
lowest common denominator of claimed personal offence, and yet codes of
conduct often seem to be intended to do exactly that.

> Do we really have to adjudicate whether the word is insulting?

It's not the word that matters, it is the intent. Codes of conduct are
often in practice an absurd way of trying to police intent. As I have
observed, some manipulator or overly-easily-offended snowflake (yes,
I've used the snowflake word) somewhere can always play the system by
claiming offence where none was intended.

I agree that the situation is potentially difficult. There is no single
"statutory" way of eliminating perceived offence (real or claimed).
Where people communicate it is inevitable that someone is going to be
insulted or offended sometimes (often unintentionally). This is real
life. *They have to accept it; we all have to accept that what appears
to be offence or insult are sometime part of life*. There needs to be
common sense and reasonableness on all sides and no amount of
"legislation" reduces the need for it (i.e. CoCs don't help since they
tend only to entrench politically correct notions of what is
"respectful" rather than allowing common sense to prevail in terms of
what is "reasonable").

> Someone
> objects, why not use a different term or ask "what would you like to
> be called in this context?"

Hah, are you serious? That would often come over as even worse, as if
the person asking the question was being sarcastic.

Furthermore, just because a person says that "I find 'fwibblefut'"
offensive/insulting is not necessarily a good enough reason for another
reasonable person to avoid it. A complaint of insult or offensiveness
cannot be sacrosanct *just because it has been made*. Such a complaint
must be reasonable for other reasonable people to have good reason to
comply.

A CoC that said this, i.e. that relied on "reasonable" behaviour and an
impartial jury's view of "reasonable", might actually be useful.

> No sweat. For all of us except those who
> think it's their God Given Right to use the word "bonduxer",
> perhaps on Free Speech grounds.

Well, do you have a problem with free speech? I don't have any problem
with reasonable free speech. I think that reasonable free of speech is
the basis of honesty and of merit-based technological progress. As such,
I accept that people will sometimes get offended and insulted (including
me!) and I accept that as the (necessary and desirable) price of progress.

> Note that it says CONGRESS shall make no law. Not
> YOUR PROJECT shall make no law. It's perfectly legal, and consistent
> with a Free Speech government, for an organization to limit speech in
> the organization.

Quite so but that doesn't magically make it morally justified. It's not
morally justified. It's cretinously stupid and immoral in an
organisation that exists to make reality-based technological progress on
things.

> SUMMARY:
>
> Conforming with almost any existing CoC is very easy, requires little
> effort, abrogates your freedom very little. It doesn't interfere with
> meritocracy, nor does it interfere with the writing of great
> software, except during discussions about the CoC.

I disagree. Indeed, yours seems like an argument specifically crafted to
reduce reasonable freedom of speech. I'd describe your attitude as toxic
political correctness.

> My observation,
> acquired over many years, is that those who keep on attacking CoCs want
> to preserve their ability to be either thoughtless or nasty in an
> offtopic way.

I find this generalisation to be deeply offensive and nasty in itself.
It seems to me that you are trying to bring anyone who disagrees with
you into disrepute by creating a prior accusation and an assumption that
they have evil intent, where none necessarily exists.

I am against what seems to be the increasingly common reality of CoCs
because they often seem designed, as I have observed above, to limit
reasonable, sensible and honest freedom of speech and to pander to the
lowest common denominator of sensitivity, and thus they harm the blunt
meritocracy that provides the greatest benefit to technical progress and
innovation. In short, CoCs commonly harm that which we have come to value.

The online environment has been an honest and blunt one for decades. For
decades, people have taken offence or insult from time to time. For
decades, this has worked well! Let's not change what isn't really broken
(except in the eyes of a small number of over-sensitive, easily hurt
souls). Yes, let's all be *reasonable* with one another. But this
doesn't mean that each and every complaint of offence or insult has to
be taken seriously or has to require a change in other reasonable
people's reasonable behaviour. Reasonableness applies to all sides, not
just one side.


--
Mark Rousell