Open Research Institute got our first space communication project
transferred over from AMSAT for two reasons: we had an ITAR/EAR avoidance
plan, and the engineering managers at AMSAT (a venerable organization that
has flown some 90 Amateur satellites since 1963) were inexperienced in
dealing with female engineers and were (IMO unconsciously) egregiously rude
on multiple occassions. The woman engineer in question is no wilting lily,
and in general refuses to represent feminist or women's viewpoints because
that isn't her thing. It may not be a gender issue at all, many men left
the organization as well.

Let's face it, guys. A *lot* of us are on the spectrum. I have motor neural
pathology and might be too. Those who are not on the spectrum may still
underperform in human relations, as we've just heard from Linus. We used to
tolerate this stuff, and it cost us in many ways. We ended up having to put
rules in place because so many folks were just plain unconscious, or
(worse) aware of their issues and stick-in-the-mud refusers to learn.

I am 60 and I *can* deal with this. I have many things to get done, and
can't afford to have the stick-in-the-mud guys on a project any longer. If
you want to paint yourself into a corner, that is your right, but IMO it's
a poor choice.

    Thanks

    Bruce

On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 12:39 PM Mark Rousell <mark.rousell@???>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
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>


--
Bruce Perens K6BP - CEO, Legal Engineering
Standards committee chair, license review committee member, co-founder,
Open Source Initiative
President, Open Research Institute; Board Member, Fashion Freedom
Initiative.