Stallman was defending a friend and, by my reading, logically correct in the narrow point he was making. Anyone can sympathize with those priorities. However, he chose to place them above social realpolitik like "don't touch sufficiently radioactive subjects" and "almost nobody has time to dissect your argument so you'll win or lose the optics game on fuzzy associations alone." To be principled in this matter was to be antisocial. Most of us, myself included, would drop the principles in order to get along with everyone else, but that's not how Stallman rolled.
Neurodivergent/autistic people are usually unaware that what they say could cause offense: they lack either the emotional capacity to feel those emotions themselves, or the ability to empathize and predict that other people will feel them.
Assholes know, they just care about other things more. They might throw their coworker under the bus for a promotion. Or they'll sexually harass women because 1 out of 10 times, it gets them laid. Or they care more about being right than being diplomatic. Or they stop paying rent because there's an eviction moratorium, even though they could, because it saves them money and their landlord has no way to enforce agreements anyway. Or they sell drugs to children because they want money. Or they cut people down because it makes them feel big in the moment.
> Or they care more about being right than being diplomatic.
This doesn't seem like particularly assholeish behaviour.
Caring more about being perceived as right (even when erroneously), sure, but if the person is actually right of course they should care more about that than diplomacy. Surely we have enough examples demonstrating the pitfalls of fostering a culture where the truth can be ignored if you don't like it.
These are all examples where one party in the interaction has come away from it saying "What a jerk!"
I'm particularly partial to being right on the Internet rather than diplomatic, so I'll cop to being an asshole. But I wanted to make the point that different people have vastly different definitions of "asshole". Some people will recognize themselves in the examples; others will recognize the person they can't stand. Sometimes those people are one and the same.
It's also possible to be both correct and diplomatic, and to criticize diplomatically. Failure to do so (often from a perspective that being right means one need not worry about diplomacy) is assholery.
Note that this is also somewhat self fulfilling. If you do end up being wrong, you can not admit that, as it would make your behavior inexcusable, so even when incorrect, you feel the need to fight and bully the people correcting you, in hopes that they go away.
> It's also possible to be both correct and diplomatic, and to criticize diplomatically.
Oh absolutely, but those are both totally compatible with someone who "care[s] more about being right than being diplomatic". It's if they didn't care about being diplomatic at all that they'd be an asshole.
I perceived that specific quote as referring explicitly to situations where the two are mutually exclusive, in which case I believe that being right is by far the better option in most scenarios.
In the extreme, it totally is. It's important to be right about the important things; it's nice to be right about irrelevant details too, but it's not nearly as important as maintaining a strong network of collaborators.
Maybe I've just been extraordinarily lucky in who I associate with, but no-one I would consider a potential "collaborator" (either in professional or personal life) would ever demand I be incorrect about something to suit their ideals.
I've been trying to come up with examples where that might happen and the best one I can think of is someone's young child asked you if Santa was real, but even then I'm about 50/50 on whether anyone in my social circles would care. I know at least a few who'd be pretty disgusted if I didn't tell the truth in that situation.
Now I recognise that this almost certainly is not representative of the general populace, but this is also one specific example (and the most egregious one I could come up with), whereas there's entire history courses written on the catastrophes that occur when people choose diplomacy over the right thing.
Well, that's kinda the thing. If something was in one of those history courses, then they were important enough that it mattered.
Playing into the Santa Claus lie with your friend's kid is absolutely inconsequential to you, but it could mean a lot to that kid (and to the parents) to keep that lie alive a bit longer. (And if telling the truth to that kid, against what the parents would wish, is that important to you, I'd suggest you re-examine your priorities.)
Context matters! Sometimes being right is essential to making some important thing work out. But hey, sometimes being diplomatic (and allowing the other person to be wrong) also can be essential to make some important thing work out. The big thing is knowing the difference and acting appropriately, which is sometimes hard to do in the moment.
But if we're talking about a kid believing in Santa Claus, and the parents actually do care that you keep up the fantasy, you actually are an asshole if you tell the truth, no question. If the parents really don't care, sure, go nuts... though if they didn't care, I'd expect the kid to already know the truth anyway.
> But if we're talking about a kid believing in Santa Claus, and the parents actually do care that you keep up the fantasy, you actually are an asshole if you tell the truth, no question.
Why is the desire of the parents more important than the desire of the child? Remember that we're talking about a scenario where the child is explicitly asking. They want you to tell the truth, their parents want you to perpetuate a lie. It's an easy choice for me to make.
Because we as a society have decided that children are not capable of making informed decisions, so parents get to decide for them on many/most/all things (the number of which tends to decrease with age, zeroing out at 18 or whatever the local age of majority is). You may not agree with that state of affairs, but that is the reality of the situation.
You may not see the useful function of the Santa Claus fantasy[0], but it is not your (or my) place to decide that for a child or their parents.
Let's try with something a bit less trivial, something that my young nephew had to deal with not too long ago: death. One day kid realizes that grandpa hasn't visited in a long while, and ask parent what's up. Parents don't think kid is emotionally ready to have the death talk. So they spin a story about grandpa having to move away, and how grandpa loves his grandkid very much, but won't be able to visit anymore. And let's say you're over visiting your friend, and their kid walks up to you and says "my grandpa had to move far away and I miss him... do you know why he can't visit me?" You know that your friend's father died recently. If your answer isn't "well, what did your parents say?" followed by affirming whatever the answer is, you've probably done a bit of harm to that child's emotional well being, and likely have introduced some trust issues between the child and parents. What right do you have to do that? I would not be surprised if your friend stops inviting you over after that.
Don't get me wrong; I think many decisions parents make for their kids probably aren't the best ones. There's no authoritative parenting handbook, and most parents do the best they can. But it is not anyone else's place to "correct" someone's parenting decisions, outside of active harm and neglect. (And no, telling a lie about Santa Claus or death does not clear that bar.)
[0] Personally I'm not a big fan of it myself; while Santa Claus can be a useful tool to help a child's imagination develop, I really dislike how tied Christmas has become to consumer culture and materialism.
> and likely have introduced some trust issues between the child and parents.
I couldn't help but laugh at this.
If you want to avoid trust issues, maybe don't lie to people. Seems like an easier solution than lying to them and calling other people assholes if they don't perpetuate your lies.
> What right do you have to do that?
There is a conversation occurring between two people. One of them asks a question. Both parties in this conversation want the question to be answered truthfully.
You are saying that I don't have the right to do so because someone who is not involved in said conversation wants me to lie instead. This is insane.
> Maybe I've just been extraordinarily lucky in who I associate with, but no-one I would consider a potential "collaborator" (either in professional or personal life) would ever demand I be incorrect about something to suit their ideals.
I find that very hard to believe. To be correct you not only need to be able to say carefully thought-out, nuanced things; you also need to be able to speculate wildly, to take half-baked ideas where they might lead. But the half-baked version of some important truths probably sounds exactly like the most offensively ignorant notions you could think of.
> the half-baked version of some important truths probably sounds exactly like the most offensively ignorant notions you could think of.
And good people are the ones who won't punish you for that. I'd agree an entire social group being this open minded seems unlikely in 2021, but GP may just have really effective filter bubble.
And I guess part of my question was that what you said (pretty close to my own understanding of the definitions) is predicated on piercing the veil of intent.
Versus most of the time, people who we don't know well do things for reasons that are inscrutable to us.
And we're left to judge solely on that basis of that information.
Truly for my own self-benefit, I often need to make decisions (e.g. with work colleagues, customers, strangers) on whether someone is (a) malicious or (b) misunderstood.
> Truly for my own self-benefit, I often need to make decisions (e.g. with work colleagues, customers, strangers) on whether someone is (a) malicious or (b) misunderstood.
I think you have to give people the benefit of the doubt. This sorts itself out with any kind of long-term relationship because then you get to know them well enough to tell whether or not they're an ass.
But the first time you meet someone, it's prisoner's dilemma. Everybody defaulting to defect because you're afraid the other guy might be doing the same thing is not going to end well.
I find it amusing that I can't tell whether you mean sexual harassment is dramatically more serious than not paying rent or not paying rent is dramatically more serious than sexual harassment.
Both examples - really all of the examples other than "selling drugs to children", which is from Breaking Bad - are taken from real-world conversations with people that basically said "What a jerk!" The person complaining about their non-paying tenant basically accepts sexual harassment as how the world works. The person (people really, it's a composite of a half-dozen or so conversations) complaining about the sexual harassers would likely find nothing wrong with a tenant skipping out on rent. Both are women, though a generation apart.
Yeah I mean, it's not exactly a huge leap of logic based on reading the post. If it's a misunderstanding, that's just one of the perils of written communication, and this gives the author a chance to reply. The societal role of rent/landlords is an active political issue, far from consensus, so it's not just a nitpick to jump in on the implication. Noone is being cancelled
Some people roll that way. Their childhood (or genes) gave them a personality that enjoys conflict, or that only feels good about themselves if someone else is feeling bad, or enjoys hurting people.
It's most clearly visible in griefers in online games, because the social consequences of griefing are minimal. Some people are just plain nasty.
But I don't think that's what's happening here. And I think it's ridiculous that it's been interpreted this way.
making oneself likeable to people one doesn't find particularly likeable themselves is a lot of work, the people who are labeled neurotypical are often jerks to the people who are labeled neuroatypical so why not use one's gifts as a neuroatypical person to be unlikable in return.
The people you're thinking of are Fox News personalities or opinions.
They do have a straight news org that isn't terrible, but they blur the line and fail to disclose when you're watching opinion and when you're watching news.
