It's in scenarios like these that in spite of the slow & tedious peer review process I am thankful that IEEE / ACM research conferences exist. Those are the places that truly strive to be inclusive by enforcing peer review and often double blind processes, where technical merit alone being the deciding factor. There are no calls to disinvite authors because of the beliefs held by them. Researchers from China, Russia, Middle east who likely do not subscribe to the same "progressive" ideas, can still participate purely on basis of the technical merit of their work. That to me is real inclusivity.
These new "cons" with their long list of rules are not about inclusivity but rather about imposing cultural hegemony.
An IEEE conference is a peer-reviewed academic conference whose proceedings are intended to help build the cite record for its field.
Academic conferences might have an invited talk, and/or an invited keynote. But that's it. Everything else will be workmanlike research advancing the state of the art of its field. Usually: real advances in the state of the art, not new formulations of well-established science. Most of it, especially to outsiders to the field, will be small-bore stuff; recall the PhD comic where the contribution made by a single PhD thesis is just a pimple on a gigantic sphere. You don't get thousands of people to sign up for a conference full of small-bore contributions, or even negative results. You get professional researchers to attend.
The kinds of conferences these inclusion controversies arise at are not the same breed. They're networking and entertainment events. Even the selective "invite-only" ones are trying to fill a quota of attendees. They have sponsors. Speakers are chosen based on excitement factor and name recognition. Most of the talks at something like Nodevember --- in fact, maybe all of the talks --- aren't going to move the state of the art forward at all; they're instead going to be (occasionally interesting) re-applications of the existing state of the art.
And that's fine! That doesn't make these events bad.
It does, however, call into question the standards needed for selecting speakers. In particular: we shouldn't pretend that merit-only selection is going to clear away misunderstandings and bias from a conference like Nodevember or LambdaConf or Strange Loop. Because what does "merit" really mean at conference whose presentations range from (say) an engineering talk on kernel programming with Haskell to the release notes for a new edition of Scala to what it's like to ship web apps in Elm?
Double blind makes plenty of sense for determining merit of papers.
Does it also make sense when selecting a speaker? These are often people chosen because of their public reputation for something they've accomplished, often uniquely identified as "inventor of X," and each usually come with their own off-topic oddities that need to be overlooked if you want to hear their on-topic thoughts.
When I started as a developer, I didn't care who I talked to if I thought they could contribute something interesting. I wouldn't care what religion, gender or country they were from - I was just interested in learning.
I recently stopped going to tech conferences. I don't want to go to gender/sexuality/religion/you name it-equality conferences and it seems like thats the main topic in all tech conferences these days.
Can someone bring back the technical discussions and throw out the bullies?
> A suggestion to boycott the conference was made, because of suspicion that diverisity and inclusivity were not top priority.
I don't have a reasonable word to describe this (ie. nothing better than name calling). So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That said, I want to note that any flak being shot should not be aimed at the organizer at all. The topic of "diversity" is slowly joining the rank of "What you can't say"[0] topic, and it takes a lot of work, courage and risk for an organizer to stand against an accusation like that. It's entirely reasonable for an organizer to drop a speaker under said circumstances, although they did botch the execution of removing a speaker pretty badly.
What's unfortunate is that such action can be considered "reasonable", and the question of who to send flak to is left as an exercise for the sub-comment thread.
I don't think it's reasonable that the organizer not be held accountable. From this article:
> By the time I’d received notice of the event unfolding on the evening of 2016-09-01, the decision was already made by the main organzier, swiftly and without discussion.
> And in a moment of confusion, a poor decision was made to remove Douglas Crockford as a speaker, by the main organizer.
Just because the organizer was put in a tough position doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for making the wrong decision.
Disclaimer: I haven't been following this particular case and thus don't know the details or have any opinion.
So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That being said I do disagree with this statement. Conferences are, at least for me, never primarily about learning about the latest hard core technical topics. They're about meeting and talking to people in my field who share my technical interests, sharing ideas and getting inspiration and talking hard problems over beers in the evening. They're as much, if not more, about the social as they are the purely technical. And even when it comes to presentations I'll take a fun and inspiring talk showing a novel take on something 'trivial' over someone reading their latest paper out loud while staring at their feet, no matter what the technical merits of that paper might be.
I'm so glad people are fighting back against political correctness.
We're all just trying to get work done, and we have to put up with this constant background noise. Checking in once in a while to see what language is now deemed inappropriate to avoid chastization by some Twitter white knight legion.
The irony here is people like this HURT their own cause. Rememeber the Adria Richards debacle (aka "Donglegate")? That gal set back females in tech years because who wants to deal with a co-worker that might complain to the boss and get you fired because they overhear something you say and don't like it?
Same thing here. These folks aren't fighting FOR equality in work or safe workspaces, they're essentially cutting off their noses to spite their faces because they're going to turn people against them out of the desire to not deal with the drama they bring.
Getting stuff done requires working with people. Working with people requires basic manners including a willingness to be polite. Sure, a lot of requirements of manners are often irrational and make little or no sense to the technically minded. But it's the cost of participating in society. Whining about not being able to say certain words is about the least productive thing you can do, and makes you appear to prioritize your desire to be a jerk over getting things done. So let's get some work done and stop whining about how we might have to think about other people and consider the impact of our words.
It's amusing how strongly the Node community strives to be "inclusionary" when comes to race/gender/orientation/religion/etc but when someone presents dissenting technical ideas or thinks an implementation is wrong, they might as well be crucified for voicing such blasphemy.
I have noticed that the most self identifying "progressive left" people are some of the most intolerant individuals I've ever had to deal with. They are extraordinarily dismissive of any "non-aligned" viewpoints, they are miniature despots. I would hate for any of those to have any real power over other people's lives.
Being tolerant is being OK with other people being "wrong".
I don't think that'll ultimately help Node but I don't see a problem with an opinionated language/framework from a technical point of view. Feel free to hold whichever extreme technical standpoints you wish.
The problem is when we fail to embrace people who are technically strong because of their race/gender/religion/sexual orientation, these are all clearly bad metrics to judge technical ability by.
I wouldn't brand that as "the Node community". It appears to be a very vocal few individuals, with most of the community either not caring or being afraid to speak out against it.
Every article I've read about this repeats the characterization of Crockford as a "grumpy old man." Self-important not-yet-old people with thin skins apparently unaware of rampant age discrimination in the tech industry, I guess. And unaware of multiple meanings of words and lameness of geek humor.
What is this nonsense? Why do conference organizers need to care about finding speakers to represent fat people, for example? Is this really a tech conference?
The whole situation is just ridiculous. SJW's have well and truly infiltrated the Javascript community. The Paul Straw linked post really highlights how silly this situation is. A few comments taken completely out of context and because some people took them the wrong way, things spiralled out of control.
I personally am not a fan of Douglas Crockford, but my views of him personally don't override the fact that he did nothing wrong in this situation. He should not have been un-invited to the conference. Their loss, Crockford is a smart guy and a huge drawcard for an event like this. Now we get to listen to a bunch of twenty-somethings talk to us about a language that Crockford was pioneering when they were still in school.
That's what this is all about. It's not about being diverse, it's about ticking off a list of checkboxes to make sure every group that some moral authority thinks needs to represented is properly represented.
Is zero excuse. Don't organise a conference if you can't organise a conference.
If Codes of Conduct are meant to protect attendees from incumbent inequalities and prejudices, what hope do we have if the organisers behave like an old boys club who keep out people that aren't like them?
The problem with using diversity as a selection criteria bias means that statistically on average the diverse speakers will be worse. While attending such a conference, if one were to optimize for the quality of speakers a simple rule to achieve this at such conferences would be to avoid the diverse speakers and pick a different track.
I avoid 'diverse' speakers, not because I'm racist, sexist, transphobic etc but because I don't like having my time wasted.
Competitive political correctness is a difficult and high stakes game at the best of times, but this lot are so ultra inclusive that they included JavaScript on the server side. I wouldn't get involved.
People just need to start standing up to these SJW people. They are literally infesting everything: Colleges, workplaces, open source, everything. They act like bullies whenever someone says something they disagree with, even calling for open retaliation across social media because they have no understanding of the real world. What is worse is that more and more people are actually catering to them out of fear instead of standing up and saying "Look, you're an adult. Act like one instead of a kindergartener who missed their nap. People are going to say things you don't like or don't agree with; shut your mouth and learn to live with it". Instead, we get things like this that juts reinforce the SJW belief that they are pure and right and that everyone needs to do what they say.
1. Many social theories aren't falsifiable science. Examples for this are Marxism, where every criticism of the theory can be framed as an attempt to keep the "lower class" from "rising up", or certain schools of feminism where every criticism can be seen as "patriarchy" maintaining it's position of "power".
These rhetorical fallacies pose traps for people who aren't experienced in scientific reasoning and especially for those who have a predisposition towards paranoid thinking, which seems to be a certain percentage of the population.
2. With the rise of social media came deep changes in public discourse. Suddenly there's an army of public speakers that didn't have a voice before.
Social Media took away the "in-between" spare-time, that is crucial for cultivating thoughts and managing emotions. Prior you could leisurely think about problems while waiting for the bus. Now the internet is pushing (often negative) information at you 24/7. And it's demanding immediate response.
So there's this giant array of public opinion now, that is much less informed, cultivated and I guess age-wise generally younger than before.
Isn't that what GamerGate was basically about? Well, at least in part anyway.
But the issue with standing up to them (however necessary it might be) is that such individuals have a tendency to play the victim a lot and get quite a bit of the media to rally around them every time someone calls them out. It's hard to call out cases like this when the inevitable media coverage will be 'Javascript conference harassed by internet trolls over Douglas Crockford's invite'.
Seriously? I never imagined I'd see this slow-motion move towards the kind of bigotry and conservatism we're accustomed to blame theocracies of.
Seriously, if "dog balls parens" and a metaphor involving "promiscuity" (sexual, I presume) is all that's needed to be toast, you're so badly f*cked it's not funny. at all
I still don't understand what it is that Crockford is supposed to have done. I mean, I've heard him speak: he's insufferable and obnoxious and self-righteous. But is that enough to earn a no-platforming these days? Cripes.
The tweets go on to chastize the conference for being held at a “Christian university”. It is worth noting: I am a Christian. I would challenge that I am in the minority among most conference attendees.
My experience suggests so. My experience also includes a case, at a very high-end tech company which I hesitate to name, where I saw a colleague derided as mentally ill, to her face, because she spoke of her faith without shame. Nobody seemed to see a problem with that. In such a light, I wouldn't be surprised if there are more Christians in the industry than are immediately obvious.
I don't see how anyone's religion is any more important at a tech conference than which football team they follow. Neither football nor religion ever seem to get mentioned at any conferences I've attended.
If someone is spending time at a tech conference intensely focused on how many people in the room happen to believe in the same god(s) as them, they might be the ones with the problem.
Anecdata - out of the ~30 people on my team, there's about 4 or 5 practising Christians that I know of (myself being one of them). There's probably about the same number of "vocal, militant" atheists and most of the rest I strongly suspect are agnostic/atheist.
I'm in a relatively "progressive" part of Australia - in the parts of the Australian tech community I'm involved with, I'd say that last statement is definitely true.
Speaking as a practicing-Christian developer in the US "Bible Belt" area: my experience leads me to believe so, though mileage may vary by group. In the startup where I work currently, all 4 devs are practicing Christians/Catholics (myself included).
In circles where I generally interact with other developers, (slack channels and in person), the assumption tends to be some form of irreligious/secular ideology, although generally those areas are more "true secular" -- that is, "sure, okay, believe what you want, that's your business."
In the internet at large, I tend to get some form of condescension or general dismissal for mentioning my faith in anything but an almost-apologetic tone. But that's the internet, and frankly people can say whatever they want to me online.
The thing that's more frightening to me is when that dismissal starts to cross from internet snark and jabs into active sort of "retribution" or (ironically) "witch hunts", trying to shut people's career opportunities down on the basis of their belief systems.
Look, everyone has a worldview, because everyone observes the world around them and arrives at conclusions. And given how complex any given worldview must be when brought in contact with reality, and how many people there are in the world with such different realities and experiences, you're just not going to be on the same page as everyone. In fact, you're virtually guaranteed not to be on the exact same page as anyone.
Intellectual and emotional maturity, at least in my view, requires the capability to look at another person's point of view and try to understand it -- and if you can't, then pare down to what's germaine to the subject at hand. I don't have to agree with my Muslim coworker about Jesus's divinity, but I do have to try to cooperate with him in deciding whether we should upgrade our codebase to Angular 2.
I may want us to agree about Jesus's divinity (and indeed, for religious reasons I may believe this is my life's central issue -- which I do), but if I mention the subject to him, it should be in another context where such issues are more germaine, and it should be in a way that grants him the intellectual respect to decline the conversation and disagree with me.
Just as I would not topically-hijack a work-focused meeting to try to convert my coworkers, I would hope not to be denied participation in such a meeting because of the unrelated issue of my beliefs.
So while a Christian University is willing to be accommodating to a tech conference without regards to anyones religious views the reverse of that is not true. This is in a tweet about inclusivity?
I can't speak for Nodevember, but as far as I'm aware, we have one openly practicing Christian working on 44CON. Not sure how many in other conferences in the UK, but I expect the number to be smaller than the number of Atheists and Agnostics by far.
Also in the UK the dominant sect of Christianity is Church of England, which in the UK is very casual compared to the Catholic church.
It probably is? Unless of course it's a smaller, local conference. In which case it would be representative of the local population. So expect a lot of Mormons in a Utah based conference.
OTOH, I bet numbers are probably higher than you might think. Not every Christian is outspoken, and religion seems to be pretty openly hated on - I could see a large % of religious people just being quiet to avoid contention OR because they aren't really practicing.
At this point, it would be desirable if people started actively boycotting Nodevember. I understand that quite many individuals in the Node community may be in favor of the decision to exclude Crockford, but I also suspect that there is a significant amount of people (if judging only by the responses in this thread) who very much dislike that decision. A concerted effort to boycott the conference, even if done by a minority, would set a precedent and send a very clear message that such arbitrarily rude behavior on the part of the organizers will not be tolerated in future events like this.
A boycott would also pressure the organizers to either "put up or shut up" regarding the evidence surrounding Crockford's dismissal. There is a very good chance [1] that this is a personal vendetta happening rather than any ethical misdeed done on Crockford's part. If so, a move to boycott the conference would benefit not only the liberal side, but also the "politically correct" (for lack of better words) side, as nobody is interested that their political movement be hijacked by people seeking personal/egotistic goals [2]. If, on the other hand, Crockford was indeed dismissed due to political motives, there is still a decent chance that the evidence against him is extremely weak (hence reluctance to present it). Such a situation would also benefit both sides, in the sense that it would teach them a valuable lesson that persecuting people is not something that should be undertaken lightly.
There are other JavaScript conferences happening this year [3]. Go to those instead. Encourage your friends to do the same.
The sad irony is this all started because some people didn't like how Nodevember was run and were going to boycott. With Nodevember now crumbling into a mess, in a very strange albeit roundabout way, they are now getting exactly what they want.
If I understand correctly, the conference "de-platformed" Douglas Crockford because at some point in the past he made a joke about the internet being promiscuous?
How utterly absurd. One should question the competence of these people to organize a technical conference. Irrational, childish behavior.
[+] [-] aub3bhat|9 years ago|reply
These new "cons" with their long list of rules are not about inclusivity but rather about imposing cultural hegemony.
[+] [-] tptacek|9 years ago|reply
Academic conferences might have an invited talk, and/or an invited keynote. But that's it. Everything else will be workmanlike research advancing the state of the art of its field. Usually: real advances in the state of the art, not new formulations of well-established science. Most of it, especially to outsiders to the field, will be small-bore stuff; recall the PhD comic where the contribution made by a single PhD thesis is just a pimple on a gigantic sphere. You don't get thousands of people to sign up for a conference full of small-bore contributions, or even negative results. You get professional researchers to attend.
The kinds of conferences these inclusion controversies arise at are not the same breed. They're networking and entertainment events. Even the selective "invite-only" ones are trying to fill a quota of attendees. They have sponsors. Speakers are chosen based on excitement factor and name recognition. Most of the talks at something like Nodevember --- in fact, maybe all of the talks --- aren't going to move the state of the art forward at all; they're instead going to be (occasionally interesting) re-applications of the existing state of the art.
And that's fine! That doesn't make these events bad.
It does, however, call into question the standards needed for selecting speakers. In particular: we shouldn't pretend that merit-only selection is going to clear away misunderstandings and bias from a conference like Nodevember or LambdaConf or Strange Loop. Because what does "merit" really mean at conference whose presentations range from (say) an engineering talk on kernel programming with Haskell to the release notes for a new edition of Scala to what it's like to ship web apps in Elm?
[+] [-] imglorp|9 years ago|reply
Does it also make sense when selecting a speaker? These are often people chosen because of their public reputation for something they've accomplished, often uniquely identified as "inventor of X," and each usually come with their own off-topic oddities that need to be overlooked if you want to hear their on-topic thoughts.
What's the right process here?
[+] [-] dozzie|9 years ago|reply
This is not "striving to be inclusive", it's "striving to be technical". Which is a good thing for technical conference.
You don't want to include minority just to include minority, you want to have best talks possible without regard of being given by minority or not.
[+] [-] oellegaard|9 years ago|reply
I recently stopped going to tech conferences. I don't want to go to gender/sexuality/religion/you name it-equality conferences and it seems like thats the main topic in all tech conferences these days.
Can someone bring back the technical discussions and throw out the bullies?
[+] [-] Balgair|9 years ago|reply
-"The Tale of the Interwebz"
[+] [-] NhanH|9 years ago|reply
I don't have a reasonable word to describe this (ie. nothing better than name calling). So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That said, I want to note that any flak being shot should not be aimed at the organizer at all. The topic of "diversity" is slowly joining the rank of "What you can't say"[0] topic, and it takes a lot of work, courage and risk for an organizer to stand against an accusation like that. It's entirely reasonable for an organizer to drop a speaker under said circumstances, although they did botch the execution of removing a speaker pretty badly.
What's unfortunate is that such action can be considered "reasonable", and the question of who to send flak to is left as an exercise for the sub-comment thread.
[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
[+] [-] geldan|9 years ago|reply
> By the time I’d received notice of the event unfolding on the evening of 2016-09-01, the decision was already made by the main organzier, swiftly and without discussion.
> And in a moment of confusion, a poor decision was made to remove Douglas Crockford as a speaker, by the main organizer.
Just because the organizer was put in a tough position doesn't mean they shouldn't be held accountable for making the wrong decision.
[+] [-] dagw|9 years ago|reply
So let's just say "I think it's not particularly reasonable for a tech conference to put anything besides tech to be top priority" is an understatement for me.
That being said I do disagree with this statement. Conferences are, at least for me, never primarily about learning about the latest hard core technical topics. They're about meeting and talking to people in my field who share my technical interests, sharing ideas and getting inspiration and talking hard problems over beers in the evening. They're as much, if not more, about the social as they are the purely technical. And even when it comes to presentations I'll take a fun and inspiring talk showing a novel take on something 'trivial' over someone reading their latest paper out loud while staring at their feet, no matter what the technical merits of that paper might be.
[+] [-] erlich|9 years ago|reply
I'm so glad people are fighting back against political correctness.
We're all just trying to get work done, and we have to put up with this constant background noise. Checking in once in a while to see what language is now deemed inappropriate to avoid chastization by some Twitter white knight legion.
Its the ultimate bikeshedding.
[+] [-] wayniac|9 years ago|reply
Same thing here. These folks aren't fighting FOR equality in work or safe workspaces, they're essentially cutting off their noses to spite their faces because they're going to turn people against them out of the desire to not deal with the drama they bring.
[+] [-] tehwebguy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skywhopper|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okket|9 years ago|reply
"In defence of Douglas Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 (2 days ago, 407 comments)
"Crockford" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425061 (1 day ago, 95 comments)
"Inclusivity Is a Joke" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12425353 (1 day ago, 203 comments)
[+] [-] meritt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ageofwant|9 years ago|reply
Being tolerant is being OK with other people being "wrong".
[+] [-] sleepychu|9 years ago|reply
The problem is when we fail to embrace people who are technically strong because of their race/gender/religion/sexual orientation, these are all clearly bad metrics to judge technical ability by.
[+] [-] joepie91_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregjor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hasenj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DigitalSea|9 years ago|reply
I personally am not a fan of Douglas Crockford, but my views of him personally don't override the fact that he did nothing wrong in this situation. He should not have been un-invited to the conference. Their loss, Crockford is a smart guy and a huge drawcard for an event like this. Now we get to listen to a bunch of twenty-somethings talk to us about a language that Crockford was pioneering when they were still in school.
[+] [-] hoorayimhelping|9 years ago|reply
That's what this is all about. It's not about being diverse, it's about ticking off a list of checkboxes to make sure every group that some moral authority thinks needs to represented is properly represented.
[+] [-] dunkelheit|9 years ago|reply
If you fight for inclusivity, prepare to exclude people.
If you strive to make everyone comfortable, prepare to face some very uncomfortable situations.
[+] [-] afandian|9 years ago|reply
How about a CoC for conference organisers? Some minimal level of professionally? The official statement:
> This conference was started by a group of friends to gather around the love of a shared language and community.
> We are in over our heads.
http://nodevember.org/statement.html
Is zero excuse. Don't organise a conference if you can't organise a conference.
If Codes of Conduct are meant to protect attendees from incumbent inequalities and prejudices, what hope do we have if the organisers behave like an old boys club who keep out people that aren't like them?
[+] [-] DonHopkins|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abz10|9 years ago|reply
I avoid 'diverse' speakers, not because I'm racist, sexist, transphobic etc but because I don't like having my time wasted.
[+] [-] hanoz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsmthrowaway|9 years ago|reply
(surprisingly necessary edit: /s)
[+] [-] ageofwant|9 years ago|reply
Hat tip good Sir.
[+] [-] wayniac|9 years ago|reply
It's really pathetic.
[+] [-] cel1ne|9 years ago|reply
1. Many social theories aren't falsifiable science. Examples for this are Marxism, where every criticism of the theory can be framed as an attempt to keep the "lower class" from "rising up", or certain schools of feminism where every criticism can be seen as "patriarchy" maintaining it's position of "power".
These rhetorical fallacies pose traps for people who aren't experienced in scientific reasoning and especially for those who have a predisposition towards paranoid thinking, which seems to be a certain percentage of the population.
2. With the rise of social media came deep changes in public discourse. Suddenly there's an army of public speakers that didn't have a voice before.
Social Media took away the "in-between" spare-time, that is crucial for cultivating thoughts and managing emotions. Prior you could leisurely think about problems while waiting for the bus. Now the internet is pushing (often negative) information at you 24/7. And it's demanding immediate response.
So there's this giant array of public opinion now, that is much less informed, cultivated and I guess age-wise generally younger than before.
[+] [-] CM30|9 years ago|reply
But the issue with standing up to them (however necessary it might be) is that such individuals have a tendency to play the victim a lot and get quite a bit of the media to rally around them every time someone calls them out. It's hard to call out cases like this when the inevitable media coverage will be 'Javascript conference harassed by internet trolls over Douglas Crockford's invite'.
[+] [-] eecc|9 years ago|reply
Seriously, if "dog balls parens" and a metaphor involving "promiscuity" (sexual, I presume) is all that's needed to be toast, you're so badly f*cked it's not funny. at all
[+] [-] grabcocque|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgrahamc|9 years ago|reply
Be interesting to know if that last line is true.
[+] [-] throwanem|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tnone|9 years ago|reply
This is starting to look more and more like someone's personal hangups turned into vendetta, using the nearest available excuses and target.
[+] [-] sjwright|9 years ago|reply
If someone is spending time at a tech conference intensely focused on how many people in the room happen to believe in the same god(s) as them, they might be the ones with the problem.
[+] [-] ajdlinux|9 years ago|reply
I'm in a relatively "progressive" part of Australia - in the parts of the Australian tech community I'm involved with, I'd say that last statement is definitely true.
[+] [-] ubertaco|9 years ago|reply
In circles where I generally interact with other developers, (slack channels and in person), the assumption tends to be some form of irreligious/secular ideology, although generally those areas are more "true secular" -- that is, "sure, okay, believe what you want, that's your business."
In the internet at large, I tend to get some form of condescension or general dismissal for mentioning my faith in anything but an almost-apologetic tone. But that's the internet, and frankly people can say whatever they want to me online.
The thing that's more frightening to me is when that dismissal starts to cross from internet snark and jabs into active sort of "retribution" or (ironically) "witch hunts", trying to shut people's career opportunities down on the basis of their belief systems.
Look, everyone has a worldview, because everyone observes the world around them and arrives at conclusions. And given how complex any given worldview must be when brought in contact with reality, and how many people there are in the world with such different realities and experiences, you're just not going to be on the same page as everyone. In fact, you're virtually guaranteed not to be on the exact same page as anyone.
Intellectual and emotional maturity, at least in my view, requires the capability to look at another person's point of view and try to understand it -- and if you can't, then pare down to what's germaine to the subject at hand. I don't have to agree with my Muslim coworker about Jesus's divinity, but I do have to try to cooperate with him in deciding whether we should upgrade our codebase to Angular 2.
I may want us to agree about Jesus's divinity (and indeed, for religious reasons I may believe this is my life's central issue -- which I do), but if I mention the subject to him, it should be in another context where such issues are more germaine, and it should be in a way that grants him the intellectual respect to decline the conversation and disagree with me.
Just as I would not topically-hijack a work-focused meeting to try to convert my coworkers, I would hope not to be denied participation in such a meeting because of the unrelated issue of my beliefs.
[+] [-] bogomipz|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _b8r0|9 years ago|reply
Also in the UK the dominant sect of Christianity is Church of England, which in the UK is very casual compared to the Catholic church.
[+] [-] swsieber|9 years ago|reply
OTOH, I bet numbers are probably higher than you might think. Not every Christian is outspoken, and religion seems to be pretty openly hated on - I could see a large % of religious people just being quiet to avoid contention OR because they aren't really practicing.
[+] [-] asplake|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] etangent|9 years ago|reply
A boycott would also pressure the organizers to either "put up or shut up" regarding the evidence surrounding Crockford's dismissal. There is a very good chance [1] that this is a personal vendetta happening rather than any ethical misdeed done on Crockford's part. If so, a move to boycott the conference would benefit not only the liberal side, but also the "politically correct" (for lack of better words) side, as nobody is interested that their political movement be hijacked by people seeking personal/egotistic goals [2]. If, on the other hand, Crockford was indeed dismissed due to political motives, there is still a decent chance that the evidence against him is extremely weak (hence reluctance to present it). Such a situation would also benefit both sides, in the sense that it would teach them a valuable lesson that persecuting people is not something that should be undertaken lightly.
There are other JavaScript conferences happening this year [3]. Go to those instead. Encourage your friends to do the same.
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[1] See Tim Hunt's case for an example of a similar situation where the evidence against an individual later turned out to be mostly made up of thin air. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-timothy-hunt... [2] Per conversation with the organizer, he had admitted to having "a long and storied history" with D. Crockford, which further corroborates the possibility of personal vendetta. https://twitter.com/getify/status/772413034773909504 [3] https://github.com/prigara/javascript-conferences
[+] [-] ageofwant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjwright|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3princip|9 years ago|reply
How utterly absurd. One should question the competence of these people to organize a technical conference. Irrational, childish behavior.