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by repolfx 2759 days ago
Being fine with the status quo is not the same thing as being "against a better working environment for everyone" and is wildly, insanely far from being "literally pathological" - your words, not mine.

Please, reflect on your position for a moment there. You're saying that anyone who is happy with their workplace and thinks things are OK is engaged in "literally pathological anti-social behaviour". That's the kind of overblown, extremist rhetoric that makes diversity initiatives a toxic topic in the modern workplace - it's a demonisation of anyone who thinks that maybe their firm has bigger things to worry about than a never-ending, apparently unsatisfiable quest for "equity".

In other words, people focus on attacking solutions as opposed to helping create better ones. That behavior is pervasive, insidious, counterproductive, and seems to be picking up steam.

It's actually your behaviour that's counterproductive here. There is never any obligation to propose something better when criticising a proposal.

It might be helpful to the proposer, and if someone can think of a better approach then you'd hope they would propose it. But if something is a bad idea, or represents a bad tradeoff (there are no solutions in life, only tradeoffs), then it's a bad idea and shouldn't happen. This is independent of anything else. Indeed, making the status quo worse is absolutely possible with any change, and something people are right to point out if a proposal might lead to it.

That doesn't make them insidious, or counterproductive.

1 comments

I think you're taking lots of liberties here so I'll try once more: I think that actively or passively resisting progress toward greater coexistence is antisocial and therefore pathological. My stance is that being fine with inequity (which is the status quo) is passive resistance.

You make some valid points about what constitutes active/passive resistance and your comment made me think. I don't think everyone is obligated to come up with better solutions but I do think if you're going to participate in the dialog, focusing solely on attacking existing solutions is counterproductive and makes me question your motives.

>I don't think everyone is obligated to come up with better solutions but I do think if you're going to participate in the dialog, focusing solely on attacking existing solutions is counterproductive and makes me question your motives.

If all of the proposed solutions are garbage and it's a complex problem, rational people will only be attacking them.

Consider when papers are submitted for peer review. The outcome is either paper is acceptable, or you get a bunch of negative feedback. That doesn't mean the reviewers don't want the problem solved, it just means that you're solution is flawed. People who want to solve problems seek peer reviews because they want to find flaws in their logic, data, or methodology.

Critical feedback is absolutely necessary for any solution to a real problem. Calling it counterproductive is misguided at best.