[bill_mon]

> Take Mr. X, who is outraged by Microsoft's behavior and refuses to buy Microsoft's products, tells other people about his problems with Microsoft, and tells everyone to use FOSS alternatives? Now, Mr. X also thinks that it's stupid to believe in god, and is not afraid to say it to everyone he meets. He's suddenly changed from "FOSS advocate" to "toxic workplace on legs".

What's toxic about this? Two perfectly sensible points of view and you think Mr. X is dangerous to be around?

[klodolph]

> What's toxic about this? Two perfectly sensible points of view and you think Mr. X is dangerous to be around?

Not sure where the word "dangerous" comes from.

Just to explain things. If you tell people at work that it's stupid to believe in god, you are probably going to get fired, and rightly so. It's not dangerous, but it is toxic (belittling people for their religious beliefs).

[bill_mon]

Toxic means dangerous.

[klodolph]

"Toxic" does not mean "dangerous" in this context. The lingustic phenomenon is called polysemy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy

It's like how when I "execute" a program, you understand that I am not killing the program as punishment. Even though the word "execute" has that meaning, it only applies in other contexts.

[bill_mon]

Toxicity is a serious thing. We label toxic chemicals with labels and warnings because they're dangerous. Serious business.

When we apply "toxic" to a person or his behaviour, we borrow that seriousness. That's why we choose that specific, strong words with a well-known meaning.

I oppose calling "I disagree with your world view" toxic. A serial killer might deserve the term.

[klodolph]

> When we apply "toxic" to a person or his behaviour, we borrow that seriousness. That's why we choose that specific, strong words with a well-known meaning.

So, you knew what the meaning of "toxic" was all along, but you pretended to not know what the meaning was in order to make some kind of point? I would prefer a direct discussion.

> I oppose calling "I disagree with your world view" toxic. A serial killer might deserve the term.

Mr. X isn't toxic for his world view, it's his actions--his actions are to call people stupid over their religious beliefs.

Stallman isn't "toxic" for writing a couple essays or emails, but you could argue that he's toxic for the way he treated people over the past decades.

[bill_mon]

> So, you knew what the meaning of "toxic" was all along, but you pretended to not know what the meaning was in order to make some kind of point? I would prefer a direct discussion.

Yes, I knew all along that "toxic" means "dangerous". When we're not talking about eg. plutonium, we at least borrow the seriousness of that use. It's a very strong word.

> [...] his actions are to call people stupid over their religious beliefs.

I think it's a stretch to call speaking an action. Hitting religious people would be an action, calling them out really isn't.

Stallman is apparently not the most agreeable person, and possibly he's been nasty and hostile. Some people have chosen not to work with him, others have worked a lot with him. He's not killed anybody, he's not made of plutonium, there's no danger.

[tester34]

>When we apply "toxic" to a person or his behaviour, we borrow that seriousness.

what makes you think so?

words means in theirs contextes whatever people attributed to them, and I've never seen toxic used in other context than somebody trashtalking somebody and being called toxic, so definitely not dangerous.

[bill_mon]

> what makes you think so?

Because that's how language works. You don't call somebody a neanderthal to imply he has great hair.

[danielheath]

This hypothetical Mr X is going to take all of a week to get the entire helpdesk & IT procurement team (and every religious coworker) to avoid him and his need to criticize some aspect of their lives.

That's "toxic" because now you have a staff member who people won't communicate effectively with.

[bill_mon]

Now you're inventing more personality for Mr X. He doesn't like Microsoft and doesn't hide it. He thinks Santa Claus is for children and doesn't hide it. He's not the problem here.

[mckirk]

He is, though, because his opinion on Santa Claus should be completely irrelevant to his interactions with his co-workers. But if he prioritizes being hostile by correcting and insulting people over being humble and accepting that others might believe differently, he is being toxic -- he's poisonous to be around.

There are different ways to stand by one's beliefs. One is to keep them to yourself and let them guide your decisions silently, but defend them vigorously if they are actively challenged. And one is to feel the need to rub them into everyone's face constantly, because there is only Right and Wrong and you can't deal with somebody being wrong (i.e., of a different opinion than you) without feeling personally attacked and going on the offensive.

[bill_mon]

I can agree. But this means that we can never talk about anything other than specific, technical issues at work. We can never reveal any opinion or outside fact about anything. I suppose that's a solution.

In this scenario, our guy wouldn't accept that others might believe differently, because he'd never know, because they never say. Fine by me.

> being wrong (i.e., of a different opinion than you)

That's not what wrong means. Opinions are personal and subjective and can't be wrong or right. Religious ideas a not opinions, they are fact claims about the universe.

[mckirk]

I think the agreed-upon way of handling this is revealing personal opinions on difficult subjects very carefully to gauge the reactions, and only proceeding if doing so wouldn't disturb the peace more than what the discussion would be worth. There are of course a ton of potentially difficult subjects, as the ever expanding "Culture War" Wikipedia article shows[1].

But after thinking about it for a bit, this approach of "tread carefully and don't disturb others" is still problematic. Because, where do you draw the line about things that you should or should not speak up against? My intuitive example would have been an anti-vaxxer at work, that I probably would have felt the need to criticize and correct, because their opinion might kill my grandma. But then, militant atheists might also feel like they have to criticize believers, given the huge number of people killed in the name of one god or another.

I think a fundamental factor here is the level of confidence in one's belief that is warranted. Challenging others (especially publicly) on what they believe should only be seen as a sensible thing to do when the confidence in your opinion that leads to to that criticism is warranted. For things like vaccinations, we thankfully have scientific evidence that would indicate that anyone who outright believes they are ineffectual or "give people autism" is, in all likelihood, simply wrong. On the other hand, a belief in god ultimately can't ever be shown as wrong[2], so being very confident in your belief that there is no god still doesn't justify putting down others for believing the opposite.

> That's not what wrong means.

Yes sorry, that was meant fairly tongue-in-cheek, because I assumed that for a person like our Mr. X, the distinction between "of a different opinion" and "wrong" would be very blurry.

> Religious ideas are not opinions, they are fact claims about the universe.

Isn't that just a really wide-spanning opinion though? Maybe we're using the word differently and mean the same?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war

2: Unless we talk about ridiculous stuff like creationism, which would at least be very hard to defend if you simultaneously want to use the scientific method for anything.

[bill_mon]

Treading carefully is probably our best bet, but it's very difficult and error prone.

There are no militant atheists, in any reasonable sense of the word. If mentioning facts about the world is seen as criticism of religious people, that's a big problem. We know vaccines work, because our best research shows that. It's not controversial and we should be free to mention it. Huge parts of many religious text are factually incorrect, we know that from enormous amounts of research -- this is also not controversial and we should be free to talk about it.

> Isn't that just a really wide-spanning opinion though? Maybe we're using the word differently and mean the same?

In that case everything is opinion and we have no real knowledge of anything.

Thanks!