[fatbird]

It's not actually a hard problem. We're not short of brilliant people who are also nice or at least not generally toxic. We don't need to exile the brilliant monsters; we just need to not make allowances for them. If they can learn to meet norms of civility, we can welcome them; if not, we can ignore them.

How many brilliant people have we lost access to because they were driven out of the field by someone like Felleisen? All we have to do is not tolerate their bad behaviour.

Everyone who met Felleisen and walked away is to be celebrated for not coddling his terrible behaviour; everyone who makes excuses for him should be shamed for enabling him.

[lmm]

> We're not short of brilliant people who are also nice or at least not generally toxic.

We absolutely are, especially with the all-encompassing definitions of toxicity that are popular lately.

[fatbird]

Is there a shortage of people with CompSci PhDs to staff universities and do research? Is there a shortage of people to present at conferences?

Just because you feel like cancel culture is cancelling people who don't deserve it, doesn't mean we need those people to fill open positions. Every time we make excuses for people like Matthias, we're filling a chair that could have someone else who's not toxic in it.

Not to mention: if we have a shortage of brilliant people, why aren't you asking how many brilliant people are driven out of the community by people like Matthias? What's the opportunity cost in brilliant people that Matthias represents?

If 2 or 3 people who could make comparable contributions to the community leave because of him, we're already in a net-negative situation wrt smart people advancing the field and community. Even if Matthias is twice as smart as the next best, it only takes a few more for him to be a net negative.

[lmm]

> Is there a shortage of people with CompSci PhDs to staff universities and do research? Is there a shortage of people to present at conferences?

There's a shortage of people doing top-quality work that advances the state of the art.

> Just because you feel like cancel culture is cancelling people who don't deserve it, doesn't mean we need those people to fill open positions. Every time we make excuses for people like Matthias, we're filling a chair that could have someone else who's not toxic in it.

> Not to mention: if we have a shortage of brilliant people, why aren't you asking how many brilliant people are driven out of the community by people like Matthias? What's the opportunity cost in brilliant people that Matthias represents?

I absolutely do ask that. But the disproportionate number of brilliant people we see being cancelled lately makes me think that "toxicity" is practically a requirement for brilliance.

[fatbird]

> There's a shortage of people doing top-quality work that advances the state of the art.

Ok. What do you have to back this up?

From my perspective, a PhD is defined by making a new contribution to the field, and we're graduating lots of PhDs. Part of Butterick's ire is directed at the many other prominent members of the Racket community who have passively enabled Matthias by ignoring his bad behaviour. If Matthias was hit by a bus, would Racket cease ongoing development? Of course not, there are many very smart people driving it forward in interesting ways. I would assert that Matthias isn't even necessary, now to the continuing advancement of the state of art with respect to Racket.

[lmm]

My perspective is that progress feels remarkably slow (despite minting an ever-increasing number of PhDs as you say), and Racket is one of a very small number of exceptions. I hope you're right that Matthias isn't necessary for Racket to keep advancing, because I fear we're about to find out.

[parenwielder]

As long as Matthias is alive, you're not going to find out. He's not going to be removed from Racket, as much as you and many others here seem to believe there's some huge problem of "cancel culture" coming for "everyone brilliant."