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by littlecranky67 146 days ago
It is a disease of modern (social) media and personal branding. People also now broadly think that an ad-hominem (attacking the person behind an argument, not the argument) is good argumentative style. I don't know about Jack Dorsey other then he founded twitter, and I don't care much about him. If there is a product, I will evaluate that product by my catalogue, not whether I like or dislike a person.
2 comments
card_zero 146 days ago
But the person controls the product, and the product will continue to develop, so the person's character is relevant to the quality of the product.
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littlecranky67 146 days ago
You are making assumptions about a future that hasn't happened yet. It is open-source, so whatever move the person might do in the future, you can fork it anytime.
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card_zero 146 days ago
I suppose the community around a product is also a reason to bring up an influential character's character. You can't fork the community, only fragment it. "I don't want to join a club with that guy in it" is a time when an ad hominem becomes a valid argument.
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littlecranky67 146 days ago
It is a self-fullfilling prophecy. If the community would adopt the style of not juding the person but only the product, that community would not care for that person. So the "I don't want to join a club with purpose X because of guy Y" leads to the problem that you are describing. If everybody would just "I join the club because of its purpose X achieved by means Z", that community split won't happen.
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card_zero 146 days ago
Yes, if the community would not be influenced by the guy, he wouldn't be influential.
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zelphirkalt 146 days ago
You can fork, but will you want to fork and spend time and effort, potentially in huge amounts, on that fork? There are reasons to be wary. Choosing an alternative, where that particular reason for forking might not exist, is a valid choice to make.
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bariswheel 146 days ago
No they don't, it's permissionless technology. Read the web site.
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threatofrain 146 days ago
Thinking that good reputation in a law translates to a good lawyer is just as mature as thinking that a bad reputation translates to a bad lawyer, just two sides of the same coin. Credibility can be so cruel, it can make a brilliant mathematician like Terry Tao preemptively decline to read your mathematical arguments basically forever.

In both cases I think these may be characteristics of healthy judgment.

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