Here's the thing: when you're discussing the failures of another person's moral reasoning, you are inevitably calling their character into question. It may not be the point, but it's unavoidably the effect.
For the same reason that you can't state that someone is lying without denigrating their character, you cannot point out that someone is representing an utterly amoral position without implying that they are a generally untrustworthy human being.
Let me put it this way: would you be comfortable having cookiecaper running HR for your company? I should hope not. But if you were, what would you tell a board member who came across a post like this an wanted to know why - exactly - a guy this demonstrably off-base was being allowed to fill a position that carried so much risk?
For what it's worth, people were just downvoting the guy. I think there's some value in seeing what he has to say in order to better understand that mindset that let to the moral implosion we're presently discussing.
Separately, I think the tone of condemnation is actually very important. I'm sure there are plenty of people here who have had damaging encounters with others who think and act like cookiecaper (e.g. anyone who has worked under Catmull). It's important to establish, in a very public fashion, that the values he displays are absolutely not okay.
Your attack is high on prejudicial conclusion-jumping disgust-invoking labels – 'stupid', 'amoral', 'stink', 'pile of shit' – and low on reasoning. It's also unnecessarily personal – implying a person holding a reasoned opinion is an untouchable outcast.
That's what makes it out-of-bounds.
Looking back, you made no substantive comments on thread. You just opened by making a speaker the subject, and slurring that speaker. That's nasty.
Try looking back a bit further. You'll note that it was actually the previous poster who had made the speaker the subject, and that was in the context of a remark about how he was being reflexively down-voted for (presumably) making conspicuously bad arguments.
Bear in mind that it was failures of reasoning like these - that is to say, ones grounded in distinctly personal shortcomings - that produced the situation at Pixar which we're discussing. Indeed, for those of us whose careers have taught us the importance of making suitably judicious assessments of the personal character of those we depend on, a discussion of the rhetorical hallmarks of people who defend illegal and abusive employment practices is vitally important. Spotting them quickly can be the difference between a really bad choice and a good one. So again, that's why I was saying there's value in cookiecaper's otherwise objectionable remarks: they're a case study in the kind of stuff you really do need to watch out for.
And within the specific social context I noted - i.e. people working in HR - remarks like cookiecaper's jolly well should him an untouchable outcast. For the same reason you don't want a person with a lax attitude about embezzling anywhere near your finance department, you don't want a person who thinks that contracts are "inconvenient" in a position where they're likely to conclude that violating the law "is just a lot faster and easier" than respecting it. (I'm paraphrasing, but that's the essence of the "reasoning" on display.)
Now perhaps you don't consider a frank characterization of the sub-par ethical traits that are the direct cause of problems like Pixar's to be "substantive". On that point I can only say that we sharply disagree.
You made the speaker the target of denigration. The previous poster was appealing for tolerance; you added name-calling and personalized shunning. You skipped any acknowledgement or engagement with cookiecutter's points, jumping straight to negative labels without supporting argument.
I suppose your armchair snap-judgment blackballing would also extend to people like Catmull, Jobs, Schmidt and others themselves. All of them, a pox on the industry who should have never held leadership roles. Sure, right.
For the same reason that you can't state that someone is lying without denigrating their character, you cannot point out that someone is representing an utterly amoral position without implying that they are a generally untrustworthy human being.
Let me put it this way: would you be comfortable having cookiecaper running HR for your company? I should hope not. But if you were, what would you tell a board member who came across a post like this an wanted to know why - exactly - a guy this demonstrably off-base was being allowed to fill a position that carried so much risk?
For what it's worth, people were just downvoting the guy. I think there's some value in seeing what he has to say in order to better understand that mindset that let to the moral implosion we're presently discussing.
Separately, I think the tone of condemnation is actually very important. I'm sure there are plenty of people here who have had damaging encounters with others who think and act like cookiecaper (e.g. anyone who has worked under Catmull). It's important to establish, in a very public fashion, that the values he displays are absolutely not okay.