I don’t fully buy that this is okay just because the free event space was a donation. Of course, you’re not obligated to fund people you disagree with. But how do you think people will behave if they learn that disagreeing with community orthodoxy will immediately lead to loss of financial support? That would have an obvious chilling effect.
I think this is worse given that Scott was pushing back on precisely this kind of “purity spiral” dynamic, where certain opinions seem to be socially enforced for groupthink reasons (not necessarily endorsing this claim FWIW) - and then Habryka started talking about pulling resources in response to disagreement here. (Being perhaps a little uncharitable here, but that’s how it can be perceived.)
Of course Habryka is well within his legal rights to withhold financial support here, I empathize with why he would want to, and I don’t think this is so clear cut morally. But it certainly does make me feel uncomfortable.
Ehhhhhhh. If I am a Netflix subscriber, and one of the executives says something I don’t like, and I make a post saying that I’m cancelling my subscription as a result of that that’s entirely within my rights but it’s definitely adversarial.
This may just be a definition thing. I want to use “adversarial” to mean something more than “not maximally cooperative”. I’d describe a position that wants the other party to lose or fail as adversarial. Like, in a zero-sum game, the players are adversaries because one’s win is the other’s loss.
Ceasing to contribute to someone else’s project doesn’t mean you want them to lose, or benefit from their losing; it just means you don’t want to help them win quite as much as you did before.
And publicly objecting to someone’s behavior doesn’t mean you want them to lose; it just means you wish they would change their behavior.
That’s the sense in which I read “adversarial”. Under some different definition, like “not maximally cooperative” or “expressing disapproval”, sure, it could be “adversarial”.
Yeah, I’m not sure English has a word or even phrase which crisply points to expressing displeasure through the performative withdrawal of previous support (e.g. “performative” in the phrase I used is denotationally correct but has the wrong connotations). Perhaps “conspicuous withdrawal of patronage”? Doesn’t carry any misleading connotations but feels pretty clunky.
Not-donating-money is not “adversarial”, it’s the default condition.
I don’t fully buy that this is okay just because the free event space was a donation. Of course, you’re not obligated to fund people you disagree with. But how do you think people will behave if they learn that disagreeing with community orthodoxy will immediately lead to loss of financial support? That would have an obvious chilling effect.
I think this is worse given that Scott was pushing back on precisely this kind of “purity spiral” dynamic, where certain opinions seem to be socially enforced for groupthink reasons (not necessarily endorsing this claim FWIW) - and then Habryka started talking about pulling resources in response to disagreement here. (Being perhaps a little uncharitable here, but that’s how it can be perceived.)
Of course Habryka is well within his legal rights to withhold financial support here, I empathize with why he would want to, and I don’t think this is so clear cut morally. But it certainly does make me feel uncomfortable.
Ehhhhhhh. If I am a Netflix subscriber, and one of the executives says something I don’t like, and I make a post saying that I’m cancelling my subscription as a result of that that’s entirely within my rights but it’s definitely adversarial.
This may just be a definition thing. I want to use “adversarial” to mean something more than “not maximally cooperative”. I’d describe a position that wants the other party to lose or fail as adversarial. Like, in a zero-sum game, the players are adversaries because one’s win is the other’s loss.
Ceasing to contribute to someone else’s project doesn’t mean you want them to lose, or benefit from their losing; it just means you don’t want to help them win quite as much as you did before.
And publicly objecting to someone’s behavior doesn’t mean you want them to lose; it just means you wish they would change their behavior.
That’s the sense in which I read “adversarial”. Under some different definition, like “not maximally cooperative” or “expressing disapproval”, sure, it could be “adversarial”.
Yeah, I’m not sure English has a word or even phrase which crisply points to expressing displeasure through the performative withdrawal of previous support (e.g. “performative” in the phrase I used is denotationally correct but has the wrong connotations). Perhaps “conspicuous withdrawal of patronage”? Doesn’t carry any misleading connotations but feels pretty clunky.