Ideas about how software should behave

[Ben Finney]

Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> writes:

> Nowadays I realize and accept that this is preposterous. You cannot
> criticize an idea without also criticizing the people who are attached
> to that idea.

Maybe so. Does that mean we must not criticise ideas? Later in your
message you say no, but everything leading up to it argues you think so.

In the thread which spawned this one, an idea was criticised, *because*
someone expressed attachment to the idea.

The idea was expressly one about software behaviour. Should that idea
not be criticised in this forum, because someone expressed attachment to
the idea?

Does this forum allow ideas to be criticised only if no-one is attached
to them?

> Even if no personal slight is intended, it is received that way. If
> your idea is bad, then by implication you are a person with bad ideas.

Yes. And people with bad ideas rarely abandon bad ideas if those ideas
are not shown to be bad.

> Now, I'm not saying that we can't criticize ideas. We can, however,
> choose to be polite or not in how we go about it.

Certainly. It is incivil to make personal attacks. The criticism which
started this sub-thread made no personal attack.

Yet you've already pointed out that criticism of an idea – an idea
specifically about how software should behave – is *perceived as* an
attack, by people who are attached to the idea.

You called such criticism “incivility”; presumably on the basis that the
person was attached to the idea that was criticised.

By responding, in this forum, to criticism of ideas with the
admonishment of “incivility”, you effectively imply that it is incivil
to criticise ideas strongly held — even when those ideas are about the
behaviour of Python software, in a forum whose purpose is discussion of
Python software.

This is the condescension of low expectation: that someone who is
attached to an idea deserves *less respect*, that they should not be
exposed to criticism of ideas they hold lest they perceive it as an
attack. That treats people as too fragile to examine an idea as separate
from their person.

I thoroughly reject that condescending attitude, and choose instead to
promote respect that people *can* examine ideas when those ideas are
criticised.

Ideas, whether lightly or strongly held, are never immune from
criticism. Indeed, for the purpose of reducing the amount of bad ideas
held by people, those ideas must be criticised.

Ideas about software behaviour, in this forum, are surely not an
exception to that.

-- 
 \       “We jealously reserve the right to be mistaken in our view of |
  `\      what exists, given that theories often change under pressure |
_o__)              from further investigation.” —Thomas W. Clark, 2009 |
Ben Finney