On meritocracy [LWN.net]

On meritocracy

Posted Jun 18, 2012 8:58 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
In reply to: On meritocracy by nix
Parent article: On mocking

I'm not claiming magical insight into human nature, or anything else for the matter. But you will be with me that when you deal with a big group of loosely related people, the probability of eventually having to deal with someone in an unfriendly way (even if it's just because he's had a bad day) approaches 1. "Refusing to accept" from some pretended higher moral ground is not going to solve the problem, but exacerbate it. A thick skin prevents a full scale conflict developing, and thus is a great thing to develop.

Don't confuse my words. I'm not saying that mockery is the best way to solve conflicts (go re-read my earlier posts), but it's useful sometimes. I know, I have been there many times. I did something stupid, and I was called stupid as I deserved. It's hard to swallow, specially for somebody as stubborn as myself, but in the end every time I learned a valuable lesson.

For these reasons I do not believe that mocking on somebody that deserves it is any kind of deadly sin. It's a tool to be used with caution like any other dangerous tool, and only with well defined purposes.

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On meritocracy

Posted Jun 18, 2012 14:22 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Oh, agreed. But there's "I've had a bad day" and there's "I do this as a matter of course when I get slightly annoyed". l-k hackers are not saints even after they have won the Millennium Technology Prize, so nobody could expect perfect courtesy at all times -- but doing it routinely is not only unpleasant for everyone else but unpleasant for the mocker and probably also a sign of approaching burnout. (I dodged that bullet a couple of years ago.)

Then there is "this is my only visible way of interacting with other people", Joerg Schilling being the foremost exemplar of this approach. Note that as Joerg's unremittingly hostile attitude made clear, hostile approaches rarely lead to constructive outcomes when the people being hostiled at are major l-k figures -- I do wonder why anyone would expect them to lead to constructive outcomes in any other situation. Most people are less hostile than Joerg even when they're being nasty, and there is at least the possibility of movement: is that all it is?