On 2014-08-12 at 11:39, Samuel Thibault wrote: > Luca Saiu, le Tue 12 Aug 2014 11:22:07 +0200, a écrit : >> * knowing some marvelous sexual technique *is* technical information, >> and educating people about it is good for society. Preventing people >> from disclosing such information is morally unacceptable. > > [...] But the GHM is not supposed to be about that, so people who feel they > would be offensed by such a talk should be able to think that they can > come to GHM without any risk of being offensed by the talks there.
I wasn't meaning to "go meta" with the joke talking about censorship of other jokes; the moral duty of being able to disclose the technical information was part of Richard's point, as shown by Alfred's quote. Neal: yes, in fact it was a joke, and the audience found it funny. I'm surprised by all these attempts of avoiding offense at all costs. I've always thought that what counts is the *intent* of the speaker; usually it's obvious whether somebody wants to attack somebody else, or if something she chooses just touches a raw nerve. The thing doesn't need to be sexual in any way. Here's an example. These days when criticizing people for being closed-minded about any topic I often use the word "Pythonic", as the designers of the Python language feel they know what good programming practices are, and so they don't have a problem constraining users with limited choices; I very strongly disapprove of that stance. Please use the word "Pythonic" as well, and help me to get it accepted into dictionaries. Am I being rude by saying this? Probably not. But if I repeatedly, callously attacked some dearly held idea by calling it Pythonic, then I would be -- to one or even two groups. My point is that the difference would be obvious to everybody. A reasonable policy can be "don't be intentionally obnoxious". If somebody is offended by a remark which was not meant as an attack, too bad: she's wrong. And probably Pythonic as well. By the way: if something is illegal then it's already prohibited and you don't need any policy for that. Call the cops. -- Luca Saiu http://ageinghacker.net * GNU epsilon: http://www.gnu.org/software/epsilon * Vaucanson: http://vaucanson-project.org * Marionnet: http://marionnet.org
