Introduction
Introduction Statistics Contact Development Disclaimer Help
----------------------------------------
poisoning the well
December 16th, 2019
----------------------------------------
This week I learned that the RSS aggregator I use, tt-rss, is
developed by an individual whose personal politics are at odds
with my own. This morning I became aware that the creator of the
television show, The IT Crowd, appears to be a scumbag. If we look
back over the last year or two it's easy to spot Chik Fil A and
Harvey Weinstein and a hundred other cases where a person or
organization has become pariah. Their works are stained forever.
A number of questions came to me after considering our present
reality:
- Is it universal? Does the idea of individual moral judgement
apply the same way to all people? What about companies?
- Is this new? Is it a continuous development from some earlier
state?
- Is it "fair", not to the subject of the moral judgement, but
to the works? What about collective works where only a single
contributor is a problem? Does their position of authority
change the judgement?
There's too much to go into in a gopher phlog. I'm not going to
write some massive moral treatise here. There's really two bits
I'm focused on anyway, so pitter-patter, as they say…
First is the question of large collective works, like film.
According to some web page I read in passing, which queried data
from the top IMDB films, the average crew on a film is about 588
members strong. If we assume that the moral distribution of
individuals on a given film is representative of the general
population (safe enough, not given a specific film) then we might
expect some sort of normal distribution of morality (if such
a thing were quantifiable). If one of these individuals were to
score at an extreme to one degree or another it will not shift the
distribution noticeably. The overall morality of those making this
piece of collective art is unchanged.
But we punish them, don't we? Many of us will boycott the movie
because of what that actor said, or what the director did. We will
spite the 587 others on a film for that one person. They have, in
effect, poisoned the well.
But maybe it's not about the math of morality. Maybe it's because
we must take action in the face of injustice. Something we
perceive as wrong cannot be allowed to occur, even if our methods
will cause harm to others. That sounds silly, doesn't it? It does
to me.
Maybe it matters more when justice would not be done without the
masses acting in protest. If the courts won't prosecute, then the
voice of the consumer will blacklist them. Let capitalism rear its
power for justice for once, right?
Ultimately I think it's harder to let go of something we see as
wrong than it is to ignore the damage we cause others. Collateral
damage is a shame, but at least we got THAT guy.
So yeah, there's some moral ambiguity here in collective works,
but what about individual creators? Should everyone boycott
tt-rss? Should we avoid using suckless code? Stop listening to
somebody's music? Maybe that's easier here. After all, we're not
hurting anyone else with this sort of mob justice.
There's just so many "what ifs" floating around. What if the
despicable person created something that helps people? What if
they pioneered a green energy revolution? What if they found
a disease cure? What if they make a really good software package
for the blind?
Yes, on the one hand it is the old debate about whether you can
separate art from artist. But there's the question of utility as
well. At what point does the good of the work outweigh the bad of
the individual.
This is where my head has been all morning and I'm not coming up
with any concrete answers. That's probably a sign that I shouldn't
expect a fixed set of rules to apply. In the case of films, I'll
probably keep seeing them. In the case of tt-rss, I will probably
jump to another project if I find one comparable. In the case of
the IT Crowd, I'll continue to quote and enjoy it and probably use
that moment to also inform others around me that Graham Linehan as
a shitbag. Double-win, right?
You are viewing proxied material from sdf.org. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.