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       poisoning the well
       December 16th, 2019
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       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?