I received a master's degree from an art program in which the (male) professors had a great deal of license to performatively take down students, from the initial admissions interview through two years of group critiques. It wasn't unusual for a professor to reduce students to tears. Graduates of the program brought this culture to their own teaching.

Recently I worked at a school whose critiques were set up explicitly not to replicate this harshness. I discussed this with a few friends from grad school, and we were mystified: "How can anyone produce good quality work unless they are constantly being torn apart?" "Is there another way to learn besides being humiliated?" Which led us to look at each other and think, well, we certainly don't choose to live that way otherwise.

And that is the question -- and maybe we'll discover on lkml: is there a better way to create something remarkable. And to replicate that behavior in whatever projects we take on.