Quit Demanding Purity | Hacker News Reader

Quit Demanding Purity

malcognition.com

Is there something wrong with an ideological boycott? If the "cost" to you of the boycott is less than the perceived importance of the issue, why would you continue to use something even though you disagree with it?

The nice thing about a boycott is that it provides a direct financial disincentive to the manufacturer simply ignoring the public's concerns. If lots of people are upset about an issue, and they change their buying habits based on that issue, either the manufacturer can choose to change their strategy to correct that issue, or it provides an opportunity for a competitor.

And even if you're the only person in the universe who cares about a particular issue, "everyone else is fine with it" doesn't necessarily mean that you feel like involving yourself in something you disagree with enough to believe that you can live without its benefits.

So I'm all for demanding purity if that's more important to you than the perceived benefits of the impure thing.

Also, if you never make your case -- then what's the impetus to make things change?

This article seems is too reductionist for me. Just because things always have their flaws doesn't mean you don't try to make it better.

Yeah, me too. "You won't make a difference, so don't bother trying" seems a rather dull way to approach life.

This is solid advice. When I was a kid, my first computer was a Commodore Amiga. I hated PC's and felt the need to go trolling on BBSes about how the Amiga was superior in every way (sorry, keep in mind that I was 12). Of course, there were lots of PC games I wanted to play that would take over a year to be ported to Amiga. Not to mention countless other things like various hardware add-ons that were PC-only.

At some point I realized that I wanted to enjoy computers, and if I went with the flow and used what lots of other people were using, I would be much happier. My new philosophy has been "use what works" ever since. It's a much happier place to be, rather than binding yourself to a set of ideological restrictions where you only limit your own choices.

I demand an SUV that gets 100MPG, but I'm not going to stop using cars in the meantime; if you support Free software, you don't have to be Stallman; etc. Being at either extreme, a pure idealist or pragmatist, is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Take the middle road and get the best of both roads.

I wouldn't view pragmatism as an extreme. If you're truly pragmatic, you have a guiding philosophy, but aren't fanatical about it. I think it's a good middle ground.

This is not a logical argument; it's a collection of unrelated paragraphs.

"Here we go: eight years of Linux kernels from 2.4 to 2.6 are vulnerable. That means, if you stumble along the wrong exploit code your safety is hosed. But thinking outside the security of your own computer, consider the millions of nodes out there that are running dangerously — and aren’t to be upgraded any time soon. And all this on our stone-stable Linux kernel?"

This is annoying. Yes, there is a critical bug out there, but it's a local privilege escalation exploit, which is completely different from a remote exploit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com