seems to me he has some runs on the scoreboard (and some facts on the ground)
It'd be a lot healthier if malleable, hero-worshiping younglings could get their heads around the fact that sometimes their flawed, human heroes accomplish their greatness despite their outrageous flaws and not because of their outrageous flaws. Then we might end up with fewer kids affecting the asshole-ness, misogyny, alcoholism, or misanthropy of their idols thinking it will make them better programmers, writers, basketball players, or mathematicians.
But noooo, it's all "Linus did X, so I'll do X and be cool like Linus!"
But correlation is evidence of causation.
Unless you believe correlation is providing evidence of causation here:
http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-...
and here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true-fa...
In both cases, yes, it is evidence of causation. However the low prior probability of causation in each case massively overwhelms the evidence provided by observing a correlation.
Here's an easy way to tell if A is evidence of B: ask the inverse question - is "not A" evidence of "not B". If so, it is trivially provable that the answer is yes.
I still remember when Linus and friends couldn't write a VM that worked on a server to save their fucking life and all Linux was good for was running xmms on Linus' desktop, but I was stuck trying to run his garbage in production. What goes around eventually comes around.
And we can either all yell at each other and wind up tuning the fuck out, or we can try to be slightly more civil and realize that everyone is trying to solve hard problem and getting yanked in a dozen different directions. I'm willing to give the GCC compiler team the benefit of the doubt that these bugs were not due to the team being generally incompetent or lazy.
To have a real discussion then requires a finer nuance of what "insult" means. Verbal abuse includes "scolding, yelling, swearing, blaming, insulting, threatening, demeaning, ridiculing, criticizing, belittling" (see http://journals.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/AJP/3768/... ). That paper, which looked at verbal abuse of children, concluded "Parental verbal aggression was a potent form of maltreatment. Exposure to multiple forms of abuse was associated with very large effect sizes [comparable to those associated with witnessing domestic violence or nonfamilial sexual abuse]."
The references for the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_incivility is one place to start. For example, the abstract for http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=880458 is:
> Obnoxious behaviour has become endemic in the workplace. Some of the worst offences are: not turning off mobile phones in meetings; leaving a jammed printer, gossiping, and snapping at coworkers. Yet, it is this small stuff that relentlessly grinds down collegial working relationships. Incivility is at the low end of the continuum of workplace abuse. Workplace incivility is not violence or harassment or even open conflict, although it can build up to any of those things. Links between the work environment and indicators of employee loyalty, commitment, and productivity show this is not a “fluff” issue. In addition, a recent study on workplace incivility reveals that rude employees and managers can cost a company millions of dollars a year. This paper will look at a definition of incivility in the workplace, the causes of poor behaviour, the costs to organizations, and what employers can do to help.
You may also be interested in "Sticks and Stones The Philosophy of Insults" by Jerome Neu.
I bring this up to point out you have not succeeded in being a devil's advocate. My response is not part of a dialog testing the original hypothesis but instead is only criticism in the way you structured your question.
(And you're using the shitty rhetorical tactic of sarcasm, which allows you to tell someone that they're wrong without making any claims of your own, or even understanding what they're saying.)
But that's just supposition, not a normative claim.
Edit: I wonder if I'd be down-voted so harshly if I was Linus Torvalds.
From me, the answer is yes, and I hope that is true for others on HN as well. I'm sure it's not always appreciated, but I think it's important for influential people to receive honest feedback. Although in the rare cases when I downvote 'pg' on this board, I do wonder if some 'all-future-downvotes > /dev/null' switch might get flipped. For what it's worth, I downvoted your sarcastic grandparent, and upvoted this somewhat more constructive reply.
I can show you evidence (China, etc.) of supreme levels of output in the most abusive of situations. That doesn't mean that society doesn't place value on a balance between productivity and the way we treat fellow human beings.