Also known as “my opinions” and “things that you can assume that I believe” because it was pointed out to me recently that many of these things, which I don’t usually announce because they are so obvious, other people mught not know that I believe, because I believe that it goes without saying and therefore others may not have heard me say them.

Some of these are points that many people argue over a lot. I will not restate those arguments here.

This list is not comprehensive. I may learn more and change my mind. Ask me anything.

  • Gay marriage should be legal
  • Discriminating against someone (firing them, not hiring them, avoiding choosing their offer for buying a house) because of skin - color, religion, nationality, gender, manner of attire, etc is bad and should be illegal.
  • As a country, you should give refugees refuge.
  • You should use a person’s preferred pronouns to refer to them, both to their face and to others.
  • Lockpicking is a fun sport and should not be illegal, as long as you only pick locks that you own, or have received permission from their owners to pick them
  • Do not prosecute security researchers who disclose issues responsibly
  • Marijuana should be legal for medical and recreational use
  • Death is bad. No one should die, ever. In response to the common rebuttal “but then the earth would be overcrowded” I say- we should solve that. It is an excuse, not a reason.
  • I want to live forever. In response to the common rebuttal “wouldn’t you get bored?” I say- extremely unlikely, but I look forward to finding out in person.
  • Imprisonment should be curative, not punitive.
  • Waiting to do awesome things makes them less likely to happen. For example: not using awesome products because they might be canceled (see: the Google Wallet debit card, Google RSS) to me is like refusing to smell flowers when they are in bloom, because they will not always be in bloom. Yes, there is more effort in switching to a new thing when this thing/product/job dies/stops- but using the good things while they are available, enjoying the beautiful things while they are beautiful, and putting in the effort to support good products even if someday you might- and it is almost always a might, sooner or later- the only difference is of timescale- have to put in more effort to recover from the ending of that good thing that you are interacting with… I am not in favor.

A clarification on religion as a non-discriminatory topic:

A theoretical question:

re “Basic Premises”, I’m confused by how often “religion” ends up on people’s anti-descrimination protected category lists. If I run my own [small business], and get an application from, let’s say, someone who also blogs a lot arguing that [religion X] is true and that it implies all sorts of disagreeable-to-me conclusions, then realistically I think I would be looking for reasons to say “no hire”

My answer:

I mostly care about discrimination of in-power groups against not-in-power groups. Although I don’t like christianity (as I have observed it in history books and by attending a few church services) personally, my primary work concern would be

  1. What if they preach in the workplace / to customers? What if public association to them is harmful to the business? (There are counter-arguments to this)

  2. Can I, personally, work with them fairly, while harboring a strong dislike of something that is apparently very important to them? (Well, legally, you might be obliged to try)

For me, it would be kind of like hiring someone who constnatnly blogged about humans being obligate carnivores and everyone must eat all meat all the time. I would consider that inherently incorrect and a position arising from willful ignorance and actively harmful to the world. (Carbon emissions, animal suffering, human health)

I don’t actually believe that picking the person who can literally do the limited-description-of-the-job best is always the right choice, but if I say that then maybe I am saying that it’s ok to not hire people “who aren’t a culture fit” and that would apply to, like, women not being hired at software development companies, and I need to find a way to make those beliefs not equal in my own mind.