The Coq mailing list

[Derek Dreyer <dreyer AT mpi-sws.org>]

Dear Tadeusz and Klaus,

With all due respect, two points:

1. Concerning the relevance of the original post: As Stefan already
noted, the original post was an announcement of an event that many
readers of coq-club are likely to be interested in, particularly given
current events.  As such, it seems entirely reasonable to post it.

2. Concerning the content of the original post: People make broad
claims of accepted knowledge all the time if they believe the truth
behind those claims is self-evident and there is a large enough
community of readers that accepts them.  For example, it is
commonplace for PL researchers to write sentences in the introductions
of their papers that make broad claims such as: "It is widely
acknowledged that the lambda calculus provides an essential foundation
for modern programming languages."  Such claims serve to clearly
signal to the reader what community of readers the paper is aimed at
-- if you don't buy that the lambda calculus provides an essential
foundation of modern programming languages, then probably that paper
is not for you.  But presumably the author of such a claim is
primarily interested in communicating to an audience that already
believes that claim.  And if we all got up in arms about every such
broad claim made by our fellow scientists, we would never find the
time to eat.

In the case of the original post, a broad claim was made that "We in
the global programming languages community acknowledge that every
institution in our society is built on a foundation of white
supremacy—and our academic systems and research industry are no
exception."  I agree with this claim, as I'm sure do many others on
this list.  I guess perhaps you don't, in which case the announced
event is probably not for you.  But I don't see how you can argue that
there is anything unusual or unscientific or "political" about a
scientist making a broad claim of assumed knowledge in the interest of
helping the audience identify itself.  It's what we do all the time.

Best regards,
Derek



On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 10:43 PM Tadeusz Litak <tadeusz.litak AT gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 09.06.20 22:16, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>
> I think the original post was meant as an announcement of an event for
> PL researchers, and to this extent, I think it was not out of place (at
> least, based on the fairly large amount of announcements I see on this
> list for other events targeting the same group).
>
>
> But Klaus was right that the post was making claims on behalf of the entire 
> community that many people on this list do not subscribe to.
>
> An agreement to close the discussion should entail an agreement that nobody 
> in future plays the role of a self-appointed spokesperson for all of us. It 
> doesn't seem much to ask for, and without such an agreement, you cannot 
> expect people to keep silent in such situations.
>
> Best,
>
> t.
>
> PS.  This is a textbook example of "moral grandstanding being a major 
> source of conflict in the world today":
>
> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/are-you-a-moral-grandstander/