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I am super sleepy but if I don't post this now I will forget my Thoughts.

So! The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang won best novella in the Hugos last year, and I finally got around to reading it a few days ago.

It's one of those stories that feels two steps removed from being a non fiction meta essay, I liked the characters well enough but it doesn't really have a plot or emotional arc or anything, he's just having fun exploring the idea of sentient virtual pets. Still, if nothing else it was nice to see the idea explored without descending into tragedy or horror. I have a bunch of critical thoughts after the cut, but the fact that the story got me thinking about these questions so much at all is to it's credit.

( And now some spoilery thoughts. Should make sense if you haven't read it, but it's short and free, so why haven't you? )

I've been meaning to post some coherent thoughts on niceness for a while but I think I need to post some incoherent ones first to get my thoughts in order :)

So: I'm a "nice" person, in that I'm friendly, and polite, and non-threatening, and passive (and that's what I'm going to mean by "nice" in this post. I realise that's not the only definition). I used to feel rather smug about this, and wish other people were more like me(*). But the older I get the more I realise that not only is this "niceness" harmful to me (as I get all repressed and ignored) but it can also be harmful to those around me, and stems largely from entirely selfish motivations.

Disclaimers like whoa, I'm definitely just stream-of-consciousnessing here. And have a headache :)

EDIT: This is a bunch of thoughts about the flaws of niceness, mainly as it relates to me and my behaviour. Niceness has a lot of benefits too, I just didn't go into them. Also people make some good points in the comments.
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Something I realised I left out of Various axioms of my anti-(racism sexism etc) (this extended conversation is definitely making me express a bunch of interconnected ideas I hadn't properly articulated before :))

EDIT: This is not a self evident truth, it's an axiom of the way I think. This does not mean it's right, but you'll have to work pretty hard to convince me otherwise :) (But one of my other axioms is question everything)

As I said there, if there is a society wide inequality which puts one group in a position of less power with regards to another, then the group with more power cannot be trusted to judge how best to fix that inequality. No matter how good their intentions(*).

Feminism and the fight against sexism needs to be mostly run by women.

Anti-racism needs to be mostly run by POC.

The left needs significant input from the poor and lower class. (Unfortunately once you have the power to change things you generally aren't lower class any more so this gets a bit catch 22ish)

etc.

And if you're in the more powerful group then you cannot rely on the opinions of other people in the same group.
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The next of my General principles of internet communication, once again prompted by me starting a post about something else (in fact, the same post. I will finish it one day!) and going off on a tangent :) Really obvious, yet I am constantly forgetting to do it.
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Freedom of speech is a nice concept, and one worth fighting for. It's not something you can assume you have a legal right to on the internet, especially when you consider all the different countries' legal systems involved (my own country offers pretty patchy support) Sop when I say "right" here I just mean in the non-legally binding moral imperative sense.

But even when we consider the principle, what it means is that you have the right not to suffer legal consequences for expressing an opinion, and the right to have public spaces in which you can express yourself.

It does not mean you have the right to avoid social repercussions. If it did, wouldn't you complaining about the people complaining about you be a violation of their right to "free speech"?

Secondly, just because something is publicly visible doesn't make it a "public space". If a private individual or organisation is in charge of a space (and this is true of pretty much everywhere on the internet) then they have the right to completely control what is said there, and that includes deleting content and banning contributors. Which is not to say that this isn't sometimes a bad thing for them to do if they are inconsistent or overly harsh, but they still have that right to dictate both the general nature and specifics of what is and is not said.

If you want to say something they don't like, say it somewhere else.

On the other side: if you are in charge of a space (the comments to your blog, say), while in principle you have the right to run it how you like people will be justifiably annoyed if you act inconsistently or (in their opinion) overly harshly.

For further discussion on the specific issues involved with blog comments, you might like to read my post POLL: When is it ok to edit a blog post?.

This post was written as part of my General principles of internet communication.