 The topic today is the topic of when social issues do not matter in technical debates and when they do. About the format will be something like scientific research report. I will tell you the question and the realm of the problem, suggested solution, some theory behind that, and a conclusion. And then I'll argue for some benefits of that conclusion. Sorry, I really did think that I would have a presentation slide for you. So about me, from a combination of social cooperatives, political action, performance art, critical theory, study groups, and also through urban planning, research through College of Urban and Public Affairs in Portland, Oregon. I put together a research project looking at the question of, how do you decide what is best together in a horizontally governed organization? So it's policy setting. And how do you set policy rationally and with good reasoning when there is no one in charge to say, this is the goal, meet it? But when you have many people deciding what they think should be best? So there is a concern in urban planning about citizen participation. That is it even rational? Can you even do that? Is it the people with the largest guns and the most money that make the decision? So in 2005, I finished, I'm sorry to say, embarrassed to say, a 360 page dissertation comparing the theory of Jurgen Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action about practical reasoning in democracy and comparing that to the evaluations of good process in intentional communities where people with equal formal power in an organization were able to govern their housing associations. And these were very elderly. I didn't realize I was going to be studying elderly people, but I did want to know people who had been doing it for the longest period of time with the most capital they were controlling together as a group. And I asked them, how do you idealize good process? How do you make these decisions together? When do you think it's going well? When do you think it's not going well? And I compared that to my understanding of Habermas' Theory, which was very influential and talked about in urban planning at the time. But people were saying, it's impossible. It's impractical. You can't use it in real life situations. I said, no, I think I have seen this in real situations in my background. So when I presented the idea of this talk, I said, when I see technical forum debates, I often see a meta argument there that I think other people don't see because I spent all this time thinking about that topic. And I wish someday I could present to a technical audience these ideas. And really, it's just three words. But there's a translation problem because I was talking to urban planning professors of planning theory. And now I'm talking to you. So I've been spending a lot of time the last week and a half learning the language that's used by Debian developers to talk about the issues, what really matters. And I hope I'm translating it well. And I hope I can contribute something intellectually and socially to this organization. So the context is we want to make a policy decision. And the question is, what would be best? And are people familiar with the poster? Maybe it was 2010, where there's a large picture of many processes that eventually become Debian, all the different releases, all the different teams involved, all the periods of time, and stable, and testing, and that kind of thing. And I did have a slide that said this question, what would be best? If we're trying to look through all the things, I like that poster because it's procedural. There are many, many decisions that need to be made over time. Not just about what do we think would be nice, but what do we do now, since we're all so diverse and people have so many different users. Many system administrators have many different kinds of customers. They can't ask those different desktop users and NASA users and military users, people who want cloud implementations and embedded device implementations, they're not going to ask those folks to come to an agreement about what operating system they need. But our system administrators of the world know how to serve these folks. And they know that the products available weren't workable. And they said, OK, we're all doing things very differently. And we have very different political and economic situations that we're working on. But we know that we need to put together something that works. And so that's how I think about Debian, is serving the needs of system administrators done by system administrators. And I know there are a lot more people involved than that. That's just a working hypothesis. So let's say now you need a code of conduct, because not only do you need to know what would be the right software to use, you need to be able to keep your association of volunteers working well together to be able to reason out together what would be best. So you have a code of conduct. And then so one of the meta arguments I see in that is you can't legislate to me to be nice. I'm critical. I have some ideas that are not. I think I hear people saying stupid things as if they were true. And I want to criticize them. So don't tell me to be nice. I think we lose critical intelligence that way. The other side says, but if you're rude, we ruin our community and there's nothing that we can work on together. And I'm sorry to say that I think that that's an unnecessary polarization of two different ways of looking at it. In Habermas' work, he suggests we add a third category. Instead of just objective issues and subjective issues, we add intersubjective issues. So that's when, so an object issue is, I can state the fact that this is a computer. Someone else can say, it looks like a toy to me. But between us, we can say, is that relevant? Does that matter for this conversation? And so it's this idea of a shared sense of relevance. What's the goal? What would be best? What's normal? You don't see your own sense of what's culturally normal until somebody walks through the room with a different sense of it. Fish don't see the water until they're out of the water and realize they miss it. Promising body language, but I don't see the visualization. Ready for the desktop. So when you want to make an objective, when you want to have a rational debate about objective truths, there are tests that we have for that. People say this is true. Someone else challenges the truth. And there are various tests you can use to verify whether it's true or not. There it's not maybe a practice talk. So that might have been the best intro I could have done. The whole scientific report thing. That's a picture of me on a spinning wheel when I'm 90 years old. That's the title of my dissertation. It also had a long title. That's that beautiful picture I told you about. Very complicated. It was beautiful. Procedural. This is a problem. So use your imaginations here. What I'm doing here is saying that there are three questions. One is the object that three people are in the middle of. One is the black, perhaps three black boxes. One is what is this object, the black box? What goes in, what comes out, the black box? The other question is the black box in my head. Do you know what I'm thinking and what my personal experience is? You can only guess. Oh yeah, there was a little percentage in that window right there. There's a good place. So we have three black boxes. So in order to learn what is inside someone's head is different than understanding what the facts of the matter are. And it's different than understanding what's the most appropriate norm in this context. And so this is the little gooey, this little graphical representation of the question one, the object, objective question, two, the subjective question, and three, the intersubjective question. It's two people's heads. And if you're outside it, it looks very strange. But if you're inside it, you might not see it at all. So one of the questions, in a way, you can say that the topic of the talk is how to be able to decide together what the water we fish will swim in will be, instead of making it invisible. How do we do that together? OK, it's good enough thinking together about this thing. What would be best? Functions about what's right and wrong have been heard. You can't get correct facts. And no one feels recognized and understood or misunderstanding each other. Let's say I'll talk to you about this polarization that I think is unnecessary. And it's OK if the people who showed up here are the ones who care about social issues. Because as we learn to be better facilitators, we can help other people who don't recognize social cues as well learn how to communicate with each other better and help them do that. Because we need them. So the polarization that I'll refer to is we want to both, this is the way I read it, a meta argument, we want to be rational and we want to keep the culture healthy. Be smart, be nice, which is nice. But it is polarized sometimes. Some people think it is. Rationally usually means objectively. And we have ways of testing things objectively, as I was saying. And this comes to northern Europe from a German philosopher named Kant, who talked about getting rid of personal bias and understanding the world, not the way powerful leaders say it is or superstition, but really observing the world as it is. Take away the personal bias and that is a step forward in rational thinking. It's very crucial to the formation of democracy. How do you make decisions without an emperor? And in fact, it works very well for certain kinds of questions. And much of northern European culture, as we have in the Americas, has excelled at it. We can even take an object and put it on the moon. And in general, this is an important part for me for the conclusion, is remember we do this in real time. So we make claims, people challenge our claims, and we try to validate those claims. And most of the people in this room are familiar with how you do that in an objective way. But the community aspects require a subjective impression. So what's going on inside my mind, the world I perceive and experience is crucial for my involvement with the rest of the people around me. I already mentioned this part about the critical intelligence versus healthy community as if there are two different things. And the problem with that is it separates the world into objective issues and fluffy stuff. And the codes of conduct is realized or we need something, so we'll have something to talk about the fluffy stuff. And the arguments about how to write that and the impacts are quite hard work. So Habermas comes to Kant and says, in the context of this, he says, hey, Kant was really important for democracy and let's not jump forward to post-relativism and say there's no way to be visible about anything. Let's go back and argue with Kant and say, how about if we did this way instead? Let's say we also need subjective and intrasubjectivity to be reasonable in these ways as well. Validity, subjective validity and intrasubjectivity validity are also testable. So I mentioned democracy. So in order to put an object on the moon, we share facts, we challenge them, we validate them, and then we can predict and control things. The problem is we also predict and control people and we'd like to change that. What do you do with subjective experience? How do you challenge or how do you test and validate the subjective reports you get from people about how things are working for them? You do that with time. You do that with history. You do that with an older version of the file than I planned on. Okay, so another version of this file has the heads all being question marks and then over time you get to know someone and you know that when they report, this is what I saw and this is what I think, you take it with a grain of salt, you kind of interpret where they're coming from and you're able to use their information in your world. And that only happens through time. It only happens through interacting with each other and being able to report. And I think it's similar to a scientific experiment where in order to report your results you need to tell somebody else what your observation equipment was and how you calibrated it. Otherwise the numbers are meaningless. You have to know who's observing and under what situation with what goals. Similarly, in a social context, and by the way we can just say object, personal and social are the three terms, might make it easier. So what about the social context, the intersubjective context where we have understandings between sentient beings like these socially constructed ideas? It's really similar. If a mundane example I like to use is people who raise children will understand this. We have a table here and three of us are sitting around this table. There are always be norms. We'll always be shared understandings of what's appropriate at this table. And that normal change in the context of when it's a dinner table, it's different than when it's a work table. And we learn these things. So it's not like you can say you want to get rid of all norms and all shoulds. It's more like let's be more conscious of what they are and realize what impact they have on these so-called objective questions. Don't be scared about all those words and try to read them all. But here they come. When we're talking about normative questions they could be any one of these. Have you chosen the right language? Are you speaking slow enough so the person listening to you can understand? Are you being polite so the person doesn't shut down and freeze and stop listening because they can't stand it? Do you really think that you are making a decision with someone who is not part of the communication? So those are kind of language and communication issues. But there are also issues like yes that's the policy but does it apply in this case? Or no that's not the policy but maybe it should be. And we test these things differently. We say what would be the impact on others if we had this be the policy? What would be the impact on ourselves? And how do you learn that? You learn that through history. People report well in my experience when I was in this kind of circumstance this is the impact it had on me and mine and ours when this policy was implemented in our case. And then you can as a human being you think in terms of stories you extrapolate and say oh this might apply to us too. And these things are fairly just normal ways of thinking. The important part for folks trying to make policy decisions together horizontally is that norms are important that we always use them but that we can, I like Habermas's way of saying traditionally received norms versus communicatively achieved norms is this something that might be appropriate in a society that has very young mortality rates where you learn from your father father's father's father you pass things on there's not much time for re-establishing new agreements or you're in a survival situation where you have to have everybody working by the same rules but sometimes you have the comfort and the resources to sit back and say how would we like things to be how would we like to do things better and that's when it's communicatively achieved norms where you get to know each other and understand the impacts of your actions and what might be better in the future. Is anyone holding the time cards? Can I expect one to go up at some point? Yes or no? Thank you. So if I made a three by three table and said one was object, objectivity, personal experience and social context then the other column on I say that's title across the book on one side and the other axis was that's what this one is is make a claim, challenge a claim, validate a claim which we've already talked about here and I personally when I'm teaching facilitation or consensus based project management to community development students I think of these things when I observe a board of directors trying to make a decision together and I see a person mistakenly giving the wrong fact and being attacked as if they're being insincere a liar or when someone it doesn't realize the context they're saying something inappropriate and they defend it because it's true these are unnecessary conflicts that are a little moderating helpful interjection from someone who is recognizing the problem you don't need to be part of the fight but you can help reframe the question something to think about later I don't think anybody needs to figure all this table out right this way so if you're going to do that and be a moderator or to have these kinds of conversations it takes energy, it takes resources it takes time, you need to create a place where it is a safe place to have a conflict where people who have very, very important points to make in a context that's very high stakes that might make a big difference have a safe place to explain their differences in a way where they will walk out alive and be able to pursue what's best for them in the future and continue to cooperate and there's a slide missing in here I wish I had put and that was one of the reasons why I believe that Debian is an appropriate context for the application of this theory is that Habermas was saying that the situation that he had in mind let me get off this slide while I'm talking the context is the action has stopped it's a diverse community of people with their separate interests they've stopped the action and they're committed to using a rational argument to come up with a decision on what would be best in a way that would allow them all to continue their action with less conflict so we have voluntary participation we have a commitment to rationality we have the question of what would be best and I'm really fascinated how Debian does this and it's been really great getting to know folks better and understand how our people are coming from this I added this on at the end after I gave a version of this talk before Seattle New Linux and I didn't offer a conclusion before I just offered a method for thinking about it but actually this week it's been really interesting thinking and I think I have a tentative conclusion for a conversation and maybe what we can say is that social issues do not matter in technical debates when subjective and intersubjective assumptions are clarified when the perspective of the speaker and the social context are the assumptions are understood then we can understand and contribute to the objective debate so think of this use case what is your response if I tell you the answer is 42 from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the computer works forever to figure out the answer by the time it comes up with the answer no question anymore so I'm suggesting here that in order to understand the answers we have to understand from what experiential perspective and in what social context what is the goal and from what angle are you talking so again you don't have to read this wall of text you probably will anyway remember from mathematics or physics or any science course you ever took they said clarify your assumptions thank you for the conversation for the mathematician here this week to help me think of how to say this clarify your assumptions so we understand what limited universe domain of knowledge are you talking is this going to be true within what was your goal, what kind of question were you trying to answer all these kinds of assumptions help other people interpret what you're saying they're relevant for their context so another laboratory takes your physics results and says well we have different environmental constraints we can't set up the same situation but maybe if we tweak these factors considering what you did and this observational equipment we'll be able to use your work thank you and that's nice another advantage is that we improve our own assumptions I'm sorry to say that gender issues eat my head and so sometimes if people are getting into gender issues I might decide not to be part of that conversation because I can't think of anything more for days I just start cogitating on it but here's a gender example if you're from a privileged group you have blinders on because other people are taking care of problems for you on hitchhikers guide you know what a set is somebody else's problem somebody else's problem there's going to be an intergalactic bypass highway coming through and so we're going to destroy the earth but and so the spaceship comes down to give the report just for public information just to let you know and it lands in left field and nobody can see it it's impossible to see it's too outside the realm you don't see it and so if someone's been taking care of the rough edges of the world around you all the time and you're like this you don't see the problems other people are facing and that's the problem with the blinders of privilege and so if you make your assumptions known you're going to open yourself up to challenges you didn't have before but it's because you're allowing other people to use your code and then modify your code and suggest improvements on it and feed it back to the same community you're working it's not a very graceful ending but that's really all I wanted to say thank you I was wondering if you had any suggestions for how to when you're having a conversation with someone and you suspect that that you're not on the same frame you're not on the same page how do you start to peel that back to get to understanding what the assumptions are what's a graceful way to ask the other person to you've gone way past and we need to go back kind of thing it's so specific it has to be in the context so the statement of stepping back is good because then what's stepping back you might get a perspective of me talking to you but I get a third perspective kind of objectify it, triangulate it and look at these two people talking and seeing is it a question that they don't speak the same language that they come from different cultural assumptions and each one will be different if they just don't trust each other you can help those two people gain some common ground and understand oh this person kind of understands who I am so if you want to help two people you can help them have some nice social beer together whatever their favorite addiction is something they can bond around have a problem they solve together whereas if it's different and then they can start understanding the different or like what's the agenda topic here is a question what are we supposed to be talking about and then when it's facts of the issue it might be in what context what are you doing with those facts I don't know it's not right thank you I think that your talk is primarily focused on when in situations where you're attempting to achieve a goal of agreeing on a way forward around something either social or technical which is certainly one of the big things that people do inside project discussions but I think there's another one that's become more common as we've all tried to create a more welcoming community which is to have there be a goal of policing the bounds or policing the rules that we want to apply to everyone in all situations regardless and I'm listening to this I'm trying to figure out because I feel like sometimes those two are in conflict like in order to reach an agreement with this one person I need to kind of ignore the way they're presenting things or redirect into a different to a focus on an issue but in order to preserve the overall in which that conversation is embedded there feels like there should be some statement that this is not an acceptable way to present a point how do you reconcile those like in real time in a conversation it feels very hard it's very hard where human beings it's really hard work and the people who are doing it don't always get the benefits so often if I just I decided personally when I was divorced and on my own with no money basically homeless for a month or so that 1979 that I had been building houses in the woods doing construction in a homestead and I was also doing house care and so I looked at all the jobs that were available to me and the boy work using tools and construction and just getting things done was much easier paid better the work of making sure that the crying doesn't disturb somebody's concentration is hugely difficult work and I think that's what happens in a community like this it's one person having an emotional issue with another person and you're trying to get some work done who does the work of trying to smooth that out it's not invisible anymore people in Debbie and now are old enough to have children families and have to take care of each other it's not just a bunch of macho folks fighting it out to be cool I know in poetry circles if people are really quiet when you're done it's a compliment really the intention is that people can think about it and talk about it later and when policy decisions need to be made or when the question comes up when we're doing policy together it will just be ideas results from different people's expectations of expediency we've got work to do we can't talk about this issue now yet it's much more likely in a co-op that people are going to take the time to work out what used to be called the first kinds of dynamics that I think you've described very well what you're seeing is hierarchical situations that don't deal with that are more efficient I think in economic terms we can talk about it in terms of transaction costs if you want to change the way everything is done you're talking about changing the cultural milieu we've been working in for millennia or not or hundreds of years or changing the government or change power structures it's hard work and sometimes you can talk about objective issues and not deal with these things if you have someone just setting this as a context here's where everybody's perspective is supposed to come from go for it give me the results if it's not any good you're out of here too and so that's much more efficient in terms of predicting and controlling a particular domain of things and sometimes that's the best way to get things done on the other hand because we don't have the skills how to make decisions together things that are much harder that don't need to be sought hard I remember someone telling the story of having been trained in consensus decision making in groups like co-ops and then being out in a situation where they're trying to protect a natural resource and having a military force coming up the hill and they look at each other and say thank you we promise we would stay here but because they're good at process they can each say what they thought look and see much concern to address decide what to do and leave and you know they may not have just run anyway but the point is that another story is an elderly man who used to be high position in the ACLU I think he was president in the 50s I forget what era it was but he was in almost 90 when I interviewed him in the 90s so he said that he was hired because of his Quaker background for the ACLU and they said that they used a majority role and he said I'm sorry I don't know anything about majority role I can't help you and so they came up with the compromises they really wanted him and he said I'll tell you what first we'll make decisions together and then we'll vote at the end but because he understood how to do facilitation they always had decisions so the vote after a while they said let's just get rid of this voting thing it takes too much time because they weren't tripping over each other I mean think of how much time it takes for someone to be hurt and for you to have to take care of them you're just bumping off the problem to somebody else that sounds a little bit like what's been happening in the technical committee recently in the technical committee we made more decisions without even bothering the vote than voting in the last couple of years I'm asking are there people who are training each other on how to moderate forum lists list of forums nice to start some people are better at it than others trying to learn from each other on that thank you for your talk you mentioned lots of concepts that I think will take time but I think they're extremely interesting even the difference between traditionally received norms and communicatively achieved norms which you just mentioned in passing as a technical like theory that was part of the literature you write is the difference between something that has always done something we thought about and documented and agreed upon and as that goes we are going from traditionally received to communicatively achieved as we hit corner cases where habits don't work really well or cause conflict and then we think about it and we work out what do we actually want to do and then with awareness of it we go on and move on so thank you for bringing these kind of topics to the table I think it's part of the process of growing up of a community to think on these kind of things I think there's a lot of wisdom in the cooperative movement and I know a lot of people think of co-ops as housing co-ops or food co-ops but in truth in the world internationally most co-ops are operations larger than that I think if it was a nation the cooperative activity would economic activity be the sixth largest nation on earth I might have the numbers wrong but there's a lot of wisdom in there because in co-ops you assume that people can be very different and voluntarily associated and not compelled to co-operate but because you've chosen one thing that serves all their needs they're willing to cooperate on that and that's an economic and they might own a share for example so they might be producers of power they might be co-members of an economic banking and that kind of thing could be healthcare I think there's a lot of wisdom and it doesn't all have to be reinvented you can actually bring in folks that have some of those skills I want to just thank you everybody I've been wanting to talk about this stuff for a long time and I know I've spent a lot of time socially with everyone I might look like just a social butterfly but I'm also someone working on some intellectual questions when I'm talking to you so thank you everyone for being so open with me