``Rightness is a Dynamic Process, not a Static Declaration"

``Rightness is a [dynamic] process, not a [static] declaration.''

This is is a working hypothesis that I have right now.

I am saying this because I think we are now in the age where the so-called ``optics'' of the statements are more important than the actual understanding and conclusions that are drawn by the person involved.

There are two parts in the inherent problem: one is the bullshit reaction that is currently known as ``cancel culture'', and the other is the equally bullshit reaction of ``virtue signalling''. Whatever part applies, it ends up with the same outcome---people either parroting the catchphrases of the day in an echo chamber, or more likely, practise self-censorship out of fear of their own lives in the face of near-total ostracisation of the various segments of society that they believe to be operating in.

From the previous paragraph, you can easily tell what my thoughts are with respect to these two really toxic types of reactions; yes, I think they are bullshit. No one other than Jesus can claim to be perfect and make no mistakes whatsover in their past---the reason for that is multifold:

1. They did not know any better then as a person;
2. The social context was different then, making the actions then acceptable but may not be acceptable now;
3. Even if they knew better and their specific social context didn't enforce the currently unacceptable behaviour as acceptable, they could've made mistakes that they have since learnt from.

If we accept that rightness is a dynamic process, and realise that people are so because they have the propensity to change, then ``cancel culture'' is bullshit because it makes the assumption that a person cannot change and therefore whatever they did in the past that is considered unacceptable now completely defines their [unchanging] being, and it is thus the morally right thing to shun them now for transgressions of the past that they might have changed from/were apologetic about.

That is bullshit. More importantly, ``cancel culture'' commits the cardinal sin of attempting to conveniently forget about the historical context, and therefore making it easier to repeat the same stupid mistakes in the future as we start to forget what the lessons then that had been learnt from blood.

The other bullshit is ``virtue signalling''. Look, I get it---we all want to appear to be wise, correct and right in this age of extreme hyper-survelliance culture. But ``virtue signalling'' is an actual sin, because it only shows a veneer of being aware of the [social] issues of the day, and demonstrating a superficial attempt at righting the perceived wrongs, but without actually having a significant impact at all at dealing with the underlying root cause. Take the whole brouhaha regarding the attempts at renaming ``blacklist/whitelist'' as well as ``master/slave''. I am well aware that words have power, but words also have context to be taken into account. The context here is a technical one, and forms a jargon that is well understood; how does a technical term used in a technical domain reinforce oppression is something I cannot easily understand, especially when the proposed terms to rename to often make things more obscure. At that point, why bother with English words then? Almost any English word can be offensive to someone---taken to its logical extreme, shouldn't we just rename every single technical term to a mechanically generated one comprising a Hungarian-notation inspired sigil for the semantic identity followed by some fixed number of digits to ensure that we offend exactly no one?

Isn't it also the fault of the person who takes offense to think about why he/she is taking offense over something that wasn't meant by the author to cause offense in the first place?

It is similar in problem to the whole ``community conduct'' fiasco---there has been many an open source project that, in some socio-political virtual signalling context, decide to come up with a code of conduct that had very strong [American politics flavoured] social justice overtures that are at best irrelevant to the code at hand. Someone on /. mentioned before that if someone demands a new code of conduct for an open source community and summarily refuses to use the ACM Code of Ethics, it should raise as many red flags as much as possible that what was at stake was not about decency but about pushing some kind of political agenda.

But all that aside, back to my working hypothesis.

I think that everyone has the right to change their views with respect to new information that come in, and that they be allowed to exercise that right. Only God has perfect information at all times (which is funny because ``time'' may not mean to God the way it means to us); the rest of us are operating on a very strongly Bayesian-type world that we have to take in evidence to modify our a priori assumptions to produce an a posteriori effect, i.e. to change our mind. Only God and His prophets can declare an unassailable static truth---the rest of us will have to slowly make our way there through the dynamic process of gathering information via observation, then altering our perspective based on the weighing of the evidence against our intuition, and doing this iteratively.

``Cancel culture'' and ``virtue signalling'' are not helping us along these lines, because they basically demand that all of us act with the omniscience that only God possesses.

And that is why for this blog, I have this very important disclaimer since the beginning:

All views expressed in this blog are #1 mine and mine alone unless otherwise indicated and #2 are consistent only at the time of publication of the particular entry. Specifically, do not take my views as the views of the general populace, and do not attempt to chastise me for taking a different stance from before. However, if you realise that there are factual errors, do not hesitate to inform me through the comment box---comments are moderated and if you would like me to not publish your comment, you can say so from within the posted comment.

I represent no one other than myself on this blog; I state my own views from my own perspective, tempered with what I know at the point in which I wrote the entry.

If I was wrong in the past, and I learnt about it in the future, you bet your ass that I will acknowledge the mistake in the future, but I will not alter the past to act as though I was right. I think that is the single most dishonest thing that I can do.