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FAQ.adoc 29.09 KiB

FAQ

1. Why are you attacking websites with censored keywords?

To increase the cost of censorship.

If commies censor things, they will get worse IT technology, and thus become less rich and militarily powerfull.

Maybe this hurts my argument, but Hillary agrees: https://youtu.be/d3dE_LDz_9E?t=1681 :-)

Since all they care about, like any other politicians, is power, the only way to make them stop censorship is to make the cost of censorship higher than not censoring.

The goal is to put them in a position where they have to choose between either:

  • having military power

  • remaining a dictatorship

but not both, since having both means that they will start WW3 and destroy Earth.

2. You are harming the Chinese programmers

Yes, and I don’t like myself for it.

But this is no my goal.

This is a necessary means to reach my real goal, which is to destroy the firewall.

Without the threat that China will be less technologically, and therefore militarily advanced, there is no incentive for the CCP to destroy the firewall.

Don’t you think it is worth a try? Destroying the firewall, would enourmously benefit not only Chinese programmers, but every single other Chinese person too.

Once the firewall is destroyed, which is equivalent to destroying the dictatorship, I want China to develop the best science and technology in the world. I would even migrate there if given a good job.

And btw, by contributing to open source, I am already helping China, and all underdevelop countries become stronger.

2.1. Your profile distracts me from learning

I’ve heard there are browser plugins for that as well, but I don’t think it will work for pictures, and in any case it will make your web pages fuzzier.

3. If programming websites get blocked, there will be less good programmers to fight against the dictatorship

This is a good point, and one that does make me think.

  1. The commies calculate their actions very well to stay in power.

    Why don’t they just take down the entire Internet like they did in Xinjiang in 2010?

    Because that would hurt them: * people would go mad, and revolt * people would work less efficiently, making the country, and thus themselves, poorer

    + So this puts pressure on them to take away the firewall.

  2. Programmers are more likely to develop better Firewall climbing tools if SO is blocked

  3. If we don’t take any action to show our dissatisfaction, the dictatorship never ends.

    The commies exist like any other organization for a sole purpose: maintain their own power.

    If nothing is done to show dissatisfaction, they will never give up on that power.

    There are two extremes of action (both which I don’t support): * everyone become a willing mindless slave of the leader: perfect stability * everyone take up arms and do terrorism: perfect instability

    + But between those two extremes, what is the right measure? I think that saying nothing is too close to stability.

    + I do see that one alternative scenario is that if we do nothing, maybe there will be more and more contact with Western countries, and the Chinese will see for themselves that we are not that bad, and eventually request democracy.

  4. Even if programmers get very powerful, it is not very likely that they will succeed to undo the dictatorship, they simply don’t have enough power.

    I’d rather have a less strong dictatorship, than one with good programmers.

4. Censorship is necessary to protect China from harmful USA propaganda

I don’t think this is below them, but:

  • without censorship, you would be much richer and stronger, and more able to defend yourselves

  • why does China also censor its own people in addition to foreign propaganda?

  • maybe this fear is greatly emphasised by the Chinese government beyond truth just to help them keep control of the country by fear and maintain their own power. Can the Americans really have that much influence in your country?

  • maybe the regions that want to split from China feel like China is not giving them anything back, and they are themselves looking for allies outside of China to help them split. With democracy, people are more likely to get what they want, and there will be split parties and votes.

  • the same argument can be used to justify any action, no matter how bad. E.g.: we must put all who criticize the government in jail, or else they will make China less united and weaker against the USA!

4.1. The Chinese masses are still uneducated, and not fit for free speech and democracy

When will they be ready? Who decides? What if they think that they are ready now?

5. This is your personal problem, we have nothing to do with it, stop punishing us for it

We have to fight for justice for our fellows, or else when injustice happens to us, no one will fight for use either.

Every form of protest incurs some damage. E.g., if we manifest on the street, it generates a traffic jam.

I don’t like it, but I think it is worth it.

6. What you are doing will never have any effect

That is true with high probability, just like any other individual which tries to influence 1B people.

Every action is statistical: I just push the balance a little bit towards freedom.

This FAQ and any talk is useless. You and I are wasting out times here.

The possibility of blocking Stack Overflow and GitHub is 1000x more useful than any talk, but it is still useless.

However, potentially blocking those websites takes 0 of my time, I just leave the content there, so it is worth my time.

To have an idea, in 2015 there are about:

And if we never start somewhere, nothing will ever happen.

6.1. Stack Overflow could be blocked at no cost by the Chinese government

Hitting the block button has of course no cost.

The cost of blocking Stack Overflow lies of course in the loss of information, and slower technological development.

7. If anyone disagrees with the government they must be punished to keep the stability of the country

Destroying diversity is the best way to reach a point where everyone can agree to start a new big war and destroy everything.

The CCP thrives on the excessive fear it instigate into its own people.

How can society improve, if we are never allowed to try new things out?

Change does not require violence. Violence happens because the government punishes any dissidence, even if pacific, to retain its own power.

In democracies, radical policy changes happen without dropping a single drop of blood.

8. You are using Stack Overflow in a way that it was not meant to be used, so what you are doing is in principle wrong

Any act of protest will use things in ways that it was not meant to be used.

For example, the street is not meant to showcase protest banners, it is meant to be a passageway for cars.

Making a statement where no one will ever see it, like a personal website, is sure to have no effect.

Finally, it is up to the Stack Overflow community to decide what is right or wrong, and so far the consensus is go ahead:

Much of the best art and technology is about using something in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used.

9. There are bad things happening all over the world, why don’t you fight for those causes as well / instead?

We have to choose the one we think is the worst, and focus on it.

What is worse is a subjective choice. For me:

  1. I love China and my Chinese GF

  2. I hate dictatorships, and China is the largest one

My SO username and protest time are not infinite.

10. You are not Chinese, you can’t interfere in Chinese politics

  1. If I lived under a dictatorship, I would welcome foreign intervention.

    Even if you don’t, I know several who do.

  2. The commies say that all foreigners are bad.

    I disagree. There are good and bad ones.

    The commies do this because most foreign countries are telling the Chinese to get rid of the dictatorship.

  3. We live in the same world.

    If China’s economy is bad, my economy is worse.

    If China’s environment is bad, my environment is worse.

    If China starts a war, I might have to fight it.

  4. You can’t do anything about it.

    I don’t like this argument, but in the end, this is what all politics comes down to: power.

    I recognize that in that sense, I may be similar to the CCP and any other political party.

10.1. You are not Chinese, you have been brainwashed by the USA know nothing about China

Eveyone is "brainwashed" by their environment.

I don’t doubt that you know more about China than me.

If you know something I don’t, please tell me, I always want to learn.

But if you are Chinese, also consider that you have been brainwashed by the commies, and likely more than me since you live in a dictatorship.

11. This repository is completely biased against the Chinese Government!

I prefer the term focused :-)

That being said, I take the agenda of information sources very seriously.

E.g. I try to clearly classify Communist Party and Falun Gong linked sources.

12. In the Tweet you say "correctional facility", but reeducation through labour has been abolished

My bad here, the precise term is "jail". I’m not talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor Unfortunately I can’t edit a Tweet.

13. Are you making programming contributions with the main intent of promoting your policital agenda?

No, that is just a side effect.

If that were the case, I would definitely target more widely technologies, in particular Web and JavaScript, instead of obscure things like C and assembly in which I have spent tons of my time.

Also, as I’ve said elsewhere, my actions are very unlikely to have any actions. Much more likely to have any action, would be for me to become rich and powerful first, and the best way to do that is to invest in whatever I think is most useful.

Actually, it can even be argued that I’m somewhat irrational, since I would much more likely become rich and powerful by bowing down to the CCP and trying to get their money instead.

On the other hand, becoming rich and powerful is also highly unlikely, so maybe I’m just taking a low risk low reward path?

I have very little free time, and will never do something for political resaons, only things that interst me technically.

Finally, do you really think I’d be able to make such awesome projects if I had primarily politicial considerations in mind? XD

13.1. Are you making trivial edits on questions just to spam your name further?

No.

I just think that website is great, and want to push it to perfection, in particular with better Google keyword hits, and uniform gramatically correct titles.

If you think that any of my edits were harmful, please ping me and open a meta thread to discuss specific edits, and I will comply with consensus.

14. Irrelevant personal questions

14.1. Are you a radical?

Radical: I don’t consider myself a radical because I actually have doubts about doing this sometimes.

Also I don’t consider the Chinese Government Evil or anything like that. To me, it’s just another non-democratic empire like the Qing Dynasty. 共产朝 as I call them. But alas, I’m not the inventor of the expression: http://web.archive.org/web/20161025220242/http://tieba.baidu.com/p/752094668

I never get mad. Only a slightly sad or annoyed sometimes.

But I do admit that I am hard headed like almost all humans, and it is very unlikely that anything anyone says will change my mind about subjective political matters.

In the end I just end up thinking about new replies to those arguments and adding them to this FAQ.

But maybe no radical ever considers himself radical? Hmmm…​

14.2. Are you a SJW?

SJW: there is a seed of SJW in me.

One major difference between me and the stereotypical SJW is that I never engage in lengthy discussions.

I believe that you cannot change people’s mind’s, and that learning tech is more worthy of my time.

I limit myself to listening as much as I can to learn new arguments.

So the rationale of my actions is not to convince anyone, but rather:

  • increase the monetary cost of censorship by binding politics to tech

  • group up like minded people who don’t like censorship

14.3. Do you hate China?

On the contrary. China is my favorite country. It has many, many wonderful things. As Bjarne said:

There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses

I only focus here on negative things to provide content that will activate the Great Firewall.

If it wasn’t for the dictatorship, I would seriously consider living there.

14.4. Are you doing this because of your wife?

Of course not. I am, just like you, a completely selfless being, who only cares about what is best for the world as a whole.

15. Is your campaign funded or otherwise supported by some organization?

Nope.

But then, a shady supporting organization might require that I don’t disclose their support, so maybe the best answer is that you will never know for sure.

Of course, a hidden support would represent a reputation hit for both such organization and for me, which makes it less likely that I would have accepted or had such an offer.

Also consider my motivation. If your mother in law were put into jail unfairly for 15 days, for following the same religion that your wife follows, and if you had a social media presence, wouldn’t you be tempted to do the same?

What about you, are you funded by the CCP?

15.1. Does your employer support this?

My employer has nothing to do with this.

He doesn’t approve or disapprove of the Chinese government or of my private actions.

The only thing that my employer does believe in is that employees can have their own political opinions, and that this should not affect hiring decisions.

Obviously, this action limits my ability to lead high profile deals with China.

Also I’m quite curious if this would limit my ability to go to China for business, but I haven’t applied for a visa since I’ve started this.

But my employer believes that inclusion and non-discrimination is more valuable.

I will always do my best to not let my personal opinions affect my professional decisions, as that would be unfair to my employer.

16. Were you influenced by the Cute cat theory of digital activism?

Nope, someone told me about it after a while, but it is basically what I’m doing.

17. Making China powerful and rich justifies anything

That’s a valid belief.

I however believe society can be richer when people know that they can do their startups, get rich, and stay in the country without fear of being persecuted unfairly and losing everything.

Maybe China was poor because of Mao’s crazy communist regime. Similar regimes also made Russia poor (yes, before that exploitation by the West was a reason).

Definitely, the current regime is better than Mao’s, but just imagine how rich China could be if it had more freedom and justice.

Imperial China lost the race for the Industrial Revolution. Will another dictatorship be able to stay on top of the next revolution?

18. People in China have already considered democracy, and rejected it

OK, shall we put that to an anonymous vote?