Welp. I just deleted a couple of posts that were deep in threads that a whole bunch of people were taking out of context and accusing me of things I was not advocating for. My mentions are destroyed for the day and I have real work to do, so comments off on this post as well.
Discussion
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I was asked a specific question about how the law worked, and I explained where things are today, which is mostly "it depends" with certain caveats, which a lot of people interpreted as "he's okay with terrible, horrible, sometimes illegal stuff happening."
I understand the desire of many people to see bad companies and bad people punished for doing bad things. But the laws work the way they work for a reason, and sometimes it's way more complicated than you believe.
There were a few lawyers who got involved in the conversation who were making interesting points (sometimes challenging my argument) and I appreciated those discussions. There were also a lot of people, almost all engineers, who assumed they understood the law in ways they clearly did not.
Anyway, the rush to assume that me explaining the state of the law was an endorsement of the results is frustrating, but something that definitely happens at times. I get it. And it was probably made worse by later in the thread me explaining potential downsides of changing the law.
So I'll take that as a lesson to myself not to mix "this is how the law works" in the same conversation as "and this might be a consequence if the law didn't work that way" without clearly establishing the difference. My apologies for not being clearer on that.
But also, I would ask that people try to have at least a little bit of grace in not immediately jumping to conclusions that someone explaining something is endorsing everything bad. Life is short. No one needs that shit. Off to do some work.
I understand the desire of many people to see bad companies and bad people punished for doing bad things. But the laws work the way they work for a reason, and sometimes it's way more complicated than you believe.