apotheotic (she/her)

Not sure, but if you’re interested to know I’m sure the information is out there :)

Edit after your edit:

Its impossible to know everything perfectly, but you can know some things to some degree and take action based on what you do know. Some will choose to not bother, and that is their decision to make, but it is a decision.

Anyway I think we’re talking around in circles at this point. Have a good one.

I try to know where my software (and hardware and everything else) comes from for this exact reason, but I understand a lot of people don’t

I take into consideration as much as I can take into consideration. I can see the pathway directly from “I support the creator of hyprland” to “the creator of hyprland grows his platform” and I don’t see any moral upside to supporting him, so this is a fairly easy calculation.

As you say, some issues are indeed more nuanced, and may have more complex balances when it comes to morality. I don’t think “not promoting someone” is a punishment, it is a decision. I prefer rehabilitation over punishment, when it comes to individuals, where possible, but that’s neither here nor there.

This truly has strayed so far into the abstract, however. We are talking about a guy who’s nasty who makes a tiling window manager. The moral judgement can only be neutral or negative, theres basically no way that anyone could argue for a moral upside of hyprland, or at least I’d love to see someone try.

I don’t support the TWM: explicitly neutral outcome, morally I do support the TWM: either negative or neutral, morally, depending on what you determine the likely outcome of your support would be

Its not “the bad thing” and its not an off chance, but sure let’s roll with that for the sake of having some constructive discussion.

It isn’t about executing punishment, but about the moral implications of my own actions. If, by supporting this theoretical Nazi science genius, I enable him to better perform Nazism, then I have been morally complicit in his Nazism. I think we can agree on that point? Its getting into the weeds a bit with the example, but it feels important to mention, that you could theoretically support this Nazi genius if sufficient measures are taken to ensure that it doesn’t benefit his nazism, thus removing the negative moral outcome. But that starts to fall apart pretty badly in this particular example of the Nazi genius.

Will I use them? Perhaps! Its about the moral outcome, right? If I can sufficiently convince myself that the overall outcome is morally positive (at a very utilitarian level this could perhaps be “does his science save more people than his Nazism kills?”), then it may well be reasonable to support. Its hard to say specifically in this example because I don’t know how lifesaving his research would be and how damaging his Nazism would be. However, the moral downside in the real case we are discussing is “more people are exposed to the creator’s nonsense, he may spread his views further than he otherwise would have” and the moral upside is… I get to use a specific tiling window manager? Which has 0 moral weight so the balance is pretty indisputably an overall negative, though how negative is up in the air based on speculation on how much damage he can do.

I agree in a vacuum with “punish the Nazism and promote the science” but in reality it isn’t that simple. Can one support jkr’s harry potter stuff without supporting her transphobic rampage? Pretty decisively not. Let’s say that harry potter is somehow a moral positive, and that you can in fact somehow cut off JKRs ability to spread hate about trans people, eliminating the negative, then maybe it becomes morally OK to support jkr?

I rambled a bit, but I hope I come across clearly enough.

Thats a tangibly different example though right? Isaac Newton isn’t alive to benefit from your support so the moral downside is basically gone. If a modern genius was out here breaking new ground left and right in science but he was also a raging Nazi I certainly wouldn’t be promoting him and I’d be very wary of using any of his breakthroughs

However, let’s centre the conversation back on what it is: a flashy tiling window manager made by a bit of a knob

Who is the Western supremacist in this scenario and what relationship do they have to morality? Kinda makes or breaks your whole argument

No worries I’m glad we could discuss it in a way that was helpful!

I don’t have a lot that I would add, but I would just assert that the “user might donate if they’re unaware” is a big enough reason on its own. Even if you promote it alongside a caveat mentioning the moral shortcomings, the people who start using it because of your promotion might also promote it, but there’s no guarantee they’ll keep the caveat (in fact I’d consider it likely that people who will use the product despite the caveat are exceptionally likely to neglect to mention anything in their promotion).

And to your second point I’d say that its pretty indisputable that they are being given a platform, as evidenced by the platform they have. It is a platform that is, as you mention, not subscribed to by a lot of people with a moral backbone, but it is significant.

If I had to give a one-liner for why it is bad to promote the things a shitty person makes, I’d say “its a bit of a Nazi bar thing”.

How much wrong does a person have to do for you to consider it morally wrong to promote the things they make?

Fuck hyprland

All my homies hate hyprland

Because promoting hyprland is morally wrong? Its pretty simple

Me: I really hope we can break away from the two party system, labour is still too far right.

Farage: say no more

Me: not like that