If Eich had actively spoken out hatefully against gay people, I would agree that his resignation would be warranted. But he has done nothing of the sort, and committed in a blog post to equality at Mozilla. I think Mozilla's actions smell like a hasty overreaction which sets a dangerous precedent.

I question the assumption that this opinion: "gay people ought not be allowed to marry" is a reasonable one. I'll accept common, but I don't agree that it's reasonable.

Also, he does still have the right to that opinion. He just doesn't have the right to express it free of consequences.

Also, he didn't hold that opinion privately. He held it publicly (by donating money to support its enforcement via the law).

Define reasonable.

The fact that you can't demonstrates why this argument is baseless. "Reasonableness" is decided by social desires, ultimately, and that's exactly what happened in this case.

Of course this produces the paradox of being intolerant of intolerance. Like most paradoxes it's not a problem in practice.

(Caveat: as a moral descriptivist I should point out that I believe there is not really any such thing as "right" or "wrong," just what people like and don't like. But, as shorthand, I use the same words other people use.)

I do not hate Brendan Eich. I do think he purchased what he is receiving, though.

Yeah, if he keeps looking and examining what's wrong with him he will eventually see that there really are five lights. I mean, that's all it takes right? We simply choose what to believe as it's convenient to us?

As far as "five lights", I suggest viewing "Chain of Command" from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which has a famous scene that riffs off of Orwell's 1984.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_marr...

This is an issue where public opinion is changing quickly, as it often does when oppression becomes recognized as oppression. I'd recommend taking the limit of the function as yr->2020.

Double standards for tactics is the subject of this rather long article by someone more articulate about it than I am:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-co...

...

So I suppose we should all judge everyone's actions based on what you believe? Since, obviously everyone has their opinions, but those who have opinions other than yours are wrong.

You might find it surprising that a number of people on the other side of this issue would agree with you. They know they're right, so everyone should just agree with them.

That's not exactly a scalable approach to social issues.

> Getting together to force the dismissal of a person from a position of power based on their views is not automatically bad or good. It is bad or good depending on what the views are.

It's just so delightfully free from rationalization! Where other left-leaning folks pretend to use some abstract rules that apply to both sides equally, and make up bogus "fundamental differences" between positions that outrage the left and positions that outrage the right, you say outright that you're going to use your moral judgment on a case-by-case basis. That might be right or wrong, but at least we can have a sensible discussion about it.

So, even though I believe that forcing Eich to step down was wrong, I urge everyone to upvote the parent :-)

For example, if you think mankind might someday create an AI that would satisfy the preferences of humans, then you need these preferences to be expressible mathematically, as some kind of utility function. If you're a non-realist, you're okay with that, as long as the utility function is specific to humans (i.e. the utility functions of human-built AI and alien-built AI don't have to be the same). But if you're also a non-cognitivist, then you're in a difficult spot, because obviously one can make true and false statements about a mathematical function. Does that make sense?

(Disclaimer - I'm a Google engineer as well, and also pretty active on lesswrong.com which has covered these issues in much detail.)