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What Urbit is

urbit.org

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Re: What Urbit is

#81

Post by mordocai »

zardgiv wrote: post #71
chc4 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He defends what he posted under Mencius Moldbug in a Medium blogpost here[0], which is nominally level-headed. There are in fact genetic differences across ethnic groups (sickle cell anemia comes to mind immediately), and it would be silly to think that the only possible generic changes are changed skin color and a specific blood disorder. You can say that since men have a statistically higher muscle density, they ar…

Oddly enough, he never made that claim re:men and women. I wonder why he focuses on certain ethnic groups. There's a lot of rationalization going on here for people that usually are quite capable of critical thinking.

This is a hugely fallacious argument.

Everyone focuses on something, if you want to extend your argument he should have also focused on diet, type of exercise, type of housing slaves are kept in, etc.

Focusing on every single factor that could possibly effect slavery would be an endeavor probably greater than the average lifetime.

Saying that some group of people or another would likely make better slaves than others is no different than saying that a certain group is more likely to be poor than another or be in jail than another. It may be considered in bad taste to discuss, but it isn't morally wrong to discuss.

It is simply remarking on what is, not what should be.

Re: What Urbit is

#82

Post by TruthAndDare »

zardgiv wrote: post #47
state wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs. 1. Has this ever actually happened? I'd be quite disturbed by that. We're more than happy to have people learning about Urbit, although we're not particularly active on social media. 2. Curtis is certainly controversial. None of us share his views, but we do enjoy working together. I'd like to think we live in a world where people who don't agree can still collaborate professionally.…

"Controversial" is the pinnacle of weasel words. How do you feel about his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves, and do you think that his views would make people from those ethnic groups feel welcome in your community?

> his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves

I'm curious, do you take that to speak well or ill about the ethnic groups in question?

Re: What Urbit is

#83

Post by TruthAndDare »

carapace wrote: post #66
adbge wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Oh, good. This again. Curtis has stated publicly, "I am not an 'outspoken advocate for slavery,' a racist, a sexist or a fascist." See: https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...

To me the parts of that document that treat on race show that this guy believes that races differ in IQ. That's racist.

Does it matter if it's true or not?

Re: What Urbit is

#84

Post by blacksmith_tb »

justadude1 wrote: post #67
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very strange interpretation, especially given that there is a strong body of historical sociology on exactly this question. I'm thinking primarily of Orlando Patterson's _Slavery and Social Death_ - which would suggest that while Native Americans could potentially escape back to their people, African slaves had a much harder time alone, which was precisely the slavers' plan.

No doubt you are right. I'm sure the slavers had all sorts of tactics, and opinions about both their tactics and the enslaved, which were wrong. The author seems to be positing the "easiest" explanation for why a particular opinion took hold among the slavers. Personally, my parsimonious explanation would be groupthink/received wisdom. Which, if it had to have a "legit" origin, was probably a multitude of factors suc…

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that your gloss was a strange interpretation (I'd say your summary is reasonable), just the original was.

Re: What Urbit is

#85

Post by zorpner »

Karunamon wrote: post #61
kefka wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the whole of collections of views he is public about. We talk a great deal of "Good Fit" and the like when working on projects with others, or working for someone. This is a case where he would work better with his own kind: racists, sexists, and bigots. Like attracts like.

You mean aside from the project under discussion? Why are his personal views even relevant here?

Because they're so repugnant that they make reasonable people question why anyone would be willing to tolerate, let alone defend him. He's freely declared himself so reprehensible that it impairs his ability to lead any project because it will inevitably attract this type of discussion.

If you'd prefer this not to be the case, please outline what restrictions on free speech you'd like emplaced so that people would not be able to discuss his views.

Re: What Urbit is

#86

Post by chc4 »

internaut wrote: post #79
chc4 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. I'm really not sure how that happened to you. I'm interested in Urbit and play around with it (and actually own a galaxy), but am not an employee, and I've been more than happy answering questions from people via :talk who are starting out or wanting to learn more. I've never seen anyone mocked, publicly nor privately, and I really hope that it isn't still happening if it was. 2. The author had an alt-right blog u…

> I'm interested in Urbit and play around with it (and actually own a galaxy Tell us about your experience and urbit thoughts.

Sure!

I like a lot of the ideas, both on the merit of being weird and fun and genuinely being better. The view of having an operating system that has: * a built-in identity system and PKI * a typed and versioned file system * a typed command line * all apps being state machines (both being able to be upgrades over the air and operating based entirely on RPC primitives) * having the entire thing be a function on an atomically updated event log that is crash-proof, upgradable without a restart, and replayable

is just great, even if it's not really usable yet. I'm not sure how feasible the entire project is, because holy hell is it ambitious, but I really hope they do well.

Playing around with Hoon is actually pretty nice. Reading it as a beginner is scary as hell due to all the weird runes, but learning it is nowhere as hard as it looks. It's vaguely lisp-like, pure and side-effect free, strongly typed, and easy to use. I've been doing codegolf challenges in it for fun on my free time.

Re: What Urbit is

#87

Post by captainmuon »

So ignoring the abstruseness and pretentiousness for a moment [x], what I don't like is this model of immutable networking Urbit has. Maybe I am in a minority position, but I fear the future where everything is cryptographically signed, verifiable and irrefutable.

I want to be able to go on a website and post bullshit that I'll regret 15 years later. And if after 15 years someone unearths that post, I want to be able to say "that proves nothing, anybody with a text editor could have forged that". You might say a prospective employer wouldn't buy that argument even now, but I want to live in a world where people do buy that argument. Where you can post party pictures on the internet, because it's trivially easy to fake pictures, and everybody has accepted that pictures have no proving power, so everybody feels free to post them, even my boss. Let technology drive society to be more laissez faire.

A similar thing with bitcoin. My utopia doesn't involve cryptographically secure, ideal money - it rather involves no money at all. I'd rather put my energy into developing a new kind of society based on free association (rather than labor & money) than using algorithms to cement this society.

I believe cryptography is great for being CRYPTic, i.e. providing anonymity. But using it to prove identity etc. should be used very sparingly and not without thinking about the consequences.

[x] And I don't want to denigrate this project. It seems to be a great technical and theoretical achievement - it's just that their ideals are not necessarily mine.

Re: What Urbit is

#88

Post by carapace »

Melchizedek wrote: post #75
carapace wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the parts of that document that treat on race show that this guy believes that races differ in IQ. That's racist.

It's simply a fact that ethnic groups differ in IQ.

I've met a lot of black people, but I've never met the black race. I've met a lot of white people, but I've never met the white race. I've never met a race and I don't expect to.

I've met stupid people and smart people and a whole lot of people who were stupid one way and smart another, but I've never met anyone with an IQ and I don't expect I ever will.

Re: What Urbit is

#89

Post by carapace »

TruthAndDare wrote: post #83
carapace wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the parts of that document that treat on race show that this guy believes that races differ in IQ. That's racist.

Does it matter if it's true or not?

"race" and "IQ" are fictions, so what does that do for their truth value?

I would ask, are these concepts truly useful?

Re: What Urbit is

#90

Post by ZenoArrow »

gjm11 wrote: post #45
adbge wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Oh, good. This again. Curtis has stated publicly, "I am not an 'outspoken advocate for slavery,' a racist, a sexist or a fascist." See: https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...

Anyone can say they aren't an outspoken advocate for slavery. Take a look at this http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/why-c... and see whether you find it plausible to say that the author is not an outspoken advocate for slavery.

I have just taken a look at the blog post you linked to.

If you've read that and come to the conclusion that the author is a racist, I can explain what you've missed in one word: intent.

The author is exploring ideas. The early parts of the blog post set this exploratory tone quite clearly by framing Carlyle not as someone with absolute moral authority, but as an original thinker, a counterbalance to his time and our time. By exploring Carlyle's ideas the idea is to examine commonly held assumptions. It's an intellectual exercise, and a healthy one at that.

As for the 'racist' comments, I don't think they're racist. The 'racist' argument being made can be summarised as... 'The idea that genetic diversity is equally balanced across all races has not been proven, it's an assumption made to further a political cause. However, even if there are genetic traits more closely associated with one race over the others, it does not make those other races inferior. This line of reasoning exposes another form of oppression, one based on intellect rather than genetics, where the right to rule over others is determined by perceived intellectual superiority.'

To me, that's not racist. I do believe there are genetic dispositions amongst people of different backgrounds. For example, look at average height. If I go to Asia or South America and stand next to people I meet there, I would tend to be taller. Do I think I'm a better person than them because I'm taller? Fuck no. Can you appreciate this point of view?

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