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E Pur Si Muove

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: E Pur Si Muove

#371

Post by geofft »

workthrowaway27 wrote: post #357
geofft wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about speakers being disinvited from campus, not views not being represented. There are a number of problems with that analysis: 1. Several speakers are overrepresented (I see a bunch of Milo invitations), which could well just reflect their aggressiveness at getting themselves invited / the strength of their own PR team. If one political side wants to make persecution their thing, they'll show up more commonl…

It's true that some speakers are over-represented, but I don't think that changes the trend substantially. I also don't see how you can draw a distinction between disinviting speakers and censoring the ideas they came to talk about. And yes, there are new forums for dissemination of ideas, but that doesn't mean they are equally open to all ideas. Some things you can't write without being shouted down. This is distinc…

> I also don't see how you can draw a distinction between disinviting speakers and censoring the ideas they came to talk about.

Milo is perhaps the best example here: Milo comes to campuses to cause a spectacle, not to spread new ideas. Sure, he's talking about some ideas. But that's not his primary motivation.

Milo is not an academic. Would he be happy with letting some academic go in his stead and present his same ideas in the form of an academic lecture?

> There are absolutely things you can't talk about freely at universities, for example: immigration, gender differences in personality, variations in IQ across races, etc.

Do you have any evidence for this?

(Note that you can't talk about things like variations in IQ across races as if they existed more strongly than they actually do or mean something they don't, and expect to be taken seriously. But that's not universities censoring dissident politics, that's universities expecting basic scientific literacy instead of people pushing a political agenda in the guise of science. The concept of IQ is an idea that came from the academy and has been refined by the academy; using an old understanding of IQ and what it means is essentially an abandonment of science.)

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#372

Post by ScottBurson »

conanbatt wrote: post #271
xocyabencl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain your last paragraph further? Obviously saying you agree with something you never read is a bad idea. Since you haven't read it, you don't know how bad it is, right? For all you know it could be Mein Kampf. Or it could just say your boss is an idiot, or that working at your company is a waste of time, etc. Especially as a knowledge worker, ideas you espouse at work could affect your employability, so y…

Godwin's law came fast on this one! A part of me is uninterested in reading it because I find other topics way more interesting. But a part of me also feels I can't read it. Because if I read it and I agree with it, I will have to balance honesty and integrity with oppression. All my life I held all my controversial opinions quite openly, but this was the first time I actually fear being controversial. I'm with Volta…

You should definitely read it and make up your own mind: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#373

Post by geofft »

workthrowaway27 wrote: post #347
geofft wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please see my other reply in this thread about censoring people vs. censoring ideas. The only one on this list that's somewhat convincing is the Laurier one, since that was in the course of an academic class. Milo isn't an academic. A professor beating someone with a bike lock might be inappropriate and criminal but isn't about academic discourse unless the other person is a professor, and it seems this person was a…

They're being censored because of their ideas though... I'm not sure how you can draw that distinction.

Not necessarily - they're being censored because of their refusal to engage with the scientific community and insistence on presenting their views as scientific when they're not (e.g., Murray) or because their purpose is antics and not ideas (e.g., Yiannopoulos). Both of those are things that a university should disinvite speakers for.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#374

Post by kansface »

kelukelugames wrote: post #310
jordanpg wrote: post #68

> This is uncomfortable, but it’s possible we have to allow people to say disparaging things about gay people if we want them to be able to say novel things about physics. What about all the novel things about physics that we won't ever hear from the gay people who are forced out of physics because of a life-threatening climate of hate and bigotry?

I'm okay with comedians writing bad jokes or telling them during open mic. Our society is somewhat tolerant of that. Al Franken did get elected after his rape joke was published. Though in hindsight that is an awful example. But the unreasonable people saying "gay people are evil" are not even pretending to be joking. They have killed. So I think Sam lacks empathy. Try this thought exercise. Replace the word "gay" in…

| So I think Sam lacks empathy... But the unreasonable people saying "gay people are evil" are not even pretending to be joking. They have killed.

Sam is both gay and jewish...

| Replace the word "gay" in Sam's essay with "white" or whatever group you belong to. How does that make you feel? Would you want to work with that person?

I don't think "white people are evil" is a controversial statement is SF.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#375

Post by dang »

letsbehonest wrote: post #329
nine_k wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in SF / SV, can you feel the general air of the ideas acceptable here? A small experiment: take an idea which obviously contradicts that air, and imagine rationally discussing it with people who you typically meet in SF. Will it be more than slightly uncomfortable? Scott Alexander wrote this great piece, I leave a link to it here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything... For instant enlig…

While on HN, you can feel the general air of acceptable ideas. Sam Altman is not concerned that a leftist can't have a sane discussion on this website. But he IS concerned that a bigoted racist can't be openly bigoted at work. Weird. I wonder why it is that Sam Altman is so concerned about the rights of bigots to be openly bigoted? Definitely couldn't be related to his relationship with Peter Thiel. No way...

Comments like this and your other one at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15925935 are so interesting to me because the opposing comments are so similar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15752730, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307915, lots more at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=.... From my perspective it brings out how much the people at the poles have in common. (That's not an argument in favor of the ideological center btw; if you think that kind of averaging is dumb, I agree. The way out is not so easy.)

> Definitely couldn't be related to his relationship with Peter Thiel

You might have the arrow of causality reversed there. Also, please don't lash out personally. It's true that public figures are just cartoon characters in most people's minds, and you don't owe any better to cartoon characters, but you do owe better to this community if you're commenting here.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#376

Post by hprotagonist »

teekert wrote: post #359
dsr_ wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all stood on the shoulders of giants, who were themselves part of huge and ancient communities of people working together.

Sometimes, sure. But sometimes it takes years of effort and loneliness, that is at least where the "and yet it moves" quote comes from. I my mind at least, Galilei was alone, with unpopular, dangerous views, against a huge number of people with another opinion. It is what the piece is about, it is what the Fountainhead is about.

"solo science gods make great advances" is not at all what "E Pur Si Muove" means.

It means that the material world is what it is, and that reality is not modulated by human decree.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#377

Post by kbenson »

creaghpatr wrote: post #311
Diederich wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Deep South (18 years - born + raised) If I may ask, where, more specifically? I grew up in southern California, and my wife grew up in Columbus, Georgia. We met in the midwest and lived there 15 or so years, and so visited Columbus frequently. For the last 4 months of her dad's life, we lived in Columbus. We've lived in the SF Bay Area for the past 8 years. > [SF Bay Area ...] most intolerant, rigid and inflexible…

>I will say that there is an enormous difference in day to day racial tension in west Georgia compared to the SF Bay Area. In Columbus, from McDonalds to hospitals, there was barely submerged but obvious tension between blacks and whites. Probably because Columbus GA is 45% black and San Francisco is only 6.4% black. Hard to have black/white tension when one of those groups comprises such a small percent of total pop…

But San Francisco is also 33.3% Asian and over 15% Hispanic. The white to non-white percentages are very close between both locations. And while the story of Asian Americans in SF is not the same as Black Americans in the South, it was hardly a picnic for them (for one example, Angel island).

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#378

Post by Houshalter »

cortesoft wrote: post #333
btilly wrote: post #147

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html is very relevant about how we got here. As Paul Graham said then, the biggest threats to free thought and speech come from people who have just enough power to enforce taboos, and not enough to be confident in their power. In this case the political ideology that is stifling thought is one that has nationwide lost Congress, the Senate and the Presidency. Which naturally results in a…

Well, another way of putting it is "Liberals are tolerant of anything except intolerance" If I want to be a tolerant and accepting person, do I have to accept someone who wants to deny a group of people to marry the person they love? Do I have to tolerate someone who wants to control a woman's body? This is similar to a love of freedom; I want everyone to have freedom, but that means having to restrict the freedom to…

That's how they justify it, but empirically it doesn't seem to be the case. E.g. liberals are pretty tolerant of minority groups with more extreme opinions than average conservatives. E.g. muslims are pretty strongly against homosexuals among other things. But they don't receive anywhere near the same level of hate and vitriol even moderate conservatives will get.

I think it's just based on how much of a threat a group is. If conservatives were a tiny minority of the population like Muslims are, no one would care enough to hate them.

>wants to deny a group of people to marry the person they love? Do I have to tolerate someone who wants to control a woman's body?

This is super uncharitable btw. Imagine a conservative saying "why do I have to tolerate someone who literally wants to murder children?"

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#379

Post by dang »

letsbehonest wrote: post #305

If you meant a single word of this essay, HN would not be a place where people are routinely banned for being critical of your portfolio companies, or for expressing any political idea that is even moderately leftist. You're a vile hypocrite. And there's nothing to debate, there. It's just fucking true.

> routinely banned for being critical of your portfolio companies

When people say this always I try to point out that the opposite is the truth. Maybe I can't convince you, but I want to reassure any silent readers who might worry about this. Literally the first rule of HN moderation is what we moderate less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved. Plenty more on this at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if anyone wants it.

> You're a vile hypocrite. And there's nothing to debate, there. It's just fucking true.

Even though this breaks the HN guideline in bannable ways, it feels like more of a cri de coeur to me, so I'm going to leave it up for now. But really, you're just making things worse both for the community and for said coeur. It would be better to speak more directly about what you feel, and if possible to connect it with what others are saying. I mean really connect it, as opposed to throwing something in opposition. You don't have to reduce any of your views to do this.

Re: E Pur Si Muove

#380

Post by jdtang13 »

alehul wrote: post #354
dmode wrote: post #274

I have no idea what this article was about. As someone who grew up in India, lived extensively in Europe and Arizona before settling down in the Bay Area, and travel to China 2-3 times a year, I find Bay Area by far to be the most open, tolerant, accepting places I have ever lived. And it is not even comparable. And it is borne out by simple stats. People vote with their feet. Bay Area is almost a majority minority a…

You're absolutely right that the Bay Area offers more freedom than India or China in terms of safely espousing your views. In our lack of government-imposed restrictions, however, we've come to restrict ourselves as a society, and many believe that we've taken these restrictions too far. America has progressed through openness to ideological diversity, and through healthily engaging in debate. We're lucky that those…

No, not true. The Bay Area is ideologically safer in only two regards: you can criticize the city, and you can criticize the government. If you have personal beliefs that are even a tiny bit different from orthodoxy, Beijing is a far safer place.
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