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“A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

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Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#51

Post by braythwayt »

topynate wrote: post #33
braythwayt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am the CEO of a company, and I listen to people before making my own decision, am I “handing them veto power?” I think this is Alex Miller’s decision.

A realist view looks at the various players and makes an informed judgment of what their power is. Alex Miller indisputably has final say on who attends the conference. That doesn't make him a dictator. If he doesn't follow people like Steve Klabnik and Alex Payne on stuff like this, the personal and business consequences to him will be immense. As his statement says, he hasn't read Yarvin's political writings. Never…

That’s how it is for dictators, too. They look at the world and make decisions designed to to optimize for the outcomes the desire, without compromising their values.

Let’s say that people on HN decide that they don’t want to attend any conference that has a Code of Conduct, because that interferes with their “right to free speech.”

If a conference organizer decides that HN is enough of a market that they tear up their CoC, that’s their decision. We don’t say that somehow, they have less free will because of the actions of HN. Their options aren’t limited. They chose to do something that involved HN.

If Alex doesn’t like this kind of controversy, Alex can stop running conferences. Sure there are actions by all sorts of players in a complex world, but the buck for every decision stops somewhere, and in this case, it stops with Alex.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#52

Post by ncallaway »

paxdickinson wrote: post #20

The repeated kills of previous threads on this topic illustrate the problem goes much deeper than Strangeloop. HN itself has long been policed by left wing stormtroopers eliminating anything they disagree with. I used to believe it could be saved but now I generally believe that the era of technology having a place for iconoclastic freethinkers is long over.

The great thing about technology is you can always make your own space. You can have a niche website — or other technological forum — that is a bastion of iconoclastic freethinkers.

The problem that you're experiencing is that the mainstream public is now very much using technology. That means the average opinions expressed on the web on the internet have become much more mainstream. Which, pretty much by definition, means the average opinion has become much more hostile to iconoclastic thoughts.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#53

Post by devalier »

antics wrote: post #43

I recently helped organize a conference. Since it is apparently not obvious to many people, I'd just like to point out that amongst conference organizers, it is an extremely common belief that your primary responsibility is to deliver a good conference experience to your conference-goers. This is not just a belief StrangeLoop holds -- it is a belief that many beloved tech conferences have (e.g., PyCon), and if you th…

It would be fine to ban Curtis if his talk was about his politics. It would be fine to ban him if he did not agree to abide by the code of conduct. The conference obviously does not owe him a platform to discuss his politics.

But his talk was about Urbit, not about his politics, and Urbit is a genuinely fascinating piece of technology. Even if the project fails, by studying it, I have learned a lot of ideas that I have applied to my own programming.

So there are two big issues with the ban. First, Alex made the conference worse for all those who cared about technology and not politics. Second, he's given the PC-police a scalp. This will make it much harder for anyone to write good-faith but politically incorrect critiques even under a pseudonym, for fear that it could harm career prospects in the future. And how are we supposed to correct problems in society if we cannot talk honestly about them? Most solutions to our problems are outside the Overton window - if they weren't we would have solved the problems already.

Now maybe Alex wishes to cater to the more thin-skinned in his audience, rather than the technologists. That his prerogative.

But I hope that other conference organizers do not follow suit, and I hope that true technologists in turn shun StrangeLoop for conferences that care about technology first, and instead attend conferences that refuse to ban innovators who haven't violated the code of conduct.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#54

Post by paxdickinson »

braythwayt wrote: post #32
paxdickinson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be his decision next time too. And now that the Red Guards know he'll succumb to even the slightest bit of pressure, there will certainly be a next time.

I don’t know that we can use words like “succumb.” It’s always that way when you have a strong opinion about a particular matter. For example, we can praise Obama for listening to scientists on certain matters, than complain he is caving under lobbying pressure on others. In the end, I prefer to say that it is Alex’s decision. He didn’t crumble, succumb, get browbeaten, or anything else. He decided, and that means yo…

If you'd ever personally faced the wrath of the social justice left, you would probably agree that "succumb" is a highly appropriate word for it.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#55

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Afforess wrote: post #34

What outcomes do actions like this encourage? Well, it encourages controversial writers to stay in the shadows, hide their real identities, lest the vigilante mobs find them. This outcome also encourages people in general to say less, creates an atmosphere of self-censorship, and so harms our free society. Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say i…

It also encourages the outraged to try to silence their ideological opponents.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#56

Post by convexfunction »

antics wrote: post #43

I recently helped organize a conference. Since it is apparently not obvious to many people, I'd just like to point out that amongst conference organizers, it is an extremely common belief that your primary responsibility is to deliver a good conference experience to your conference-goers. This is not just a belief StrangeLoop holds -- it is a belief that many beloved tech conferences have (e.g., PyCon), and if you th…

There are probably lots of people who need to hear this, and given the people who'll be attending and made it clear how much of a fuss they would make, it was obviously the right call to disinvite him.

I think it's still worth briefly lamenting that our culture is heading in this direction. I see more and more echoes of the worldview and tactics that ultimately killed just shy of a hundred million people or so last century, and yes, it scares me.

Do you have any thoughts you'd be disinvited via public pressure from the best conferences for having? Will you in the culture of twenty or thirty years from now? Grist for the mill.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#57

Post by irickt »

ncallaway wrote: post #27
topynate wrote: post #11

Kicking people from your tech conference because they were racist outside of it hands veto power to whoever determines what racism is and when something is 'too racist'. The same goes for the other beyond-the-pale isms like sexism, fascism, etc. I commented on a flagged post on why this is an issue for me personally: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9674958

> it hands veto power to whoever determines what racism is and when something is 'too racist' This sounds like the function of the free marketplace of ideas. One is allowed to espouse any ideology that you wish. However, other people are allowed to respond with their own speech. They can call the idea racist if they want. They can take away speaking platforms if they want. Whether a statement is "racist" is a determi…

Yes, and the rejected author can't very well complain because, whether or not his views are "racist", he clearly imagines a society where many people are excluded because of their views.

Any group almost by definition has the right to define policies and police its membership, for any cause (including irrational). No group owes you the right of membership.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#58

Post by braythwayt »

paxdickinson wrote: post #54
braythwayt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that we can use words like “succumb.” It’s always that way when you have a strong opinion about a particular matter. For example, we can praise Obama for listening to scientists on certain matters, than complain he is caving under lobbying pressure on others. In the end, I prefer to say that it is Alex’s decision. He didn’t crumble, succumb, get browbeaten, or anything else. He decided, and that means yo…

If you'd ever personally faced the wrath of the social justice left, you would probably agree that "succumb" is a highly appropriate word for it.

I’m loathe to personalize this discussion with a comparison of your anecdotal experiences and mine. And to be honest, once we start bandying about hot-button phrases like “the social justice left,” I have a feeling that we’re on a slippery slope towards ayn rand and men’s rights.

So I’ll just step off here.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#59

Post by paxdickinson »

ncallaway wrote: post #52
paxdickinson wrote: post #20

The repeated kills of previous threads on this topic illustrate the problem goes much deeper than Strangeloop. HN itself has long been policed by left wing stormtroopers eliminating anything they disagree with. I used to believe it could be saved but now I generally believe that the era of technology having a place for iconoclastic freethinkers is long over.

The great thing about technology is you can always make your own space. You can have a niche website — or other technological forum — that is a bastion of iconoclastic freethinkers. The problem that you're experiencing is that the mainstream public is now very much using technology. That means the average opinions expressed on the web on the internet have become much more mainstream. Which, pretty much by definition,…

I'm not talking about the mainstream. I'm talking about hiring and funding within our industry. If you haven't noticed a chilling effect over the last few years, maybe you don't have any nonconforming opinions.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#60

Post by ncallaway »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #50
ncallaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it hands veto power to whoever determines what racism is and when something is 'too racist' This sounds like the function of the free marketplace of ideas. One is allowed to espouse any ideology that you wish. However, other people are allowed to respond with their own speech. They can call the idea racist if they want. They can take away speaking platforms if they want. Whether a statement is "racist" is a determi…

There are extremely good game-theoretic reasons to support a policy of allowing full debate on ideas and zero tolerance on attacking the person holding the idea. Specifically, I'm imagining a degenerate case where there's a norm of killing people who do X, as well as people who don't kill people who do X, as well as people who advocate making the anti-X policy more lenient. My point is that we can end up in a bad sit…

As a disclaimer: I don't have any context outside of the linked article. I don't know the candidate, what viewpoints they hold, or how those viewpoints have been previously expressed.

> "support a policy of allowing full debate on ideas and zero tolerance on attacking the person holding the idea."

If I had infinite time on this planet, I'd agree with you. However, my time is extremely limited. It's the most precious resource I have, so I have to aggressively consider the opportunity cost of listening to every person.

It's more valuable to me to have a debate with someone I disagree with rather than someone I agree with. However, if someone has reached a conclusion that I find to be shockingly suspect ("all foreigners are terrible people"; "protest the funerals of homosexual service-members"), I am not going to spend time listening to any aspects of that person's reasoning.

So, due to my limited time, I'm now punishing this person for expressing their ideas on a specific topic. How does the game-theory deal with the trade-offs of finite time and the opportunity cost of listening to specific speakers?

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