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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”

#131

Post by vezzy-fnord »

lukev wrote: post #116
k_brother wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide citations for those posts? This is the first I have heard of either Curtis or Moldbug, and I'm having trouble seeing the connection you're drawing. However, it seems to be the consensus. [edit: I see that there are secondary sources — but I'm curious about a primary source. Shouldn't that be the most important?]

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl... Relevant obnoxious quote, in a sea of drivel: In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship p…

So, from that quote, he seems to be:

a) Describing a master-slave structure with the implication that it is a biologically programmed one.

b) That some are born for more dominant roles, some for more submissive ones, and then others who are in between or neither.

c) That the aforementioned characteristics are genetic.

Not particularly savory, but also a pretty standard evopsych position. In fact, I'd say that the only truly controversial part is the argument that these structures are innate and predetermined. That such master-slave structures permeate society is readily observable.

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

#132

Post by venning »

serf wrote: post #107
PopeOfNope wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind that uses logic and reason instead of rhetorical appeals to emotion. The 'personal is the political' is part of the culture in california and is common throughout the state. And if you don't believe me, you should go on a job hunt and tell every interviewer who talks to you that you're a republican. Now that I think about it, I want to do just that and document the results. Should be interesting.

I disagree with your idea that other states don't have some sort of pet peeve they will 'dock you points' for. Go to Austin and look for a job while spouting off right-to-life and anti-gay marriage nonsense. Go to Houston/Dallas and espouse the opposite opinion. Go to Washington DC or Virginia and look for a job while being vocally against government involvement in your personal life and the spy state of affairs, or…

DC is definitionally composed of people carrying opinions across the spectrum. Being vocally opposed to those things you list is actually a job requirement for some places. DC's stereotype is a bit unnuanced.

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

#133

Post by corporealist »

sagichmal wrote: post #128
corporealist wrote: post #80

Alex Payne founded a socialist blog: https://www.jacobinmag.com/ Why is writing about certain political ideas OK, but writing about certain other political ideas not OK? Why are those certain other political ideas "not OK" enough for someone to be banned from a technology conference?

> Why is writing about certain political ideas OK, but > writing about certain other political ideas not OK? Calling socialism and racism the same thing, just a "certain political view", is about as intellectually honest as calling speeding and murder the same thing, just a "certain sort of crime".

Has anyone produced evidence of racism? Most of his detractors on Twitter have been beyond hysterical yet I doubt most of them have read anything he's written, and I've yet to see any examples.

What is wrong with people that the presence of Curtis Yarvin makes them feel unsafe?

EDIT: This seems to be the one example that is being bandied about: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676625 . Replies to that post point out that the case is extremely flimsy. Give me a break. This guy is a rightwinger (outside of his industry) and somebody didn't like it. What an embarrassment. They're proving the right's points.

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

#134

Post by overgard »

I'm sort of baffled by this: why would anyone care if he's giving a tech talk? It reminds me of the Brendan Eich situation. I disagree with his political views, but also.. who gives a shit? It's immaterial to the job.

I used to read moldbug and I thought he was really incisive for a while, but his blog kept getting more and more, uh, esoteric. (basically unreadable -- it got hard to figure out what point he was even trying to make) All the same though, I don't really care about moldbug's political affiliations in a tech talk, I'd rather just hear what he has to say.

(Also: how many attendees would even really know who he was or care enough to protest it?)

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

#135

Post by convexfunction »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #131
lukev wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl... Relevant obnoxious quote, in a sea of drivel: In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship p…

So, from that quote, he seems to be: a) Describing a master-slave structure with the implication that it is a biologically programmed one. b) That some are born for more dominant roles, some for more submissive ones, and then others who are in between or neither. c) That the aforementioned characteristics are genetic. Not particularly savory, but also a pretty standard evopsych position. In fact, I'd say that the onl…

This is not a "standard evopsych position". Evolutionary psychology seems to get conflated with a lot of unsavory bullshit just because the latter uses appeals to the former. Most people I know who do evolutionary psychology are extremely careful to point out all the ways they differ from (usually) sexists because they're so damn tired of people conflating one with the other.

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

#136

Post by leereeves »

obstinate wrote: post #114
k_brother wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide citations for those posts? This is the first I have heard of either Curtis or Moldbug, and I'm having trouble seeing the connection you're drawing. However, it seems to be the consensus. [edit: I see that there are secondary sources — but I'm curious about a primary source. Shouldn't that be the most important?]

Google is helpful here. There are plenty of articles that have been written about him (speaking as someone else who hadn't heard of him until today). This is the one I'm reading right now: http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/

I'd never heard of him either. Now we have.

If the goal of banning him from the conference was to suppress his ideas, his opponents remind me of George Bush standing beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

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

#137

Post by A_COMPUTER »

wmf wrote: post #78
devalier wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

BTW, Urbit has neoreactionary politics hard-coded into the network layer. I don't know if that was to be discussed in this particular talk (usually the Nock/Hoon stuff is so weird people never get to the rest), but if Yarvin/Moldbug can't keep political rants out of his documentation then I think it's fair to consider the politics as part of the technology.

True, but meaningless. Any OS that has the concept of a root or admin user with total control has monarchy hard-coded into it too.

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

#138

Post by braythwayt »

PopeOfNope wrote: post #95
braythwayt wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: “Our way of life is under attack by all those mobs of non-straight, non-white, non-males.”

Look at the people making the accusations. They're all straight, white men. Socialists are typically upper middle class straight white men. Nice try painting me as racist, sexist or homophobic, though. Look at the twitter hashtag #notyourshield. The PC hatemob isn't liked by women, people of color or LGBT. They tend to dislike straight, white men telling them what it's like to be black, female or gay.

I have a real problem with your telling me what people of colour like and don’t like. Last time I checked, you don’t speak for me either.

And the entire premise of your world-view is broken. When you frame these white liberals as “speaking for” people of colour or speaking for women, or speaking for LGBT people, you are presuming that racism, sexism, and homophobia are strictly issues for people of colour, women, and LGBT people.

And therefore, if someone who isn’t one of these people speaks out against it, they must be some kind of paternal mansplaining social justice warrior.

In reality, some such people exist, but so do people who are egalitarian, and feel that racism, sexism, and homophobia are simply wrong. They aren’t speaking for anyone but themselves, and that is why you get some people pointing that out. But just because they don’t speak for me, for example, doesn’t invalidate that they speak truth to power.

As long as they don’t claim to speak for me, thats fine. Unlike you, who tried to suggest what people of colour think without qualifying your statement by admitting that you want to present some cherry-picked examples that suit your cause.

Painting people who speak out as a “PC Hatemob” really speaks to the fact that you relish taking an extremist position.

So given that you are way out in batshit-crazy tinfoil-hat land, what’s in it for me to talk to you? I doubt that anyone reading our respective words is going to be swayed from whatever position they already held. People who agree with you will mindlessly upvote you for saying what Fox News has been saying for years.

Nothing you have said really provokes any kind of “hmmm...” from me. It’s like talking to a well-written Markov Chain that was trained on a corpus of GamerGate tweets.

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

#139

Post by tptacek »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #131
lukev wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl... Relevant obnoxious quote, in a sea of drivel: In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship p…

So, from that quote, he seems to be: a) Describing a master-slave structure with the implication that it is a biologically programmed one. b) That some are born for more dominant roles, some for more submissive ones, and then others who are in between or neither. c) That the aforementioned characteristics are genetic. Not particularly savory, but also a pretty standard evopsych position. In fact, I'd say that the onl…

That's one way to read it, I guess. The more straightforward way to read it would be to just use the normal accepted meanings of words, under which the quote straightforwardly argues that Africans are genetically adapted for slavery, and that arguments to the contrary constitute "political correctness".

I feel like the only "reaching" I had to do to take that meaning from the quote was c/p'ing it out of my browser window to correct for the weird spacing HN put on it.

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

#140

Post by cactusface »

emjr wrote: post #123
lukev wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl... Relevant obnoxious quote, in a sea of drivel: In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship p…

"Natives did not make good slaves, and so Africans were imported." That alone is so innocuous as to appear in elementary school textbooks. Is this really what the whole row is about?

No, it's because he said it was due to genetic differences between population groups. This makes him a "true" racist in that he believe there are different races, or sub-species, of homo sapiens (sapiens). There is a scientific consensus that this is not the case, because races only exist if population groups are completely isolated, which humans never have been.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

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