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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”

#151

Post by al3x »

overgard wrote: post #134

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…

There were a number of people who voiced their objections on Twitter. It's easy to ask the rhetorical question here, but if you really want an answer, go check out what they said.

In particular, people who represent groups that Moldbug treats as subhuman in his writing expressed concern and dismay. Perhaps looking through their eyes for a moment might illuminate why a person would care.

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

#152

Post by vezzy-fnord »

tptacek wrote: post #139
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

No, that's oversimplified, I find. The quote implies that the colonizers found Africans to be more suited to fulfilling slave roles, and that the master-slave cycle formulated earlier is a genetic one. It doesn't make a direct judgment whether the colonizers were correct. The jab at political correctness doesn't seem to be an absolute refutation of opposing arguments, so much as an outlining of the historian's fallacy of trying to apply contemporary moral value judgments to past circumstances. FWIW, there was "political correctness" (sidestepping taboos) in those days, but the taboos were wildly different.

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

#153

Post by twoodfin »

to3m wrote: post #144
twoodfin wrote: post #61

As of 12:30pm EDT, this has been flagged down to #111. Some people really don't want to discuss this.

Think of it as you might a ban on discussing religion and/or politics when dining with people you don't know especially well. Less an attack on MAH FREEDMS, more a simple means of keeping the peace. You may complain that this will give rise to nothing but an echo chamber - and that's possibly true, but I fail to see how it's any worse than the alternative ;)

But this doesn't really involve politics as traditionally understood. Nobody here is particularly interested in defending Yarvin's views, AFAIK. But for an active HN user working on a project right in HN's wheelhouse to effectively be banned from presenting at Strange Loop (for violating what policy?)... It's a fascinating story with broad implications for how we interact with each other.

Overall, disappointed in those who have flagged these posts.

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

#154

Post by k_brother »

tptacek wrote: post #143

Isn't Urbit named for the Mencius Moldbug blog, whose writer repeatedly refers to same as "UR"? How distinct is Urbit and Yarvin from the advocacy of the Moldbug UR blog? The association between Yarvin and that blog isn't exactly cryptic; for instance, Yarvin has given somewhat recent video-recorded talks espousing many of the same ideas as the blog, purposefully and in some depth. Is it possible that the most boring…

Could you provide links to those talks?

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

#155

Post by ShardPhoenix »

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".

You're right - socialism is much worse than racism. Socialism (actual socialism, not "social democracy" aka capitalist welfare state) destroys countries (eg North Korea), while racism is merely a moderate problem (eg South Korea is very racist but doing fine).

edit: To be fair, people are probably more sensitive to racism in America because America is so diverse.

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

#156

Post by politicalhn4tw »

steveklabnik wrote: post #146
tptacek wrote: post #143

Isn't Urbit named for the Mencius Moldbug blog, whose writer repeatedly refers to same as "UR"? How distinct is Urbit and Yarvin from the advocacy of the Moldbug UR blog? The association between Yarvin and that blog isn't exactly cryptic; for instance, Yarvin has given somewhat recent video-recorded talks espousing many of the same ideas as the blog, purposefully and in some depth. Is it possible that the most boring…

I have at least attempted to be _very_ clear that I do not begrudge the organizers of this conference for exactly the reason that you say. Your 'boring interpretation' lines up with my understanding of the situation. As has been said many times in this thread, Yarvin is free to say what he believes, and I am free to say what I believe, and organizers are allowed to do what they want. This is how a free market of idea…

You have argued to suppress Yarvin's ideas in one realm based on his unrelated ideas in another realm.

This is emphatically not how the free market of ideas is supposed to work.

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

#157

Post by andrewchambers »

cactusface wrote: post #140
emjr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

I find asserting superiority of one race over another hard to justify, but is it crazy to think there are differences?

Dogs are the same species, but people do assign traits like aggression/playfulness to different breeds.

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

#158

Post by politicalhn4tw »

tptacek wrote: post #143

Isn't Urbit named for the Mencius Moldbug blog, whose writer repeatedly refers to same as "UR"? How distinct is Urbit and Yarvin from the advocacy of the Moldbug UR blog? The association between Yarvin and that blog isn't exactly cryptic; for instance, Yarvin has given somewhat recent video-recorded talks espousing many of the same ideas as the blog, purposefully and in some depth. Is it possible that the most boring…

Below you commented that you hadn't put much effort into understanding Urbit, but here you're evaluating its technical value.

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

#159

Post by overgard »

steveklabnik wrote: post #125
paxdickinson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those calling for his removal from the conference cited this six-year-old blog post about Thomas Carlyle as their only specific complaint. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-car...

This is factually not true, and since you claim to have read my complaints, this comment appears disingenuous. More specifically, I linked http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/ and http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ as a brief introduction if you don't want to wade through the torrent of Dark Enlightenment shenanigans.

Why does it matter what his political beliefs entail on a technical subject?

More to the point, while I'm guessing you didn't dox him or whatever, the fact that he wrote under a pseudonym and (as a person having read his blog) had no idea of his actual name, I get the impression you went out of your way on this one. I don't really care about right or left (I think both sides are idiotic), but it seems like you're going out of your way on this one.

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

#160

Post by dang »

twoodfin wrote: post #148
dang wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're implying that we'd censor an HN post because of some arcane YC-related detail, that's false. None of the people who work on HN have any knowledge of what you're referring to. We haven't the cycles to keep track of such things even if we wanted to—our hands are rather full—and they'd play no role in HN moderation if we did. The post in question was downweighted by user flags. The only thing we did was unkill…

Thanks for unkilling it. The most fascinating part of this issue to me remains how "uninterested" HN is in discussing it (insofar as the mechanics of HN allow us to collectively express interest).

I'm not sure what you mean by "it", but this thread has 158 comments. That's not uninterested.
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