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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”

#211

Post by tptacek »

leereeves wrote: post #209
tptacek wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of banning him is probably not to "suppress his ideas". I'd imagine the goal is something more like "not allowing the experience of conference attendees to be made a little less pleasant in the service of what is a quirky and maybe interesting but probably pretty marginal technical talk".

Allowing some to have a more pleasant experience by excluding others... Once upon a time, liberals argued against that.

I don't think you really believe, were the shoe on the other foot and you were the one organizing Strange Loop, that there's nobody you'd consider excluding.

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

#213

Post by colinhb »

urbit wrote: post #169
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…

"He has literally written that several of his co-speakers are genetically more fit to be slaves while he, a white male, is genetically designed to be a master." Certainly a powerful use of the word literally . Frankly, I'm actually considering recanting. Who wouldn't rather be Galileo than Giordano Bruno? But recanting is a serious matter - it's the sort of thing you need to get right the first time. To appear at fut…

> I'm guessing it's either:

> (a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations.

> (b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations.

Or: (c) The inter-group variation in the talents and inclinations of human beings is completely dominated by the intra-group variation.

In other words, "living populations" (= ethnic groups) don't matter. You'll have (e.g.) smart and dumb people in every group, and everything else is noise.

I'm not sure how a reasonable person could choose hypothesis (b) over (c), given the long history of hypothesis (b) proponents trying (and failing) to make the math work out for them.

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

#214

Post by obstinate »

tptacek wrote: post #205
obstinate wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to reactionary beliefs, there is a significant contingent on this site that believes one ought to be able to hold them publically with no consequences in any other space. This happened with that Mozilla CEO that resigned, the scientist who wore the shirt with scantily clad women on it, and a number of other situations where the privileged paid nominal costs for their mistakes. It is very upsetting to a…

Being disinvited from a conference after a writing career that left you most notable for your politics is not the same as being removed from your job over a political position that people had to do research to discover.

I didn't mean to convey that I thought they were the same. Related, though.

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

#215

Post by dropit_sphere »

gwern wrote: post #203
13thLetter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why read an article _about_ him, as opposed to reading what he actually said? Are you concerned about contracting wrongthink?

Probably because his blog posts are like millions of words of meandering stream of thought and links to public domain books and you would have to spend the next few months of your free time to read most of his posts? Occasionally funny and insightful, but concise and well-written they are not, burying the real content under mountains of fluff.

You're gwern, so if you said you'd read enough to say you understand his writing, I'd believe you.

But someone reading the Baffler article will not have the same understanding you do---and worse, they'll think they do.

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

#216

Post by topynate »

tptacek wrote: post #208
topynate wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assure you that the racism of, for example, Yitzhak Herzog (who heads Israel's main centre-left party), is as obvious to the ideological opponents of Zionism as Yarvin's is to you. If you doubt me, ask them. It should be clear from my other comments that I am concerned with the principle of excluding people from apolitical fora on the grounds of racism alone. How justified or controversial it is to call someone a r…

If I Google your name, am I going to find a very well known blog in which you repeatedly and at length argue about the inferiority of Palestinians as a race? No? Then, again, not sure what your Zionism point has to do with anything. Strange Loop has a blind review system?

I'm going to start repeating myself if I get into your first paragraph, and no offence but I'd rather hear what Klabnik has to say. If that's unfair then let it be unfair.

Strange Loop has a two/three phase system, in which applications are blind-ranked, a panel takes the top ranked applications and further filters them based on 'softer' criteria (which may include demographic ones) and the final say is Alex Miller's. That at least is what I gathered from reading the blog about how talks are selected, and also from reading people on twitter discussing how Urbit got by them in the blind review stage.

In any case, it is way past my bed-time after this HN outage.

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

#217

Post by cactusface »

andrewchambers wrote: post #157
cactusface wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There aren't "races" in the sense of Darwin's finches because there is interbreeding between population groups, that's all.

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

#218

Post by tptacek »

topynate wrote: post #216
tptacek wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I Google your name, am I going to find a very well known blog in which you repeatedly and at length argue about the inferiority of Palestinians as a race? No? Then, again, not sure what your Zionism point has to do with anything. Strange Loop has a blind review system?

I'm going to start repeating myself if I get into your first paragraph, and no offence but I'd rather hear what Klabnik has to say. If that's unfair then let it be unfair. Strange Loop has a two/three phase system, in which applications are blind-ranked, a panel takes the top ranked applications and further filters them based on 'softer' criteria (which may include demographic ones) and the final say is Alex Miller's…

Sorry about that. It annoys me when people do that to me too.

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

#219

Post by leereeves »

tptacek wrote: post #211
leereeves wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing some to have a more pleasant experience by excluding others... Once upon a time, liberals argued against that.

I don't think you really believe, were the shoe on the other foot and you were the one organizing Strange Loop, that there's nobody you'd consider excluding.

I've never refused to work with anyone because of their political beliefs.

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

#220

Post by cactusface »

devalier wrote: post #171
cactusface wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Science is not a democracy, and consensus means little when the peer review and tenure review process is designed to reward conformity rather than truth. Use your own brain. Denying the existence of races is completely absurd. See for instance: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for... and https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i... And lots more reading here: https://jaymans…

There's a scientific meaning behind the word race - geographically isolated population groups, or more precisely groups that do not interbreed. Humans don't have those, and never have had those. I never said we were homogenous, any nitwit can see that most people in Asia have black hair, and there's no reason to think that only superficial physical characteristics sort geographically. Just that, there aren't distinct races. You know, a middle ground, as proposed by the guy who wrote that first article you linked to, at the end.
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