A Strange Loop (about Curtis Yarvin Being Kicked Out of Strange Loop) • Hacker News Board

Re: A Strange Loop (about Curtis Yarvin Being Kicked Out of Strange Loop)

#21

Post by RichardZBrookes » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 5:44 PM UTC

gaoshan wrote: post #14

The tone of this post is strange to me. The author says things like, "To them, it is an absolute requirement that anyone who utters opinions they consider unacceptable must be excluded from their society." and "They “would not feel comfortable” being forced to treat him as a respectable human being. As a matter of tactics, this is perfectly reasonable. ...the people we are talking about are communists." and "...the i…

Well, as Moldbug pointed out http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technol..., at the height of the 1950’s anti-communist fetish, being a right-wing extremist in America was still much less acceptable than being a communist.

You don’t have a problem hearing about Urbit, but various other people, some of whom identify themselves as socialists or Marxists, such as Klabnik or Payne, have a great problem. If it’s not because of their left-wing politics, then why do they not agree with “a moderate, normal person” like you? If it is because of their left-wing politics, isn’t that an interesting fact?

Re: A Strange Loop (about Curtis Yarvin Being Kicked Out of Strange Loop)

#22

Post by RichardZBrookes » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

gaoshan wrote: post #14

The tone of this post is strange to me. The author says things like, "To them, it is an absolute requirement that anyone who utters opinions they consider unacceptable must be excluded from their society." and "They “would not feel comfortable” being forced to treat him as a respectable human being. As a matter of tactics, this is perfectly reasonable. ...the people we are talking about are communists." and "...the i…

The tone is a bit strange, and there's a reason for that.

I'm avoiding the question of whether Yarvin _deserves_ to be excluded. There are three answers to that:

a) Nobody deserves to be punished for expressing a political opinion

b) Some political opinions people should be punished for, but not his

c) Some political opinions people should be punished for, including his.

(a) is quite a popular view, and many people hold it, and some people claim to hold it but act otherwise, but I do not actually hold it myself, so I can't advance it in good faith.

Given (b) or (c), the set of opinions that a person does deserve to be punished for expressing is unavoidably a matter of opinion. Given that I share Moldbug's views, my opinion on whether they should be punishable is both inevitable and uninteresting.

Therefore I was carefully avoiding the "justice" argument, and instead making a very limited practical argument. If you care about technology working well, it is better not to exclude people, and in particular better not to let political partisans decide who is and is not excluded. That is true irrespective of what I or Curtis Yarvin or anyone else "deserve".

Now, if you dig into theories of where justice comes from, you can develop that argument into a grounds for a "right to free speech", as an instrumental rather than axiomatic good. But I've already gone way over what is reasonable in a HN comment.

Re: A Strange Loop (about Curtis Yarvin Being Kicked Out of Strange Loop)

#23

Post by RichardZBrookes » Mon, Jun 08, 2015, 5:53 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #4

api wrote: post #2

This is sad to hear, especially with how crazy this same crowd goes over things like NSA surveillance and Internet censorship. Such hypocrisy. Yeah I know it's a private conference, but it says something that people can't tolerate views they disagree with.

Free expression is a cultural value. The value is way more important than the Constitution and laws that embody it. Funny way for this to finally make the front page. I'm not sure I buy that this is the work of Marxists or the connection to Donglegate. But very curious to hear how HN sees the situation. Unfortunately, one side effect of this kind of "no platforming" is that it legitimately leads to concern about whet…

Apparently someone at YC un-killed it. I'm new here, but I had posted replies to some of the comments on the blog attached to the post here, and now I've duplicated them here.