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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”

#381

Post by 13thLetter »

ncallaway wrote: post #68
yummyfajitas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, if Jessitron (singling her out solely because she wrote a really good blog post today [1]) wants to talk about microservices in clojure, and folks want to keep her out because of her views on women in technology, you are ok with that also? Let me also emphasize that no one disputes that strangeloop has the legal right to do this. The discussion is simply over whether the strangeloop organizers are a bunch…

Again, a disclaimer: I know pretty much nothing about this specific instance except the linked article. I don't know the candidate speaker, their political views, or anything of that nature. No examples in this comment are meant to be reflective of this specific situation. > "wants to talk about microservices in clojure, and folks want to keep her out because of her views on women in technology" For me, it comes down…

Then it sounds like you're fully on the side of Yarvin and fully opposed to Strangeloop's actions, since (even when he dared to write about unpopular political opinions) he was never anything less than calm and rational.

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

#382

Post by topynate »

zimpenfish wrote: post #289
saryant wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does shunning someone for their political beliefs help advance your own beliefs? Seriously. Refusing to professionally engage with someone due to private political beliefs will do nothing but strengthen the resolve behind that belief. Instead of stepping across the battle lines into your exalted realm of enlightenment, they will circle the wagons and reload the muskets. What if Tolkien had refused to befriend CS…

I have a vague memory of some research recently (last few months) that showed it was nigh-on impossible to persuade most people of a contrary position to one they held. In fact, it helped to strengthen their existing beliefs. But my google-fu/pocket-fu is weak and I can't currently find it.

You may be referring to the result that exposing people to evidence contradicting their beliefs actually increases the strength of those beliefs (older than a few months, though). Pop-sci level article at http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/

This doesn't reduce to "impossible to persuade most people of a contrary position." It just means that you have to employ methods of persuasion, i.e. rhetoric. This was obvious in classical Athens, when people heard news and discussed politics in public, but is apparently harder to grasp in our society.

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

#383

Post by chubot »

lexcorvus wrote: post #378
chubot wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of discussion that doesn't end anywhere productive, but I don't have any reason to believe that those two groups have substantively different inclinations for playing chess. As others have said, the individual variations drown out the group differences. Look at how superior Americans are to Europeans economically. Americans invented the iPhone, Google, and could best all of Europe combined in a milit…

I appreciate your thoughtful comments. Inspired by these discussions, I believe I've sharpened my understanding of this subject considerably. When it comes to accounting for observed differences between different groups, the following statements are the only two possible explanations: (a) Genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes (b) Non-genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes Note that the…

This is too meta -- they're not exclusive, but the structure of the argument is pretty clear.

The burden of proof falls on the one making the claim. If you are claiming (a) or (b), you need to justify it. I haven't seen credible evidence for (a). I'm not refuting it because I don't have the burden of proof.

Answering Yali's question requires at least one of (a) or (b). If (b) were false, then that would imply (a). Providing evidence for (b) rules out the argument based on elimination.

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

#384

Post by lexcorvus »

chubot wrote: post #383
lexcorvus wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your thoughtful comments. Inspired by these discussions, I believe I've sharpened my understanding of this subject considerably. When it comes to accounting for observed differences between different groups, the following statements are the only two possible explanations: (a) Genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes (b) Non-genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes Note that the…

This is too meta -- they're not exclusive, but the structure of the argument is pretty clear. The burden of proof falls on the one making the claim. If you are claiming (a) or (b), you need to justify it. I haven't seen credible evidence for (a). I'm not refuting it because I don't have the burden of proof. Answering Yali's question requires at least one of (a) or (b). If (b) were false, then that would imply (a). Pr…

No, the burden of proof is on those who claim not-(a), because it is evident at a glance that there are at least some genetic difference between groups. (Detailed genetic analysis, of course, confirms this. Noted anti-racist Henry Louis Gates Jr. has a whole show about it. [1]) There's no law of biology that says evolution only works on physical traits; quite the opposite. Therefore, the burden of proof is on the claim that any particular cognitive or behavioral characteristics have no genetic component.

Answering Yali's question requires at least one of (a) or (b). If (b) were false, then that would imply (a). Providing evidence for (b) rules out the argument based on elimination.

It is impossible to use the process of elimination when the alternatives are not mutually exclusive. I.e., this reasoning is specious: Why are men generally stronger than women? Well, men lift weights more often than women. Therefore, strength differences have no genetic basis. So it goes with Yali's question. You, and Jared Diamond, are obviously smart enough to understand this completely. But the conclusions are heretical, which is the only reason I can think of for why you fail to do so.

[1]: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/

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

#385

Post by chubot »

lexcorvus wrote: post #384
chubot wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is too meta -- they're not exclusive, but the structure of the argument is pretty clear. The burden of proof falls on the one making the claim. If you are claiming (a) or (b), you need to justify it. I haven't seen credible evidence for (a). I'm not refuting it because I don't have the burden of proof. Answering Yali's question requires at least one of (a) or (b). If (b) were false, then that would imply (a). Pr…

No, the burden of proof is on those who claim not-(a), because it is evident at a glance that there are at least some genetic difference between groups. (Detailed genetic analysis, of course, confirms this. Noted anti-racist Henry Louis Gates Jr. has a whole show about it. [1]) There's no law of biology that says evolution only works on physical traits; quite the opposite. Therefore, the burden of proof is on the cla…

There are genetic differences between groups, but claim (a) is that there are such differences that contribute (substantively) to different outcomes -- as you wrote yourself. I don't know of any such evidence. It's controversial to say the least, but if you are engaging me in a discussion, you have the burden of proof on that point.

As mentioned, I don't really care for these types of discussions, because either way, it's not going to lead me to change my actions. My original motivation was to see what moldbug thinks of Jared Diamond's work (i.e. if he tries to refute it)

(a) and (b) aren't exclusive, but it could be that one contributes vastly more to the observed outcomes than the other. I happen to believe that this is the case with (b), as Jared Diamond explains. There is just much less evidence supporting (a) compared to that supporting (b).

I think you misread my last statement. Providing evidence for b means that you can't apply the argument that if b were false, then a. They are not exclusive, but at least one of them is necessary. I would assume (b) is false without evidence as well.

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

#386

Post by newuser88273 »

danielHanniger wrote: post #323
sagichmal wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

racism has killed very few people compared to socialism.

If you sum over all micro-insults suffered by victims of racists, caused by billions, possibly trillions of micro-aggressions, who knows how many death-equivalents you might get?

Anyway, whomever socialists might have killed, it was long ago: smack in the middle of the dark ages of widespread racism, to be exact. Which means those so-called victims of socialism probably all were racists.

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

#387

Post by escape_goat »

emjr wrote: post #328
escape_goat wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your counter-arguments are very bad. I thank you for sharing them here, because I don't think they reflect uncommon opinions at all, and I think they are too easily accepted without reflection. With regards to the "defend to the death your right to say it" hyperbole, I agree that it is overstated. Furthermore, it is true that getting dis-invited from a tech conference does not involve losing the right to say…

"It is also true that these visible, physical qualities have created barriers in the tech industry." I think it is rather clear that fixing the quoted issue is a far higher priority than minimizing the suffering of those who suffer the least of any of us. It is a roughly utilitarian ethical position to take, and a fairly reasonable one, I think. Is there a particular reason that prioritization of efforts must never o…

As I've mentioned elsewhere, my concern was with the nature of the parent comment's argument, rather than with the ideas he was seeking to defend. A utilitarian position is of course quite defensible; one could even argue for a sort of triage.

What I was interested in, however, was how facile and insufficient his counter-arguments actually were, and how scant the consideration of empathy actually was, even though he started by saying:

> All I long for is logical consistency and empathy...

I think my mini-essay would have been greatly improved if I had thought to address that directly.

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

#388

Post by newuser88273 »

yarvin9 wrote: post #259
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…

Sorry, but no. urbit, from the Latin urbs == city, is actually a good bit older than UR. The initials are somehow very compelling - another couple of great literary UR blogs are the Unz Review (unz.com) and Uncouth Reflections (uncouthreflections.com). I will admit that urbit has very few users, as technically we're really not launched at all. We were thinking Strange Loop might be a good place for this, but I guess…

Just so people don't think there's no third way to think about your work: I get nothing but snake oil vibes from Urbit, but loved the blog, which, among other things, was the venerable art form of Usenet trolling taken to utter perfection.

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

#389

Post by leppr »

riverc wrote: post #373
patrissimo1976 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps so, but I think it is enough in the vicinity of the chilling effect line that it is worth discussing and being concerned about. I say this specifically because it was a professional conference and such conferences are important for earning a living. If private organizations vital to earning a living voluntarily censor people for their political opinions, that is equivalent to denying careers to those people,…

It's also the case they don't care about skin shades OR accents either. Huh.

I think you meant:

>It's also the case they don't care about skin shades OR accents, on the other hand.

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

#390

Post by zimpenfish »

topynate wrote: post #382
zimpenfish wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a vague memory of some research recently (last few months) that showed it was nigh-on impossible to persuade most people of a contrary position to one they held. In fact, it helped to strengthen their existing beliefs. But my google-fu/pocket-fu is weak and I can't currently find it.

You may be referring to the result that exposing people to evidence contradicting their beliefs actually increases the strength of those beliefs (older than a few months, though). Pop-sci level article at http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/ This doesn't reduce to "impossible to persuade most people of a contrary position." It just means that you have to employ methods of persuasion, i.e. rheto…

You missed off "nigh-on" from before "impossible". It's an important qualifier.
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