Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

jonprl.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 122 posts

Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

#11

Post by Karunamon »

llamataboot wrote: post #9
pmalynin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Is their belief system so fragile, that letting a person speak will destroy it???

Nope, not about fragility at all. It's about creating spaces where a large chunk of people aren't being literally attacked (and told they are better suited to being slaves) by a speaker. What's the problem? Free speech can also mean no speech. I have no problem with people pulling out if they disagree so strongly with the social views of another participant. This isn't the government smashing someone's printing press…

people aren't being literally attacked (and told they are better suited to being slaves) by a speaker.

Was that actually the content of his talk? If so.. okay, this makes perfect sense.

If not, it's crap.

Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

#12

Post by MattRogish »

spicyj wrote: post #5
Karunamon wrote: post #2

From the linked site within the linked site: > The controversy had nothing to do with the talk, which by all accounts was a great fit for the eclectic topics served up every year by the conference. Rather, the controversy surrounded the speaker’s political views, which were penned under a pseudonym years prior. Can we please stop this? If I read right, this guy decided to kill a conference because he didn't like the…

Just so everyone's on the same page, some of the thoughts in question: https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/606576005667504129

Also, he's no garden variety racist. He's the creator of the "Neoreactionary Movement" http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement

Regardless of whether or not you think a racist should or should not present (be paid to speak? Edit: they are not paid to speak at this conf although some expenses are covered) the founder of a pro slavery, pro facist movement speaking at your conference is a different sort of thing.

Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

#15

Post by llamataboot »

Karunamon wrote: post #11
llamataboot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, not about fragility at all. It's about creating spaces where a large chunk of people aren't being literally attacked (and told they are better suited to being slaves) by a speaker. What's the problem? Free speech can also mean no speech. I have no problem with people pulling out if they disagree so strongly with the social views of another participant. This isn't the government smashing someone's printing press…

people aren't being literally attacked (and told they are better suited to being slaves) by a speaker. Was that actually the content of his talk? If so.. okay, this makes perfect sense. If not, it's crap.

Nope, talk content doesn't matter. If I know you believe that "rape doesn't exist" and you regularly publish about it, but you are giving a talk on 'advanced garbage collection in Ruby", I can still feel totally ostracized from the conference knowing what you've said in other spaces is literally an attack on my safety.

Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

#16

Post by saryant »

MattRogish wrote: post #12
spicyj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so everyone's on the same page, some of the thoughts in question: https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/606576005667504129

Also, he's no garden variety racist. He's the creator of the "Neoreactionary Movement" http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement Regardless of whether or not you think a racist should or should not present (be paid to speak? Edit: they are not paid to speak at this conf although some expenses are covered) the founder of a pro slavery, pro facist movement speaking at your conference is a different sort of t…

FWIW, LambdaConf speakers are not paid.

Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

#17

Post by Karunamon »

llamataboot wrote: post #15
Karunamon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people aren't being literally attacked (and told they are better suited to being slaves) by a speaker. Was that actually the content of his talk? If so.. okay, this makes perfect sense. If not, it's crap.

Nope, talk content doesn't matter. If I know you believe that "rape doesn't exist" and you regularly publish about it, but you are giving a talk on 'advanced garbage collection in Ruby", I can still feel totally ostracized from the conference knowing what you've said in other spaces is literally an attack on my safety.

A speaker's personal views are not and cannot be an attack on your safety.

Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

#18

Post by tel »

jblow wrote: post #6
Karunamon wrote: post #2

From the linked site within the linked site: > The controversy had nothing to do with the talk, which by all accounts was a great fit for the eclectic topics served up every year by the conference. Rather, the controversy surrounded the speaker’s political views, which were penned under a pseudonym years prior. Can we please stop this? If I read right, this guy decided to kill a conference because he didn't like the…

Yeah ... I don't know what PrlConf is (and the link does nothing to explain) but LambdaCon's policy and statement about it seem totally well-reasoned and fine. So cancelling whatever Prl is seems like yet more internet outrage culture that we would be better off with less of.

Without commenting on LambdaConf's statement, PrlConf refers to the JonPrl language but much, much more broadly the general PRL ("Proof Refinement Logic") system of proof languages of which Cornell's NuPRL (http://nuprl.org/) is by far the most advanced example. Unfortunately, NuPRL is engineered such that it is really difficult to get started with it and usually depends upon having access to an instance of a NuPRL server running at a major institution. This prevents the spread of the ideas of PRL and both JonPrl and PrlConf are, most likely, attempts to reverse that.

Generally, PRL is a mechanism for proofs which varies slightly but significantly from the "proof calculus"-oriented provers like Coq/Agda by including at its very core an unbounded notion of untyped computation. This allows more interesting, exotic things to be expressed in PRL even if the proofs about them must ultimately be finite.

Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled

#20

Post by jonsterling »

DanielDent wrote: post #8

I'm disturbed by the amount of CSS that was used to try to make the page look like it hadn't been styled. Font choice: "propagandaregular". Are we being trolled?

Sorry about that. This note replaced our "call for proposals", which had much more formatting. Also, I'm a shite web developer, so there's that.
Post reply on HN