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

Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

degoes.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 243 posts

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#181

Post by zahmahkibo »

ubertaco wrote: post #177
zahmahkibo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I am perfectly okay with discriminating against Nazis. Since when is ALL discrimination bad? I discriminate against shitty people all the time, and so do you. Don't even pretend you don't, no one will believe you.

>and so do you. Don't even pretend you don't, no one will believe you. You're projecting a bit. I try hard -- consciously -- not to shut down and shut out people who need grace as much as I do (either more or less externally-visibly). Your own code of ethics is not universal. There are people who think and operate differently from you. Which is exactly the point of not discriminating whenever it's avoidable.

Your code of grace is also not universal and is almost certainly the minority.

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#182

Post by zahmahkibo »

brighteyes wrote: post #165
zahmahkibo wrote: post #142

There is an extremely simple test for such arguments: would anyone make this argument if the person in question was Osama bin Laden? Suppose old Osama was a Haskell wizard. Would anyone argue he should still be at the talk? No. But Nazis? Who make bin Laden's terrorism look like a rounding error? They're A-OK! And people wonder about why there's a diversity problem in tech.

1. Bin Laden actually killed thousands of people. If, instead, your example was a Muslim preacher who advocated controversial views, but was not violent himself nor the head of a violent organization, then yes - we should accept such a Muslim preacher, if he has an interesting technical talk to give. 2. Has Moldbug actually self-identified as a Nazi? He has offensive views to many, to be sure, but Nazi is much more s…

1. Do you think people like Hitler just arise out of the sea one day, like Aphrodite, completely unbidden? No. Worms like Moldbug lay the path for the actually physically dangerous people to rise up.

2. I'm not gonna get bogged down in a nomenclature debate. We both agree he's a terrible person; that's enough for my argument to work.

3. This would only be true if this were the ONLY factor for the diversity problem (there are others)

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#183

Post by kevinburke »

kevinburke wrote: post #150
xmj wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Curtis Yarvin is a professed fascist who has written about his belief that some races are more suited to slavery than others. Having read a good deal of his unqualified reservations, I wonder if you can source this quote for me please?

Search Google, Twitter, or send me an email. I'm not going to link to hate speech here.

No one has sent me an email.

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#184

Post by brighteyes »

zahmahkibo wrote: post #182
brighteyes wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Bin Laden actually killed thousands of people. If, instead, your example was a Muslim preacher who advocated controversial views, but was not violent himself nor the head of a violent organization, then yes - we should accept such a Muslim preacher, if he has an interesting technical talk to give. 2. Has Moldbug actually self-identified as a Nazi? He has offensive views to many, to be sure, but Nazi is much more s…

1. Do you think people like Hitler just arise out of the sea one day, like Aphrodite, completely unbidden? No. Worms like Moldbug lay the path for the actually physically dangerous people to rise up. 2. I'm not gonna get bogged down in a nomenclature debate. We both agree he's a terrible person; that's enough for my argument to work. 3. This would only be true if this were the ONLY factor for the diversity problem (t…

1. Sure, but trying to stamp out every person with opinions you think might lead to something bad someday is, frankly, more frightening to me than Moldbug. What you advocate threatens our existence as an open society.

For social progress to happen, we need people to tolerate unlikable minorities. That's how things like gay rights happen, as 30 years ago, your arguments could have been use to ban a gay activist from a tech conference.

Yes, tolerating unlikable minorities like whatever Moldbug is has risks. But it's a risk we have to take.

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#185

Post by 13thLetter »

zahmahkibo wrote: post #167
moldbugisvile wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Marxists, they're cool right? Edgy even! If you want to hold these standards and exclude someone like Moldbug, fine by me. But if you do that there, do it consistently . Newsflash: Che Guevera executed blacks, gays, nuns, and more in cold blood; his face is now considered a bland apparel decoration. Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot and Mengistu and many others killed and caused the deaths of 10s of millions of human be…

I gotta say, this is some next-level red baiting.

What was incorrect about his statement?

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#186

Post by mcantelon »

calibraxis wrote: post #179
mcantelon wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does theoretical common ownership of the state mean a state doesn't exist? Do you have any examples of this theoretical non-state communist society? Has it ever existed at any scale?

These are among the most common anarchism 101 questions. FAQs exist; why not google for yourself? (Or speaking of capitalism, pay someone to educate you rather than expect uncompensated labor. I've done enough unpaid work resulting from your character assassination.)

"Educate yourself" seems to be a fashionable way of dodging difficult questions.

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#187

Post by zahmahkibo »

erics32 wrote: post #149
zahmahkibo wrote: post #139

Not all views are equal. Some views are so horrendous it is our moral duty to ostracize their believers.

How right you are! Let's ostracize and noplatform all the wrongthinkers. How about we start by banning those horrendous muslims whose beliefs are homophobic, sexist, calls for the death of apostates and atheists etc. Or maybe those sexist homophobic christians?

Again, this presupposes that all thoughts are equal. They are not. This should be a trivial distinction for a hacker to make.

It is also particularly interesting you are talking about groups of people, when this discussion was about Moldbug. That Moldbug holds sociopathic opinions is at this point simply a matter of public record. Anyone with an internet connection can confirm this.

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#188

Post by zahmahkibo »

brighteyes wrote: post #184
zahmahkibo wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Do you think people like Hitler just arise out of the sea one day, like Aphrodite, completely unbidden? No. Worms like Moldbug lay the path for the actually physically dangerous people to rise up. 2. I'm not gonna get bogged down in a nomenclature debate. We both agree he's a terrible person; that's enough for my argument to work. 3. This would only be true if this were the ONLY factor for the diversity problem (t…

1. Sure, but trying to stamp out every person with opinions you think might lead to something bad someday is, frankly, more frightening to me than Moldbug. What you advocate threatens our existence as an open society. For social progress to happen, we need people to tolerate unlikable minorities. That's how things like gay rights happen, as 30 years ago, your arguments could have been use to ban a gay activist from a…

It's not about "might." That's like saying the sun "might" set, or the tide "might" recede. Worms like Moldbug have a 100% historical record of mutating into terribly destructive individuals when given even the slightest leeway. On the other hand, tolerating them has a zero percent success rate. Zero! Never, not once, in history have Fascists been beaten by anything by the usual liberal, democratic means of discourse and praxis.

And again, not all opinions are equal. The opinion "we should noplatform gays" and "we should noplatform Fascists" aren't remotely in the same world just because they share the same first three words.

Imagine if we applied this argument to other facets of life! Imagine if people thought doctors were as bad as cancer because they tried to poison cancer cells. Imagine if people thought the Jews who rose up in the Warsaw ghetto and murdered Nazis were as bad as the Nazis themselves!

Also LMAO it's not a risk for everyone. It isn't a risk at all for the usually affluent/usually white liberals that usually stand in the way of noplatforming people like Moldbug. It IS a risk for people of color, women, the disenfranchised, etc. It is facile for someone to say "well that's a risk we have to take" when it's hardly a risk to you at all. Of course politicians use this logic all the time to justify the mass slaughter of civilians abroad. "Well, it might result in collateral ~~murder~~ damage, but that's just a risk we'll have to take."

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#189

Post by brighteyes »

zahmahkibo wrote: post #188
brighteyes wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Sure, but trying to stamp out every person with opinions you think might lead to something bad someday is, frankly, more frightening to me than Moldbug. What you advocate threatens our existence as an open society. For social progress to happen, we need people to tolerate unlikable minorities. That's how things like gay rights happen, as 30 years ago, your arguments could have been use to ban a gay activist from a…

It's not about "might." That's like saying the sun "might" set, or the tide "might" recede. Worms like Moldbug have a 100% historical record of mutating into terribly destructive individuals when given even the slightest leeway. On the other hand, tolerating them has a zero percent success rate. Zero! Never, not once, in history have Fascists been beaten by anything by the usual liberal, democratic means of discourse…

> Worms like Moldbug have a 100% historical record of mutating into terribly destructive individuals when given even the slightest leeway.

You're thinking of all the ones that you know the outcome of, like Hitler. But there are many, many idiots like Moldbug that simply do not succeed in doing anything. Many Hitlers go back to painting after failing at politics, some even after some initial promise.

Statistically, ignoring Moldbug will work. And actually banning him is counterproductive: I only heard about him through these bans, and it led me to read a bunch of his work out of curiosity. I wasn't convinced (I'm not exactly his target audience anyhow for demographic reasons), but others might be.

> not all opinions are equal.

The point is we don't know which are equal. 30 years ago, most people thought the ethical thing was to ban gay people. And 30 years from now, things you and I do now will look bad to people.

Given we might be wrong, just like all past and future generations, it's a good idea to be tolerant.

Of course, we shouldn't tolerate all behavior - if someone sexually harasses someone, we should ban them and report them to the police. But for just having a certain belief, or other personal attribute that is not part of a programming language conference, we should not ban people.

Re: Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf

#190

Post by zahmahkibo »

13thLetter wrote: post #185
zahmahkibo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta say, this is some next-level red baiting.

What was incorrect about his statement?

It is two thousand and sixteen in the year of our Lord. Redbaiting doesn't work any more; McCarthy is death. Screaming "BUT WILL SOMEONE JUST THINK ABOUT THE VILE, VILE COMMUNISTS?" at every turn to suppress dissent no longer works. It is an evasionist tactic.
Post reply on HN