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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”

#291

Post by learnstats2 »

ncallaway wrote: post #83
DanBC wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you tell coke, nike, and adidas that you're boycotting them?

Truth be told, I didn't really "start" boycotting Nike products as I didn't happen to be purchasing much from them already. I included them rhetorically as the three-beat felt much more natural in that context. I did tell Coke and Adidas.

Boycotting Coca-Cola is extremely challenging: they own a lot of competing "hydration" brands and perhaps even the manufacturing processes used by their direct competitors.

I know several people who think they are boycotting Coca-Cola but are extremely ineffective in managing to do so. Although Coke might be disappointed by the damage to their core brand, they might be less than disappointed when you choose their more profitable products as an alternative.

Good luck!

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

#292

Post by hga »

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.

Back then being or becoming Christian didn't mean an end to your career; perhaps some of this current hardness is due to the much nastier consequences of going against the mainstream?

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

#293

Post by paxdickinson »

al3x wrote: post #166
PopeOfNope wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."? Marxism happened. Limiting speech has always been a tactic employed by the political left. Words like "racist", "sexist" and "homophobe" were designed to shut down free speech. It's extremely effective at silencing any opposition.

The political left in America were made enemies of the state during the era of McCarthyism. People's careers and personal lives were ruined during that Red Scare. That is "silencing". That is "limiting speech". Who on the right today has been similarly "silenced"? If someone is called out for racism and then voluntarily chooses to exit public life or withdraw further commentary, that's their own cowardly choice. Bein…

>Who on the right today has been similarly "silenced"?

Hi, nice to meetcha.

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

#294

Post by eaton »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #8

I wonder - suppose someone Alex Miller agreed with, but who also caused controversy, was met with opposition by folks who disliked her. For example, suppose a bunch of gamergate types were to complain about Brianna Wu giving a purely technical talk about pathfinding and AI. Would all the folks who are so quick to defend Strangeloop also defend it in this case? Somehow I doubt it.

That's really the crux of the problem, isn't it? If the organizer of a conference decides not to give a platform to neofascists who want to end democracy, they MUST also bar women who are being harassed by *chan trolls.

There's simply no way that a conference organizer could possibly handle those situations differently without being a hypocrite.

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

#295

Post by jessaustin »

devalier wrote: post #150
sagichmal wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> actions like this encourage . . . controversial writers > to stay in the shadows, hide their real identities, lest > the vigilante mobs find them. Racist writers can stay well in the shadows; their human persons can suffer the consequences of their detestable opinions. Both of these are moral and just outcomes. Societies need not, indeed must not sacrifice forward progress on the altar of freedom of expression for…

If we can not make moral decisions as a society, to say "the opinion that minority races are inferior is not one we are willing to tolerate," we stand no chance to have any meaningful cultural progression. Can you suspend disbelief for a moment? Imagine, hypothetically, that in the world we live in, the one standard deviation difference in IQ between certain races was in fact primarily due to statistical differences…

Haha, she was at least clever enough to avoid the is-ought trap.

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

#296

Post by topynate »

overgard wrote: post #191
steveklabnik wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first sentence implies that technology and politics are divorced. I disagree with this. Furthermore, _certain_ views merit more consideration than others, especially with regards to something like a conference, see raganwald's comment elsewhere in this thread about conferences being cultural. Second, I've been aware of Yarvin long enough that I am not particularly aware of how I came to know the psudonym. I don'…

> Your first sentence implies that technology and politics are divorced. I disagree with this. I find that perspective strange. Machinery does not particularly care what end it's put to. > Second, I've been aware of Yarvin long enough that I am not particularly aware of how I came to know the psudonym. I don't remember it as being particularly private. I did not go out of my way, I saw his name on the program and ins…

Moldbug's fundamental definition of Left and Right is that the most purely Left organisation makes everything political, because everything is effected by persuasion, and the most purely Right organisation makes nothing political, because everything is by compulsion.

This is becoming a pretty fruitful way for me to analyse sentences along the lines of "the code is political." The interpretation is that if you 'accept' the code in some fashion, you are implicitly persuaded of some political proposition. This is a complete funhouse way of looking at what Yarvin might actually be doing: providing a structure that you can choose to execute, and that will instantiate certain unbreakable rules under which you must (are compelled to) operate. There's no subtext, it's right there in front of you in the most immediate manner possible. You either run it or you do something else.

Two branching lines of thought from here are that a) even as people like Klabnik try to separate the 'acceptable' political thought from the unacceptable residue of racism etc., they are constantly attacking at a political level, and b) looking at a rigorously defined computational system and trying to work out what the deep hidden politics of it are, is rather like the beginning meditator's mistake of thinking that mindfulness involves access to some distant source of knowledge. Rather, mindfulness involves noticing literally the most immediate possible thing, the activity of your own mind, which is with you every moment of your waking life.

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

#297

Post by k0nsl »

masterleep wrote: post #256
steveklabnik wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have at least attempted to be _very_ clear that I do not begrudge the organizers of this conference for exactly the reason that you say. Your 'boring interpretation' lines up with my understanding of the situation. As has been said many times in this thread, Yarvin is free to say what he believes, and I am free to say what I believe, and organizers are allowed to do what they want. This is how a free market of idea…

Booting out Moldbug makes sense as long as we boot out any avowed communists or Marxists as well. Those philosophies led directly to the deaths of tens of millions in the past century, so any reasonable person should find them highly offensive.

Agreed. But we know that won't happen...not in a long time, anyway.

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

#299

Post by oldmanjay »

tptacek wrote: post #165
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that's oversimplified, I find. The quote implies that the colonizers found Africans to be more suited to fulfilling slave roles, and that the master-slave cycle formulated earlier is a genetic one. It doesn't make a direct judgment whether the colonizers were correct. The jab at political correctness doesn't seem to be an absolute refutation of opposing arguments, so much as an outlining of the historian's fallac…

The term "politically correct" comes directly from the quote, as does African genetic predisposition for slavery. It's also not an isolated, out-of-context quote. For instance, it's easy to find Moldbug holding forth about the evils of South African apartheid abolition.

After reading the specific example given, I do have to qualify that as an out of context quote. The surrounding paragraphs make it clear he isn't targeting any one race in particular with the genetics business, just that the master-slave relationship occurs frequently enough and in enough forms that it seems to be fundamental to our nature as a people. I have a hard time finding that objectionable.

You're heavily implying that one can find writing wherein Curtis explains that black South Africans need white rule, but all the writings I can find "easily" (via google) are about how the current government fails to be at least as good as the apartheid-era government, which is an unpalatable truth but hardly racist. Do you have some specific examples? I'm not finding it as easy to come up with damning examples as you indicated.

I will admit I've found quite a lot that can be easily twisted if you're being uncharitable but I'm assuming you're better than that.

Overall, I'm getting the feeling that Mr. Yarvin is a victim of the modern moral panic led by "right-thinking" folks, and as seems to happen far to frequently, the panic seems to be precipitated by strange misinterpretations instead of what was actually said.

Sure, he advocates for forms of government few people want. I'm not too onboard with that meaning he needs his technical work suppressed.

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

#300

Post by djur »

fixermark wrote: post #239
djur wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewers are generally not allowed to ask you about your political positions or take them into account in any way. Frankly, talking about one's politics at an interview for an apolitical position would be so inappropriate as to reasonably raise concerns about the interviewee's impulse control and judgment.

Clarification (at least from a USA perspective): Interviewers are not generally banned from asking about your political affiliation. In many states, there are protections against discrimination based upon political leanings, but they are not implemented across the board nationally.* As a good rule of thumb: if you really want the job, do not volunteer potential employers anything about yourself that you don't think w…

I meant most interviewers are forbidden from discussing it by company policy, even if it isn't forbidden by law. My state doesn't ban asking about political positions in interviews, but I know I'd be canned if I ever asked an interviewee about that.

Agreed on everything else.

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