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Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

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Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#51

Post by hga »

saryant wrote: post #38
steveklabnik wrote: post #32

I've protected my twitter account because of https://gist.github.com/steveklabnik/7cd3267a631c4847c34d Basically, a Breitbart columnist said that they were putting an article about me today. When this happens, a wave of harassment generally follows. I did not delete that or any other tweet on this issue. (They seem to have decided to post about something else instead, we'll see.) As I said in the last thread, I don't…

How do you reconcile your statement that "I have not called for violence against any person and do not condone it." and your tweet about being "100% okay" with a violent "antifa" movement? http://popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/steve.png

Presumably his as of yet inchoate concept of a tech "antifa[scism]" movement does not, at this time, "call for violence against any person". Heck, it doesn't have to, when all his side has to do is the "Nice tech career you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it" (why Alex Miller had to capitulate). Violence will be entirely irrelevant until those of us who are getting shut either start staging a counterrevolution (don't ask me how) or start forming our own counterrevolutionary tech culture; then things might get interesting, especially since we can limit our venues to those which allow concealed carry ^_^.

Which, oddly enough, includes Strange Loop! (Unless the Peabody Opera House screens attendies with metal detectors (!), in Missouri law even a "no guns" sign at such a venue only means you have to leave if asked.)

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#52

Post by ta92929 »

maxmax wrote: post #40
nemo wrote: post #13

While Moldbug holds hideous political views, if the talk is on tech. and doesn't overlap him advocating hideous things, then this is akin to the old Hollywood blackballing, the excuse for dropping him was pathetic, and I agree that promoting a culture of free speech must be a core value of a liberal society. I'm pretty far-left (though more liberal than leftist), and found the black-and-white leftist-bashing in the a…

Hitler was a decent painter, but I wouldn't want him in my gallery.

I would.

In Hungary after the government change they saved a whole bunch of communist statues that were being taken down and made a museum out of it. I think it's interesting and worth seeing.

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#53

Post by oldmanjay »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #46
oldmanjay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time understanding the "hate speech is violence" perspective. I feel like that position can only be held by someone who has never actually been assaulted using real, actual violence. I guarantee, being punched feels a heck of a lot worse than standing next to a person who (potentially) talked positively about slavery.

I get where you are coming from but verbal abuse can be incredibly scarring. As someone that experienced both I can assure you of that... And ill grant that you weren't really talking about abusive speech... But hate speech especially from a superior...be it job or school... An authority figure, I could see where that would be just as bad.

Well just to keep this on topic, I'm not aware of any authority Curtis Yarvin has, so how could anything he says rise to that level?

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#54

Post by almaIV »

sudioStudio64 wrote: post #46
oldmanjay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time understanding the "hate speech is violence" perspective. I feel like that position can only be held by someone who has never actually been assaulted using real, actual violence. I guarantee, being punched feels a heck of a lot worse than standing next to a person who (potentially) talked positively about slavery.

I get where you are coming from but verbal abuse can be incredibly scarring. As someone that experienced both I can assure you of that... And ill grant that you weren't really talking about abusive speech... But hate speech especially from a superior...be it job or school... An authority figure, I could see where that would be just as bad.

Even in this reply you've had to use a metaphor for physiological abuse (a scar, a bodily mark of harm) to elevate the seriousness of emotional damage, to the extent this emotional damage is even lasting, and it doesn't have to be, while something like a scar is unequivocally permanent barring some kind of advanced cosmetic treatment.

Whether some emotional damage is "scarring" (i.e. permanent) will depend on, well, a lot of things, but almost no kind of emotional damage has to be permanent because of the way our physiology of emotions behaves. Your resilience, your existing beliefs, what you expect out of the world, and so on will determine how you respond to stressful stimuli. Learning that people don't live forever can be 'scarring' (not really) to a two-year old, but, people eventually adjust to this information, because stress tolerance exists. If everything were as equally stressful as the first time we heard it, our bodies would be overwhelmed with cortisol all the time. Since this obviously doesn't happen, our bodies can (and do) adapt to stressful stimuli in various ways.

Comparing emotional damage to scars is probably a false analogy. Your skin will never fully adapt to a gash, and being stabbed once isn't going to change the way your body responds to stabbings. But your body will adapt to stressful emotions, or at least it is capable of doing so. In the worst case it's probably like a muscle tear, but in most cases emotional stress is more like some kind of the muscle trauma that happens during resistance training, which the body adapts to.

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#55

Post by joe_coin »

lexcorvus wrote: post #9
savanaly wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is wondering about the actual views and arguments of Moldbug and his neoreactionaries, they were covered and responded to by economist blogger Noah Smith here. http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/neoreactionaries.... The crux of it (and something I never saw quite covered in all the essays bouncing around) is "Essentially, neoreaction is the dream of a society of mostly white people, living in a hier…

the actual views and arguments Getting the views of neoreactionaries from Noah Smith is like getting the views of Luther's 95 Theses from Pope Leo X. How about, you know, just reading Moldbug? http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com

And for those who prefer a chronological index: http://mencius.xmas.ratry.ru/

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#56

Post by nemo »

maxmax wrote: post #40
nemo wrote: post #13

While Moldbug holds hideous political views, if the talk is on tech. and doesn't overlap him advocating hideous things, then this is akin to the old Hollywood blackballing, the excuse for dropping him was pathetic, and I agree that promoting a culture of free speech must be a core value of a liberal society. I'm pretty far-left (though more liberal than leftist), and found the black-and-white leftist-bashing in the a…

Hitler was a decent painter, but I wouldn't want him in my gallery.

The problem with Hitler wasn't just the ugly and noxious ideas he had, but what he did. Moldbug is a ignorant crank, but on that front he isn't doing much besides ranting, largely in the incoherent jargon he's invented. I don't like him, and can't stand his views, but I fully believe that preserving his freedom to think and say ignorant and stupid things is important to protect, and any attempt at a cure is likely worse than the poison.

I'm been told by plenty of people that I'm a loon with crazy political views (Tea Party family members mostly), but if I was working on an interesting tech. project, and wanted to do a talk at a tech. conference about it, I'd hope that wouldn't be a factor in conference organizers rejecting me.

If I'd started a political party founded on ideals of illiberalism, dictatorship, and subjugation of the people I hated and worked to gain political power in the US, then I'd say not accepting me at a conference could be more easily justified as the conference would then become a political platform for me regardless of what the talk was about.

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#58

Post by almaIV »

hga wrote: post #51
saryant wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reconcile your statement that "I have not called for violence against any person and do not condone it." and your tweet about being "100% okay" with a violent "antifa" movement? http://popehat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/steve.png

Presumably his as of yet inchoate concept of a tech "antifa[scism]" movement does not, at this time, "call for violence against any person". Heck, it doesn't have to, when all his side has to do is the "Nice tech career you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it" (why Alex Miller had to capitulate). Violence will be entirely irrelevant until those of us who are getting shut either start staging a c…

I made this word up a long time ago, but the "nice tech career you have there" move can be called 'bluelisting' -- i.e. censorship of someone's outside-employment speech via threatening someone's at-employment livelihood. I think it's a problem, and an increasingly huge one.

People who are virulently anti-libertarian inexplicably adopt very libertarian "employers should be able to hire/fire anyone they want" responses when this practice is criticized, as if they don't see any kind of problem with the ability to readily get someone fired for arguing controversial beliefs outside of their workplace.

But, think about it this way: you obviously can't deeply engage the views of others at work, unless you have a very open-minded workplace or those views somehow relate to your job performance. (I doubt questions like "is it immoral to do [insert drug]?" or "should prostitution be legal?" would ever be workplace appropriate, but they're sincere views people hold that dictate drug policy via public opinion for example.)

So, if you can't talk about these things at work, where the hell do you talk about them? I'm guessing on the internet, because colleges are the next option and they're only available to a fraction of the population for four years at a time. So the internet is no longer an option, where? I'm asking this question rhetorically. If society has no battlegrounds for beliefs, democracy is permanently is screwed, because you need some kind of battleground for beliefs to refine beliefs in concordance with reality in the first place.

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#59

Post by calibraxis »

Glad that leaders in the white community stood up against terror supporters! (In a country where organized, armed whites shoot children, strangle friendly cigarette peddlers and assault bikini-clad women relaxing on lawns.)

Many whites are decent people. I have white friends and even dated whites. But in my experience, many vocally support sending armies abroad to spread capitalist law. I know the PC police (real police) hate hearing this, but it helps when good whites openly condemn supporters of terror. Otherwise maybe they should go back to Europe?

Re: Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)

#60

Post by Cowen »

oldmanjay wrote: post #41
oldmanjay wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a hard time understanding the "hate speech is violence" perspective. I feel like that position can only be held by someone who has never actually been assaulted using real, actual violence. I guarantee, being punched feels a heck of a lot worse than standing next to a person who (potentially) talked positively about slavery.

As a follow up, I've read a bunch of Unqualified Reservations since this whole brouhaha started (and I read some before, I find it occasionally amusing) and I've never seen any of the racism or hate speech I see claimed. I have seen a lot of out-of-context examples, but every one I tracked down was simply using shocking imagery to make a larger point. There is quite a bit that speaks frankly of slavery and the relati…

> unless the very concept of slavery is supposed to be considered racist

I've never read a word of Moldybug or whatever, but in the American context, the very concept of slavery is absolutely considered racist and rightly so. America's history of slavery is completely inseparable from racism.

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