Will we see a similar reaction when anti-white or anti-male speakers are invited to speak at conferences? Or are there groups that it's acceptable to insult and denigrate?
PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
61–70 of 122 posts
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#62If you're going to start a massive drama based on accusing someone of saying something bad, please quote the bad thing directly . When you call someone an "advocate for slavery", I check your accusation for links and verifiable quotes. If there aren't any, then I reflexively assume this is someone who ran over your dog, stole your girlfriend, and said nothing of the sort. Thank you. EDIT: I have been informed that Jo…
The individual in question is Curtis Yarvin aka "Mencius Moldbug". Quote: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CGr9pDjW8AA23uT.jpg Source: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.be/2009/07/why-carl... Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
Thank you for the links. I really feel like they needed to be part of the original post.
Yarvin's writing is... rather too voluminous for me to feel confident that I know what he believes, in so little time, but I did see a few things in that seven-year-old post which made me question the interpretation given:
> "Lifetime employment and slavery are, of course, practically synonyms, and indeed the same phenomena of reciprocal loyalty and dependency were said - repeatedly, in my memory, in the '90s on NPR - to emerge."
> ...
> "Carlyle is in fact ready to be as indignant as anyone over these abuses. He reasons: since slavery is a natural human relationship, this bond will exist regardless of whether you abolish the word. And it does - if only in broken and surreptitious forms."
This leads me to think that he's using words in a non-standard way. An unwise way, given the response it's gotten him, and I certainly wouldn't invite him to speak anywhere if I thought he was going to say things like that. But I'm really not okay with seeing someone attacked for beliefs I'm not sure they actually hold, in domains unrelated to those beliefs, by people who don't appear to be trying to be charitable.
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curtis Yarvin still believes what he said years ago; he has written as much today on Reddit. I would not have made the decision I did if he had renounced his prior views. Lord knows, I had very regressive political views once upon a time, though never as horrid as his.
But really, don't you think it's ok to have very "offensive" beliefs? I hope you are aware it was once reprehensible to think the earth revolved around the Sun and you can get killed for "blasphemy" I believe you are operating under the same principles of censorship AND punishment for ideas you do not agree with. I'm sure you you strongly believe his are "obviously bad". But that's how people in the places above thin…
My belief (which you are free to disagree with!) is that the nature of Yarvin's public statements disqualifies him from acting in good faith with the broader community, at least until he has withdrawn them. I feel that each person is a whole human being, and I do not believe that someone can just leave something like "Blacks are suited to slavery, Europeans to mastery!" at the door. Even if he could, it wouldn't do anything for our speakers and attendees who are not comfortable sharing a stage or a room with him. My job as an event organizer is to make sure that conditions are comfortable for the people who have entrusted me with their safety. I did my best, but to be honest, every possible choice before me was distasteful, and I chose the least odious path I could.
I decline to answer your questions about hypotheticals (a black person who says the same thing, or a hypothetical VC firm, etc.). I believe these are interesting questions, but I do not believe that anyone can come up with a set of rules or laws that captures precisely the outcomes we wish to see; as a result, I retreat to a far less ambitious perspective, where I intend to deal with things like this on a case-by-case basis using empathy and common sense, taking the unique circumstances into account.
I hope that this helps, and I recognize that you may not agree with the choice that I made. But I did my best.
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Is their belief system so fragile, that letting a person speak will destroy it???
I'd say they have enough integrity to not support a parent organization that has made an odious decision. There's a different between "allowing someone to speak (anywhere, at all)" and "providing them a platform." The parent org has decided to provide a platform, which has consequences. You can disagree about the decisions made, but your "belief system so fragile" is a strawman.
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Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#65It is correct and proper to shun and revile a person who actually advocates slavery. To say, "Well, as long as he is not advocating slavery at the con, that's fine." is ridiculous. Throw the racist evil nasty bum out and let someone else who actually deserves the timeslot talk.
Where is the line though? Should radically conservative parts of the south bar anyone who has advocated for gay marriage from speaking at tech conferences?
I think this and the growing list of similar circumstances establishes "she/he/it offended me" as a valid reason to blacklist anyone.
Whoever gets to define Bad Think is in a position of incredible unchecked power.
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#66The announcement is written on behalf of the program committee but signed only by its chair. The cached version of the page doesn't say anything about a program committee either. Who is on the program committee other than Mr. Sterling?
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#67Summary: PrlConf 2016 is being cancelled because Curtis Yarvin[0] is speaking at another conference, LambdaConf, and has written (elsewhere, under a pen name) about political viewpoints that are not mainstream, progressive political viewpoints.
The LambdaConf people are aware of Yarvin's political writings, do not agree with them, but decided to let Yarvin speak anyway if he agreed to their terms, which he did (these are Yarvin's own words to LambdaConf[1] on the subject):
> One: I’m a writer, not an activist. I’m neither a leader nor a member of any kind of organization. I promote only one kind of action: reading old books. I’ve explicitly denounced any other form of “direct action,” violent or otherwise. Instead I promote passive unresistance, or “passivism.” Frankly, any “follower” who needs me to explain this is a dangerous fool and hasn’t read enough old books.
> Two: Politics of any sort is out of scope at a functional programming conference. I pledge to treat other LambdaConf guests as if they were colleagues at a large company or fellow students at a university, and neither utter nor show any content that’s out of scope or otherwise disturbing. My pen name has been “doxed,” but professionally I behave as if it was a secret.
> Three: violence is unacceptable and frankly preposterous at a functional programming conference, even over an issue as charged as strict versus lazy evaluation. The strongest possible pledge is to not respond with verbal or physical violence even if assaulted myself. I have no hesitation in making this pledge.
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The virtue of tolerance is not very virtuous if you don't have to tolerate anything.
Not tolerating intolerance is very different than "not tolerating anything". Popper argued that it is proper and warranted to refuse to tolerate intolerance, and Rawls noted that a reasonable right to self-preservation supersedes the principle of tolerance.
I can tolerate anything except the out-group[0]
[0]http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
the founder of a pro slavery, pro facist movement speaking at your conference is a different sort of thing. Unless he is speaking about pro slavery and pro fascism, I have absolutely no reason to care. Can we please learn to separate technical concerns from nontechnical concerns? And before anyone starts replying with "they're one in the same!" - only under certain circumstances. If the subject of the talk is garbage…
Why do you care so much what other people think and do? You don't care? Then don't. Other do care? Let them, since you don't care keep not caring?
this seems more like meta-caring. i may not care about what anyone writes in a book, but it can be concerning when people start burning books they dislike.
Re: PrlConf 2016 is cancelled
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does prlconf have to do with lambdaconf? How does a speaker at one conference cause the closure of another conference?
It was collocated with lambdaconf and essentially happening within lambdaconf: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:o9MkL1W...
[Wikipedia]
In programming languages, closures (also lexical closures or function closures) are a technique for implementing lexically scoped name binding in languages with first-class functions. Operationally, a closure is a record storing a function[a] together with an environment:[1] a mapping associating each free variable of the function (variables that are used locally, but defined in an enclosing scope) with the value or storage location to which the name was bound when the closure was created.[b] A closure—unlike a plain function—allows the function to access those captured variables through the closure's reference to them, even when the function is invoked outside their scope.