Wrestling With Inclusion at LambdaConf
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Yet it seems there are those on the left (and to some extent on the right) that demand ideological purity in all things. "You must be the right kind of [ideological stance/trait], lest you offend someone..." Seriously, I've seen flaps over Laura Jane Grace's book being titled Tranny (she's trans) over the last week. It's just as bad when you look at how fellow libertarians go at each other (see Jeffrey Tucker's essay on Libertarian Brutalism and the resulting fallout).
It's absurd how bad things have gotten in this regard and I honestly am concerned we'll see ideological puritanism infect various F/LOSS projects and events. Just keep the CoC to the absolute essentials (don't be a perv/jerk/stalker/etc and don't have sensitive topics in conversations...).
Which has no bearing on the conversation, as you cannot deny that the person in question is anything but a vehement and devout racist.
We're not mad he's a christian. I'm not even mad he thinks trans sexuality and non-binarism is an illness. At least there is some idea I am human there. He genuinely thinks non-white people are a sub-species.
Please, please, please don't try and equate this to a "political" view. There is no political view worth entertaining that denies people's essential humanity.
Does this even matter if he never speaks to people face-to-face on a FL/OSS project? A commit is a commit and unless he's dropping Daily Stormer in IRC or the mailing list it shouldn't matter. If they're not harassing someone who's African-American or any other non-white ethnicity I don't think it should come up. More likely such people who are devout in their racism won't contribute to projects which have PoC heading or contributing to them on a regular basis. If your CoC goes outside the scope of handling harassment and incivility I'm not gonna support your project with donations or code submissions, ever. So, I guess that makes me one of the 'baddies' then.
To participate in LambdaConf, participants must pledge their allegiance to your Code of Conduct. That's fine, except for the following part of the CoC that mandates the following:
"That I shall embrace and celebrate the abundant diversity in the human species, and refuse to feel threatened by those different from me;"
This is a highly problematic statement. By diversity, you mean diversity in sexuality, race, religion and politics. Why is this a problem?
Because nobody should be made to "embrace and celebrate" all the diverse facets of humanity. It's patently absurd: I'm not going to celebrate and endorse the views of paedophiles, I'm not going to embrace and celebrate the views of the doomsday Aum Sum cult, nor any of dozens of even more innocuous views such as open source is a cancer on society. Nor should a gay person have to celebrate and embrace the views of those who believe marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
And in fact, you don't. You've excluded a racist, which FWIW I don't have a problem with. But you are hardly celebrating the diversity of humanity, which includes those whose views deny people's essential humanity.
There is a big difference from politely and civilly disagreeing with the opinion of another, and asking someone to embrace and celebrate the fact that there are views held by others that they find fundamentally objectionable.
All you should be asking for is that you respect their right to hold their views, but not impose them on others at a conference that is about functional programming!
This Code of Conduct goes too far. As I've said, if you applied reductio ad absurdum then it would mean that it celebrates and embraces those who - like myself and evidently the conference organisers - don't believe that you should celebrate and embrace all aspects of the abundant diversity of humanity. The reason this argument reduces to the absurd is that because of my view, I am specifically excluded from your event, which means that your own CoC doesn't embrace and celebrate all diversity within humanity.
I'd suggest you dump that clause. It's self-contradictory and a ridiculous condition you are imposing on participants. In fact, it's a straight-jacket for conference organisers because when you do exclude someone you can, unfortunately rightly, be accused of violating your own CoC!
In addition, you do realize that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, right? Nobody chooses to be attracted to people they can't ever legally have sex with. And just as there's nothing wrong with being gay, there's nothing wrong with being a pedophile (keeping in mind that child molestation, i.e. rape, is wrong, just as all other kinds of rape).
Of course, you miss my point on this anyway - there are people out there who believe that forcing themselves on children is right. There are also those who believe that rape is justifiable - just ask Daryush Valizadeh.
Furthermore, I am indeed interpreting this correctly. I am saying that if you want to force those who don't celebrate diversity from joining your organization, your are rejecting the a part of the diversity that you are celebrating. Let's restate this: if I say that I say that there are some things that humans promote and undertake are so horrendous that I cannot accept them under any circumstances, then I am implicitly rejecting the notion that diversity is to be celebrated. I am in fact rejecting diversity - as almost every single human being does to some degree.
What is basically being pushed here is a form of moral relativism, and taken to it's logical limits it's entirely self-contradictory.
Obviously. We should chemically castrate them. Like Alan Turing. Being attracted to anything but adults of the opposite sex is wrong and sick.
/s
I don't agree with the guy's views either, but I wouldn't disinvite him just because he thinks that way.
Good on LambdaConf for letting him come anyway. Many of the quotes from this piece were shockingly powerful. I'm happy I took the time to read it.
Your definition isn't necessarily correct. I don't think the commenter you're replying to meant any harm, just that he'd rather not participate in listening to that particular talk.
Which is a shame, really. It's a shame that people feel the need to ignore entire people and all of their ideas just because of one idea that the person had. As the quote goes, "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." [+]
But that's that person's right, to abstain from interacting from a person. I don't think it was meant maliciously. I think it's just a sort of misguided kind of thinking.
1: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boycott (emphasis mine)
+: I mean no offense to the person you're responding to either; I believe Eleanor Roosevelt should have exchanged the word "small" with "closed".
That's VERY easy to make editorial decisions on. The entire purpose of the conference staff is to editorialize.
Is Hacker News endorsing you by letting you comment here?
And I'd be concerned too if this conference let him talk about his viewpoints, but that's not what he's on the stage for. If someone looked into your history deep enough, wouldn't they be able to find something distasteful too?
Imagine not being able to talk about your software development career just because something thinks something you did (even if entirely unrelated!) was distasteful.
Do you think anyone seriously looks at Moldbug as an authority figure? Come on, you're blowing this way out of proportion. I think someone should be allowed to have their fringe views and be a member of the wonderful programming community. I don't agree with his views, but I'll defend his right to have them.
If you think it's easy to make editorial decisions on, I think you're missing some part of this.
If that is true, then it's also true that no one is censoring him by declining to let him speak at a conference.
> Is Hacker News endorsing you by letting you comment here?
No, but Hacker News has and will continue to make editorial decisions about who is allowed to post here. Race baiting trolls have been called "race baiting trolls" and kicked out of Hacker News right before my eyes.
> And I'd be concerned too if this conference let him talk about his viewpoints, but that's not what he's on the stage for. If someone looked into your history deep enough, wouldn't they be able to find something distasteful too?
Of course! I was a hyper-right self-denying religious racist as a child. I've been very open about the environment I was raised into, and done my best to work through those issues. I no longer endorse those views, and I've paid a heavy price for them.
But you seem to pretend that just because the subject of his talk is some technological function, that this means that he will not be interacting socially or simply being present. Isn't the best part of conferences the "hallway tract?" Do you think his presence will not influence that?
Have you read what this person has wrote? "Racism" is not "distasteful." Racism is a vile dehumanizing view of our peers.
> Imagine not being able to talk about your software development career just because something thinks something you did (even if entirely unrelated!) was distasteful.
Racist viewpoints, no matter their origin or justification, are not politics. They're a fundamental denial of other people's humanity. These views were once common, but now are frowned upon. People who vocally and publicly espouse them can and should face societal consequences. It is not like tech conferences are some special place where humans was away the stink of the outside world and emerge as beings of pure thought.
> I think someone should be allowed to have their fringe views and be a member of the wonderful programming community. I don't agree with his views, but I'll defend his right to have them.
No one is mad because of a fringe view. They're mad because he vociferously promotes a view of the world that fundamentally denies the humanity of many people who are members of the tech community. These targeted members are part of a community that faces systemic violence and discrimination in many parts of the United States. We've seen this lame tactic before; people claim that any mention of feminism and the inherent biases of the programming community is "politics" and that should "stay out of tech." "Tech is neutral on this issue! All we care about is making something."
But when you take a neutral stance on someone clearly calling for oppressive action to be enacted against an entire category of humans, you are not being neutral. You're inherently supporting them, because inaction on human rights issues means not protecting human rights.
> If you think it's easy to make editorial decisions on, I think you're missing some part of this.
How is saying, "We don't support racism" even remotely difficult in 2016? Quite the opposite. With the way that sponsors are dropping off of LambdaConf, they've chosen the expensive road. The major sponsors are pulling out, and I have backchannel info that another one will on Monday.
I don't recall saying anything about censorship. I said it was "actually inadvisable". Because I think that his views have nothing to do with the presentation he's going to give. No one even realized that he was going to give this talk because the speaker names were anonymized to the editorial crew, probably as a way to prevent marginalized groups from being excluded.
> [...] Hacker News has and will continue to make editorial decisions about who is allowed to post here.
And those decisions are made judging by the person's interactions on HN and only HN, as far as I know.
> [...] you seem to pretend [...]
Am I being accused of something?
> [...] just because the subject of his talk is some technological function, that this means he will not be interacting socially or simply being present.
Firstly, there's a very well-written pledge that all LambdaConf attendees (speakers or otherwise) have to follow. What you are describing in his social interactions will be contained within those rules. He will be thrown out if he does something stupid.
Secondly, is his mere presence such an affront to you? Are you really unable to exist in the same space as a racist? I understand that those views are fundamentally wrong and really awful. But what does his presence have to do with it? Can you explain to me a scenario where his presence is a factor in the equation?
I know he's dehumanized people in his writing and I think that's a horrible thing. At the same time, what do his purposely self-anonymized writings have to do with his code?
> [...] can and should face societal consequences.
Witchhunting? ...I hope I'm misunderstanding you. Can you please elaborate on this point?
> [...] people claim that any mention of feminism and the inherent biases of the programming community is "politics" and that should "stay out of tech." "Tech is neutral on this issue! All we care about is making something."
I said none of that, and I don't agree that feminism or bias are politics. They're intertwined with society, which touches everything we do. I agree with many of the ideals at play here, and you're not wrong about systemic violence and discrimination. At the same time, I wouldn't prevent him from talking to a group of people because of what he believes in a different context. It's not in scope. We shouldn't be seeing side-effects here.
If I or anyone else made a conference for feminist issues or the like, then I'd have to reevaluate whether people are interested in hearing what he has to say. But that's not even in scope in this instance.
> [...] someone clearly calling for oppressive action to be enacted against an entire category of humans [...]
Citation needed on his call to action. A quote from him:
>> I promote only one kind of action: reading old books. I’ve explicitly denounced any other form of “direct action,” violent or otherwise.
> But when you take a neutral stance [above quote] you are not being neutral. You're inherently supporting them, because inaction on human rights issues means not protecting human rights.
False dichotomy
> 2016?
I know what year it is
> even remotely difficult
You're boiling down a complex concept to "supporting racism"
> they've chosen the expensive road
Being inclusive and open-minded is priceless to me
> I have backchannel info
Is it just me or do you seem to revel in this? Realize that this kind of stuff is penalizing people not even remotely close to this argument or whatever's happening.
It's not complex. An infamous author of racist texts who also happens to do technology shows up at another tech conference and goes, "Wink wink nod nod I think black people make good slaves but we can be patient about that and passively do it."
There is no threat to his speech. There is every threat to his avenues for podiums from which to speak in public. No one is saying he can't attend. They're saying they don't want to go to a conference that gives a podium to a devout racist.
> At the same time, what do his purposely self-anonymized writings have to do with his code?
Nothing. This has nothing to do with his code. It never has been. Why do you keep bringing it up? Are you going to perhaps say, "Because it's a tech conference?" Because I'd reply, "Because it is a tech conference." It takes place between people, and only serves its attendees.
> Is it just me or do you seem to revel in this?
I loathe that this is my responsibility. I loathe that this is a thing we even have to discuss. I hate that these assinine actions and weak justifications need to be shot down again. They're boring, they're tiresome, they're morally baseless and intellectually bankrupt.
But I also feel like collecting bad actors in my peer group and helping to censure them is important. My reasons for that are my own.
... this is a really unfortunate way to carry a discussion. And I'll remind you that he's not carrying his ideals to the conference. That'd be against the Pledge, as well as against his public statement in the article.
> There is no threat to his speech.
I'll say it again. "I don't recall saying anything about censorship." I didn't say anything about free speech or censorship.
> [...] a devout racist.
> Why do you keep bringing [his code] up?
What does race have to do with it? What doesn't his code have to do with it? It is indeed a tech conference, and I believe that anyone who has an interest in tech and is willing to follow the rules should be able to attend.
He has given every indication of those two things.
It does take place between people, you're right. But do you think he's going to be an awful person in person? And I'll quote back again to my previous post: "is his mere presence such an affront to you? Are you really unable to exist in the same space as a racist? I understand that those views are fundamentally wrong and really awful. But what does his presence have to do with it? Can you explain to me a scenario where his presence is a factor in the equation?"
It does not dis-serve the attendees of the conference for him to be able to go.
> I loathe that this is my responsibility.
This is your responsibility? What?
> [...] morally baseless and intellectually bankrupt.
Can you explain to me why you feel this to be the case?
And I agree that criticizing bad actors is a perfectly okay thing to do, within reason. I disagree with the idea that the shitstorm surrounding this is reasonable. This is totally excluding someone from a community. And as much as I agree with your right to have your opinion, I disagree with the idea of taking action on such an opinion.
I just can't fathom it. I don't get it. And I don't think that his racism in a totally different context precludes him from being able to participate in a conference.
Why exactly is it that a short written statement can somehow absolve someone of the social responsibility of a multi-year career of hate speech?
> What doesn't his code have to do with it? It is indeed a tech conference, and I believe that anyone who has an interest in tech and is willing to follow the rules should be able to attend.
No one has said he can't attend. Why would yous suggest this?
> But do you think he's going to be an awful person in person? And I'll quote back again to my previous post: "is his mere presence such an affront to you? Are you really unable to exist in the same space as a racist? I understand that those views are fundamentally wrong and really awful. But what does his presence have to do with it? Can you explain to me a scenario where his presence is a factor in the equation?"
It's not his presence. It's his authority figure as a speaker while being an outspoken member of the pro-racism community. Do you actually know what he writes about?
> And I agree that criticizing bad actors is a perfectly okay thing to do, within reason. I disagree with the idea that the shitstorm surrounding this is reasonable.
How is this unreasonable. "We will not support your conference if you give the podium to a famous and vocal racist who calls for the enslavement of black people." This is a boycott. No one is suggesting they be made to comply by force.
And the amount of pressure brought to the sponsors is minimal. Tiny. People are choosing not to support LambdaConf because the notion of handing the microphone to a prominent and vocal defender of racism is a vile notion.
Why is this so hard to grasp?
> This is totally excluding someone from a community. And as much as I agree with your right to have your opinion, I disagree with the idea of taking action on such an opinion.
Why should an intolerant bigot be included in any community? Don't these communities have a right and a duty to control their attendance as they see fit?
It doesn't. I agree that what he said was unacceptable. But just because what he said was unacceptable, does that mean we shouldn't accept him and everything he does?
> No one has said he can't attend. Why would yous suggest this?
Right, sorry. He can attend for sure. I meant that he should be able to speak, since he'll be following all the rules and has an interest in tech.
> It's his authority figure as a speaker while being an outspoken member of the pro-racism community.
He doesn't identify himself by his racist beliefs. He keeps them separate from his technology. It has nothing to do with his tech. If he walked up to someone from a minority group and talked about his views at the conference, or if he said any of them from his podium, I wouldn't care as to what happened to him. But it looks like he'll make every effort to follow the rules.
> How is this unreasonable. "We will not support your conference if you give the podium to a famous and vocal racist who calls for the enslavement of black people."
It's not far from being reasonable, except you seem to be forgetting that he's never made a call to action. And the fact that his views on race, in the way that he holds them, have nothing to do with tech. Actually, it is kind of far from being reasonable.
> And the amount of pressure brought to the sponsors is minimal.
Look, I don't really care about pressure to the sponsors. The possible damage here to them is minimal. What I do care about is how this affects LambdaConf. It's really sad that there is damage done to LambdaConf just because of this.
You even said that they're "taking the expensive road." You realize how much this one issue is hurting them.
> Don't these communities have a right and a duty to control their attendance as they see fit?
Who is "these communities"? On my post with the text "This just in", I have more than 30 upvotes. Your posts are going gray. You are trying to control the attendance of the community as you see fit. And there are people in the community that disagree with you.
> Why should an intolerant bigot be included in any community?
If you exclude bigots, they will be bigots forever. Imagine if someone hadn't included you into their community when you were, as you described yourself, "a hyper-right self-denying religious racist as a child." If you were shunned by the community, wouldn't you still be that way today?
I believe in including bigots because I believe that people can change. I believe in including racists because I believe in working with people to achieve something great, regardless of who those people are.
You're not just intolerant of racism (which is an understandable thing), you're being intolerant of an entire person. And you're taking action on it. You yourself are acting in an intolerant manner.
And that's a shame, because you're a well-reasoned person, you're clearly intelligent, and I'm enjoying this discussion with you.
Intolerance of intolerance is a precondition to an actual open society. Suggesting I allow people to divide themselves in half in a way we'd never do in any other portion of society (imagine this person being appointed as a teacher at a university then promising his beliefs won't affect his communications with his students). It's ludicrous. It's absurd. Let him actually demonstrate the behavior he's pledging and then we can talk, but there is no rational reason to believe he won't bring conflict, strife, and bigotry with him wherever he goes. Even if you cannot see it because you don't seem to be the subject of his ire.
Mendacious Moldbug has brought this rejection upon himself in one of the few ways we universally recognize as a way to earn that rejection: by passing the identical fate upon a whole category of people just because of the circumstances of their birth. Far better to reject one toxic person than make every non-white person walk on eggshells throughout the conference. And you need not look far to find a number of people in the community who would feel that way, and already face substantial marginalization that no amount of behavior changing can ameliorate.
I'm fine being intolerant of intolerance. Any rational person should realize the implications of not speaking out against intolerance wherever we find it. And part of that speech is making proponents of intolerance feel unwelcome. We shouldn't invite Eric S Raymond or David Duke to speak at these events either.
It's not particularly related to the rest of the discussion, but I'm curious as to what passes as rectifying his behavior. What would he have to do?
> It was not faux-tolerant people like you who would ever lead to that change.
Although I disagree with the "faux-tolerant" assertion (I believe I'm being tolerant!) I'll agree that the change probably wouldn't stem from me. I try to get along with people as much as I can. Perhaps this incurs a cost on others. This criticism is a fair one.
I'm not a reactionary-conservative (maybe that's who I'm being compared to?); I'm not trying to mislead you. I honestly believe what I'm typing. (I reserve the right to change it in the future but) I'm not trying to trick you. This is an honest discussion and I am treating it like one (and thanks for doing the same). I don't feign misunderstanding, I just honestly don't understand.
> Intolerance of intolerance is a precondition to an actual open society.
Isn't intolerance of intolerance an intolerant act in and of itself, though?
> (imagine this person being appointed as a teacher at a university then promising his beliefs won't affect his communications with his students)
I actually have had teachers that have taught in this way, both in high school and at university. Not that they promised any of this to the administration, but that they made a promise to us not to let their inherent political bias infect what they were teaching us. They would try to present, as best they could, both viewpoints. This, in and of itself, was a lesson to me.
People can hold two separate and conflicting ideas in their minds, while realizing the implications of both ideas. As a precise example, it's exactly how I was taught the functionalist and conflict perspectives of sociological theory. It is literally cognitive dissonance to accept both ideas, but you can't understand the whole of sociology without both of them. Cognitive dissonance can be a tool.
Hell, I had an English teacher in high school that was a known (and self-admitted, to a degree) misandrist (not to such a degree that the word connotes, but there was a bias). She asked all of her students to use ID numbers rather than names, because she realized that she always graded essays written by males lower than those by women, and that the disparity didn't exist when she didn't know. She was a fine teacher, and the bias rarely ever spilled over into how she taught otherwise. She was also the fairest grader I had that year.
> but there is no rational reason to believe he won't bring conflict, strife, and bigotry with him
He said he wouldn't. Until he does, I'll believe him. Maybe I'm a pushover for thinking so, but I also think people are innocent until proven guilty. He says some shitty things, but I don't think he'll say them on stage. And if he does, then he gets kicked out.
At the same time, tptacek's post here[1] disagrees. I don't have any direct citations, so I can't speak to it. And because of that, I'm going to believe Moldbug. I hate that I have to, but I think I can logically defend it, with a lack of further evidence. (I have to because I can. If I can't, I won't.)
> Far better to reject one toxic person than make every non-white person walk on eggshells throughout the conference.
We know at least a couple non-white people won't walk on eggshells. I remember this post[2], from someone who isn't white.
And I agree with the spirit of that post. If someone says something stupid, by God, let them shout their idiocy, so that we may hear it and strike it down with our logic and our facts. Let us put people in their place when they have asked for it and not a moment before.
Moldbug basically represents neoreaction. If he acts poorly, it'll show people like me (who are neutral on him for the time being) that he and what he represents is actually harmful. Suppressing how stupid someone is only makes their stupidity more effective. It's when their stupidity is visible that people can avoid it. To me, it's a win-win. Either he shows us some very strange and interesting tech, or he acts like a dick and no one listens to anyone from the neoreactionary movement ever again.
Being intolerant of wholly intolerant people is not a bad thing, but there are some people that can separate their intolerance from the other aspects of their lives. I don't think Moldbug is a wholly intolerant person. I think he holds intolerant views. And I think there is a distinction to be made, especially as these views are not in scope of the talk that he's giving.
Even if you consider my views misguided or wrong, do they at least follow logically?
Admit the worldview is wrong and he was mistaken, then hold that view publicly and without recantation for a reasonable sum of time. But that's for me. Other people may have different standards.
Forgiveness is not something that calendars well.
> He said he wouldn't. Until he does, I'll believe him. Maybe I'm a pushover for thinking so, but I also think people are innocent until proven guilty. He says some shitty things, but I don't think he'll say them on stage. And if he does, then he gets kicked out.
Ignoring his existing behavior and its duration is not a logical or reasonable act. It is a luxury you can express because his beliefs do not deny your essential humanity.
> And because of that, I'm going to believe Moldbug. I hate that I have to, but I think I can logically defend it, with a lack of further evidence. (I have to because I can. If I can't, I won't.)
You do not have to. You've chosen to ignore his writing. You've chosen to ignore his reported and verifiable actions. You've chosen to ignore the people hurt by those actions.
> If someone says something stupid, by God, let them shout their idiocy, so that we may hear it and strike it down with our logic and our facts.
How often do black people have to refute people who claim they're sub human before you're satisfied? You should let them know what they're on the hook for, if that's evidently the rule.
> that he and what he represents is actually harmful.
None of this is about neoreaction. No one has mentioned neoreactionaries. That he believes in an authoritarian government or all but fetishizes small corporate structure is supremely boring and unoriginal, he's repeating the same arguments about essential quality that we saw in the Victorian Era.
His "biodiversity" doctrine is the problem. And that's not a belief shared by all neoreactionaries (and I know a few who vehemently deny that this is a required tenant).
Racism is not politics, racism is not religion. Racism is hate. You keep trying to sneak in this equivocation like I won't notice. Like somehow if you say it often enough we'll all forget this is the central point of this entire discussion. It is the same moral and ethical cowardice that filled the original blog post.
> Even if you consider my views misguided or wrong, do they at least follow logically?
No. You have willfully discarded the evidence, discarded Occam's razor for a strained equivocation that wouldn't hold up in a first year college philosophy class.
You have further attempted to take a weak form of censure (i.e., "We decline to have you speak at this conference, though you may still attend.") and classify this into a rejection of that person's humanity and then pretended this is identical to Yarvin's views towards black people. At worst, that's disingenuous. At best, it lacks even a shred of human empathy.
I'm certainly done talking to you now.
You're confusing yourself. Let me use reductio ad absurdum to point out how your logic is self-defeating. Please understand, I'm not ridiculing you, just pointing out the logical fallacy. Try this formulation...
Isn't hating "hate", in itself, hateful? Why, then, it follows that we should love "hate" in order to be loving! Hate people: it's what loving people would do!
There is a moral equivalence here that's wrong. Despising things that are evil isn't in itself evil, merely because you're employing a word or sentiment normally associated with evil. It's the loaded meaning of the words "despise" and "intolerant" that's tripping you up. Try the word "embrace" instead and things become much clearer.
Example: Isn't failing to embrace intolerance intolerant? No, it's the very opposite.
Citation needed for the claim that Yarvin has called for the enslavement of black people.
I've seen him say that black people made better slaves than, say, Native Americans, but that's quite different from saying that they should be slaves. See this discussion from his recent AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...
He has said he is amenable to white nationalist writings. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-a... He has expounded at length on the suitability of certain races for slavery.
He has frequently called for the dissolution of the form of government that has spent decades and an incredible body count to outlaw slavery.
Mysteriously this doesn't quite add up to a wholesale endorsement of enacting slavery in the US. Just in whatever part of the world he'd like to help Thiel and the ultra-conservative libertarian people build.
And quite frankly, plain naked racism is almost always the justification for enacting slavery. Just because it's convenient for him to say he doesn't endorce active conversion to his "natural" relationship today doesn't mean that the notions aren't a direct precursor and a justification for said actions.
He is, in fact, (creepily) fixated on blacks vs. whites.
I've read one or two of his walls of text, but kind of fogged out a bit due to the length so was more skimming than reading closely in many parts.
Generally, when I ask someone for a citation it is because I want to know if they have done their homework, or are just repeating what they read on some blog or forum.
If you say he is racist, I have no doubt you have checked for yourself, and if I did ask you for cites you'd give ones that strongly backed your points.
The person I was responding too...not so much. I was not impressed with his response.
From what you said here and elsewhere, it sounds like there are three levels to understanding Yarvin. At the first level, you see some statements about things like slavery that seem in isolation to be pretty bad.
At the second level, when you check for context of those specific statements, they seem reasonable. E.g., slavery as a natural human relationship. Given how long widespread slavery lasted in human history, it is hard to say that it is not natural. The key at level two is to realize that recognizing something as natural does not imply one thinks it is good. I'd say much of human advancement comes from deciding that we will NOT do things that are natural, because often natural behavior maximizes short term or local gain over long term or widespread gain. Hence, we have banned for good reason various natural behaviors such as slavery, rape, revenge killings, genocide against conquered people, and so on.
Then there is the third level, apparently, where you go deeper and decide that he really is racist underneath.
I've went to level two. You are at level three. The person I was responding to appears to be either at level one, or perhaps at level two but applying faulty logic (e.g., it was democratic governments that outlawed slavery, and Yarvin is against democracy, therefore Yarvin is in favor of slavery).
Quick.... quick question. Wouldn't that have been the kind of foundation research you were asking for and hoping for in the first place? And didn't I provide specific blog posts by the man in question w.r.t. his views on race relations?
Unless of course, your entire request was a disingenuous attempt to derail the conversation.
But now I'm being silly! Of course, that's exactly what you're saying it is. I appreciate how you freely admit that you aren't actually interested in evidence, you were just hoping to derail me. Your honesty is refreshing.
> The person I was responding too...not so much. I was not impressed with his response.
Have a nice day. Better luck next time on your astroturfing.
I asked for a citation on the claim that he has called for the enslavement of black people. I specifically mentioned that I had seem him talk about how some groups were better slaves than others, and linked to a thread within his recent AMA.
You responded with a link to his blog where he said that slavery is a natural human relationship. I followed that link, searched for the places where he said slavery was a natural human relationship--and found nothing in those parts of the blog post where he called for enslavement or even said that it was a good thing.
Your second point was that he has said he is "amenable to white nationalist writings", and you cited a blog entry where he talked about this. There is no mention of slavery in that blog entry, and a bit of Googling has failed to turn up a connection between white nationalists and any advocacy for slavery.
You also brought up, without providing a cite, that he has discussed the suitability of different races for slavery. I had already noted that, since it was in the discussion from the AMA that I cited. In that discussion it was clear that he meant "suitability" in the sense that they work out better from the slaver's point of view. If one group of people tend to die when enslaved, and another tends to live, then the later are more suitable. Believing that doesn't imply that one believes that the second group should be slaves or that one supports slavery.
Which we've established is his MO, which you've accepted from other sources without any claim at all.
> You responded with a link to his blog where he said that slavery is a natural human relationship. I followed that link, searched for the places where he said slavery was a natural human relationship--and found nothing in those parts of the blog post where he called for enslavement or even said that it was a good thing.
The entire discussion was about how good Carlyle's work on slavery was. The entire subject matter is a defense of the use of slavery and in particular black people as slaves. Which he was defending and promoting, as he then directly said slavery was a natural human relationship.
> There is no mention of slavery in that blog entry, and a bit of Googling has failed to turn up a connection between white nationalists and any advocacy for slavery.
I do not believe you did this. If you did you would see that it would at its core remove citizenship rights and protections from everyone not identified as 'white.' The primary goal is the deportation or detainment of the resident black population of America.
> You also brought up, without providing a cite, that he has discussed the suitability of different races for slavery.
You had accepted this as a prior condition and mentioned the AMA. Am I obligated to cite your sources now?
> Believing that doesn't imply that one believes that the second group should be slaves or that one supports slavery.
You know, a few people told me you were a good person to talk to. That you were one of the better commenters on HN. But this level of deliberate, defensive obtuseness is a great example of someone frantically putting their head in the sand.
Maybe you should ask the other person in this thread who you trust implicitly if I'm wrong about this. Either way, your judgement of my methodology and the degree to which you require me to spoonfeed you the vile substance of this conversation is immaterial to me.
We've defunded Lambdaconf and picked up the sponsors to Moonconf. Mission complete.
OK...so now it sounds like I need to read the entire wall of text to get the point? That illustrates a big difference between how you responded to me and how tptacek responded to me.
After I said that I saw the AMA, and that Yarvin's discussion of suitability of various groups to slavery did not seem to indicate he called for enslaving black people, your answer was to cite a couple of his blogs posts, and mention very specific parts of those posts.
I went and read those specific parts of those posts, not the whole posts. I found that those parts did not support your argument.
tptacek, on the other hand, told me that he could provide a citation for the claim, but that it would be complicated because Yarvin is an obscurantist. The impression I get from this and other comments of tptacek is that individual parts of Yarvin's writings have reasonable non-racists explanations (deliberately) so you have to look at the whole giant walls of text.
tptacek has an excellent record of backing up claims with complete and accurate cites when requested, and from this and other comments he's made on the matter the impression I get is that if I were to ask for the details I'd end up with a big list of long articles that I'd have to read in their entirety to get the point. I don't want to read a bunch of giant walls of text on this subject, and it sounds like it would be a lot of work for him to produce it, so I didn't ask for it.
> Maybe you should ask the other person in this thread who you trust implicitly if I'm wrong about this.
I'm not saying you are wrong on this...I'm saying you've failed to show that you are right. I accepted tptacek's response not because of any implicit trust, but rather because he offered a good explanation for why he was not providing a list of citations unless I really wanted them.
If you had said something like "Yarvin can write reasonable justifications for individual points, like he did in the AMA, but when you look at the writing as a whole a different picture emerges" and then linked to a few of his posts, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because as with tptacek I'd have decided I was not interested in going that deep.
But there are also very troubling eyewitness reports about things he's said in person that provide a pretty convenient shortcut to doing that.
Instead, you have to carefully unspool all the stuff Yarvin writes. It's not enough to observe him lovingly citing Carlyle; you have to note how he also cites him when the subject of race comes up, and you have to tie it back to things like his warm and generous citation of Nehemiah Adams --- a figure who, unlike Carlyle, is not very notable for anything other than providing a defense of slavery that sounds suspiciously compatible with everything else Yarvin says about social organization. And so on, and so forth.
It's easy to see how two very smart people could get so tied up discussing this, especially when one of them ('tzs) is only casually acquainted with the work we're talking about.
The kinds of conferences we're talking about here are private events. Conferences are free to make decisions about speakers any way they'd like, just like a magazine can choose to run or not run a story about any given author.
A lot of people talk about things like StrangeLoop and Lambdaconf as if they were academic venues, like USENIX. They are not; they are as different from academic conferences as The National Review is from IEEE Transactions on Networking.
The latter leads to a far happier life. And often you'll find even people who hold views you find offensive can be perfectly nice people most of the time.
Kudos to LambdaConf for actually keeping on focus in the face of dissent.
You seem to be making a declaration that acts are inherently political, and I'm all for that. It's just that the standard works both ways.
So not in this case.
So when someone decides to hold a dev conference but chooses to disallow any gay/lesbian developers, is that also totally okay?
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.
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.
As long as Curtis stays professional and speaks only on Urbit [0] he is doing the right thing and should be allowed to speak.
The idea of a "Code of Belief" is a strawman -- the issue at hand is the expectation not of freedom of thought or freedom of speech, but a desire for speech without consequences (which inevitably requires that the freedom of speech of others be quashed).
> At what point does someone's routine vocal
> endorsement of racial superiority and advocation of
> violence become problematic?
> Or are we obligated to welcome these people into
> our conferences
> (workplaces?
> homes?)
> the issue at hand is the expectation not of freedom of
> thought or freedom of speech, but a desire for speech
> without consequences
I would be curious to know what you think free speech means, if it doesn't mean speech without consequence.
You can say anything you want, and the government won't intervene. That's all free speech means. Other people, groups, and corporations are free to judge you, criticize you, exclude you from their platforms and private events, organize boycotts against you, criticize people who agree with you, criticize people who choose not to exclude you, and so forth. You may dislike that they do those things, but they are free to do so without government interference, because of free speech.
You, in turn, are free to criticize and exclude them in a similar manner. This is dialogue, and a desire to promulgate your opinions but have others not promulgate their opinions (including when they're about you) is the height of hypocrisy.
Darn it, I thought we were going to get all the way through this discussion without someone wheeling out that old nag.
Once again: Attempting to ban people from unrelated fora based on their political views is not against the letter of the First Amendment to do this. But attempting to ban people from unrelated fora based on their political views is quite certainly against the spirit of the First Amendment.
I honestly can't believe someone could be dumb enough to think that the founders would want the government to dictate who people were required to admit to non-public settings. There's no way you're being sincere.
FIFY.
If you can cite cases where people silently disagreeing, e.g. with t-shirts or signs that didn't block the view of others, were removed, I'm all ears. But while I haven't watched this closely, I'm under the strong impression the removees were shouting him down, and were often physically violent.
To quote Ronald Reagan in an analogous situation, "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green".
The First Amendment cannot prevent social ostracization.
As long as the person does all that on their own time and is professional and respectful in the work context? Never.
Any other questions?
And frankly, I am of the view that it's better for views like Yarvin's to be out in the open where they can be challenged, rather than left to fester. That means - yes - that his speech must be allowed "without consequences" for his employment, etc.
I have few redundant personnel of my thought police I could rent out to you.
"In the end, we all converged on the same opinion: that LambdaConf should focus on the behavior of attendees, rather than their belief systems."
What you believe in, in everyday society, shouldn't matter either. It is how you treat others and if you do so with politeness and respect, you should expect the same in return.
That _does_ matter; it makes large swaths of the potential talk audience (and other attendees) feel unwelcome. How can you engage in polite, respectful discussion with someone who believes that you're more suited to be a slave than a free man?
Having read a good deal of his unqualified reservations, I wonder if you can source this quote for me please?
I'd imagine there's a solid overlap between Hacker News posters and people who might attend a functional programming conference, and judging by this comments section your position is in a distinct minority. So if it's OK to ostracize people based on their unpopular political opinions, you may find yourself in the hot seat you've been preparing for Yarvin.
How about this: perhaps we should instead strive for a system of pluralism and tolerance where we don't bring our political disputes into the professional sphere.
>> "Not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery. For others, it is more suited to slavery. And others still are badly suited to either. These characteristics can be expected to group differently in human populations of different origins. Thus, Spaniards and Englishmen in the Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries, whose sense of political correctness was negligible, found that Africans tended to make good slaves and Indians did not. This broad pattern of observation is most parsimoniously explained by genetic differences."
If personal politics and beliefs are not apart of the talk, I don't care.
Polarizing of personal beliefs, unless specific personal actions are documented, is comparable to a witch hunt.
At least for me.
My own beliefs waver on the spectrum of Silicon Valley, yet I have concerns for outside options I have.
But, no, at a technical conference, if personal idealogy isn't part of the talk, that is your own issue and you need to deal with it.
With tensions in the world PCism needs to stop and individual accountability is more inportant, at least to me.
You can't separate the two. Spouses invited to a speakers dinner? What if my spouse is also a man? What if my spouse is a different race? Should we give priority to people of color and women in the speaker selection process? Are trans people allowed in whichever bathrooms they want? Giving a talk on preventing fraud and abuse, where part of your belief system is "women should be free to give opinions online without bullying, trolling and harassment?" How are you supposed to give that talk without communicating a value system?
Just to clear any ambiguity, I don't accept the modern definition where you can call someone racist because you don't like their writings in sensitive topic. I'd like to see some hard evidence where said person has actively discriminated against someone with different racial background.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/2b/78/f2/2b78f2e25...
Similarly a fascist is someone that believes in the fascism ideology. That's just how these words work.
Well, if the discussion is about technical matters, that's easy. (As long as CY is willing on his own part to talk politely and respectfully to people he considers his racial inferior, of course, which is not a given.)
Even on the actual matter of contention: yes, that's harder (albeit utterly irrelevant to Lambdaconf). But why should even that be impossible? CY's 'contribution' to politics seems to consist entirely of taking the vulgar prejudices of certain degenerate corners of the internet and giving them a superficially erudite and sesquipedalian form, without actually strengthening the intellectual content. His arguments are laughable. I'd probably pay good money to see someone politely, respectfully leave the whole edifice in smoking ruins.
That's wrong of course and I say that as a non republican. The Tech industry has become so politicized positions that used to be seen as extreme are considered "normal". I mean how can an article such as this one can be deemed acceptable on a tech blog ? : https://archive.is/elvvc
Replace white people by black people and racism, defined as broad generalizations based on the color of skin, becomes obvious. Yes the article linked is racist period.
Don't worry. Tech is currently undergoing yet another tectonic shift, with the difference that this time it goes into the right direction.
From my point of view, it seems like the previous (pro-feminist, pro-censhorship) tectonic shift still lasts (Brendan Eich, Gamergate, "Shirtgate", "discrimination" in tech), and IMO it's definitely going in the wrong direction (towards lies and censhorship).
that's, uh, kind of the point.
No, really. People have different opinions, and are allowed to have them, even if they hurt your feelings or you disagree. Since when did this thought crime bullshit take over? Orwell would never have thought that self policing, not Big Brother and his armed henchmen, were what would do in individual thought.
Nazis are bad. Racists are bad. Claiming these "opinions" are equivalent to any other is childish and immature. Grow up and realize you live in a society with other people, and the positions you advocate for (and encourage others to advocate for) have real consequences.
Think about that for a minute - then remember that interracial marriages used to be banned, and a person with your operating principles would have actively made it worse for those people to enforce the norm.
But this is different! You say - missing entirely the point.
aka libertarian fruitopia
Everyone should feel included! Racists, homophobes... Respect the beliefs of everyone, like believing there is a god, or that white people are superior, or believing you are being discriminated, or believing people will insult you or assault you at a whim for who you are, or believing you belong in a community full of racist assholes. It's OK 100%, all beliefs are equal, so we shouldn't discriminate people based on that!
That would be even worse than racism if you think about it."
I'm sad and disgusted.
Ouch. Must've been an almost sisyphean task in Moldbug's case. Dude's the most prolix blogger I've ever come across.
If you actually care about inclusion, you need to think about how including backwards-views that oppose inclusion itself could affect your effort. Banning only physically violent behavior is behind the times, it's obvious there are many ways of harming someone without lifting a finger. If you're supporting inclusion for inclusions's sake, including everyone may make sense. But if you really care about people who depend on you including them, it's obvious some measures must be taken to create a safe environment for the underrepresented.
Then it comes down to defining what "safe" means. To most people, that does mean basic physical safety, meaning you won't be physically assaulted or have your stuff damaged/stolen.
However, once you get into subjectivity of a listener's interpretation of others' words or social actions (like disinterest in their topics or cultural mismatch), calling any difference from their beliefs or expectations "unsafe", all procedural sanity flies out the window. The only types of meetings that can be rationally and formally capable of running under such specific clauses would be particularly exclusionary meetings of only certain beliefs.
Inclusivity means exposure to difference, and if exposure to difference means "unsafe" to someone, then inclusivity itself is unsafe to them. There are those who also simply equate "socially uncomfortable" with "unsafe", and social discomfort can come from literally anything.
(Edit: I would strongly prefer responses from the downvoters. Defining some specific, actionable policy capturing subjective interpretation by attendees without becoming exclusionary is something I'd be interested in actually seeing. I'm not talking about subjective application of policy, but actual full capture within policy.)
Please be specific: how is Yarvin's presence making you unsafe? Are you concerned he'll physically attack you, or insult you personally or as a member of a group? If not, you have no reason to feel unsafe.
(And if you feel unsafe anyway and believe that's a reason to ostracize him, well, I have bad news: your viewpoints make me feel unsafe. So sounds like you're not going to be attending, either.)
Disregarding irrelevant political views and focusing on the technical content is what every conference should do. It's too bad that this is less common than it should be.
If I ever organize a conference (unlikely) I will return here and adopt LambdaConf's policy along with a link to this very open and thoughtful consideration as justification.
It's probably already happening.
I would think it would be well within the mandate of the conference organisers to pick talks that reflect the material they want to see presented and the conversation they want attendees to be able to participate in. The conference is a curated collection of talks, and will necessarily reflect an active political position held by the organising committee and a passive political position shaped by systemic issues. For almost all tech conferences, even the very large ones, the politics expressed are so bland and so unfocused that no one really cares about them. Almost no tech conference has the capability to seriously address systemic issues of inclusivity.
I imagine LambdaConf's view resonantes with the audience on HackerNews, because it addresses primarily the former politics. The latter politics aren't a danger to most of the commentators here.
The inclusivity of attendance seems to be much more defensible. Even under great pressure, I can see an event being reluctant to bar attendance. I don't know that any tech conferences ask unpopular people to simply stay away (even if they promise to be on best behaviour.)
Out of curiousity can you describe how one could " address systematic issues of inclusivity"?
Get over yourself a little and you'll see that the above is the ultimate consequence of your choices to exclude people.
Given how most codes of conduct are written there is virtually no difference between the two. If a code of conduct in a community applies everywhere its members might be on the internet or in the real world, then they are not free to say what they want publicly anymore. If one can be excluded from an opensoure community because of a totally unrelated comment on some obscure forum as stated by codes like the "contributor covenant", it's pretty clear that this kind of code of conduct is a code of thought.
How much should the State intervene? Wrath of Kahn and GATTACA were both dystopian. Roe v Wade will reopen soon on CRISPR grounds.
Now, I don't like those beliefs at all. I do think that LC made the right decision though. Inclusiveness is a good policy, and no matter how certain more authoritarianly inclined progressives are spinning this, that's what this is. Assuming no one is threatened, and he isn't promoting his politics, he should have a chance of going through the (anonymized!) entry process and talking about the really weird and awesome Urbit.
[1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carl...
edit: One of my main philosophical issues with Moldbug (besides the repugnancy), is that he is internally inconsistent. He might refute that later on. I dunno, he's spewed out literally tens of thousands of pages of text.
I assume you mean LambdaConf, not StrongLoop.
I assume by SL you mean LC?
Neoreaction is just another form of asshole-ism in the blogosphere.
People have strong reactions to it and thus its proponents should not be surprised when their belief colors other peoples' judgement of them when they want to talk about something unrelated at a conference.
https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/514125493663436800
Communism has killed millions and millions of people yet its advocates don't get blacklisted for wrongthink.
And despite Klabnik's efforts to police the ideas of tech speakers, his chosen software licenses don't prohibit use of his software by repressive regimes:
https://github.com/steveklabnik/request_store/blob/master/LI...
Your post is horrifically misleading.
Anyway, anarchists generally strive towards communism, if that means an advanced future society where you're free from boss-subordination, and some don't have to be "poor" to scare everyone else into obedience.
And anarchists don't bomb people, unlike adherents of every other political philosophy in the last decades. Certainly the US is always bombing people. Even Bernie Sanders supports it.
Please google these basic terms before you engage in character assassination. As you did with Klabnik. (On topics like this, HN comments don't even rise to the factual rigor of YouTube comments.)
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.
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 beings, far more than Nazis could hope for. Marxism has never gone out of fashion on the left, and prominent tech speakers display their Marxist colors proudly.
Who will boycott them and stand for the memory of the millions killed in Marxist suppression, genocide, and famine?
If not, why not?
2. Has Moldbug actually self-identified as a Nazi? He has offensive views to many, to be sure, but Nazi is much more specific, and to me, a weird way to interpret what he writes. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that what you call "Nazi" I would call "disgusting, wrong, and troubling." The fact we don't agree on what precisely he is - even if we both dislike him - is one reason why we should not ban him. Especially since on other people we might not agree on who to ban (e.g. some consider abortion doctors to be literal murderers; should they ban such doctors from a programming conference?).
3. About the diversity situation in tech: the article mentions how another industry, medicine, handles this kind of thing. LambdaConf's decision is the default in that industry. In fact, in practically all industries. Yes the gender difference in tech is larger than in medicine. That is inconsistent with your claim.
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)
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.
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."
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.
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.
Community sanctions are part of what it means to be human.
> Community sanctions are part of what it means to be human.
But not the only part, or even the most important part. (And as long as we're getting philosophical, just because they're part of what it means to be human doesn't mean they're always admirable. Prejudice against outsiders is also part of what it means to be human, after all.)
Well, that's a political position with sizable historical backing. The people behind the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and China's revolution would all have agreed.
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" - Marx.
The relevance is that this guy isn't the only one who believes it, just the only one we're currently talking about for being honest on social media.
His speech is no more actionable (and thus no more worrying) towards any individual than "Just bomb Iraq" was in late 2001. Cough.
In lieu of threats you don't get safer for banning him because 1) bans don't actually work against criminals (not that he is, but if he was) and 2) if you're really at risk there are billions more who feel the same way he does. Better to avoid a false sense of security and just be on your toes.
"It's okay, you can kick him, he thinks X, Y, Z so he's practically Hitler"
The status quo: highly funded white people in a ranch house, obsessive dreams of white supremacy floating into the night...
(Unfortunately in the real world, very few "technologists" have any sort of progressive future vision. Most just chase money and perks, building bureaucratic tech. Politically regressive.)
> we wrote the speaker and asked for a public statement clearly stating the speaker’s views on violence.
What does "violence" mean here? We're talking about Moldbug's acts of spreading white supremacy whenever he gets a platform. Including tech conferences and good ol' boy networking.
> Social media has muddled this issue so much
"Social media"... as in this blogpost? Twitter & HN? Techies sound suspiciously like oppressive governments, blaming "social media" when it threatens actual disruptive change.
> Last year, StrangeLoop rescinded an invitation to a speaker because of the controversy that erupted (nay, exploded) when his talk was announced.
People pointed out the error, and StrangeLoop promptly fixed it. This is in keeping with previous actions, like implementing dozens of tips from a highly respected diversity consultant.
There's a reason StrangeLoop is considered way ahead of the curve. Other confs aren't willing to do what it takes to be excellent. (And anyway, StrangeLoop is more than just about a single style of programming, unlike LambdaConf.)
> Would this be the end of LambdaConf???
How many tech conferences ended so far because they give high-profile white supremacists a platform? Just look at the racially-skewed audiences.
> Feedback Highlights: Below are a few quotes from some of the amazing feedback we received:
7 in favor of giving Moldbug a platform. 1 unclear. That's all he decided to list.
> The status quo: highly funded white people in a ranch house, obsessive dreams of white supremacy floating into the night...
Were you there? If not, then you're projecting. As it happens, the participants were at best plurality white. And no, the PoC weren't all Asians either.
Also, because Twitter requires short statements, there are multiple readings of "ignored" there. I see you're taking the least charitable one, i.e., "everyone let it slide." That interpretation is incorrect. People stopped talking to him. Isn't shunning what you progs want?
Good, because I used your interpretation: silence. You silently enabled a white supremacy propagandist.
Of course, you're certainly NOT silent when it's time to support him. (Despite your own evidence of his history of "casual racism" at a professional networking event.)
So you're oddly quiet with white supremacy: you "stopped talking". But god forbid you "ignore" when a conference right next to Ferguson (StrangeLoop) declined to help promote a white supremacist's influence!
(Hell, if I mocked people's favorite programming language or text editor, I'd almost certainly get a vocal reaction. Mild rebuke at least. Says everything about techies' priorities.)
> As it happens, the participants were at best plurality white. And no, the PoC weren't all Asians either.
That's interestingly vague: were these participants to Moldbug's "casual racism"? I imagined he only did this with obviously sympathetic audiences like you.
(And what does "the PoC weren't all Asians" exactly mean? For someone berating others for interpretations you don't like, you leave open a wide range of interpretations.)
And that wasn't the starting point? What a joke!
> We would never allow a violent criminal to attend LambdaConf.
Yes, you would. You'd be sued if you didn't. They did their time and (presumably) got out or the question would be moot. If they (or anyone else) threatened someone, see the next point.
> There is always a line. There must be one. The question is, where do we draw that line?
I've run conferences for years where the only policy of that sort is that we won't hesitate to call the police.
It's worked perfectly because if someone follows someone else to harass them that's illegal despite the subject matter. Harassing someone for liking the wrong pokemon is just as actionable as harassing them because they're the wrong gender. If the person isn't harassing anyone they're free to their opinion no matter how odious.
The police are very helpful in explaining "a disturbance" and how someone is creating one!
And here's the answer to threats, violence, etc. They get arrested. Not expelled. Not shamed. Arrested. Treat it like you'd treat random street crime and have them arrested.
Lambda is pretty solidly about functional programming. Maybe extending to programming/admin in general but not to politics.
Speakers should always be tweaking their talk for the audience anyways to handle different durations, venues, crowds, time of day, etc. If there's anything you don't want you can fix it here.
I'm absolutely within my legal right to call the police on anyone who I kick out for anything other than a tiny list of protected reasons, and I do so. (Very rarely, almost everyone leaves immediately when you show that you aren't playing some rules-lawyering game but simply calling the police.)
Both as someone familiar with human behavior and as someone who's gotten legal advice, a code of conduct never helps me or the good attendees. It only offers refuge for the spoilers.
So as a member of the majority, I'm expressly the only person bound by these rules of behavior in this pledge. My allowed attendance would be contingent on remaining silent the entire time on premises.
One way that one could attend is to not say offensive things. Yes, anything could be offensive and you have no way of knowing a priori. But a reasonable person should be able to sort things out.
We have two articles on the front page condemning a two second soundbite at a keynote which was vetted by one of the most image conscious companies on the planet. I don't think your statement is true. If a code of conduct does not treat everyone as equals then it sets up a dynamic that will cause some group of people to shutdown and not participate.
"Donglegate" involved person a being offended by what another person said whilst at a conference, and somebody else - not the conference organizer, or indeed anyone at the conference at all - punishing the person who caused offence.
You don't see that as having a chilling effect?
Donglegate isn't about conference staff having a quiet word with people in private. It's about one person getting fired for offending another, and that person eventually getting fired because of community lacklash.
If all that had happened was that somebody got offended, privately told a staff member, and then the person causing offence had been privately spoken to - which is what the PyCon code of conduct required - we would never have heard about it.
Now, the possibility that the offendee might shame me publicly and cause me to get fired might have a chilling effect. But that's nothing to do with codes of conduct. If anything, publicly shaming somebody that offends you would be in violation of the code.
Your assertion was "You will need to remain silent if you bully, harrass, intimidate, stalk, stereotype, or belittle." The guys in donglegate did none of those things, and yet they were in fact reported to staff. Over private words.
My point is that you never know what is going to offend someone. This CoC says that you agree to be removed from the premises if someone gets offended, provided they are of proper minority status, which in itself invalidates the whole idea that this is a non-political CoC.
Can you quote the jokes and explain how they were meant to belittle women?
EDIT: Herein lies the rub, and some might say the whole purpose behind CoC's. As a cop might say, you might beat the charge, but you won't beat the ride. Even if you've been tried by event staff for wrongspeak and found innocent, your whole experience is ruined.
The code actually says that you agree to be removed if you "wantonly behave in a manner inconsistent with" it, and only one of the paragraphs mentioned minorities: they chose to lead with a general requirement to treat others with respect, dignity and empathy, regardless of who they are.
This is not a code of conduct designed to punish accidental "thought crime" against minorities: it is designed to prevent intentionally or recklessly offensive behaviour towards any and all conference attendees.
Sure, it was just one paragraph (or 1 of 5 bullet points in the pledge). Let's look at another:
"That if I become aware of any behavior by others which is inconsistent with this pledge, I shall take immediate action to report such behavior to event organizers;"
Coupled with this in particular from the previous quote: "examples of minority groups include..."
40% of this pledge says: If an event-goer commits and/or witnesses a behavior that could be offensive to a minority group of some sort, thanks for your money but we'll be taking those badges back, unless this hourly event staff member thinks you're cool.
You, like many others, miss the most important part of DongleGate. She shamed the supposed dongle-joke offender on Twitter with their picture, which was unambiguously against the Code of Conduct, for it bans harassing photography. She did not only fail to see the hypocrisy, her actions were deemed heroic and she compared herself to Joan of Arc.
This was a clear sign to anyone paying attention that Codes of Conduct were never about policing behavior objectively, but instead were to be wielded as a weapon to shame and attack particular groups of people based on a political ideology of victimhood.
Only if you are incapable of acting like an adult human being. As someone who is also a member of the majority, I would find no problem in being able to follow the rules, because I can behave like an adult.