What a bunch of children. They don't agree with a person's personal views, which are totally tangental to the subject of the conference, so they pick up their ball and go home?
Since when did everyone become such cowarda towards people with different ideas? Why not show up with a diverse group of kick ass programmers, and show him he's not so great?
No, we'll run and cry, and make blog posts about it. Stay strong. /s
They decided to cancel it because they feel that being associated with an advocate of white supremacy over the lesser races hurt their image, or were offended by said views. It's their prerogative, just as it's lambdaconf's prerogative to invite that man. They're not asking people to boycott lambdaconf, they're not even blaming lambdaconf for doing this - they explicitly state that they respect their right to do so. I read an implicit "just as you should respect our right to associate, or not, with whoever we want" there.
How is standing up for what you believe in cowardly? they find these ideas disgusting and protest them in a peaceful yet visible way. What would you rather have them do? ignore the issue and compromise their ethics because, well, it's easier (read: be cowards)? or make a more confrontational stand, such as trying to get lambdaconf speakers to cancel?
The issue is not whether moldbug is great or not - it's whether typelevel wants to be associated in any way, shape or form with ideas that they find abhorrent. They decided they didn't want to, and I can't really fault them for that.
Sounds like it was somehow linked to lambdaconf, at least implicitly.
If they aren't in the mood to preside over such an event, it's reasonable not to have it at all. They are not obligated to be in the business of public debate, and the results of such debates could easily harm their reputation. It's important in life to pick your battles. Having read about the speaker in question, it's pretty much impossible that TypeLevel employees would be able to magically argue him out of his existing position, and it's probably equally inevitable that he would be unable to argue them into his position.
None of the above seems childish to me. Most people I know, with few exceptions, make such decisions all of the time. Are you going to have a good Thanksgiving, or are you going to get into it with your reactionary relative for the thousandth time?
This is a professional conference about a particular apolitical topic. If the speaker, no matter how controversial or unpopular his unrelated personal views might be, is going to stay on the topic and not bring up politics, then anyone who tries to bring politics into it is being the disruptive force, not the speaker, and that is the person who is creating an unsafe atmosphere and needs to be ejected from the conference.
> it's pretty much impossible that TypeLevel employees would be able to magically argue him out of his existing position, and it's probably equally inevitable that he would be unable to argue them into his position.
Why is it necessary for either of them to argue the other into their position?
> Are you going to have a good Thanksgiving, or are you going to get into it with your reactionary relative for the thousandth time?
I'll tell you what I wouldn't do: I certainly wouldn't demand that my reactionary relative not be permitted to attend, and if she's gracious enough to not start a fight at the dinner table I won't start one myself. If she can be polite, I can be polite.
If we're going to keep running with this thanksgiving comparison, they're not asking for the relative not be invited. They're having a party the day after, a party to which the crazy relative was never invited, and decided to cancel that.
You make it sound like they randomly woke up one day and decided, for no particular reason whatsoever, to not hold an event they had already put enormous effort into planning and scheduling. They are cancelling their event in an attempt to pressure LambdaConf into bowing to their political demands.
> If we're going to keep running with this thanksgiving comparison, they're not asking for the relative not be invited. They're having a party the day after, a party to which the crazy relative was never invited, and decided to cancel that.
How would that behavior make any sense, though, if you're a person who doesn't want to disrupt the Thanksgiving dinner? They already didn't invite the crazy relative to their own party; what more do they want?
Back to the thanksgiving dinner thing: they don't really want anything other than to make it clear what they're having an issue with. But they're not asking for anything, just saying: this is incompatible with my values, I'm taking myself out.
What else do you want them to do? Compromise their values? Who are you to demand that of them? Or demand the crazy relative be booted, making the whole thing horrible for the host? They took the only reasonable action given their values: take themselves out of the equation, and explain why. Anything else would have been either childish or cowardly (again, given their core values, which you might disagree with or not feel quite as strongly about).
If their values are "we cannot interact in a professional manner with people who hold views we dislike," their values are bad and they should compromise them. If we can't get along with those with whom we disagree when necessary to accomplish unrelated things, we might as well disband this country and start arming up for civil war, because that's where this road ends.
Maybe you could. Maybe, if someone had consistently argued that you and your family were of an inferior race and should bow to their will as is your ordained place in the universe, you could shrug it off and say, "let's agree to disagree and get on with things".
I'd guess this has never happened to you though. I'd guess you can have this position because this is not your safety and your rights that are in danger. It's always so much easier to consider hatred acceptable when you're not its target.
In a professional environment we all have to compromise. You can't expect to only run into people who share your values and/or validate and approve your life style, or even what you feel is your identity.
I'm fine with working with people whose don't share my values. I wouldn't be with someone who very publicly and very repeatedly advocated me and my family being enslaved. If you are, good for you! just don't expect everybody to share your obvious strength of character and forgiving nature.