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Comment by OoTheNigerian | Hacker News Reader

I'm African and should be very disgusted by this person's views (I am) [1]

However, the views were written under a pseudonym years ago and has no bearing on technology.

Basically, these were anonymous talks jotted down somewhere.

It is shocking that this person John Sterling canceling this talk thinks it's a good idea to permanently sentence a person for what the wrote UNDER A PSEUDONYM years ago and may or may not longer think the thoughts.

This is the height of intolerance I have ever seen. Left to this guy, thinking absurd stuff today about various issues (not even acting on it) should banish on from society when it is discovered in 2 decades.

I unreservedly condemn such intolerance and declare it far more dangerous than folks who think Africans are a lower species. One is an uneducated thought the other a dangerous totalitarian action.

[1]https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/606576005667504129

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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 think too.

Now, it would have been very different if his political views were a topic of conversation at the conference but to the best of my knowledge aren't. So how do both of them tie up.

I do not know what your religion or denomination is (or if you have one) but I know a lot of people who will not let you work for them (say develop a website) if you do not in private believe that Jesus is your personal Lord and savior.

You are acting alike sir.

PS:

1. Would you act the same if it was a black dude that wrote the same thing/has the same ideas he has?

2. To what extent should he be ostracized? Can he get investment in your VC firm for a photo app? Get a job at your company managing servers? Open a bank account?

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

PPS: What he wrote is very very insulting and reprehensible to me and I'm sure many others.

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.

"My belief (which you are free to disagree with)". However, you are not free to express such disagreement or even discuss it. Expressing ideas with which the "right people" disagree is grounds for scorched-earth attacks on every aspect of your life until you can be brought to heel.

(I find slavery and support for such reprehensible. Such ideas should be openly confronted and countered directly by expressing superior ideas. For example, the idea that all human beings have inherent value and should not be subject to the use of force inherent in slavery.)

(While I'm criticizing ideas, I'll criticize a couple more: 1. It is deceptive to imply there is was some threat to the safety of attendees. (The linguistic sleight of hand of "physical and emotional safety" is the giveaway. It combines and attempts to equate two unlike things.) 2. The repeated references to "solidarity" are a dressed up form of tribalism, placing loyalty to "us" or "our team" over clear thinking. (It's the left's equivalent to how some on the right use "patriotism".))

> the use of force inherent in slavery.

The article in question mentions agreeing to willing slavery, i.e. without the use of force:

> Once we get this far, we are almost all the way to Carlyle on slavery. We have not agreed that a man can be born a slave, but we agree that he can sell himself into slavery. That is: he can sign a contract with a master in which the slave agrees unconditionally to obey and work for the master, and the master agrees unconditionally to protect and support the slave.

Thanks, you did the right thing.

On HN you're more likely to get told that choosing to make your group more inclusive and accessible to people of color is tantamount to supporting blacklists and suppression, but rest assured that there are a lot of people who appreciate this kind of thing.

We have to get past this notion that there's something virtuous and inclusionary about protecting bigots by giving them the ability to benefit from your platform. This perpetuates the culture of disinclusion we're already saddled with... it shows that more people are willing to speak up for those beliefs than of any person of color who might feel uncomfortable with the presence of a person who thinks they are biologically inferior and entitled to less status as a human being.

And speaking up about that doesn't make you in support of doxing, quote decontextualizing, online harassment, threatening the employment of others, blacklists, criminalization of expression, pogroms, etc. The irony of the slippery slope argument is how often its wielded to make the community less friendly to real diversity.

As a non-hypothetical: consider support for communist brutality.

"My belief is that the nature of Sterling's public statements disqualifies him from acting in good faith with the broader community, at least until he has withdrawn them. I do not believe someone can leave something like: "then you will enjoy hard labor in the North, after we send all the counterrevolutionaries there!" [1] 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. The job of an event organizer is to make sure that conditions are comfortable for the people who have entrusted the organizer with their safety."

The presence at a tech conference of an overt, unrepentant promoter and apologist for the brutality of Communism, is offensive, demeaning, and endangering to:

- Victims, and descendants of the victims, of Stalin's "Great Purge" [2]

- Victims, and descendants of the victims, of Mao's "Cultural Revolution" [3]

- All other victims of the failed experiments in Communism; which is to say: all experiments in Communism.

- All "counterrevolutionaries" who oppose further experiments with this irreparably broken ideology.

[1] http://imgur.com/rlqa73W [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

Wow. I guess people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

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...

Everyone advocating for suppressing others always believes they hold the ethical high ground. Sometimes they do. The problem is when they don't, those tools of suppression work just as well.

USSR:

"[We call for] painless but full liquidation of the monasteries, as chief centers of the influence of the churchmen, as nurseries of parasitism, as powerful screws in the exploiting machine of the old ruling classes."

USA:

"We will not knowingly employ a Communist ... In pursuing this policy, we are not going to be swayed by hysteria or intimidation from any source. We are frank to recognize that such a policy involves danger and risks. There is the danger of hurting innocent people. There is the risk of creating an atmosphere of fear. Creative work at its best cannot be carried on in an atmosphere of fear. We will guard against this danger, this risk, this fear."

"... We request Congress to enact legislation to assist American industry to rid itself of subversive, disloyal elements."

China:

"Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds, and stage a comeback."

"[Our]  objective  is  to  struggle  against  and  crush  those  persons  in  authority  who are  taking  the  capitalist  road,  to  criticize  and  repudiate  the  reactionary  bourgeois  academic  “authorities”  and  the  ideology  of  the  bourgeoisie  and  all  other exploiting  classes"

Had no idea the slope was this slippery. Apparently you can go from choosing to not participate at a conference because an invited speaker harbors racist views to being in support of pogroms and blacklists.

The obvious implication is that the conference was expected to enforce a blacklist.

If failing to preemptively blacklist ideologically unacceptable attendees carries with it this degree of negative response, then a preemptive Hollywood-style industry blacklist is exactly what we'll get.

It's already the case that defending someone like Moldbug carries with it the risk of being branded as supporting the popular perception of his views, which in turn means you too can be on the receiving end of mob wisdom.

Curtis Yarvin is a software engineer, so if you want to make the analogy honest, a blacklist would be a large contingent of software companies refusing to hire him under any circumstances. Dalton Trumbo wasn't pressured not to speak at conferences because of his political allegiances, he was barred from working period (and eventually jailed!). This has absolutely nothing to do with a blacklist.

So you're saying that this mob is unhappy with him speaking, but has no issue with his being employed?

Like this?

https://twitter.com/justkelly_ok/status/713222987537756163

"In case you think it's just LambdaConf: Google continues to employ one of Moldbug's most devoted followers."

"Tech employees: it's time to hold your execs accountable for lack of action. My tweets aren't gonna do it alone."

Some tweets and a Sam Biddle provocation piece about Google keeping this person employed (from 2 years ago) != a blacklist. Even if this amounted to action on Google's part, an employer has the right to fire an employee for actions deemed hostile to other employees (and its plausible to say its hostile for an employee to write blog posts about how certain races are genetically inferior). This is implicit in the concept of "at-will employment". I've been on the receiving end of this taken to a ridiculous extent when I was fired from a job for not going to a Christmas party. I found the reason I was fired to be pretty objectionable, but it wasn't anything remotely like being blacklisted.

There's a lot of hypothetical rabbit holes to go down with this, but ultimately this is a distraction from what's being discussed, which is a person choosing to withdraw their workshop group from a conference because of the opinions of a speaker. Boycotting, protests, or simply declining to not participate are fundamental methods of democratic action. It's laughable to me that anyone would equate what's being talked about here with a suppressive measure.

Not suppressive?

I won't even discuss this subject non-anonymously due to the risk of the mob setting on me by association, not because I agree with Yarvin, but because I disagree strenuously with their use of intimidation to suppress people with whom they disagree.

Attempting to paint this as anything other than intimidation and suppression strikes me as a great irony as I sit here responding, necessarily for the well-being of myself and my family, anonymously.

Please provide proofs for you accusations.

Curtis Yarvin seems to have some really stupid ideas, but the only reason we're wasting time discussing them is because people like yourself felt it appropriate to introduce them in an unrelated context while asking everyone to pass judgement on their basis.

There's a time and a place for that discussion, if you seriously want to spend time making sense of Yarvis' views in the first place. However, evaluating his proposal for a technical conference is not an adequate venue for reviewing and passing judgement on someone's broader world views.

I'm also not comfortable attempting to define exactly what degree of "unacceptable" Yarvis inhabits, or what line(s) exist that justify exclusion from professional conferences, but that's exactly what you're asking us to do.

Furthermore, you're asking us to accept a precedent of excluding those that hold views that the majority finds unsavory, as if there's not significant consistently negative historical precedent demonstrating the volatility and danger of doing exactly that.

Obligatory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

> The program committee feel that we cannot possibly organize a workshop under the umbrella of a conference that values the free expression of racist and fascist views over the physical and emotional safety of its attendees and speakers…

From reading the link, I would assume that no "racist and fascist views" will be aired or otherwise expressed at the conference: it's a technical conference, it's against the pledge of conduct, and in addition the organizers sought out a public statement from the speaker "clearly stating the speaker’s views on violence," which they duly got. Do you not believe them?

Many (me included) consider the inclusion of such a speaker as tacit endorsement of the acceptability of such views.

One of the results of holding and espousing deeply racist views should be exclusion from society.

So YOU'RE to blame...

Thanks for nothing

That's a reasonable position, but that's not what the argument for cancelling the conference was.

The argument was that the speaker's presence would threaten the "physical and emotional safety of its attendees and speakers." This appears to be completely unsupported by the facts.

I read the entirety of his AmA and did not once see him "advocate for slavery". Could you directly link to where he does and quote him?

for reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...

I agree completely. A liberal society is one in which we can work with people who hold views we disagree with, even views we find reprehensible. A society in which only one set of views is permitted to exist is a totalitarian society. We spent so many lives fighting totalitarianism when it came from the Nazis, the Communists, the Islamic fundamentalists; to smuggle it in again under a mask of liberalism is a betrayal of everything the Enlightenment once represented.

> thinks it's a good idea to permanently sentence a person

The courts have not been involved, so there is no sentencing going on.

> This is the height of intolerance I have ever seen.

Then you haven't really seen much. See, for example, any instance where intolerance has been enshrined in the US legal system. That's way worse than somebody cancelling a programming conference.

It's almost comical that you call this "the height of intolerance", given how trivial it is to find worse examples of intolerance.

> One is an uneducated thought the other a dangerous totalitarian action.

I don't think you understand what "totalitarian" means. It means "a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible" [0]. None of that is going on here: the government isn't even involved. You're just using "totalitarian" as a vague insult, like "fascist".

In a non-totalitarian society, you are free to organize your own conference wherein you invite (or disinvite) whomever you please. The same applies to the organizers of PrlConf (or indeed LambdaConf). That's exactly what's happened.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

I agree. They may be disgusting views, but I think the lamdaconf guys have it right; "Conduct versus belief". Assuming the speaker behaves in a manner appropriate for a tech conference, his other beliefs should not be an issue. And to sanction someone merely for their beliefs (however appalling) is itself completely disgusting; George Orwell must be turning in his grave.

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