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Comment by zardgiv | Hacker News Reader

"Controversial" is the pinnacle of weasel words. How do you feel about his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves, and do you think that his views would make people from those ethnic groups feel welcome in your community?

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It would demonstrate a lot about the HN community if we could get through an entire Urbit post without it devolving in to yet another debate on Curtis Yarvin's (incredibly lengthy, vague and contradictory, and entirely irrelevant) views on race.

It wouldn't demonstrate anything that would make it a community I want to be a part of, though.

The comments that I have seen from him on that topic (and it should be noted that I have only read a small part of his comments so this may not be representative of his thoughts on these matters) implied that those groups were better slaves because they were more resilient or stronger, so were able to better survive slavery than less resilient or weaker groups.

I don't see why that would make people from those groups feel unwelcome. If anything I would expect people from the groups that he says were genetically not as good as slaves to be the ones who would feel unwelcome. The implication is that they are weaker or less resilient.

Wait, so your argument is that only Native Americans would feel unwelcome in this community?

Is this supposed to be in his favor?

EDIT: For clarity

> So your argument is that Native Americans should feel unwelcome in this community?

You're putting words in 5F36B5F62640's mouth.

And to be absolutely honest, anybody reading this can see that you're the one attempting to make people feel unwelcome in this community.

Edit: The commenter has now upgraded his comment but the original with added emphasis is quoted above.

That was the example Moldbug used, claiming that Africans made genetically better slaves than Native Americans. 5F36B5F62640 contended that the groups that were not better slaves should feel unwelcome. This is just the basic logical implication of taking those two claims together.

Rather than attacking me personally, is there something I missed or was incorrect about?

You created a 'should' from a 'would', and therefore implied that 5F36B5F62640 had ill-feelings towards Indians.

I'm not attacking you personally, nor am I speaking to you personally. I am just pointing out to anybody reading this, that you just tried to smear somebody.

Of course, whether you did so on purpose is another matter.

You're grasping a bit on this. Logic does not dictate that there were implied ill-feelings on 5F36B5F62640's behalf. In fact, I can categorically state that from the one post I've read from them I do not believe they have any such ill-feelings!

To restate, then: "Wait, so your argument is that only Native Americans would feel unwelcome in this community?

Is this supposed to be in his favor?"

I appreciate your dedication to accuracy, and I must assume this satisfies your complaint.

It wasn't a grasp. The rhetorical effect of your comment was to imply some sentiment from 5F36B5F62640 on 'what ought to be'.

Yes, that is no longer accusatory; and it is correct: there are other sets of people that would no doubt feel unwelcome in such a community.

I think in a practical sense their fear is overblown as 'Code is law'. However people generally make decisions based on consensus reality.

Do you seriously not see how someone discussing how good a slave you would make is (at the very least) 'unwelcoming'?

Was that on Urbit's homepage? The docs? The IRC? The subreddit? Over e-mail?

Was it something like "yeah it is a functional system... hey have I mentioned how much potential you have for whenever you feel like dedicating your life to slavery?"

...or was it just the guy rambling on a blog of his under a pen name?

It's pretty obvious to anyone that the guy's views are obscenely offensive, but if the guy is strictly professional when it comes to Urbit, treats everyone with the same respect and works just fine along with many people that despise his views, how are the project's goals tainted?

Because people don't just see Urbit, if they end up participating long-term. They see Yarvin, and he definitely is not one to hide his worldview.

As much as some people like to pretend it's only about tech, tech is made by people and it requires them to interact with each other, and that can never be completely confined to code.

>They see Yarvin, and he definitely is not one to hide his worldview.

While talking to Urbit contributors about Urbit?

By definition no, of course. But I have never done a non-trivial amount of open source-style work (coding or otherwise) with someone who shares their political views online, without learning about them somehow.

And in fact, every Urbit contributor in this thread who's mentioned this has also heard about Yarvin's political views, and not from this thread. It appears to me there's already a kind of self-selection process in Urbit contributors, towards those who are comfortable tolerating his garbage. And that's exactly the problem.

Well, if you define "comfortable tolerating his garbage" as "contributes to Urbit despite it being Yarvin's project", then tautological assertion is tautological.

There is certainly some self-selection for people who don't throw tech babies out with political bathwater. I count myself as one such person. I mean, I continued using Javascript and Firefox even after hearing about Brendan Eich's political contribution! Feel free to draw incorrect inferences regarding my opinion of gay marriage.

I have also toyed around with Urbit, and have (in a sense) made minor contributions. Feel free to draw incorrect inferences regarding my opinion of Yarvin's political writing.

It's not about your beliefs or what people infer about them. In fact it's not about you at all- it's about the other potential contributors and users that Yarvin is alienating, despite all the claims in this thread that his views don't impact the project.

Ah. So basically this[1]?

[1]: https://gist.github.com/djspiewak/3a6ff436865d9e5794e4

I mean, I guess you're technically correct: If nothing else, the impact of his views on the project is that it results in the exclusion of people who choose to exclude themselves from projects created by "the wrong people".

But of course that's trivially true of all projects, so why do you think it's such a problem in this particular case? If you answer "because his views are really bad" while acknowledging that they otherwise have no direct bearing on the technology, you're basically saying "because he's really unpopular".

I have no love of Yarvin's politics, but that sort of cure is worse than the disease.

Where we seem to differ is in the importance of those people who avoid Yarvin (or Torvalds, or other more or less abrasive open source contributors), as well as the reasons they avoid him. It's more than merely ideological for many people, it's personal.

I don't acknowledge that his views have no direct bearing on the technology, either, and that's tied up in my first point. We design things for ourselves, for the most part, so by excluding (perhaps inadvertently) people with different perspectives on life, we lose out on valuable input.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm certainly not claiming that people who avoid the project are somehow "less important" as a result of their decision. And I wouldn't doubt that it's personal for them - "mere ideology" also seems like a pretty personal thing!

I think we agree that Urbit would benefit from a larger, more diverse user/contributor base. What wouldn't? We're just ascribing agency in different places. I view the claim that Yarvin is excluding people as a sort of rhetorical sleight of hand. What he's actually done is 1) publish some really unpopular opinions, and 2) build Urbit. It is entirely possible to evaluate 2 on its own merits[1]. So I'm disappointed to see so many people write it off for other IMO less relevant reasons.

It reminds me a bit of a "Christian-friendly" Linux distro I once saw that omitted software written by known homosexuals. Would you also claim that the gay programmers were (perhaps inadvertently) excluding a subset of Christians? I suspect most people would agree in this case that agents of exclusion are the ones actually performing the exclusive act, rather than ones who happened to be "the wrong people" from another group's point of view.

[1]: This is true even in the presence of a strong political influence on the technology. I honestly don't see much of a connection between Urbit and Moldbug's politics, but then the latter never made much sense to me, so maybe I'm missing something. If there are politically objectionable aspects to the software, then by all means object! But plain old guilt by association is a weak argument in any context, doubly so in a technical one.

Yes, in a hypothetical platonic code-only way you can separate Yarvin from his work to some degree. But you're underestimating the impact of the word "personal" here- some people avoid communities like this not as a boycott, but for their personal safety or emotional well-being. That's the point where they go from the excluder to the one being excluded.

> "It's pretty obvious to anyone that the guy's views are obscenely offensive"

Is it? From what I've seen so far all the controversy has come from taking statements out of context.

However, I take your main point that it doesn't need to impact on Urbit.

> his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves

I'm curious, do you take that to speak well or ill about the ethnic groups in question?

It's a shame you were downvoted here, you're asking a pretty interesting question.

Yeah, I mean, being strong as an ox would mean both that your abilities are superior to those of others and that you would make for a useful slave.

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