Hacker News Reader

Comment by meddlepal | Hacker News Reader

Seriously what the fuck happened to Notch. I don't blame Microsoft from excluding him at all.

He's self-made and not afraid to express his opinions even if they aren't politically correct. People like him should be applauded as they are increasingly rare in today's society.

Do you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions? This rhetoric plays into a common theme among extremists which is quite dangerous: "Everyone actually thinks the same way I do, they are just afraid to say it".

Yes, I know many, many people who don't express their non-far left opinions for fear of losing their jobs. They are not extremists, quite the opposite, they view the current cultural zeitgeist of tech companies to be extremist but can't speak up against it.

> Do you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions?

Repeated surveys show that the identitarian left accounts for about 8% of the population, and that their views are over represented in media, while people are genuinely afraid of being publicly lynched for saying the wrong thing.

The entire #walkaway movement started because of that.

Anyone can express their beliefs within reason (the US courts have put some limits on what falls under the first amendment, of course) - you just can’t be surprised when there are consequences for your public expression.

Notch obviously doesn’t care what people think of him anymore, that’s not something I personally feel we should be applauding. It’s one thing if you’re using “fuck you money” to speak against the status quo, it’s another to just be a bigoted jerk on Twitter.

Saying "Pizzagate is real" or that Q is legit isn't an opinion, it's making up false facts. And that statement has been used to push Pizzagate among the masses.

Should people who believe in Russiagate be excluded from events?

I haven't been following him and his comments. And I agree it's important to call out false statements.

But believing in and promoting demonstratively false and damaging ideas is much more common than people realize.

For example, many good people who are more important and educated than game developer falsely believe that President Trump said that white nationalists and neo-nazis are fine people.

Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest --"

Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/26...

Does that prove something? I'm not sure what your point is.

Here is the rest of the exchange where Trump explicitly says he isn't talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists when he says 'fine people' and explicitly condemns neo-Nazis and white nationalists from the article you linked to.

Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."

Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"

Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."

Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

"So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NEO-NAZIS AND THE WHITE NATIONALISTS -- BECAUSE THEY SHOULD BE CONDEMNED TOTALLY But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

Alternatively, we could not applaud racist assholes.

All I've found regarding notch's racist comments is this GQ article: https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets

I would probably not interpret his comments as racist, at least not in an obvious definition of the word.

I've also read his twitter feed a fair amount, and have not spotted any clearly racist statements.

I've also heard he is anti semitic, but haven't seen any citations.

As for the links in the parent article, saying transwomen aren't women sounds like an opinion, not hate speech.

Calling women the c word is very rude, and That could be grounds for disinviting notch. But if so, I hope MS is consistent and bars people who call men the d word, african americans the n word, and so on.

Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous. Hardly grounds for disinviting someone, unless again MS is consistent.

https://twitter.com/notch/status/22330335379333120

Since you posted this comment, the tweet has been completely deleted.

http://web.archive.org/web/20190430104624/https:/twitter.com...

Alright, notch is a racist. Best case he was saying that for shock effect, and that's no excuse. So, I have to agree with Microsoft banning him from the anniversary, and it's too bad he's gone this way. I guess you can't judge a game by its developer.

> Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous.

Sorry - Aren't we in the middle of a measles outbreak (U.S.A)?

Don't forget the guy who went to Pizza Restaurant and shot the gun into the ceiling because he said there were kid sex dungeons.

How is this related to conspiracy theories?

Misinformation driven in part by conspiracy theories has increased the spread of measles back into areas where it was thought to be eradicated.

> An unfounded fear of vaccines has spread around the world in recent years, with childhood vaccination rates reportedly declining in several countries as a result. Nothing in the belief system of Orthodox Jews makes them any more likely to oppose vaccines, and several Orthodox rabbinical organizations have called on parents to vaccinate their children. But Hasidic Jews are prey to the same misinformation that has affected others, and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis have come out against vaccines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/measles-jewish-c...

The article is paywalled.

So, there is a documented decline in vaccination, but is there a documented link between that and spread of measles?

> He's self-made

Well, Microsoft made him a billionaire—and they're also the ones choosing not to include him in the Minecraft event.

I think it's a side effect of becoming so well known in a short amount of time.

It's a side effect of success and attitude/pov not being correlated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com