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Hereticon

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46 pointstempsy65 comments

Is anyone else worried about this trend where people seem to believe the more angry someone gets at the things they say the more correct they must be?

Oh, you're going to love this[1]:

> "Ladran, luego cabalgamos" ("They bark, therefore we ride") or "Ladran, Sancho, señal que cabalgamos" ("They bark, Sancho, sign that we ride") is also atributed to the book but it actually comes from Goethe's 1808 poem Kläffer ("Barker"; obviously, without the interjection of "Sancho": :But their strident barking / is only a sign that we ride"). In its stock phrase version, it's used to say that an attack from one's enemies over a recently taken action is a sign that you are doing the right thing. There is an even more insulting version, "Ladran, señal que son perros" ("They bark, sign they are dogs").

[1]https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DonQuixote

Amazing. Don Quixote is a very underrated book.

True. Every TV trope you can think of is already there.

Which direction?

Reversed stupidity is not intelligence so I don't see people being angry as evidence towards the target of that anger being correct, but witch hunts tend to be done by people who are either wrong or malicious or both, so I read that as evidence against the hunters.

I'm not sure I understand. I've just observed a staggering amount of internet commenters (often, but not at all limited to, people who are made very upset by people they label "sjw"s) assert either directly or by implication that the fact that people get angry at them is evidence that they are right.

How does one obtain a pass or ticket or invite or whatever to attend Hereticon? If its the same folks who will be curating topics and speakers at Hereticon as in:

https://foundersfund.com/anatomy-of-next/ then, count me in!

They had me at the "Sex in Space" podcast. Bonus points for having two parts.

Part 1: [..]Sex, reproduction, and marriage have been linked for most of human history, but today that paradigm is evolving. This season of Anatomy of Next we’ve looked at every aspect of turning Mars into a habitable world. Now what about the changes in biology that are going to alter the way we populate our world? From artificial gametes derived from skin cells and genetically-modified embryos to artificial gestation – this is the future of sex.[..]

Part 1 is more interesting than Part 2. Part 2 beckons Heinlein. Two thumbs up!

I wish Quanta Mag and Nautilus Mag would have live events too.

Instead of a conference why not just an internet forum that focuses on user anonymity (not even nicknames) so that writers can both express exactly what they think and readers can focus on the messages instead of the posters? After all the idea is about the messages themselves being the "heretic" aspect, not the people.

You end up with actual thought crime (racism) instead of "drag culture"(rupaul's drag race is mainstream tv now)

Well-behaved users leave the site for a nicer place, which becomes a vicious cycle. In the end you have noone left but jerks and racists (see voat, 8chan)

What is the connection between "well behaved" users and non-racists (or whatever)? Cannot racists be well behaved and non-racists (what is the opposite of racist?) be badly behaved?

I mean, sure, people will leave. But if you aren't interested in discussing something that would be opposite to your beliefs and opinions then why would you participate in such a forum in the first place?

It is right there in the purpose of the forum: a place to discuss highly unpopular ideas and opinions. Who would join such a place and expect it to not be met with discussions they'd dislike?

The place you want should have strong but clearly defined moderation that allows one to voice unpopular opinions and only banning the low-effort spam and actual advocacy of harming people. The phenomenon GP described (which I remember 'Eliezer likened to evaporative cooling) relates more to the level of discussion than to the topic itself.

I think you're looking for https://4chan.org/

Or voat, the refuge for communities banned from Reddit.

AFAIK Voat requires registration so it is more pseudonymous than anonymous. Also the up/down voting interfere with the messages themselves as people use them as quick "agree/disagree" without engaging in actual discussions (this is an issue anywhere such voting is implemented, not just Voat).

Correct, the refuge for cesspools banned from Reddit.

...and name it with a numeric prefix followed by the suffix "chan".

I do not think chans are very discussion friendly (in terms of layout and functionality, not culture) though and AFAIK there is optional registration that can make people focus on the messenger instead of the message.

This is going to have people reading out the blood libel on stage, isn't it?

It sounds like they're going for new, potentially-interesting heretical ideas, not stupid old ones.

The old ideas always try to dress themselves up in new clothes, but I can't imagine they'll be able to escape the usual suspects.

It would also be good to spend some time on the defects in those stupid old ideas, to counter the undeserved street cred from being continually banned.

Is there such a thing? Do you have an example?

Because every time I heard about people getting banned / disinvited, it was usually because of old ideas.

Ideas don't just appear out of the ether, so for any given idea, it's possible to point to influences and declare the idea therefore "not new". So, by "new", perhaps what I really mean is "newly considered acceptable in a small but influential or passionate community".

The conference also doesn't seem to be exclusively devoted to "ideas that get you banned from things." To pick a seemingly non-political example from the list - are there any mainstream medical or nutritional experts talking about the benefits of starvation?

Well, they are pretty clear that they are looking at "ideas that get you banned":

> heretical thinkers have been met with hostility, even death, and vindicated by posterity.

> Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences.

.. which actually brings the good question: why is "benefits of starvation" listed in the topics list? Pubmed lists over 120K articles for "fasting", and some of them seem to be pretty positive: [0] (disclaimer: I have not read the paper, only glanced at abstract)

Why would someone recommending starvation may be banned from the conferences, if there are many people who are doing research in this area? I have a couple of ideas, and they are pretty grim.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29086496

And yet it always seems to be the stupid old ideas that crop up. Sometimes in a good disguise, sometimes in a thin disguise.

Is Milo Yiannopoulos onto this yet?

Or a session on protocols...

I support the idea in principle, but it's inevitably going to serve as a flame to bad-actor moths. Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

I think Haidt's Heterodox Academy has a better approach, focused around academia, and all the accompanying values and norms which often aren't present in "heretical" ideospheres. (Perhaps there's a corollary to Gresham's Law regarding emotionally inflammatory ideas?)

There are controls. I believe they're selective about who they let in, and let present.

> Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences.

Sounds like a nightmare.

Anyway, maybe it's just the conferences I go to. But. I've never heard of someone getting kicked out for offering a controversial but considered opinion on something.

"Y'know, we've found that PHP is really the best tool fo---"

"OUT WITH YE, HERETIC. DO NOT RETURN."

Usually people are banned for, y'know, doing something destructive or offensive that's out of the bounds of normal discourse. The idea being that banning them improves the experience for everyone else, which is (usually) a good thing.

I'm imagining that this was only for effect, because a conference of bad actors banned for poor conduct is just going to be a smorgasbord of normal, very not heretical ideas from people. Otherwise, what, are the banned going to give talks about how they were banned from the conferences?

You're right then, but this just makes the conference just a conference of provocative ideas, which aren't really banned in general because we have free speech in this country generally?

I've never heard of someone getting kicked out for offering a controversial but considered opinion on something

"Kicked out" is stronger than what usually happens. More like "disinvited".

Yarvin/Strangeloop is the canonical example. More recently it was Hurd/BHUSA.

It usually takes the form of speakers being dis-invited because they hold opinions, unrelated to the topic of their talk, that are unacceptable to a vocal minority of the attendees.

'Yarvin's opinions have been described as racist, with his writings interpreted as supportive of slavery, including the belief that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons... [He] has argued that some races are more suited to slavery than others. "It should be obvious that, although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff," Yarvin wrote.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin

Yeesh.

So? It's not like he goes around shouting racial slurs at everybody who passes. His strangeloop talk had nothing to do with his political beliefs. People who have unpopular opinions are capable of behaving like adults in public.

I have heard from people who have gone to conferences with Yarvin that he does talk about racism and his other regressive politics when not on stage, apparently in an attempt to flock together with others with similar beliefs.

This should not be surprising, that’s how people work; that’s how conferences work.

The person who told me this said, that on the occasion she witnessed, it wasn’t successful. Everyone politely ignored him. But this is not sufficient. We can’t have a civilization if we tolerate the intolerant, and if there are no penalties for trying to move the Overton window on “maybe some people don’t deserve human rights”.

> Everyone politely ignored him.

Which is exactly what's supposed to happen when you have adults interacting in public. This is fine.

> We can’t have a civilization if we tolerate the intolerant

This is a ridiculous statement. Western Civilization has tolerated intolerant groups for the entirety of its existence. Inviting one man to talk at a conference is clearly not a threat to the continuing existence of civilization.

Some things are beyond the pale. Actions, and opinions, have consequences.

This has always been the case, and I don't think it's a bad thing - there should be limits to tolerance, and those limits are defined by harming other people, or advocating their harm. I would hope a vocal majority would oppose a racist white nationalist like Yarvin.

> there should be limits to tolerance, and those limits are defined by harming other people, or advocating their harm

Here's the problem point: what do you mean by "advocating"? I'm all for not tolerating people who issue explicit calls to violence, but once you extend this to advocating or even talking about things that can be used by others to justify calls to violence, and attempt to remove that person, I think we should stop tolerating you because the paradox of tolerance applies recursively: the moment you go overboard with not tolerating the intolerant and start claiming collateral damage, it is you who's actively intolerant and needs to be removed to safeguard the society.

I don't know much about Yarvin beyond what I picked up here and over at SSC, but I don't recall him ever advocating actual, explicit harm to anyone. Being wrong about something does not cross the "intolerance" line if it's not followed by advocating hurting people (or excluding them from society).

> Being wrong about something does not cross the "intolerance" line if it's not followed by advocating hurting people (or excluding them from society).

A little historical context:

Treating black people as if they're "lower IQ" than white people has been the basis of hundreds of years of brutal oppression.

Which is why people are extremely uncomfortable giving someone who espouses those sorts of views any power whatsoever.

Oh, and fuck people who believe that. They're racist. They're wrong. And I don't want to be anywhere near them, personally or professionally. How's that for exercising my freedom of speech?

If that makes me intolerant of dumb racists, whelp, I guess I'm intolerant.

Here's the problem point: what do you mean by "advocating"?

I mean questioning their existence, their intelligence, or their rights based on criteria like race. I'm fine with not being tolerated by you if you're fine with nazis and white supremacists (as long as they're polite and not violent!).

That's a fine argument, as far as it goes, but in practice it's applied spuriously, unevenly, and unfairly.

One of the principals involved in getting Yarvin deplatformed from Strangeloop, Steve Klabnik, is a communist, supporting an ideology that is directly responsible for the murder of 40 million people, and indirectly responsible for another 70 million. Klabnik has spoken, without political interference, at plenty of conferences.

If we were to apply your argument equally, Nazis and Communists would both be deplatformed. But in practice, they are not.

If we were to apply your argument equally, Nazis and Communists would both be deplatformed

I disagree fundamentally with your definition of communism as presupposing mass-murder. Also your comparison with Nazis as somehow equivalent is extremely troubling.

That extreme communist states have indulged in mass-murder (like many christian states, democratic states, tyrannical states, etc before them) doesn't mean it is an ideology of mass-murder, and it's extremely disingenuous to suggest it is.

Liking PHP is not controversial.

You might find this interesting: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Look up "donglegate".

I'm familiar with "donglegate." Care to elaborate your point?

Do you think people who make innocent, if tasteless, jokes deserve to lose their jobs and not be allowed to attend conferences ever again? I guarantee you that you've made at least one joke in the past year that will qualify you for such a fate at some point in the future.

Is that the argument you thought I was making?

And it's from Peter Thiel

Which makes complete sense; of course it's old bigoted nonsense in new guises.

https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-vc-firm-founders...

https://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-coul...

> Topics including but not limited to: biological self-determination (modification, design), geo-engineering, transhumanism, the abolition of college, transgressive media, sex, the softer side of doomsday prepping, the nature of conspiracy, the benefits of starvation, constitutional monarchy (what?!), revisionist demography, immortality, drag culture, and building nations

Nothing actually Heretical then.

Most of those I'd class as "left-wing" or "futurist/transhumanist" .. except for "constitutional monarchy". That suggests it's probably going to be Menicus Moldbug and a bunch of "dark enlightenment"/"alt-right" people there. But I can't see how they wouldn't clash horribly with whoever they've got in to discuss e.g. drag culture.

Edit: ah, of course it's going to be someone who's against drag, isn't it?

I doubt it will be alt-righters. Instead, it will be left-to-middle pushing mainstream left-to-middle ideas as if they are "heretical".

Well, for any of the topics listed I can recall an idea I've seen, mentioning which would get one ridiculed and in some cases probably Twitter-mobbed, so I don't see how they can't get actual heretical ideas there.

(Geoengineering is probably the least heretical on the list, but for some reason there's apparently something close to an UN moratorium on the topic. Which is sad, because I'm not having much hopes we'll survive this century without some large-scale intervention to Earth's carbon and heat exchange cycles.)

Also, I see zero relevance between being "left" and "right". Personally, I think these labels are doing huge damage, pretty much stopping all thinking.

I dunno, biological self-determination+sex could imply they'd want to talk about accepting pedophilia. Which is probably as heretical or taboo a subject as you could get, I'm not even comfortable mentioning it, even if I'm strongly opposed.

"Heretical" is not an objective measure - it's used in reference to an existing belief system. I suspect most "normies" would be shocked or at least suspicious of those ideas.

I would define "heretical" as "risky to talk about" - as in people will target you; Things that people simply dislike talking about are more "unpopular" or "perverse".

I think the whole idea is a place to discuss ideas that are “heretical” by modern left wing “cancel culture” standards.

> “heretical” by modern left wing “cancel culture” standards.

So it will be the usual modern alt-right people pushing the same bad old ideas in new disguises then.

I think the opposite is True - none of these topics trigger cancel culture, and I can't see anything that protects speakers anyway.

How so? Drag culture and sex/gender are among the most triggering of topics.

True, but "sex" is very unspecific, it's not really a topic.

And I doubt a talk on "drag culture" will be titled "why drag culture is is bad/wrong".

What do you mean by "triggering" here?

"Triggering" is the outrage caused by voicing an unpopular opinion, usually one that is counter to modern socially liberal views.

Moreover, the right wing have podcasts, conferences, etc.

There will be pitchforks...

Yes, profoundly good ideas have historically been met with resistance. So have profoundly bad ideas, and I suspect the ratio approaches a googol to one.

I clicked on this thinking there was a new font, maybe a cousin of Helvetica...

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