Social Animus
justine.lol
justine.lol
I want to zoom in on this:
"I am the intersection of so many unliked groups whose minds I've come to understand. If you were to use bayesian inference to compute the probability that I'm a good person, it would underflow a double. In practice, this just means I'm a curious person who hasn't had much to fear, since I've never had much to lose. If the day should ever come when society chooses to accept me, then the negative attention I've received will be viewed for what it really was, and then people will be able to safely examine my lifelong track record of kindness and conspicuous public service. All of the people I've talked to in my life will be influenced by my example and then stand a better chance of flourishing thanks to an increased interest in understanding."
I don't know your life, but I think it's more than possible that it's not merely a coincidence that you're at the intersection of so many unliked groups.
My brother once sent me a picture of a furry wearing a swastika armband asking if it's a real thing. My first reaction was a giant "WTF?!". My second thought was, you know, on some level, I gotta respect the hustle.
Someone really thought, "How can I be as revolting as possible to everyone? I can't LARP as a nazi, because then nazis would like me. Becoming a furry isn't enough either, because then furries would like me. But if I can stand at the intersection of all causes of disgust aimed at our fellow beings, then I will have proved my case."
I think the point of this line of thinking is different for different people, but the motivation could be a) because you want the world to hate you as you hate yourself b) you want to embody the negative underbelly of humanity to be a mirror so society or individuals within it can see their true nature. You want to have stones casted at you to prove that the rest of us are, in fact, the type of people who cast stones. Or c) it's just funny in some depraved way, "for the lulz" as they say. But, I assume you're already way past the point of laughing at the ridiculousness of this tired dance. You're a middle-aged adult who is struggling.
Well I, for one, won't cast a stone your way. I genuinely don't hate you at all. I admire your boldness and tenacity. "Donate so I can buy a private jet" is gold. I didn't really appreciate the mania or hyper-fixation roller coaster the article took me on, but I just found it unfortunate because I don't think this is the best way of thinking you could employ.
If at all possible, I think you should just try to be a "normal person" and think that that's an okay thing to be. By "normal", I mean not putting yourself in the crossfire. I still think you can and always will be technically extraordinary, and I don't think that's contradictory. You merely stop seeking rejection.
It seems to me, even as divisive as you may be, there have been many earnest attempts to integrate you into regular society, give you a super high paying job, and bring you into a context where you can innovate and push humanity forward. Why not just let that happen? Why not de-politicize just a little bit?
People will hate me for saying this or think I've licked too many frogs (I've never not been sober btw), but I have come to see a lot of political posturing as more arbitrary than not. I still know people have different visions for the world, and ideological differences that matter at a macro level, but to me, what really matters in life is looking other human beings in the eyes and having a connection to them. Sitting inside, alone, typing on a keyboard or phone, is anti-social, and it is against the nature of a human being.
I'm not telling you to give all of it up. But hopefully I've evoked at least one thought that encourages you to walk a path with a better outcome. You don't deserve to suffer your whole life, waiting for the world to accept you. I am sorry to hear about the tax situation and people who really have targeted you. I genuinely care and hope you find peace and healing on the inside. And stop reading internet comments.
I think it's that same impulse that keeps getting her in trouble. It's not really an option, is it.
You gotta work with reality rather than against it. It's okay to be who you are.
And you'll have to accept that everyone's going to have their own reaction to that. Trying to appeal to people who hate you... well, just look around.
Man, become who you are!
Justine has expressed unorthodox views in the past but that's no reason to punish him forever, or indeed at all. To be as inclusive and tolerant as possible - towards an end goal of maximizing participation and enabling outstanding technical work to flourish - it is better to simply agree to disagree.
Now it's, on the internet, everyone knows you're Literally Hitler.
The bit about "using only private aviation" and "hir[ing] an elite team" sound satirical at first, but then the next sentence sounds earnest, so I can't tell?
I looked up this person on wikipedia, so the "I want to live a cosmopolitan life and fly private" seems like something someone who was involved with occupy wall street would say sardonically, but I am not sure?
Regardless, this person's technical work seems incredible and I really hope we can find a way to support people who work independently and aren't obsessed with capturing the value they create in the US.
That being said, and speaking from my own experience, one can develop ego problems if they've been undervalued by society. You can start viewing other people as lesser than you for not understanding your situation. I managed to escape those toxic thought patterns by practising empathy as a deliberate activity, and forcing myself to give love and grace to others until it felt natural.
I don’t think so. I think what happens is that people believe in meritocracy or karma or universal justice. Generally, one cannot rely on that. You make one mistake and then another and you are out, no matter how much goodness you have done. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s absurd, but we must keep pushing the rock and be happy (or else the alternative is s…)
What freedom indeed!
> In 2012, Tunney started working for Google as a software engineer.[4] In March 2014, Tunney petitioned the US government on We the People to hold a referendum asking for support to retire all government employees with full pensions, transfer administrative authority to the technology industry, and appoint the executive chairman of Google Eric Schmidt as CEO of America.[5][6] Tunney has been inspired by the political views of Curtis Yarvin.[7]
This person seems to be extremely online and Wikipedia has a petty high bar for inclusion of things like that. I wouldn't be surprised of their social media was littered with even more extreme things (like support of slavery, which the talk page mentions).
Feel free to make the conclusive and comprehensive survey of their online presence, and report back your findings.
They're just struggling to buy "a home in San Francisco" and "travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation."
Also this person apparently went from being part of Occupy Wall Street to being "inspired by the political views of Curtis Yarvin" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justine_Tunney).
A lot of the far right are anti-globalisation as Occupy Wall Street was, both are a rejection of consensus politics, and people who tend to go to extremes are more likely to go to a different extreme than become moderate.
There is also a type of brilliant person (and Justine is brilliant) who tends to go off the rails in some way. Look at the number of weird or nasty creative artists and authors.
> "travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation."
I did not read that far and thought the post arrogant and entitled! That is a Musk like level of being out of touch with reality. Again, something people who indulge a sense of their own brilliance are prone to.
> but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed
The juxtaposition of these two statements is amusing.
I think people generally underestimate how hard it is to permanently kill their ego. What ends up happening, then, is that a lot of people genuinely believe that they have humility when in actuality they don't.
Find who framed it.
It's effective to apply a filter of eccentric vs predictable on these sort of matters. The issue isn't so much whether someone is capable or not, but whether they fit into one of the standard boxes the bureaucracy has prepared. And to make it even worse, managers don't have the skill or inclination to try and make the best of the specific person who they employ. They generally have an approach that they've worked out based on the average of people who they have managed. If they get an employee who falls too far outside that range they may literally not know what to do. Usually at that point they will decide that they are dealing with a deviant and the problem must inherently be the deviance.
It's an unfortunate situation. Particularly if you're the sort of person who cares about getting to the best outcome and you realise how many geniuses must get shut down when the best way isn't the usual one. In practice incompetent but routine gets a lot more tolerance than competent but eccentric. Someone needs to be very competent indeed to overcome eccentricity.
Based solely on this blog post, I would question if this person would be capable of holding a regular job, and it has nothing to do with skill. It also kind of reads like they already know this about themself.
The blog post states quite clearly that this person has had regular employment in the past, which suggests they may be just as capable of it in the future. There are some bad optics in the post, but they have more to do with wanting to buy a home in SF and fly private aviation than whether OP can hold down a job.
How does it resonate with your situation? What do you have in common?
Being rejected for being racist and neo-fascist? Being frustrated by not being able to afford private aviation? Wanting to raise donations to pay for a house and travel? Lots of comments here substantiating that, BTW.
I realize that it takes great courage to do what Justine does, the world is not fair to trans people or many other groups. I want her to be safe and happy. I have however, observed Justine make some pretty careless remarks about homeless people or you can Google her views on slavery or various political individuals and they're not great. They are views that hurt people. I've noticed in past threads these are brought up but she does not address them, which strikes me as lacking the courage that she usually has.
Justine, can you clarify some of the views you've had over the years so that people who donate to you feel like they are not supporting somebody who might not hold the same views for other groups of people that are in danger?
For example,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46890435
That overall thread has a few relevant discussions, that comment thread cites:
https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
How can I support somebody who thinks a guy who doesn't give a shit about me not having a job (and worse) is somebody worth cheering on?
Thank you.
The reason is a massive ego problem they refuse to address. Reading this difficult to follow rant also reveals they no clue what it means to be humble.
I feel like it is a very great privilege to be able to post this to Hacker News, soliciting donations.
She's asking for money to fly private and live in a nice neighborhood in one of the more expensive places in the world. She has a massive ego, saying that donating to her does more for open source than anything else. She cites issue after issue she's had with people including governments saying she hasn't paid taxes. Sometimes when nobody likes you it is because something you are doing, and this post doesn't do any soul-searching. None of this registers to you?
I almost don't want to post this because I've posted twice here and I don't wan to come off as a Justine-hater, but I truly don't get how you don't read this in th epost.
The fundamental tension here is between pre-Christian and post-Christian worldview. Are you allowed to be great, or do you have to apologize for your greatness? Justine refuses to apologize, which is the cardinal sin. And yet she does not fully own it, but leans into the oppression thing. Hence, the post lands with neither side.
It veers from topic to topic with abrupt transitions, developing tenuous threads to support perceived grievances and slights, and every once in a while goes fully off the hinges.
There are delusions of grandeur -- "One of the issues I have is that I'm so popular on Hacker News that people there don't criticize me so much these days, even when I'm wrong" -- and an apparent obliviousness to their redflagginess that is so extreme it almost feels like satire ("A few days ago, I got served with a tax warrant from the State of New York. They believe I didn't pay taxes in 2018 and they want an amount of money that's more than twice my current yearly income").
And after paragraph after paragraph of a sob story, the request for money is presented with perhaps the most bizarre pitch I can imagine: Donate your money to me so that I can live a lifestyle you could never yourself afford.
I don't know about this person's particular mental health struggles, but it does not come off as an essay by a person who is in a good place right now.
I generally try very very very hard to resist armchair-diagnosing people, but it was also very hard for me not to get that impression as well. She seems hyper fixated on people's reactions to her, without examining -- or even telling us -- why people are uncomfortable working with her.
I had to look elsewhere to learn that she's espoused techno-fascist views in the past. She should have been honest about that up-front in her article, and, assuming she no longer holds those views, say so, and explain what happened to change her mind. If she does still hold those views, then... well, I can see why people continue to not want to be associated with her.
Somewhat similar to you, I also got the sense that this was a pointed response/positioning to some controversy. Not because I have any clue whats going on (I dont), but just cuz it pattern-matched with the style/tone of a PR statement.
I was unaware the blog copied my title change until seeing this on HN and I have no emotional reaction to it. I've replaced over a hundred clickbait titles and it's not an emotionally evocative chore. Anyone can read my contemporaneous explanation at https://lobste.rs/c/hjlmw1 to see my reasoning and judge for themself how upset I sound.
This is pure passive aggression:
> To ease her confusion and conscience, and in the hopes of dealing with less trolling, I have banned her domain.
I then read the links in that post, and some of the comments in the Lobsters thread, including by someone now appearing as "inactive-user". I think the points inactive-user made about the distinction between bannable and benign actions being somewhat arbitrary and footgun-ish are sound. At the same time, user matklad pointed out that the subsequent behaviour of Justine's invitees (namely, posting many more articles from their own sites) was exactly what the bans were designed to prevent, which I agree with.
I do accept that a forum like Lobsters (or HN) is beset on all sides by spammers whose participation, if left unchecked, threatens their very existence. So it's unfortunately necessary to have and enforce rules, which will inevitably be imperfect.
For now I've concluded that two people on opposite sides of a really quite small argument about a grey area were looking for a fight, and that both took actions to escalate it.
It reads entirely to me like someone tired of dealing with a chronic rule-abuser. That is what moderators are for. I don't see how you interpret any of that as the mod looking for a fight.
> I found a much easier answer for my own project, which has been to never accept anonymous contributions and to not merge a single line of code until the contributor sends an email promising to assign me copyright
i understand the anonymous contributions part even if i dont agree but how does assigning copyright make it easier to fight toxic people? the only reason you would ever do this instead of a cla is when you want the option to release the code as closed source. you cant revoke a open source license anyway
Archived here: https://archive.today/sWFja
Is the ask here to donate and support the desired lifestyle of traveling, owning a home in SF, and writing open source projects for fun and profit?
The only thing I'm aware of: she posted a very weird petition to appoint Eric Shmidt as "CEO of America" (https://9to5google.com/2014/03/20/occupy-wall-street-co-foun...) and told people to read Curtis Yarvin, in 2014.
EDIT: lobste.rs context: https://lobste.rs/c/hjlmw1
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889008
eg:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46890435
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46892447
Yarvin believes in a world where the upper class (monarchy) runs everything. It's a pretty controversial take to support them from somebody who themselves has faced discrimination. I think Justine might be out of touch with people who aren't well off.
She seems to do some trolling (but it isn't obvious because she won't address) it where she even made statements which seemed like they were in support of slavery back in 2012. She's brilliant but controversial and I'm sure being trans doesn't help with people rejecting her for no reason either.
Hence, recommending Curtis Yarvin in 2014 is rather eyebrow-raising but a very different thing from recommending him now.
I think you're wrong about Yarvin changing, but let's say you're right for a moment. Do you know what's easy to do between then and now? Say, "That was an error. I regret it." Do you know what hasn't been done between then and now? Yeah.
Plenty of people believe that, if perhaps only in a descriptive sense. Given the constraints of human social organization, it's just very difficult to not have a world where some kind of restricted social elite (that people may of course rotate in and out of, allowing for some kind of social mobility) is running things. Especially if we're even less comfortable with the main realistic alternative to social hierarchy, namely open markets.
Even self-proclaimed anarchists have long acknowledged that 'the tyranny of structurelessness' is a thing: trying to remove structure just makes it less readable and overt; it doesn't make it go away.
This is quite distinct from, say, a government of elected policy debaters submitting bills to a body of elected law passers that are part of a silo separate from the the silo's of military, civil enforcement, policy enactment (merit based civil service), etc.
The later is a hierarchy but not a class based one (assuming sufficient widespread education and social support).
Oh, your ?
Our Government has a PM raised in a public housing estate# and we've mostly avoided political dynasties .. (few want to get caught again* ... )
# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Albanese#Early_life
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Court
structure and hierarchy are two very different things. you can have elected leaders who manage the day to day problems and a popular vote on all the important issues. of course its hard to implement in practice but it is possible. the reasons our society is elitist are economic inequality and different social connections but they only have real power when the people cant decide directly. if there was a federal ballot prop system america would look very different
https://unherd.com/2019/02/techs-dark-overlords/?edition=us
https://www.yahoo.com/news/rogue-occupy-wall-street-account-...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140802022307/http://valleywag....
Then there's her interview with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes: https://youtu.be/LXVWLA5eKO0?si=V37wz5NicRd0r_wD
This is surprising to me. I always thought it was a niche thing. But I guess if the performance gains are significant (and it sounds like it), then companies can save real money by using llamafile.
The dream of a supportive harassment free internet was never real.
The post was flagged, and now it's gone back to not being flagged, which I don't understand.
I couldn't relate to anything less
It's very interesting to see a post asking for donation do this well on HN. I really doubt I would be able to do the same, and my systems work isn't too shabby either..
But after digging a little more, it seems she is (was? still is?) a techno-fascist in the vein of Curtis Yarvin, and, among other things, earnestly believes that the USA's form of "government" should be corporate despotism, having petitioned the White House to retire all government employees, make Eric Schmidt the "CEO of America", and turn control over administering the US to the tech industry[0].
In a way, I feel duped reading this all the way through. Throughout the post, she dances around the topic of what people found objectionable about her, and then brings up transphobia in a way that makes it seem like gender-identity discrimination is what's going on. But wow, what a dishonest way to present all this. Classic way to build feelings of sympathy when it's not deserved.
Maybe her first order of business should be actually addressing the techno-fascist stuff. If she doesn't still hold those views, she needs to say so, and tell us why she believes she was misguided. If she still does hold those views then, well... nothing has really changed, and IMO the reason some people are uncomfortable working with her is entirely valid, regardless of how impressive her technical achievements are.
Oh, and being one of the top 300 GitHub users doesn't put you in the 99.9997th percentile of open source developers, or that you're "uniquely able to convert your money into the largest amount of value for society". I'm fine with people accurately describing their achievements and capabilities and a no-nonsense manner, but this just smacks of delusions of grandeur.
[0] https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
I think what makes fascism appealing to some people is that it seemingly offers an explanation and solution for why their immense talent, real or perceived, has been overlooked. Justine Tunney probably has more actual talent than the vast majority of the fascists of this type but she shares the same core of grievance.
I think it’s telling too that she doesn’t really mention that many open source maintainers, if they’re paid at all, don’t get paid enough. I’m not saying every pitch for open source funding has to include this but to omit that and also to brag about being in the 99.9997th percentile certainly makes it seem like she’s indifferent to the many talented open source maintainers who are in the same boat, most of whom do not have her destructive, nihilistic, and bigoted politics.
I can imagine that someone with that level of talent can be extremely socially unfit - whether intentionally or unintentionally I am unaware. At some point I may have been that way (hoping I am no longer that way, hopefully I was that way with the talent as opposed to without), and I’ve met others who are.
What strikes me as weird is how no manager/leader is able to utilize this absolute treasure of technical ability. I think that makes someone a true leader and/or a capitalist. Anyone can hire average skill who needs the money and is capable of faking sincerity.
You can isolate folks without soft skills to some extent to avoid them butting heads with other people, but at some point they still need to be able to take direction and work with some people.
It sounds like you're having a rough time, I hope you'll get through it and find the other shore. You're well-known and respected, more than the infamy and controversy. I think you need to meet someone, or company, who can appreciate your genius (and a bit of madness) and provide a safe, comfortable space to be yourself and express your brilliance how you want. Hang in there, we're looking forward to seeing more wonderful works from your art and magic.
How about we actually treat people like persons? What happened to that idea?
I've never heard of this and generally would say people should be given space to grow from things they said ten years ago... But...
> The Dark Enlightenment, also called the Neo-Reactionary movement (abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian,[1] and reactionary philosophical and political movement
> The Dark Enlightenment has been described as part of the alt-right, as its theoretical branch,[15][16] and as neo-fascist.[15][17] It has been described as the most significant political theory within the alt-right,[2] as "key to understanding" the alt-right political ideology
> The Dark Enlightenment has been described as part of the alt-right, as its theoretical branch,[15][16] and as neo-fascist.[15][17] It has been described as the most significant political theory within the alt-right,[2] as "key to understanding" the alt-right political ideology
And it continues with gems like "freedom is incompatible with democracy" and so on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
It's not like she made a few of the cuff statements here. She was so deeply involved in this movement that people were writing articles about her.
> And then there’s Justine Tunney, “co-founder of Occupy,” proud Google employee and self-declared defender of the tech elite.
Tunney does not just flirt with neoreactionary ideology, the way self-congratulatory “open-minded iconoclasts” like me did in high school and college. She goes full throttle in her embrace of it, doubles down on it, rejects every “politically correct” rejection of sexism or racism or classism that define the modern world.
She makes bold statements that IQ, law-abiding or -breaking tendencies and political alignment are all genetically determined.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/occupying-the-throne-justine-t...
As someone else mentioned below, this is why she was uninvited from speaking at the Internet Archive. It seems the llama.cpp drama had little if anything to do with it.
At the very least, if she has grown beyond this, I would expect or rather need her to acknowledge it and distance herself and explain how and why she's grown since then. Otherwise, I can only assume that she hasn't and is still basically that same trollish reactionary from 2015 and that's not someone I would want either working at my company or speaking at my convention.
He is clearly a highly intelligent and highly accomplished individual, and an eloquent communicator. Indeed he is exactly the sort of person who organizations like the Internet Archive should be delighted to have speak on technical matters.
It comes across as very petty and short-sighted of the IA to rescind the invitation based on a handful of complainers complaining about non-technical issues that they are personally offended by.
Whatever happened to being tolerant of the perspectives and opinions of others, even if you strongly disagree?
"Because they're smart" isn't a good enough reason. I wouldn't want to listen to a podcast that hosts eugenicists. I wouldn't want to appear on a podcast that hosts eugenicists. Even if they didn't talk about their problematic beliefs on the podcast.
There's no shortage of smart folks that don't have a complicated reputation. Organizations like the Internet Archive simply don't have to host them. And frankly, it sounds like they gave her the opportunity to explain her beliefs, and she chose not to. In a way, that's worse: it says "I don't want to explain my beliefs, because they're going to make me look worse" or "I don't want to disavow my problematic beliefs because I don't want to alienate people who share(d) those beliefs".
the locus of thought for llama.cpp has always been on 4chan
I actually developed migraines for the first time in my life and ended up in the hospital... due to the eye strain of reading unfiltered thoughts about me for months.
and since llamafile is an ex nihilo project that I worked on for six years
I even wrote a blog post giving Slaren more credit, because it instilled in him a false sense of confidence that led him to tackle harder problems, like multiplying three dimensional numbers.
Hacker News is my favorite place on the web, because it's the last bastion of curiosity online.
This upset the moderator so much... because he had already banned me for spamming... So this became the day Lobsters also banned my domain, so that no one else could post my articles.
The first thing he did with his enormous wealth and power is share his animus towards trans people and I got fired for performance reasons around that time.
A few days ago, I got served with a tax warrant from the State of New York... This is what it's been like living in California for the last ten years.
I am the intersection of so many unliked groups whose minds I've come to understand. If you were to use bayesian inference to compute the probability that I'm a good person, it would underflow a double. In practice, this just means I'm a curious person who hasn't had much to fear, since I've never had much to lose. If the day should ever come when society chooses to accept me, then the negative attention I've received will be viewed for what it really was, and then people will be able to safely examine my lifelong track record of kindness and conspicuous public service.
I want to start by using the money to buy myself a home in San Francisco, in a neighborhood where I can feel safe, so that I can have a bed, set up a real office, entertain guests, and take photographs. I want to travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation, so that I won't be molested or risk being detained each time I fly. I want to hire an elite team that can help me accomplish my social and technical goals, such as adding native support for my file format to every operating system.
P.S. describing your open source work as "my" isn't great.
Your support will upset everyone who feels that I don't deserve the gift of life.
I'll say this: given that and the top comment under this very post, I think it's undeniable that Justine has certain very conservative views that differ greatly from the tolerance and acceptance that is A) the default in professional online spaces, and B) implied by raising money by citing transphobia. *I have no first-hand evidence that she literally directly supports Trump though, and my sincere apologies if I was misled on that point.*
Clearly she's soured on them at the least tho, given the complaints about the transphobia of the 'current US government' in this post.