A Strange Loop (about Curtis Yarvin Being Kicked Out of Strange Loop)

Huh, strange that the article to get traction on HN should be written by a neoreactionary. I'm not one, but the author isn't wrong: the people who got Yarvin kicked are hard-Left. Which is significant to me personally, because of the following:

I'm a Zionist. That is to say, I'm a Jewish nationalist, who immigrated to Israel about four years ago from personal conviction. As many will be aware, there is a strong current of Left thought that calls Zionism a racist ideology. This led to U.N. resolution 3379 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly...) - later revoked as a condition of Israel agreeing to a crucial stage of the peace process.

But I would be very surprised if at least some of those who demanded that Yarvin be kicked for racism, did not also think that I was a racist on account of my Zionist beliefs; the phrase "progressive except Palestine" exists for a reason.

Now yes, Miller has every right to choose who comes to his conference, and the attendees have every right to ask that he kick people out for any reason they deem sufficient. But it seems to me that if there is a social norm of letting people veto speakers on grounds unconnected to the subject of their talks, then we're in a very parlous state - even if those grounds are things like racism.

Miller can't be blamed for uninviting Yarvin, there's too much money hanging on it. But this should not be something that passes without concerned comment.

A good reminder of the 2013 PyCon fiasco encrusted within some of the most polite extremely extreme reactionary conservatism that I have read in recent times. Harks back to the good old days of William F. Buckley and the old days of the National Review.

Unfortunately, the author is more interested in the manifestation/justification of his own values (arch politeness; nihilistic stoicism; the existence of a strictly bipolar culture war between noble, truthful conservatives and misguided communists who are living a lie) than the topic at hand, so we don't get to hear as much of his thinking on the matter as we might like to.

He points out that there are tactical and strategic dimensions to this sort of incident, and that there there are individuals and groups who actively pursue this kind of power; he correctly, I think, identifies this as a general problem that needs to be dealt with more determinedly and in a more professional manner than "now look, we don't want no trouble, here..."

However, he gets bogged down in a threat analysis that really only needed to go as far as the word "careers." There are indeed individuals for whom this sort of disputation is a career, or at least vocation, regardless of how cynical or innocent their intentions may be. One needs to fear professional revolutionaries; an inquiry into the nature of the revolution misses the point.

I vaguely recall the name Mencius Moldbug as being that of an absolute loon; he may well believe a great many things that are directly or by consequence very ugly. The author is likewise someone I would (having read a few of his essays) personally describe as deluded. However, I think that someone needs to make the argument that this sort of influence-leveraging is ethically wrong. It is disappointing that the author explicitly shrugs off the notion... the truth, or ethics, or whatever is just and good in his mind: these are matters internal to conservatism, it would seem.

I am not sure that it is, in fact ethically wrong. I don't know. But I think it needs explicit, public justification on the part of at least a few of those "large number of current and former speakers" who allegedly put such widespread pressure on the conference organizers. Such a thing requires justification in every case, as does all public censure, for the same reasons that (for instance) a system of laws ought require justification for a penalty: otherwise, the ability to coordinate and provoke censure becomes a means to power and an end in itself.

The tone of this post is strange to me. The author says things like, "To them, it is an absolute requirement that anyone who utters opinions they consider unacceptable must be excluded from their society." and "They “would not feel comfortable” being forced to treat him as a respectable human being. As a matter of tactics, this is perfectly reasonable. ...the people we are talking about are communists." and "...the ideas that almost everyone in communion with Harvard University believes are communist ideas" and on and on in this vein.

The author clearly has a curiously well defined political ax to grind but to conflate the issue of this speaker being banned with what looks like a 1950's style anti-communist fetish is bizarre. There are so many assumptions and leaps of extremist faith in the post that I'm surprised something like this would get so highly ranked on Hacker News.

As someone who has attended the conference in the past and who is diametrically opposed with the political views of the extreme right (being a moderate, normal, person), I don't have a problem with someone like Yarvin speaking about tech at the conference. What's more, we can discuss his banning without the issue turning into a ridiculous red baiting diatribe framed in terms more suited to the crazy wing of the extreme American Right.

p.s. look at the comments on that post! It's just ridiculous that such insane extremism (of any sort) should elbow its way into such a topic.

This is a surprisingly low-quality essay for the front page of Hacker News. Accusing everyone of communism? Claiming that Adria Richards’s job was to go to conferences and “fuck them up?”

And that comparison is extremely suspect regardless of the hyperbolic ad hominems. That issue was around what is and isn’t a violation of a conference’s explicit or implicit code of conduct, and what is or isn’t an appropriate response with respect to the persons involved and those that report them.

Whereas, this issue is around a person who has not violated a code of conduct. Massive difference. A far better comparison might be to the fate of Brendan Eich, who did not publicly espouse views about same-sex marriage on or off the job.

There’s an excellent essay to be written about the dividing line between someone’s personal views and their professional conduct, but this isn’t it

This is sad to hear, especially with how crazy this same crowd goes over things like NSA surveillance and Internet censorship. Such hypocrisy.

Yeah I know it's a private conference, but it says something that people can't tolerate views they disagree with.

Do we really need this kind of culture war nonsense? I don't agree with anyone being barred from speaking at technical conferences for their political views, but then bringing Steve Klabnik's politics into it doesn't feel like a classy move either (and I say that as someone who does not share his politics). It seems that posts like this are designed to get people more riled up and create another round of polarising outrage, rather than encourage the people who mobilised to bar Yarvin from the event to consider the possibility that they might have been wrong to do so.

Quite sober-minded and unpolemically written, in contrast to the many non-passivistic articles produced in response to this case of politics eating the world. The clear acknowledgement of the independence of tactics from ideology is refreshing - the weapons of rhetoric and other forms of social technology are as innocent of harm as more corporeal arms.

Talk submissions should be blind to maximize inclusiveness and minimize quackery.

I wondered when this nonsense would show up here, and indeed am utterly unsurprised to see an article spinning conspiracy out of the disinvitation of a virulent racist and fascist popping up at #1.

For a less sensationalized counterpoint, try this: https://al3x.net/2015/06/04/wouldn't-censorship-be-exciting....