Two Kinds of Freedom of Speech (or Strangeloop vs. Curtis Yarvin)
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The "Exit, voice, and loyalty" terminology might seem odd if you don't know it's origins. It's from 1970 book by economist A. O. Hirschman that's coming back in popularity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty. Hirschman gives an 1978 intro/postscript in his own words here: http://homepages.wmich.edu/~plambert/comp/hirschman.pdf
I'm surprised by apparent predominance of support here on HN for Strangeloop's position. While clearly legal, it's strikes me as a terrible precedent to require speakers on technical topics to pass a political litmus test. I'd be interested to know the actual direction that the sentiment lies. Do those who support Curtis appearing at the talk (wisely?) refrain from posting out of (legitimate?) fear of career repercussion? Or am I (comfortable speaking because I'm largely outside the industry) in the minority?
No and yes. I have been pretty vocal about it on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/606474432509394944 https://twitter.com/joelgrus/status/606673594198794240
but I've also been sitting on a 75%-written blog post that I'm hesitant to actually post.
Not because of career repercussions (I have never had an employer who really gave a shit what I write about in my spare time) but because of conference repercussions.
I am promoting a book, and to that end I am scheduled to speak at various conferences and meetups. And I worry that the mob would somehow try to get me uninvited. It's not like there's an actual policy that Yarvin violated that I can be confident I'm on the right side of.
So I am torn between my natural inclination to say exactly what I think, and the more practical takeaway of "don't write or have written anything that might anger the mob".
Status-quo social thoughtcrime is rather terrifying to me. There's no "easy" way to amend laws or lobby a system to address the issue, as one would against a governmental stance.
It's also cyclical, as less "clean" people speak out against it, the "only rapists defend rapist" situation mentioned by sister posts occurs, and the entire culture of defending someone who might be distasteful, separating the issue from their broader history, diminishes.
I can't claim to judge you for your decision, I fully acknowledge the unfortunate state of things and your ability to make a choice that best serves your needs, but for the sake of putting my money where my mouth is; I think he should have been allowed to speak (espousing viewpoints I disagree with is far and beyond an offensive enough act to cause me to want to petition against someone, and even then, I would not attempt to convey that aversion as anything more than my personal stance).
The fact that I (or you, or any of us) feel any uncertainty due to fear of the repercussions for merely voicing this opinion only serves to reinforce my conviction that it needs to be voiced.
I think, regardless of political affiliation, we have to admit to ourselves that most people are prepared & willing to silence people with beliefs they find odious. Please note that I said "beliefs" not "actions".
The right to vocalize and discuss our beliefs freely is something that must be fundamentally protected, most especially when it is odious. The only way to do that is to make it both legally permissible [as the law can apply violent force] but also socially permissible to the point of indifference for people to voice different beliefs [even the odious, bigoted ones].
This is the bigger issue - the chilling of all controversial views and debate.
It's less about "violated Rule XXIV, subsection (c) of the Code of Conduct" and more about "wrote some stuff that made us feel funny and we're worried that something awkward might happen at the meeting". Yes, the organizers have the power to rewrite the schedule for bad reasons or no reason at all. But it's important to point out what was done, and why we think it was done.
If I were to hazard a guess, I think I'm not alone in this and I think you're not in a minority (or at least a small one). The recent HN stories seem to get a good number of "silent upvotes" before anyone steps into the fray to add a comment.
This is something I'd love see SJW's here react to. How do you feel about the fact that you have created a climate of fear amongst people who disagree with you?
Would you prefer convincing them of the correctness of your position, but willing to accept that at least by making them afraid you are helping further your cause?
Or are you concerned you've become the kind of discourse-stiffling monster you set out to defeat?
Or are you proud you've made the priviledged afraid?
Or something else entirely?
Because don't kid yourself: people are increasingly afraid to speak up on these issues because they are genuinely afraid of the consequences to their future employment prospects. Personally, I see that as a shameful situation, antithetical to any reasonable notion of a just society.
[Disclaimer: I've been accused at times of being an SJW, an MRA, a shill for Big Carbon, and quite a few other things besides.]
I don't think they care or, more specifically, if you fear then you don't think correctly and should shut-up[1]. Its quite a common attitude in movements and has happened many times.
1) or they'll add you to a blacklist to shut you up - the clean modern version of disappearing a person
I've been involved in anti-racist/anti-fascist work, either directly or on the periphery, for about ten years at this point. This takes many forms, from street confrontations with fascists, protests at book readings and other events, and also disrupting fascist conferences and similar.
Anti-Racist Action is the organization that has developed the most tactical and strategic influence in this space, not by design, but by chance (and it largely doesn't exist anymore). Disrupting fascist meetings by denying them space by getting hotels to drop them is the bread and butter of any ARA chapter. It's the easiest thing to do, and most modern tumblerites aren't willing to get in the streets with a bandanna and a baseball bat, so it's what gets done now. And in fact, it's likely that this sort of thing happens because ARA activists got involved in more liberal groups, etc., and the tactics just trickled down.
Personally, I have developed political differences with the "SJW" orthodoxy myself (though obviously in the other direction), and have seen the effects of this sort of attack applied on a social level. It has made my own work slightly more difficult, because I have to pick my comrades more carefully to ensure that they won't alienate me from my network. But this isn't a big deal for leftists, because there are already so many camps that are mutually oppositional that you'd need to do that already for some of your politics anyway. What's new in the last few years is having that extend away from your class alignment. (This is an answer to a question you didn't really ask, which is how the "SJW" community itself is affected by this, though it is what came to mind when I asked myself how I felt about it.)
As far as this issue and other similar issues are concerned, I'm overjoyed that, as you put it, a climate of fear exists for fascists, misogynists, racists, and similar. I hope that this continues and only worsens for these people.
I'm happy for many reasons. The first is that it has, as you've said, made privileged people afraid. I think this is only the beginning. Privilege creates safety, and as it is removed, I think the unsafety of the oppressed will in part come to the currently privileged classes. But if I could flip a switch and make every man feel the persistent, gnawing fear that a woman has of men, I would in a heartbeat. I wouldn't even consider whether the consequences were strategic, I would just do it.
I'm also happy that these people are achieving real victories. This is nearly impossible to do in a post-reformist landscape, and so the people involved in getting this fascist kicked out of this conference will have a real victory under their belt where their friends who are campaigning against some law that will inevitably pass or for some reform that will inevitably never happen won't. I hope that these victories can motivate people into taking more action. Burnout is a huge problem in activism and successes stave it off.
I would not say that I set out to defeat a "discourse-stifling" monster. The monsters I set out to defeat were patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy. These systems violently oppress, they don't "stifle discourse." In fact, they LOVE discourse! When people are discoursing, they aren't in the streets. I've seen so many promising movements hobbled by reformism that I'm glad the possibility no longer exists, though that isn't at all the fault of SJW-outrage (and is rather a consequence of the fact that the economy is in large part so perilous that nobody can afford the concessions that were previously won by reformists). So if discourse is permanently removed as a tactical and strategic option for future leftists, I'll consider it a victory.
You might be unsurprised to find out that free speech is not valued on the left or among "SJW" groups. I suggest you research this further, because I can't communicate to you in a single hacker news comment why this is, or what theoretical basis it has.
Would it not be better to work towards nobody feeling such fear?
> I'm also happy that these people are achieving real victories ... their friends ... are campaigning against some law that will inevitably pass
Once again championing (any) change itself over sane outcomes. Oppressive laws and the march of the machine are inevitable, so let's just fight each other?
Your comment is a poignant example of everything gone wrong with the "progressive" mentality. Thank you for being candid though.
But that isn't the hypothetical. Do you understand the concept?
Certainly if I had a faeries & unicorns switch I'd hit that as well, but we don't always have the options we'd like.
In the meantime, if it's possible to make fascist programmers afraid for their careers, that's great for me. It means fascist movements are disrupted before they can even form. God knows leftists have been afraid for long enough.
By your usage, I presume you're using definition #1 of http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascist even though you are not capitalizing it. If it is possible to make Fascist programmers afraid for their careers, then Fascists cannot possibly wield much power.
On the other hand, the results of mob justice look an awful lot like a distributed implementation of fascism definition #2 - how is it not appropriate to describe, for example, a summary firing for political views as such?
It is true that all exercises of political power are at the end of the day coercive. My personal take on this is to minimize political power, but to do this takes a specific social arrangement that doesn't exist in the present day.
The hypothetical I came up with is one where it's easier to attack an existing system than to create new and liberatory systems. This is the same as reality. It is much, much easier to get a fascist talk removed from a conference than it would be to get everyone at that conference to come to an appropriate understanding of feminist and anti-racist thought and praxis. There are certainly people involved in education, propaganda, and outreach, but this is by nature a much slower process and one that will not bear fruit in any reasonable time span. It is certainly not fast enough to counteract things like fascists at conferences, so we shut down the fascists.
I also obviously disagree as to whether denying a fascist the ability to spread fascism is injustice, or more broadly, whether attacking the oppressor classes and limiting their ability to oppress is somehow unjust. But then, I also care much less about any concept of "justice." Certainly the world is not a just place, and I question whether the concept of justice as communicated by oppressor classes is something we need to bring with us into the future.
Finally
>distributed implementation of fascism
Do you notice the contradiction?
How does one distinguish a "fascist talk" from a "technical talk presented by one accused of being a fascist"? Is the difference relevant? I think Moldbug views himself as anti-fascist, and argues that Fascism and Communism are alternative undesirable endgames for democracy: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/carlyle...
And I'm not sure whether one should equate Moldbug with Yarvin. Is the blogger a pseudonym, a construct, a caricature, or an alter-ego? Should a comedian be equated with their on-stage persona? An actor with the character they play? An author with their protagonist?
I (truly) appreciate the insight your earlier comments provide.
Well, pragmatically, the difference is immaterial, because to maximize the memetic intensity of anti-fascism, we have to attack all fascists everywhere all the time. Within the fold, there is very little opposition, because once one valid point has been made, going against it is nearly impossible.
This is the real danger in going down the ideological-purity path the way the mainstream extreme-liberal tumblerite bloc has. I get around this by maintaining a network of people I trust implicitly as comrades and who also trust me, but this is how ideologic drift happens in, say, activist groups.
>I think Moldbug views himself as anti-fascist
Well, nobody's the villain of their own story.
>Is the blogger a pseudonym, a construct, a caricature, or an alter-ego? Should a comedian be equated with their on-stage persona? An actor with the character they play? An author with their protagonist?
Do you think Moldbug is intended as a fiction?
>I (truly) appreciate the insight your earlier comments provide.
Don't think they provide so much insight. I'm one person and pretty idiosyncratic in my ideology and praxis. I am certainly not representative and I'm sure I would disagree with (just as an example) most of the people whose twitter comments were cited in the OP's article.
I just wanted to say that yes, I fully enjoy the fact that people are now afraid to be racist, sexist, etc., at tech conferences.
Nobody on the Left talks like that. I'm guessing you're actually one of Yarvin's own bunch masquerading as an antifascist to discredit the cause.
No, I think they are essays where in the author is testing out ideas to see how they hold together when criticized by the world. Some of these ideas are deep beliefs, where the question is simply how the outside will react to hearing about them. Some of them are fragments of arguments he's trying to piece together, in the hope that the process of writing will clear things up in his own mind. Others are probably there simply because he was drawn in the cadence of the language.
But I do think that Moldbug is consciously a persona, and not identical to Yarvin. And I don't think either is a fascist by any reasonable definition. Racist? Yes, the writing is racist by the current way the word is used to label practically any belief in racial differences. But I'd prefer to judge the author (Yarvin) by how he treats others in the world, not how he writes about the world in the abstract.
I fully enjoy the fact that people are now afraid to be racist, sexist, etc., at tech conferences.
If this was the only outcome, I'd might agree with the tactics. But what if their pragmatic reaction is to simply avoid situations where they can be accused of these things? Don't hire women, because they might accuse you of sexism. Don't hire minorities, because you might lose your job if accused of racial prejudice?
In such an environment, silence is likely the best strategy. But along with the silence is likely the belief that everyone else shares the same opinion, but similarly doesn't speak about it. I believe more in sunlight as a disinfectant: get the ideas out in the open. I think it's good for people to hear more points of view they disagree with.
I'm one person and pretty idiosyncratic in my ideology and praxis.
Yes, but that ideology is so different from mine that I learn just by the knowledge that such a viewpoint exists.
> My personal take on this is to minimize political power, but to do this takes a specific social arrangement that doesn't exist in the present day.
So in the mean time, you switch to maximizing political power? Why exactly do you think this would end any differently than it has in the past - simply empowering new autocrats borne by new religions?
> But then, I also care much less about any concept of "justice."
How can you propose to have a society without justice? When people feel wronged, their desire is to get greater revenge. Without moderating this force, feuds grow ever larger.
It seems as if you're envisioning a magic society where everybody just "gets it" and nobody transgresses against one another. And since you can never have that (there will always be differences of opinion), you take solace in mob destruction but yet still tell yourself you're fighting the good fight.
>> distributed implementation of fascism
> Do you notice the contradiction?
Not at all. The result is the same for those on the receiving end. (and for your inevitable thought of 'well they deserve it' - that's exactly the position of the oppressors you're fighting against. good job!)
No. Distributivism comes to mind.
Disrupting fascist movements sounds like a great idea, but is that really your intent?
> But if I could flip a switch and make every man feel the persistent, gnawing fear that a woman has of men, I would in a heartbeat. I wouldn't even consider whether the consequences were strategic, I would just do it.
Because it seems your intent is to make others as afraid as you are regardless of the consequences. Unless it's not, in which case things would probably be a lot more clear if you stopped flip flopping and refusing to define the words you use.
When you ask questions like this, you give the respondent authority, because it is worded in a way that gives the possibility that the respondent might say something intelligent in response.
There is no such possibility here.
Who needs theory? Practicality tells all.
Extreme ideologies don't value free speech, because free speech allows the unwashed masses to communicate to each other just how ridiculous they think your ideology is. This is true regardless of where an ideology falls on the oversimplistic "right-left" spectrum: North Korea, Fascist Italy, Communist Russia, Oligarchical-Capitalist Russia, Cambodia, North Vietnam, Burma, Communist China, pretty much the entire Middle East, etc. The list goes on and on and on.
Suppress free speech and criminalize dissident thoughts, and you establish a social basis for staying in power - for the good of the people, of course.
It's unsurprising that extreme ideological adherents are always united in at least one common idea, regardless of the actual content of the ideology they are espousing: the belief that people themselves don't know what is best for their own interests and must be closely watched and shepherded (and culled) if they fall into an annoying habit of thinking on their own.
I would give you some discussion questions, but I'm sure you'll never, ever move past this roadblock, so I won't feed the trolls.
Not because it is a sacred cow, but because I believe the benefits to free speech far outweigh any drawbacks. (For largely the same reasons, I support open data in government to an much further extent than I think most people would.)
Out of curiostity, Mr Throwaway, what -ism do you use to identity your personal ideology?
>though my political ideology is pretty obviously very far from the ones you've listed
That is very arguable and not obvious at all.
I've been involved in political activism of one kind or other for decades, mostly in ways that are opposed to your ideals, so I'm not one tiny bit surprised to find a lefty who is opposed to free speech, nor am I unfamiliar with the "theoretical basis" for such abhorent positions.
I wanted to cast as broad a net as possible in my question, as I know how eclectic the left is: the two major Communist parties in my country spent most of their political capital fighting each other while the mainstream drifted gently, and rather too far, to the right.
Your myopia, anger and hatred are unfortunately true to the rightwingnutjob's caricature of anyone interested in building a just society, which makes the job of sane social reformers more difficult. Just so you know (yeah, I know, we're you're enemies too... and it's important to have a comprehensive enemies list, isn't it?)
And while on the one hand I can take heart in the knowledge that you'll never get close to achieving your goals, I'm also saddened that you will spread so much toxicity into your environment on your way to ultimate failure. The world needs more love, not more hate, or more fear.
If you have a specific idea at all about how the world should be better, the people who oppose that are certainly not your friends. I think you're mistaking vision for myopia, dedication for anger, and pragmatism for hatred... but then you certainly hate me more than I hate you.
I'm probably just as unsure as you about whether I'll achieve my goals, but I have to try, because to do anything less would be a betrayal of all of humanity. I believe everyone is responsible for their actions, and so if I'm to be responsible I have to act somehow.
It's very easy to say that "the world needs more love," but love doesn't break bricks, as the saying goes. I doubt your own activism is limited to "love"; you probably do things that are intended to make reality assume some objective state. In doing that, you are preventing your opponents from forcing the world into their preferred state. This is no different from opposing free speech. I just have a more complete vision of the world that I want, and it doesn't include Mein Kampf or Birth of a Nation or hacker news's casual misogyny and racism.
There's not much point in railing against racists / sexists / etc. if you're going to make equally condescending generalizations about the victims you're trying to save.
Probably because this is a really stupid course of action to begin with, independent of tumblr.
Using baseball bats to reinforce your political views seems like a great idea until your opponents show up with guns. Which means you, now, have to show up with guns, and so on, until you're a full-on terrorist group.
Well, that and you risk going to jail for assault with a deadly weapon, and you don't want to be in the same cell with someone from the Aryan Brotherhood when they find out your reason for jailtime was assaulting white power groups.
I have to wonder if this dangerous person lives in the US, or at least the true US, the 2/3rds of which allow concealed carry. I marvel at how the National Socialist Movement and some "White Nationalists" thought it wise to meet in New Jersey and Illinois, respectively, where and when it was illegal to carry concealed (not groups of smart people, it would seem :-). Hmmmm, for that matter, Ohio is in one way the worst state in the union for self-defense, because the burden of proof is on the person claiming it. (These incidents mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Racist_Action)
Try that shit in the state of Missouri where Strange Loop is meeting and you'll very possibly get legally shot. Counterwise the Nazis were greatly aided by prior Weimar efforts at gun control, which they of course reinforced once they started getting formal power.
In fact, all these actions by the left in the US strike me as extremely unwise, for in the many possibilities of "this will not end well", those of a very well armed population putting paid to their pretensions should be quite prominent in their minds.
It's hilarious to me that you seem to think leftists could set off an arms race.
Also, what do you think the black panthers, weather underground, etc., were?
"Do you think that white nationalists don't take guns to their protests and marches?"
I think the kind of person who talks about carrying around baseball bats isn't going to go to these marches.
What you think is hilarious is on you and your weird sense of humor. If you go to a meeting with baseball bats, eventually, the people you're disrupting are going to bring weapons stronger than baseball bats.
Anti-racist and anti-fascist organizing happens under the mantle of a thousand different groups all over the world. There are antifa in Russia that have it much harder than antifa in France or the UK or the US.
And yet we are asked to believe that an obscure blogger flirting with monarchist political thought would introduce a dangerous authoritarian element if allowed to present on a technical topic. Thanks for putting this into context.
This thinking, right here, is a problem.
Discussing an individual's technical contributions does not legitimize their political views, let alone their technical ones.
And the big threat today is not neo-reactionaryism, but zealotry in all its forms. Radicals from any group are more dangerous than moderates from a single distasteful group, and they all use exactly the same tactics to win. And if we're going to win by burying bad ideas through threats and intimidation instead of openly dismantling them through rational and ethical thought, then I'm not sure the battle is even worth winning.
This will be great news to the neoreactionaries. How do you figure?
> because it communicates a lack of concern with the threat "neo-reactionaryism" or fascism represents.
And what is the threat, if not that they will seize power?
Antifa did and do routinely disrupt fascist actions with physical force and frequently got (and get) shot for it. Sometimes the antifa are the ones doing the shooting.
But most of the time the antifa are hilariously underarmed compared to the (as you've pointed out) very well armed rightists and it's a combination of bravado and stupidity that they take the actions they do. The KKK, neo nazis, etc., have all had weapons stronger than baseball bats for a while. There's no "eventually." Do you understand what I'm saying?
Plus, if what you say was true, can you point to some incidents where your side actually, you know, got shot for their troubles? I mean your violent side, not the pre-Black Power civil rights period of this.
(edit: parent edited post, this no longer makes sense. Original was about revolutionaries never expecting the guillotine to fall on their own neck)
But far more put there by the state, make no mistake. It's not like there haven't been plenty of purges and organized campaigns of systematic repression from the state to the left. But you like ignoring that when we talk about fascist programmers not being able to present their widgets, don't you?
See: The Holocaust The Great Purge The Reign of Terror etc
"But if I could flip a switch and make every man feel the persistent, gnawing fear that a woman has of men, I would in a heartbeat."
If that's intentional parody, it's brilliant. If not, I guess there's always therapy.
How terrifying.
Communist here. Fuck you: of course we care about free speech.
That 'climate of fear' also exists for those people who don't fall into such cleanly vilifiable categories, and yet occasionally engage in language and behavior that could be categorized as such, often unknowingly because those definitions seem to depend on contexts they cannot determine, have different meanings for each individual, and are rapidly being expanded to encompass broader categories of thought and behavior.
> I'm happy for many reasons. The first is that it has, as you've said, made privileged people afraid. I think this is only the beginning. Privilege creates safety, and as it is removed, I think the unsafety of the oppressed will in part come to the currently privileged classes. But if I could flip a switch and make every man feel the persistent, gnawing fear that a woman has of men, I would in a heartbeat. I wouldn't even consider whether the consequences were strategic, I would just do it.
One thing I've noticed about the fearful is that they tend to resent the fearless, and want everyone to live under the same fears they do. It's a very primal thing, as people who fear the same things are part of the same tribe. These fears are not used to achieve anything strategic, but to define the very culture members exist in, and so are vigorously spread and defended regardless of any practical value they may have. In such a culture you will never get beyond that fear. You can see this most readily in religious sects, but many political movements are little other than that.
And regardless of the 'harm' fear prevents, it is still the antithesis of knowledge, and a society ruled by fear cannot be ruled by knowledge. In such a society knowledge itself is a threat, and the only people willing to discuss controversial ideas will either be the ones courageous enough to question or hateful enough not to care. The fearful of course will not be able to tell the difference.
Personally, that is not a price I am willing to pay for a 'safe' society. That doesn't mean such a system is right or wrong, only that it doesn't align with my values. But regardless of differing values, it still troubles me that anyone would take such joy in other people's fear and unsafety, and I don't think any good can come of that.
> So if discourse is permanently removed as a tactical and strategic option for future leftists, I'll consider it a victory.
And yet here you are, using a throwaway account to engage in tactically and strategically driven discourse.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
So instead of attempting to clarify what you mean by 'fascism' to further discussion, you effectively declare that the words you use only have meaning to you, making further discussion impossible. I hope then it's acceptable to use the word 'gay' to designate 'lame' (especially among my gay friends), unless you're also stuck in that barren rule based wasteland too.
Words only point to a reality. And while we cannot know the entirety of that reality, it can certainly be made much clearer in this case. Words are useless unless they're communal property and their meanings (sufficiently) shared.
Why is it important to you that it be gray? Why are you implying that the status of Hacker News is affected by this?
I also find myself not posting sometimes because of repercussions at a later date....not too often, but you know...
That said, this entire conversation has an amazingly suppressive effect on me. This is primarily because i come from east germany, have grown up in its social era until my early teens, and have seen how it changed since the wall fell, and thus consider myself strongly socialist and glad that germany itself still is strongly socialist. I am left.
And i find myself under attack for what i consider to be a human-friendly view. I see talk of leftists, the red guard, communists, etc. etc. etc. and find the american internet to be extraordinarily busy painting what i consider to be my political leaning as "terrorist".
You are right about the crazy views on socialism and German politics in general.
It's a lot more pervasive, and has been going on a lot longer than most people think. The Brendan Eich or Pax Dickinson purges are probably the most known to the HN community, but there are many, many more.
https://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-bad...
On the other hand, consider how "Obamacare" was attacked, and (if i understood correctly what came out of your country) changed, cut and successfully damaged, thus affecting wide parts of the US population. ( http://www.galen.org/newsletters/changes-to-obamacare-so-far... )
Also, i find it a little disingenuous to ask for something and in the same breath declare delivery of such impossible.
With regard to your link I don't know whether you're obtuse or spraying squid ink. The topic under discussion is consequences for voicing free speech.
Please provide one example of a person [...]
enduring serious economic consequences
As for this:
Name one person who was fired for comments in support
of the federal involvement in local police matters in
relation to the Treyvon Martin and Michael Brown
incidents. The left is in power.
Edit: I'm sorry for the edits, and i hope you see this post only after i am done editing. One last note on this:
The topic under discussion is consequences for voicing free speech.
Do you not recall the self-immolation of the Mozilla Community during the Brendan Eich CEO fiasco? Big overlap in the two communities.
This. It also has the perverse effect of leaving the defense of "racists" to actual racists (e.g., [1]), thereby leading to guilt by association: "See, only racists are willing to defend this guy, so he's obviously a racist!"
[1]: https://twitter.com/B8GodDante/status/607201146017615872
Many moderates - in this case, moderate supporters of Yarvin, as shown in the comments here - appear to be fearful of getting tarred with the scarlet "R" and facing career threat. The scarlet "S" and "M" are also significant.
In contrast, the "C" is not threatened nowadays, if it ever was. Left-wing extremism is given a pass, while right-wing extremism is always tarred with the "R" brush. People rarely use the "F" word - they just default to "R", which is far more damaging.
(I mean: racist / sexist / misogynist / communist / fascist above.)
And this reminds me of a quote by the not moderate Jim Hightower, "There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos."
It's funny, in some countries you have laws against hate speech - it probably wouldn't be legal to write stuff like "blacks make good slaves because of their genetics" [sic] - but in the US because of the free speech thing society relies on all these extrajudicial lynch mobs. So... terrible precedent or common sense?
I'm pretty far-left (though more liberal than leftist), and found the black-and-white leftist-bashing in the article didn't add much besides giving the author the opportunity to vent his spleen at a segment of leftists while pretending we're all some monoculture, which is ludicrous. Would have been better to just focus on the issue of why an open society needs to be willing to accept diverse political views, even hideous ones like Marxism or neoreactionary craziness, without using it as a platform for pontificating about a crudely conceived culture war.
Actually, progressives do seem to be relatively monocultural when it comes to, as the article says toward the end, "tolerating everything except the outgroup." Either that, or the intolerant faction(s) are very dominant and end up getting their way quite a lot.
As well as the examples cited in the article, another good example is Brendan Eich being forced out as chief of Mozilla due to having political views that some progressives deemed to be "incorrect."
Alternately, you could just look at the actual cases the ACLU takes, which often enough support people and causes that aren't darlings of some faction or another on the left.
For the record I was against Eich's firing (and know a number of leftists who were similarly against), I donate to the ACLU and the Sierra Club, and used to be an anti-war protester long ago. I also am enough of an exception to your generalization that you might want to reconsider your stereotype.
I'm been told by plenty of people that I'm a loon with crazy political views (Tea Party family members mostly), but if I was working on an interesting tech. project, and wanted to do a talk at a tech. conference about it, I'd hope that wouldn't be a factor in conference organizers rejecting me.
If I'd started a political party founded on ideals of illiberalism, dictatorship, and subjugation of the people I hated and worked to gain political power in the US, then I'd say not accepting me at a conference could be more easily justified as the conference would then become a political platform for me regardless of what the talk was about.
In Hungary after the government change they saved a whole bunch of communist statues that were being taken down and made a museum out of it. I think it's interesting and worth seeing.
The fact that a horrible, unconscionable, genocidal dictator was also a painter makes his paintings more interesting, if anything.
The "questions for sponsors" bit is particularly sharp at cutting towards the discrepancy between the standards dissenters expected from the conference and those they saw. There may be widely agreeable answers to the "how is this justifiably different?" question, but the conversations so far have largely skated around it with sophistry.
Also, I'd recommend everyone read the "Tolerating everything except the outgroup" link, but the writing style and/or position might prevent you from seeing the message.
Or was, till I took an arrow to the knee.
Anyway, thanks for your kind words re the post!
Politics is a common topic here, of course. I've participated in my share of such discussions. But I couldn't tell you who took what position. I'd definitely never look at a prospective conference speaker and say, oh, that's the guy who believes X, where X is any political subject. Not even as a neutral observation, let alone as criticism.
Is this a real thing? This conversation feels like a window into an alternate universe.
I'm with you there.
I've helped organize a couple of small regional meetings, and I have literally zero idea what the political leanings of the speakers or attendees were. Nor did I care.
If someone were into radical politics in his free time, that would be his own business. If any of the speakers had veered off into unrelated violent or rude speech (e.g. racism, calling for war, political uprising, etc) at the podium, for a technical talk, that would be addressed on the spot. (I've never seen this happen.)
But if you are informed of their political leanings, and then don't take 'appropriate' action, then that says something about YOU, like how you endorse and advocate such politics.
See how it works ;)
If someone has a view that is actually destructive for the forum its aired in ( I'm speaking hypothetically now ) does it have to be accommodated.
By that, and I genuinely want to know what you guys think, what if a political candidate advocated the end of democratic elections? A "one man, one vote, one time" kind of thing. How is that handled in an open society?
Extreme conservative opinions like Mr Yarvins are actually shocking to me. I don't think his particular writings should be banned or anything like that. However, are they so reactionary as to represent to the organizers a position that they don't want to even tacitly or obliquely endorse?
I will say this, the first post on this subject the other day saw me having one of the most interesting exchanges I've ever had on HN. That was cool.
It's a heckler's vote. Now, the conversation is about Yarvin and his politics. But if these 3-4 radical and deeply political agitators had not made this an issue to begin with, everyone attending the conference would have just known they were attending a presentation on Urbit (if they even chose to check out that session).
In other words, if this is established as a precedent, then a passionate enough fringe group can create the "destruction" they claim to be against to justify covert ideological policing. That this is occurring at a strictly technology event with a reputation for openness to innovative, experimental ideas is particularly chilling.
"Nice conference you got there, shame if this speaker I don't like created a controversy for you"-type manipulation does not seem as bad or obvious when the targeted beliefs are foreign to your own. Stepping back and anticipating the implications reveals a troubling future, and one that is occurring in many industries at once.
That's really interesting that the most prominent voices against him aren't attending...I don't know.
I don't think that you have to imagine done kind of follow on effects...i think the US probably irreversibly stopped being a free society when it became a national security state. So, I guess what I'm saying that it doesn't seem our of character in the US. I would just add that it's actually bidirectional pressure from both the left and the right depending on the subject and the area.
I'll stop rambling... Thanks for the background info, though...
Given that the reaction of the organizers was to remove Yarvin's talk, with extremely vague justifications, I think both sides could agree that the answer to this question is "yes".
As has been noted by others, this could be interpreted as the latter issuing a "Nice conference and career you have there, it would be a shame if anything happened to them". A political interpretation, yes, but one of pure power politics, vs. anything requiring an actual analysis of the putative issue, Yarvin's politics.
Rather, the "hecklers" who advised the organizers to drop CY/MM were the ones who held this belief.
All these experiences helped me get socially connected with a lot of powerful and important people. They all loved me. I even put the fact that I engaged in this sort of troublemaking on my resume. I'm not kidding. I even talked about it at job interviews. Stuff like this impresses people. There's no doubt in my mind that it led to my current level of success, writing code for a living.
Does Noam Chomsky get heat for his political views? I was amused when I realized the Chomsky I'd heard about in CS classes was the same person I'd read about in political news. I guess his views are more palatable to the people criticizing Mr. Yarvin.
This whole episode does make you wonder where the line would be drawn in the future.
2001-09-11, NYT
I wonder how popular Chomsky's radical left views actually are among techies...assuming what I hear about libertarian views being prevalent...its not necessarily a natural fit.
And somewhat discredited at this point? I don't care to write up a bunch, but his ideas about universal grammar built on genetic properties have not fared well over the years. I know he's done other stuff, but that seems his main claim to fame, excluding the political stuff.
Let's face it: the window of conference political acceptability covers the point -infinity. We know the upper bound is finite, and shrinking.
Inviting Moldbug bring not only his own person but also his followers. It's understandable if your goal is to foster a diverse crowd to not invite a group of people who constantly argue against any kind of modern society.
Imagine if your sentence was reformulated like this instead.
> Inviting Harvey Milk bring not only his own person but also his followers. It's understandable if your goal is to foster a diverse crowd to not invite a group of people who [insert claim here] against any kind of modern society.
See the problem? :(
Tolerance is hard, I know, but something we need to foster nonetheless.
Even if we don't allow these people to conferences, we still share roads, grocery stores, national identity, tax revenues, employment opportunities, classrooms, etc, with them. Humanity sucks badly enough at cooperation already! Let's not ever actively discourage it!
I'm uncertain if I'm willing to consider the position with Moldbug intolerance, because of the paradox listed. This is not someone with a pro-gun or anti-tax or some other form of political speech that are culturally arguable without being an intolerant viewpoint against a group of people.
Still, that's just pointing out the difference. I feel like a bit of a fence sitter to be honest. That being said, I have left jobs because of a boss that had, what I considered, intolerant viewpoints of LGBT and non-white people.
edit: if there are others with notable real-world achievements, I will eagerly accept correction.
That's not fair at all. You make a value judgment by referring to (but not defining) 'real-world achievements' and follow it up with an ad hominem, instead of deconstructing the actual ideas involved.
It also makes perfect sense that following any political view radically different from the mainstream will lead to less 'real-world' success, as not only does compromising your politics for success potentially alienate you from your allies, but mainstream society will be actively and deliberately trying to prevent you from achieving that success (and apparently speaking at technical conferences).
For example, I would not have been successful in the Roman Empire, Communist Russia, or Nazi Germany unless I was willing to compromise my politics. I'm not exactly successful now because my politics don't precisely line up with the 'mainstream'. But that still says nothing about how ethical or tenable my political stance is.
- 2014/05/27: @ReactionaryTree I don’t identify as a neoreactionary. Although I talk to a lot of people who do. https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/471281445013843968
- 2014/05/30: @tesseractiv I don't identify as a neoreactionary. I already had my movement. I don't want to join any others. https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/472425936692854784
- 2014/06/28: @nullvoid9 I'm not a neoreactionary :'( I'm also friendly and will treat you with the same respect you give me. https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/482757375854522368
- 2014/08/04: Who said I was a neoreactionary? I keep telling people I'm not, but no one believes me. http://ask.fm/JustineTunney/answer/116475763475
- 2015/01/15: @DurrutiOvercloc Well, most of the things. Like, I’m not pro-slavery. I’ve also never called myself a neoreactionary. https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/555603973286400000
- 2015/03/11: @jhamby @justkelly_ok I'm not a neoreactionary. I've never been one. Also Shanley is a huge racist. https://twitter.com/justinetunney/status/575829516079263744
On the other hand you did start a petition to turn over government rule to Google, and believe the bottom 1/3 of the population should be live in servants to the top 1/3. What this has to do with neoreactionarism I have no idea, but apparently many people think it's associated.
P.S. I'm still not convinced that you're not a troll, but then again I'm not sure if this is not exactly the kind of $#@% that needs to be stirred up.
Neoreactionary ideas have been picked up and directly cited by cultural influencers like Ross Douthat, Ed West, and William Gibson, however. They see themselves as a right wing Frankfurt School - not noteworthy for their identities, but for their subtle cultural impact.
ah, the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism um, ok
Check out Eclipse of Reason, Escape from Freedom, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, and The Theory of Communicative Action when you get a chance. Primary sources and all.
Note: it was written in 2010 and I am sure that over the last 5 years a lot will have changed.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/sl-notes/yarvin.txt
So on the word of a few individuals he doesn't name, with information he doesn't bother to validate for himself, Alex decides to remove Curtis from the lineup because he might be 'distracting', not because of what he'd say, but just because he'd be present. This implies an environment where we're powerless against unnamed accusers, an authority who is unwilling to evaluate the merits of a case, and a group of people who are so unable to separate technical matters from politics that the mere presence of someone they disagree with makes it impossible to focus.
And you know what? I've seen exactly this sort of behavior from other corporations and both the 'left' and 'right'. It's something all groups naturally default to, and active measures need to be taken in order to avoid it. And while I get why people want to remain anonymous, I also know you cannot have the free flow of ideas when anonymous accusers can cost you your position, by making accusations they never need to verify, over things you never intend to address at a venue.
We need to challenge ideas, not bury them, especially at a conference like Strangeloop. And if the Urbit presentation was deemed good enough to hear before these facts came to light, then it's still good enough to be challenged on that basis.
P.S. By excising Curtis Yarvin in an attempt to avoid "overshadowing the talk and acting as a distraction for launching the conference as a whole", Alex Miller has done just that. And if I were to put on my tinfoil hat and give a bad faith reading of all this, considering the internet savvy are well aware of the Streisand Effect, I'd say this was exactly their intent.
On the third hand, though, I find the popehat post, complete with the use of "social justice warrior", to be especially repellent. Although I do congratulate Clark on the ability to be a conservative intellectual---I now have a puddle of condescension on my office floor.
Basically, a Breitbart columnist said that they were putting an article about me today. When this happens, a wave of harassment generally follows. I did not delete that or any other tweet on this issue.
(They seem to have decided to post about something else instead, we'll see.)
As I said in the last thread, I don't really plan on reading and responding to much here, but since this is on the front page, might as well correct the inaccuracy.
edit: wording
FWIW, reading "A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations" made me identify as liberal. I wholeheartedly agree with Moldbug's analysis of the arrow of time and condemnation of the machine(s) of USG and the Cathedral. But I believe he unjustly discounts the idea of distributed force wherein aggression is unproductive, and IMHO making that work at lower levels is a better goal than the federated centralization of take-it-or-leave-it fiefdoms. (Then again, this growing feel-good "SJW" cancer has me rethinking how enlightened such a society could be, but I digress...). He also discounts how technology has made subjects ever-more transparent to their rulers, with a simple handwave that rulers wouldn't be interested in unnecessary policing. (If I am guilty of oversimplifying here I apologize - it's been a while since I read him and I'm recalling my main takeaways.)
I don't believe in Urbit for similar reasoning - it seems like its entities are opaque objects where the only primitive is composition, and punts to delegation for solving the hard problems. I'd previously gone down a similar "immutable universal code" fugue with r6rs as the basis and eventually considered it a dead end.
I've never read a word of Moldybug or whatever, but in the American context, the very concept of slavery is absolutely considered racist and rightly so. America's history of slavery is completely inseparable from racism.
To outright decide that all mentions of a word have such a narrow context is something I cannot accept as valid. It's thoughtcrime.
After all, it's not like Moldbug's writing shies away from this idea.
> Not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery. For others, it is more suited to slavery. And others still are badly suited to either. These characteristics can be expected to group differently in human populations of different origins. Thus, Spaniards and Englishmen in the Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries, whose sense of political correctness was negligible, found that Africans tended to make good slaves and Indians did not. This broad pattern of observation is most parsimoniously explained by genetic differences.
If all you have to make your case is rhetorical tricks (like "look! somewhere in this man's million plus words he talked about Africans being slaves! Slavery is therefore a specific kind of racist in all conversations") then I work from the premise that there isn't much of a case to be made.
Kind of like what you're doing right now?
Real contexts, where abstract concepts have been concrete realities, put natural and rational limits on the ability to treat those concepts as abstract ideas to be debated solely on their hypothesized merits rather than their hard realities. There is a very rational difference between arguing in favor of communism on an American college campus, where communism is a lovely abstract ideal, and arguing in favor of it in Romania or Ukraine where communism was a brutal reality.
Moldbug is an American, being read by Americans, writing about his support for the institution of slavery, and explicitly saying that some races are genetically better suited for slavery than others. It is far more rational to treat that as racist than to bend over backwards and pretend that it is not in the name of free debate.
On the other hand, saying that some races are more suited to slavery is about as direct as it gets.
Besides, those deaths weren't due to the policies of communism, rather the particular regime. Hell, British colonialism is responsible for a lot of deaths too. Tons were under the East India Trading company (and the governments that it morphed into), which was a capitalist venture and all of its harmful policies were profit-oriented. There are probably other examples, I don't know.
(I don't exactly support communist ideals, but I don't really think it's something that deserves to be taboo'd.)
Whether some emotional damage is "scarring" (i.e. permanent) will depend on, well, a lot of things, but almost no kind of emotional damage has to be permanent because of the way our physiology of emotions behaves. Your resilience, your existing beliefs, what you expect out of the world, and so on will determine how you respond to stressful stimuli. Learning that people don't live forever can be 'scarring' (not really) to a two-year old, but, people eventually adjust to this information, because stress tolerance exists. If everything were as equally stressful as the first time we heard it, our bodies would be overwhelmed with cortisol all the time. Since this obviously doesn't happen, our bodies can (and do) adapt to stressful stimuli in various ways.
Comparing emotional damage to scars is probably a false analogy. Your skin will never fully adapt to a gash, and being stabbed once isn't going to change the way your body responds to stabbings. But your body will adapt to stressful emotions, or at least it is capable of doing so. In the worst case it's probably like a muscle tear, but in most cases emotional stress is more like some kind of the muscle trauma that happens during resistance training, which the body adapts to.
There are mental trauma, that has not been caused by physical trauma, that will end up being like the gash you describe never being able to acclimatize to.
I take your point about the use of the word scarring...I was just trying to draw a certain type of similarity into the conversation...it certainly isn't a perfect analogy.
One other thing, though...is it really a surprise that discussing mental or emotional damage would use a physical analogy? We don't culturally have a large body of language for describing things accurately that are "just in your head."
"There are mental trauma, that has not been caused by physical trauma, that will end up being like the gash you describe never being able to acclimatize to."
I'm not so sure about this.
Stress happens because of stress hormones. You can develop a tolerance to those hormones like you could develop a tolerance to any drug.
The range of experiences that human emotion can adapt to are vast. People in far more violent societies have adapted to far more horrific things. If we didn't have the ability to adapt to extreme shock we'd be screwed as a species.
Cheers.
Which, oddly enough, includes Strange Loop! (Unless the Peabody Opera House screens attendies with metal detectors (!), in Missouri law even a "no guns" sign at such a venue only means you have to leave if asked.)
People who are virulently anti-libertarian inexplicably adopt very libertarian "employers should be able to hire/fire anyone they want" responses when this practice is criticized, as if they don't see any kind of problem with the ability to readily get someone fired for arguing controversial beliefs outside of their workplace.
But, think about it this way: you obviously can't deeply engage the views of others at work, unless you have a very open-minded workplace or those views somehow relate to your job performance. (I doubt questions like "is it immoral to do [insert drug]?" or "should prostitution be legal?" would ever be workplace appropriate, but they're sincere views people hold that dictate drug policy via public opinion for example.)
So, if you can't talk about these things at work, where the hell do you talk about them? I'm guessing on the internet, because colleges are the next option and they're only available to a fraction of the population for four years at a time. So the internet is no longer an option, where? I'm asking this question rhetorically. If society has no battlegrounds for beliefs, democracy is permanently is screwed, because you need some kind of battleground for beliefs to refine beliefs in concordance with reality in the first place.
Many of us US gun owners say "Soap box, ballot box, bullet box", but of course long term denial of the first invalidates the second. We're watching all this in horror because we really don't want to be forced to the third.
Especially since one way or another, such former democracies fail hard when faced with inconvenient truths the ruling class has been denying and "The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!" Doesn't have to be political, could be e.g. transmissible bird flu coupled with our current SJW public health authorities, as the Texas Ebola cases demonstrated.
we have an "antifa" movement in France (reacting to our
rising far right), and they're often just as violent :-(Folks looking for a polite argument with Curtis could have had one.
His view on gender 'roles' is also dangerously close to hate speech (and before any of you calls me an islamophobic: as a non-muslim white male he has no cultural heritage that could justify his opinion, so it's different).
So this seems to suggest that you believe that "non-Muslim white males" have no cultural heritage whatsoever, which is... odd.
The trouble with democracy is that it's not a system of government where everyone has their say, but one where the majority rules. A democracy does not protect individual rights, but the 'rights' of the majority. And members are not required to have any skills or qualifications before making an impact on how the government is run. Democracy is NOT an ideal, there's a lot to criticize, and even the founders of the United States understood this. But all these excluded middle thinkers think that if you're critical of democracy, then you're pro communist/socialist/monarchist/etc, which is nonsense.
Here's a relevant example of where relying on democracy would have compromised citizens constitutional rights.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/06/12/gay_marriage_a...
> His view on gender 'roles' is also dangerously close to hate speech
Then you really have no idea what hate speech is, and should ask someone who survived the holocaust or had a cross burning in their front yard.
> and before any of you calls me an islamophobic: as a non-muslim white male he has no cultural heritage that could justify his opinion, so it's different.
When the hell did islamophobia enter the picture?!? Regardless, you don't need 'cultural heritage' to 'justify' an opinion. You do however need facts to support a conclusion. Are you saying that certain conclusions can only be made by those with a specific cultural heritage, regardless of the facts?
The answer is: it doesn't. He was removed because some politically influential leftists wanted him declared a non-person.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/cur...
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/neoreactionaries....
The crux of it (and something I never saw quite covered in all the essays bouncing around) is
"Essentially, neoreaction is the dream of a society of mostly white people, living in a hierarchy based both on group membership (aristocratic lineage, gender, race) and individual ability (IQ). The neoreactionaries do not demand total racial purity. But many seem to think that if multiple races live in the same country, the races should be placed in a hierarchy of power, status, and freedom, apparently based on the average IQ of their racial group. Since the movement is about European traditionalism, it's not clear whether white people would be given a special place in the hierarchy, even above those groups whose average IQ is higher than that of whites.
As for women, many neoreactionaries appear to want them to return to traditional social roles - homemaking and child-rearing - and to submit more willingly to the sexual desires of men. Finally, there is some sense that within these group boundaries, the neoreactionaries might want a limited meritocracy - in other words, maybe the smart should rule. However, some neoreactionaries (particularly Anissimov) praise the idea of aristocracy, apparently believing that naturally superior people would manage to win the titles of nobility, and that their descendants would remain superior.
In other words, the neoreactionaries want the West to be a lot like the Ming Dynasty, but for white people. I've often thought of Europe as "the China that never quite made it"; neoreaction seems like the latest manifestation of a dream that refuses to die. "
https://theumlaut.com/2014/07/29/a-gentle-introduction-to-ne...
They are like an alternative version of the Society for Creative Anachronism, re-imagining the Enlightenment historical period in ways that leave out the things they find icky but that are in fact inevitable consequences of the times. For SCA that's reimagining the High Middle Ages without the plague. For neoreactionaries it's reimagining the Enlightenment without the end of slavery, or the rise of individualism and democracy.
For those of us who pursue Enlightenment ideals rather than Enlightenment historical accidents, they are an unfortunate bunch. SCA members would feel the same way about anyone who was serious about bringing back feudalism, or reducing society to "warriors, priests and peasants."
Getting the views of neoreactionaries from Noah Smith is like getting the views of Luther's 95 Theses from Pope Leo X. How about, you know, just reading Moldbug?
Read Moldbug, people.
Life is too short to do a lot of silly things like veg on junk TV or fart around on Twitter or read the entire Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality all day yet I admit that I sometimes persist.
Moldbug is a strange and fascinating bird that is not immediately meant to be understood, but experienced. There really is no one else like him. For those with a taste for the antiquated charm of letters filtered for the post-post-modern generation, he writes entertaining and challenging essays that lets us peek behind the lacquered veneer of modern society to get a feel for what it is that we don't realize we have forgotten. He is certainly not for everyone, but a "fascist racist sexist anti-Christ" he is decidedly not.
Seriously, any interest I've ever had in whatever he's talking about has been stymied by his lack of concision, even simple methods like the pyramid style which allows for the full treatment. When this blew up I tried reading, then skimming the Carlyle essay, couldn't make myself (and I am somewhat interested in learning about political philosophies I'm not yet familiar with, and of course the peculiar institution is a very important thing to those of us in the US). A bit like the Wheel of Time when the plot stopped.
Ken is the free speech Popehat, Clark is the ... lesser Popehat.