13thLetter

> They decided not to hold another event that was affiliated with lambdaconf.

You make it sound like they randomly woke up one day and decided, for no particular reason whatsoever, to not hold an event they had already put enormous effort into planning and scheduling. They are cancelling their event in an attempt to pressure LambdaConf into bowing to their political demands.

> If we're going to keep running with this thanksgiving comparison, they're not asking for the relative not be invited. They're having a party the day after, a party to which the crazy relative was never invited, and decided to cancel that.

How would that behavior make any sense, though, if you're a person who doesn't want to disrupt the Thanksgiving dinner? They already didn't invite the crazy relative to their own party; what more do they want?

Indeed. If self-important bullies are demanding that folks get thrown out of professional conferences because of their personal political opinions, men and women of good will everywhere need to forthrightly stand up against that.

But that's simply victim-blaming.

This is a professional conference about a particular apolitical topic. If the speaker, no matter how controversial or unpopular his unrelated personal views might be, is going to stay on the topic and not bring up politics, then anyone who tries to bring politics into it is being the disruptive force, not the speaker, and that is the person who is creating an unsafe atmosphere and needs to be ejected from the conference.

> it's pretty much impossible that TypeLevel employees would be able to magically argue him out of his existing position, and it's probably equally inevitable that he would be unable to argue them into his position.

Why is it necessary for either of them to argue the other into their position?

> Are you going to have a good Thanksgiving, or are you going to get into it with your reactionary relative for the thousandth time?

I'll tell you what I wouldn't do: I certainly wouldn't demand that my reactionary relative not be permitted to attend, and if she's gracious enough to not start a fight at the dinner table I won't start one myself. If she can be polite, I can be polite.

I recall a lot of wailing about how irresponsible they were deploying their sinister infrastructure-damaging war viruses, and such. But thinking about it more, I'll grant it depends on your perspective of the whole issue, so my point doesn't really stand.

I still find it dismaying that we so casually accept this state of affairs. There is no meaningful difference between attacks like this and a foreign agent setting fire to the bank building or physically sabotaging the dam.

It's weird how the news that agents of a foreign government were attempting to sabotage American infrastructure, which is -- I realize this is an antiquated notion nowadays -- an act of war, is received with shrugs and yawns and no real action. Imagine the screaming worldwide if hackers working for the CIA were breaking into Iranian dams and financial institutions.

A disappointing lack of professionalism on Typelevel's part, but fortunately such behavior is also self-limiting.

A group that's policing who can use their services based on political disagreements is definitely not a group that it's safe to do business with. Who knows what they'll take offense at next?

> I don't want Yarvin at FP conferences, and I suspect none of the attendees particularly do either.

I'd imagine there's a solid overlap between Hacker News posters and people who might attend a functional programming conference, and judging by this comments section your position is in a distinct minority. So if it's OK to ostracize people based on their unpopular political opinions, you may find yourself in the hot seat you've been preparing for Yarvin.

How about this: perhaps we should instead strive for a system of pluralism and tolerance where we don't bring our political disputes into the professional sphere.

What? Presenting all the facts is exactly a journalist's job. If a journalist is presenting a "narrative" instead of the facts, that journalist needs to quit their job and become a novelist.

You've missed the point. Namely: If one person's semi-trollish advocacy of monarchy under a pseudonym several years ago means he's too dangerous to be allowed to speak at a tech conference, then surely other people's absolutely sincere advocacy of Communism under their own names, today, would make them even more dangerous, and they should also be barred from speaking... right?

If not, why not?

What was incorrect about his statement?

Yarvin and his "ilk" aren't the ones complaining about being offended here.

Along the same lines, no one is obligated to like you or associate with you, doubly so if you have political beliefs that would likely result in their being unable to earn a living in their field.

> Community sanctions are part of what it means to be human.

But not the only part, or even the most important part. (And as long as we're getting philosophical, just because they're part of what it means to be human doesn't mean they're always admirable. Prejudice against outsiders is also part of what it means to be human, after all.)

For example, the view that people should be prevented from earning a living if they have the wrong political opinions.

So... no, then?

What if they wanted to host a conference about technology? Are they allowed to do that?

You think that the fundamental principle behind the First Amendment and Enlightenment philosophy was that we really needed a natural rights justification to have people whose politics we disagree with ostracized from public life and prevented from earning a living?

> Why? The "jokes" were clearly in bad taste, and meant to belittle women.

Can you quote the jokes and explain how they were meant to belittle women?

If one did that one would, of course, be wrong, both in the general case (the jokes were silly grade-school level puns that would concern no well-balanced person) and the specific case (if anyone was being stereotyped or belittled, it would be males, given that they were telling the jokes about a male presenter.)

> You have no understanding of the first amendment. It applies, of course, only to the government's response to speech.

Darn it, I thought we were going to get all the way through this discussion without someone wheeling out that old nag.

Once again: Attempting to ban people from unrelated fora based on their political views is not against the letter of the First Amendment to do this. But attempting to ban people from unrelated fora based on their political views is quite certainly against the spirit of the First Amendment.

> But if you really care about people who depend on you including them, it's obvious some measures must be taken to create a safe environment for the underrepresented.

Please be specific: how is Yarvin's presence making you unsafe? Are you concerned he'll physically attack you, or insult you personally or as a member of a group? If not, you have no reason to feel unsafe.

(And if you feel unsafe anyway and believe that's a reason to ostracize him, well, I have bad news: your viewpoints make me feel unsafe. So sounds like you're not going to be attending, either.)

> At what point does someone's routine vocal endorsement of racial superiority and advocation of violence become problematic?

As long as the person does all that on their own time and is professional and respectful in the work context? Never.

Any other questions?

It's not true in the slightest; it's political propaganda. You can walk into almost any drug store in the United States and buy armfuls of contraception without any difficulty.

It is true that in certain limited cases if a company has a religious objection against contraception, they are not required to pay for it as part of their employees' health plan, but a) that's very, very few employers, b) that doesn't prevent the employees from buying it themselves, and c) the over-the-counter expense of contraception is trivial anyway.

"Deemed" by whom?

Nope. You're making the mistake of mapping a foreign political force with its own motives and ideas onto Western political disputes.

> It's not like a bunch of people got up and were like "We hate the West!". There's a lot of stuff involved. Not that it justifies their actions, but it's at least good to be lucid when thinking about the why.

I agree with you on that; it's unfortunate, though, that a lot of political bad actors have spot-welded "we need to understand why they're doing this" -- which is obviously true, it's much harder to defeat an enemy you don't understand -- to "it's racist to think that we have an enemy at all, never mind actually fight them effectively."

Perhaps people are coming here to discuss things, not to be "educated."

> I'm all for soaking the rich, but how is that fair?

Perhaps this experience should make you rethink your support of "soaking the rich."

Are you're going to vote for Hillary in the general anyway? If so, they're not going to pay any attention to what you want.

Have you ever heard of a place called Tibet? It's pretty interesting. You can look it up on Wikipedia.