sinker

Sure you can nitpick, but the point still stands. This movement isn't about equality or inclusion. It's an opportunistic power grab that exploits people's sense of good will. Read the Evergreen University story or listen to Bret Weinstein, a former evolutionary biology professor at Evergreen, on his recent appearance on Joe Rogan.

This is a movement that operates on fear, paranoia, and coercion under the guise of equality. Without fear and coercion, it has no legs whatsoever.

I understand wanting to be charitable towards a good cause, but the current political shift represents an existential danger to our society. I've never cared when right-wing wackjobs hoarded guns. I didn't lose my mind after 9/11, thinking terrorists were going to strike us randomly and frequently. Even after a somber fews days after Trump's election, I could feel things getting back to normal.

The far-left radical progressive movement is different and has greater power and momentum than anything we've seen in the past two decades. Aside from destroying the reputations of a few truly bad people, we've seen them attack rational speech, deny biological realities, ingrain the perception of racism into innocuous encounters, unironically apply blatantly racist viewpoints towards white people, denounce any form of logic or reasoning as racism or sexism, and so much more.

Your tepid response tells me you're not aware of the scope of this movement. It co-opts the good will of normal people and redirects normal liberal and progressive tendencies into something truly destructive.

If you're tuned in to what's happening in universities, companies, workplaces; the pattern is hard to miss.

The movement works on forced compliance, humiliation, denouncing logic, attacking perceived racism with actual racism.

None of this is right and so many people and companies are going along with it. Most people are taking these movements at face value and want to do the right thing. Companies are pre-emptively capitulating to future demands because it's good for business.

If you express nuance you're instantly and overwhelming branded as a racist or sexist. There is no room for thought or reason in this movement unless it points to a narrative that white men are evil oppressors.

This isn't really about one man being murdered by a cop anymore, or even about racism in general. It's about a cult of victimization leveraging offense and outrage to oppress anyone who gains a modicum of public success in society, and the justifications by which they're acting defy the bounds of reality.

The movement represents a greater risk than racism or sexism, it destroys the individual, eliminates free speech and thought, and coerces normal, kind people to say and do things which go against our most basic intuitions.

The terms have racial undertones which are more pronounced than they ought to be due to the current political environment.

The master/slave term is an accurate metaphor for the technology, and we can infer that no racial discrimination is intended by its usage.

We have to assume people who are performing intelligent work are capable of nuance and discretion.

And for people working on serious problems in science and technology, in order for them to progress effectively, they need to be insulated from silly little identity politics intrusions like this.

This is a bad precedent. We are seeing companies pre-emptively capitulate to social media outrage from spheres completely outside their own domain.

This is not an act from humanist principles. This is just addressing surface level, visible things that are in no way racist or offensive - until a political environment coerces you to believe it is.

Unfortunately, capitulation is good for business.

But in the long-term this will be incredibly damaging to the principles of free speech, open discourse, science, and the advancement of technology.

In what way is it good for tech companies, research institutes, academic institutions to bend to the forceful compliance of mid-20s liberal arts students who have yet to undertake any real responsibility in society, who have yet to enter into any domain of societal consequence?

There's nothing that constrains its application. Its users are those energized by outrage and offense and act on emotional reflex. Their position of pure victimhood is the perception which justifies their right to take down anyone for any reason.

It's single-minded, irrational, damaging to society and acts with little regard for the nuance of actual reality - which means it cannot in the long-term solve actual problems we face without creating bigger ones.

Acting is good faith and with intellectual honesty is always going to require voluntary participation. But if one contestant decides to knock the pieces off the table, then what we're watching is not a chess game, but one party claiming chess superiority because he bit his opponent on the neck.

I'm not advocating for any of these people. I'm saying there's going to be scenarios that require nuance to navigate, and that the rules that delineate hate speech should be very explicitly spelled out.

That's the current situation, and maybe it's worked well so far (I don't create content on YouTube).

What appears necessary or at the very least helpful, is to have a very clear terms of service that outlines exactly what is unacceptable so these situations can be avoided in the first place.

One question is, why did it take until now for these bans to come into effect?

Gray areas are always going to emerge. For example, the popular YouTuber Jenna Marbles came under criticism recently for old videos (years ago) that could be construed as hate speech, or at the very least, mildly racist. Does this justify a ban?

A few comments say Stefan Molyneux (again, don't know this guy) is not specifically racist but has white-centric views.

These issues are going to be decided by the discretion of humans, many of them with a geographically-concentric worldview (i.e., Silicon Valley).

EDIT: Stefan, not Peter Molyneux.

So long as YouTube issues bans to users that are as egregiously racist as klan members I see no problem.

I don't know any of these people, but if they are undeniably white supremacists, then it's a hard sell to dispute this individual action.

But another argument lies in the policy of bans for certain types of speech, and that's the argument that's more pertinent. If we accept that YouTube can ban users for hate speech, then we also accept that YouTube is the arbiter of what constitutes hate speech.

The question at hand is if we can deem YouTube a fair judge.

Isn't this just speculation? He gave out enough good reasons for his identity to not be known, the biggest is that he works as a professional psychiatrist with clients of wide ranging political stances.

He's also, I suspect (I don't follow his blog), given and written enough to at least earn enough good faith to be taken at his word.

Neither did I. He seemed quite patient explaining everything. Maybe it's his brother?

> surviving 113 days in the wilderness isn't that great of a feat. if you were prepared, and had done a bare minimum of research and planning beforehand, you could manage not to die.

Sorry but this just isn't true. There's too many variables to account for, the season, terrain, availability of large game, availability and proximity of water. Even in the best circumstances, outdoor survival isn't easy. There is one particular show (forgot the name) where contestants are put into an area on their own and tasked to survive as long as possible. The areas are specifically chosen for their viability. Even then very few people, even those with experience, make it past 90 days.

Successful survival is a conglomeration of many skills, hunting, navigation, sheltering, foraging, cooking, weather adaptation, emotional regulation, food preparation and preservation, shooting, injury prevention and care, etc. Of course preparation is an important factor, but your statement suggesting that just about anyone can do it given some basic research is a huge stretch.

That's not the reality of it. You can easily get lost even day hiking maintained trails. When you're cutting through brush, have no familiar landmarks things are different. Being lost is a combination of not knowing your location relative to camp and also being disoriented as to which direction you're supposed to go, where you've come from.

You're constantly making decisions to travel to avoid trees, difficult elevation, brush which entails changes of direction. The inaccuracies in those decisions can compound. The idea that you can just look at the sun or have nothing but a compass and travel safely and confidently in unknown territory is a myth. It's rarely ever as simple as moving in a straight line.

The question isn't what he should or shouldn't have done. That part is crystal clear. The question is why do people feel entitled to moral indignation on account of someone hiking out alone into the wilderness. The arguments so far have not been convincing - it costs money to fly them out, it puts SAR in danger.

This is overstated and someone else addressed it further down. SAR work is slow, methodical, done in coordinated groups with medical, communication, and navigation technology. I'm not disputing that SAR workers are useful and necessary, only that the work is dangerous at the extremes.

I'm not talking about the people in Alaska. I'm talking about commentators on HN. Scroll down a bit further and you'll find no end of it.

My feeling was that he preferred not to think about it, that the careful, fastidious planning of the trip, that nearly any reasonable person would commit to, would detract from the experience. He was naive, but I think he also willfully entered into the venture with intentional naivety.

What are you on? 20km on foot is a great distance, especially when you're unsure of where you are. And 20km in area is a massive amount of space. When you don't know which direction to go, even a mile is daunting.

McCandless was explicitly escaping society. He had already vacated his family, friends, home, money, his vehicle. At this point he's a major outlier in terms of being a member of society.

Who is the party that "lets" him climb mountains?

Isn't it far more self centered to criticize a person's own personal choices from a time period of over two decades ago when they were in their early twenties, had almost no money, friends, or place to call home, escaping an abusive household, and decided that their intention in life was not to rob, beg, or harm anyone, but to escape into the wilderness, and not just any place, but into the most remote place in the US where he would bear the total cost of the consequences of his actions.

He went out there, blindly, but with every intention to live. He also survived for over three months before succumbing to poisonous berries. Some of these comments would suggest that he intentionally went into the wild just to die.

For your question, none of your business.

No one said you can't criticize him. I wouldn't go out there alone without a sure way out. But the smug, self-righteous predictable knee jerk condemnation from many people I would suspect barely venture outside is, as always predictable, and distasteful.

You're contending the weakest part of my argument. I'm not making a comparison of the climbing skill of Honnold. The comparison is in that both climbing and wilderness exploration are individualistic events where the consequences are imposed almost entirely on the individual.

> your implication that a person walking off into the woods leads to no additional demands on others

I don't deny that dying out alone in the wilderness does end up having a cost to others. I don't agree that the potential cost of it should preclude someone from doing it.

The whole argument against McCandless begins to sound absurd.

"Does an individual have the right to die alone in the wilderness?"

If you pose the question this way, the answer becomes obvious. If you were to ask me if someone has the right to suicide by train or suicide by cop, or even if they have the right to jump off a bridge, I'd be inclinded to say no, or at least hesitate on the last one.

But being alone in the wilderness, prepared or not, is a different category.

People put up the same comments about Alex Honnold when the Free Solo documentary made the front page of HN. That he was an irresponsible jerk who lived only for himself.

Ultimately, the individual pays the greatest price. There is a difference where you if you want to set the land-speed record on a public highway in rush hour versus going out alone into the wilderness or climbing a mountain without a rope. The difference is where you draw the line. I believe that if any individual desires to stake out into the wilderness, alone, live in nature, hunt, and forage without a whisper to society at large - that is precisely the place where you would go. If not in wilderness, then where?

I don't think there's a consensus to be reached. Part of why this story gets attention so frequently is because there's approximately two camps with points that aren't even contradictory logically, but are contradictory in spirit.

A. McCandless was negligent, his neglect was bordering mal-intent. He should be made an example of, not for his search of freedom, but for behaving stupidly as to put the lives of search and rescue workers in danger, or at the very least putting them to work and depleting funds from the state that could have gone elsewhere. He had an ill-effect on his family and friends, and should have put them foremost before venturing out with little preparation.

B. McCandless engaged in an act of personal liberation. Even if he ultimately died, he at least had the courage to embrace his own version of freedom.

I don't think the people in camp (A) are wrong, but ultimately it's not how I want to live my life - where I have to value the peripheral concerns of society above my most intrinsic desires.

Isn't it also self-centered to feel entitled to curtail another person's freedom because of your limited sensibilities?

Wilderness is a special designation, different from public lands, national forest, state parks. It's one of the last places in the US where you can be close to being free. Public lands often border private property. National forests have strict rules on usage and have roads paved through them like theme parks. State parks often require fees for entry and design areas for easy camping/eating/leaving waste.

Wilderness areas are a "part of society." But wilderness is an idea as much as it is a place, and the only place you can engage in the idea of "wilderness" is in geographical wilderness.

Your statement suggests that the rules of domestic life should apply in wilderness, but it's our domestic laws that say that there should be some territory where the spirit of domestic life doesn't prevail.

Heading out into the wilderness for months at a time alone is an extreme event. So is flying in a wingsuit, or downhill skiing in a remote location full or rocks, or free soloing a difficult mountain. One one hand, you can say, "Think of society, think of the people who would bear the responsibility of cleaning up after your death if you were to fail."

On the other hand, there are always people who are going to pursue extreme ventures. But given how few people are willing to enter into life or death scenarios like I described, I don't find the the argument that these people have any noticeable effect on the economies of the state very convincing.

That would be a valid point if McCandless had made a pact with rangers that if he were come into serious trouble, they should rescue him immediately.

Of course, he made no pact. He went out alone, died alone and his body was found incidentally by a group of hunters.