"A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop" - <AUTHOR> https://s3.amazonaws.com/sl-notes/yarvin.txt <comment><AUTHOR> As linked at [https://twitter.com/puredanger/status/606663407635283968](https://twitter.com/puredanger/status/606663407635283968)

</comment><comment><USER3> This incident reminds me of growing up as the son of an oil company's PR man in the Bay Area.

We lived in one of the small towns in the North Bay. My father handled public and government relations for the oil refinery in that small town. A contingent of the opposition was especially vocal in their distaste for the plant.

An orthodontist refused to take me on as a patient due to my father's job. Snide remarks from teachers were normal (but the school district relied on the refinery's charitable contributions—which my father controlled—so they had to play nice). Parents telling their kids they couldn't hang out at our house.

There is a certain type of extremist who is unable to separate public and private lives and believes attacks on both are equally valid in advancing their agendas.

We were glad to leave the state.

<comment><USER4> What kind of extremist attacks a child because of their father's political views?

<comment><USER5> Somebody who believes in their cause.

While I wouldn't take it out on a child, I won't want to associate with somebody who was against gay marriage or try to save somebody who was against women's rights to their own bodies.

I feel that anybody who spends time with the people they strongly disagree with, when they don't have to, lack a moral backbone.

<comment><USER3> How does shunning someone for their political beliefs help advance your own beliefs?

Seriously.

Refusing to professionally engage with someone due to private political beliefs will do nothing but strengthen the resolve behind that belief. Instead of stepping across the battle lines into your exalted realm of enlightenment, they will circle the wagons and reload the muskets.

What if Tolkien had refused to befriend CS Lewis due to Lewis' atheism? Lewis would've remained an atheist all his life. Instead, through their friendship, Tolkien brought Lewis over, leading him to write one of the most influential texts in evangelical Christianity ever published.

There's a lesson in there for absolutists.

<comment><USER6> I have a vague memory of some research recently (last few months) that showed it was nigh-on impossible to persuade most people of a contrary position to one they held. In fact, it helped to strengthen their existing beliefs.

But my google-fu/pocket-fu is weak and I can't currently find it.

<comment><USER7> You may be referring to the result that exposing people to evidence contradicting their beliefs actually increases the strength of those beliefs (older than a few months, though). Pop-sci level article at [http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire- effect/](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/)

This doesn't reduce to "impossible to persuade most people of a contrary position." It just means that you have to employ methods of persuasion, i.e. rhetoric. This was obvious in classical Athens, when people heard news and discussed politics in public, but is apparently harder to grasp in our society.

<comment><USER6> You missed off "nigh-on" from before "impossible". It's an important qualifier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All I long for is logical consistency and empathy...

Various comments from the discussion:

> Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll > defend to the death your right to say it."?

Getting dis-invited from a tech conference is not losing the right to say anything. The state is not punishing Yarvin for his speech. Giving a talk at a private tech conferences is not a right protected by anyone.

> Kicking people from your tech conference because they were racist outside of > it hands veto power to whoever determines what racism is and when something > is 'too racist'.

I'll defend Alex's right to organize a conference. You are free to organize another conference. (More generally, the market of conferences will decide whether Alex is doing a bad job.)

> In the end, if you're a straight white male, you will fall prey to it > because you're not a protected class. You can see this playing out in video > games, movies and SF&F publishing right now.

If you are a straight white man, accept that the world isn't perfect (you suffer the consequences of being a member of an identifiable group) and count yourself lucky that you don't have to face the other (often deadlier) forms of oppression faced by other groups.

> My personal opinions would get me called racist, sexist and homophobic by > Marxist standards and I was exhausted by the political mask I had to assume > just to find and keep work.

I imagine it was a lot easier to wear that political mask than it would have been to change your skin-color, gender, or age. Your way in the tech industry will be quite difficult if you get any of those wrong.

<comment><USER9> I think your counter-arguments are very bad. I thank you for sharing them here, because I don't think they reflect uncommon opinions at all, and I think they are too easily accepted without reflection.

With regards to the "defend to the death your right to say it" hyperbole, I agree that it is overstated. Furthermore, it is true that getting dis-invited from a tech conference does not involve losing the _right_ to say anything; nor is the state punishing speech. However, it would be an error to overlook the fact that speech is being punished.

Yarvin would have been welcome at the conference had he not revealed his racist opinions in [what was intended to be] an unrelated forum. Those opinions revealed, he was unwelcome, without (as far as I can tell) any particular reference to his actual public behaviour. So as a practical matter, if the conference's reaction should be considered normative and appropriate, he had a right to say things... unless he wanted a career.

Now, _you may well wish_ to argue that this reaction should indeed be normative and correct. However, I am not sure that you would be as comfortable with your actual words in another context. We could be discussing this in Russia in the 1950s, for instance, and agreeing that Yarvin shouldn't have kept his jewish-sounding last name if he wanted a career, or got forbid spoken about his anti-socialist economic views.

In such a case, our circumstances would have been very different, of course, and it is incredibly easy to draw broad distinctions between counter-factual racist fantasies and failing to disguise one's ethnic background. But the mechanism is the same, and here you are stating an indifference to --- defending, even --- the mechanism.

Another commentator writes that "kicking people out of your conference hands veto power to whomever determines what racism is and when something is racist."

It seems to me that if a popular arbiter of opinion about racism could mobilize a grassroots reaction against racism as _they_ saw it, when _they_ saw it, and _when they felt like it_ ; and if that grassroots reaction probably would _not_ have occurred without their instigation: under those circumstances, this assertion would come quite close to being true.

Again, this is not something peculiar to racism, or fighting against racism, or any particular political struggle at all. It is a mechanism whereby interest groups influence the direction of public discourse and policy. Yet here --- despite the certainty that there are interest groups using such tactics, somewhere in the world, whose views are pure anathema to you --- you are not actually defending the fight for social justice and inclusion; instead, you defend the mechanism.

More realistically, I do not think that you intended to even do so much as that. Your reply at first reads as an announcement of indifference and antipathy to the author's concerns. A rejection of actual argumentation or discussion, in other words. (This itself, in case you might overlook it, is rather far from an inherently virtuous sort of response.)

However, your parenthetical comment _does_ attempt to justify the mechanism, and the comment is notable in that it specifically _rejects_ the protection of actual minorities, instead embracing a "market" determination of right or wrong: in other words, the nature of a protected minority is to be determined by the opinion of the general majority.

A third commentator complains about a sort of reverse-racism burden, in that the "straight white male" is doubly impacted, as both the target of discrimination, and as a target of discrimination who is not a member of "a protected class." I do not think that this is a very defensible argument. However, "accept that the world isn't perfect, and feel lucky you don't have it worse" is not any better.

At risk of beating a dead horse, one must in general ask oneself if the response defends the _structure_ or the _substance_ of the allegedly discriminatory circumstance. I will assume you can predict my response to this as an argument defending the discriminatory _structure_. Insofar as the response is a defense of the _substance_ of the circumstance, then it seems to be implicitly appealing for deference and calling for restitution, of sorts, in that a hardship should be accepted in recognition of the hardships of others. This is a very powerful and emotionally appealing argument... when made to address apparent discrimination that arises out of minority protection. The 'Why The "Safe Area" Of The [Women's/LGBT/Native] Center Is Not Discriminatory' speech would be the typical example, in my experience.

Here, it is much less appealing, and also misses the point. Reading your response literally, one should infer that any member of an identifiable group ultimately needs to accept that "the world isn't perfect" and that they will face _some_ degree of 'oppression'; they should protest against and fight that oppression only if it is _too much_ oppression, or _too_ deadly. I am almost certain that this is absolutely not something that you meant to say. I suspect that you meant to convey that you thought the commentator's experienced/feared discrimination was trivial and negligible.

This would be fine, as a response, but the attempt to convert it into a self- evident, justified response on this basis is very weak, and I feel that the problem is that you are trying to do the easy thing rather than the hard thing, and to end argument or dialog rather than invite it. "You can see this playing out in video games..." _really_? Straight white men are falling prey to reverse discrimination _in video games_? I would _love_ to hear the commentator attempt to justify this view. It would be satisfactory enough, I think, to simply end discussion by responding that "this is ridiculous unless you feel like making a cogent argument to the contrary." Instead, however, you let it slide completely: you even accept the premise. I feel that if you were not intent on justifying [reverse] discrimination (because it is reverse[1]), and instead were concerned about discrimination period, you would not have missed the opportunity to talk about what does or does not constitute discrimination --- let alone missed the fact that this is a ridiculous, indefensible imagination of what discrimination is.

Finally, the commentator who writes that "my personal opinions would get me called racist, sexist, and homophobic by Marxist standards and I was exhausted by the political mask I had to assume just to find and keep work."

Again, structure, substance, escape_goat goes on for a paragraph or two here in a now-predictable manner, let's skip to the good part... suffering.

You are responding to someone reporting a sense of alienation and mental exhaustion specifically because they had to wear a 'mask' in the workplace. Your response is that you imagine that it was a lot easier for them to wear that mask than it would be for them to change their skin color, or gender, or age.

This seems obviously true, as those are very difficult things to change. It is also true that these visible, physical qualities have created barriers in the tech industry. But it leaves begging the question of whether anyone _should_ be required to wear a mask, and under what circumstances. Is it wrong to discriminate against co-workers on the basis of the color of their skin, but not wrong to feel uncomfortable around them if they act "too black"? Is it okay to create a "non-homophobic" environment and then fire people for revealing their sexual orientation? I am thinking that perhaps there are some circumstances where you would not find "it's easier to wear a mask" to be a satisfactory response _at all_. Even though, yes, it's easier to wear a mask.

Similar to the case of the third commentator, but more problematically, your response is clearly predicated _against_ the complainant because of their (white, straight, male) identity and whatever mixture of personal emotions, political views, or what-have-you that makes someone fear that their views would be seen as racist, sexist, or homophobic by 'Marxists'.

Again, the central, crucial abstract question (should anyone feel this alienated in the workplace?) and the difficult, complicated particular questions (why does this person, as an individual, feel so alienated, and are those feelings justified; do they reflect a work environment that unknowingly makes rigid ideological demands; do they reflect mental health issues; could this person comfortably work with a black/gay/female co-worker [which of these] without 'wearing a mask'; would a black/gay/female co-worker be able to work with them; would the situation be altered by empathy training, counselling, mediation; and so on...) These go unanswered.

And this is your response to someone's actual personal suffering, so one must infer that you do not oppose discrimination _because it causes human suffering_. If there is a different, justifiable basis for opposing discrimination, then you should be straightforwards about that, as this would be the most crucial aspect of your response by far.

[1] An oscillatory model of discriminatory impulses resulting in the balanced distribution of prejudice floats into my mind when I say this.

<comment><USER10> This is a slippery slope fallacy. It turns out that in reality we are quite capable of allowing tech conferences to choose their presenters and to disallow presenters who have made uncomfortably racist comments without ending up at the point where it has a chilling effect on other types of speech.

<comment><USER7> I flatly deny that the process as described is capable of discernment. What happened was: speaker announced, lots of people complain, conference organiser withdraws invitation to avoid focus on "inclusion and/or presence." Note that the organiser explicitly excluded consideration of the _merits_ of the complaints.

Now compare my invocation elsewhere in this thread of the spectre of an anti- Zionist boycott: the complaints would be of a very similar nature, including references to 'racism', the number of complainants could be quite large, particularly if there was an organised attempt to find them (there is in fact a very considerable degree of organisation for anti-Zionist boycotts), and the strength of feeling would be equally high. Therefore it is only a matter of time at this point until Israelis are prevented from attending conferences like Strange Loop, as indeed we already are in much of the world.

I note in passing that those who favour excluding Yarvin have yet actually to state their opposition to this sort of thing.

<comment><USER11> I agree with you, but one point of caution is that the NRX movement that Yarvin helped found has many avowedly anti-semitic members who see "Jews" as part of the forces that oppress them.

None of this came from Yarvin, who is Jewish, and well worth defending, but get much beyond him into the movement and you'll be supporting anti-semitism, not tolerance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I recently helped organize a conference.

Since it is apparently not obvious to many people, I'd just like to point out that amongst conference organizers, it is an _extremely_ common belief that your primary responsibility is to deliver a good conference experience to your conference-goers. This is not just a belief StrangeLoop holds -- it is a belief that _many_ beloved tech conferences have (e.g., PyCon), and if you think this can't happen at your conference, you are likely in for a surprise when/if something rough happens to that venue.

In fact, this claim is stronger than you might think. This belief is prominently reflected in pretty much every decision every conference makes. People choose codes of conduct to deliberately exclude some people and certain behavior. They make you "apply" to go to their conferences so that they can hand-pick attendees to fit whatever criteria they have for their crowds (e.g., xoxo). People _select_ talks and their speakers to fit profiles they want.

And so on.

I can name on my hand the number of people I've met who organize conferences, who believe their job is to provide a fair platform ideas. It's just not the way people seem to think.

<comment><USER13> It would be fine to ban Curtis if his talk was about his politics. It would be fine to ban him if he did not agree to abide by the code of conduct. The conference obviously does not owe him a platform to discuss his politics.

But his talk was about Urbit, not about his politics, and Urbit is a genuinely fascinating piece of technology. Even if the project fails, by studying it, I have learned a lot of ideas that I have applied to my own programming.

So there are two big issues with the ban. First, Alex made the conference worse for all those who cared about technology and not politics. Second, he's given the PC-police a scalp. This will make it much harder for anyone to write good-faith but politically incorrect critiques even under a pseudonym, for fear that it could harm career prospects in the future. And how are we supposed to correct problems in society if we cannot talk honestly about them? Most solutions to our problems are outside the Overton window - if they weren't we would have solved the problems already.

Now maybe Alex wishes to cater to the more thin-skinned in his audience, rather than the technologists. That his prerogative.

But I hope that other conference organizers do not follow suit, and I hope that true technologists in turn shun StrangeLoop for conferences that care about technology first, and instead attend conferences that refuse to ban innovators who haven't violated the code of conduct.

<comment><USER14> BTW, Urbit has neoreactionary politics hard-coded into the network layer. I don't know if that was to be discussed in this particular talk (usually the Nock/Hoon stuff is so weird people never get to the rest), but if Yarvin/Moldbug can't keep political rants out of his documentation then I think it's fair to consider the politics as part of the technology.

<comment><USER14> I had to dig around in the Wayback Machine since the documentation was deleted. But the gems are still there:

"When I worry about Urbit and privacy, I worry that it will create too much privacy, rather than too little. Certainly several services not too dissimilar to Urbit, such as Freenet, have become hives of digital vice - at best.

Only social and political methods, not technical tools, can fight this filth. One of the inspirations for Urbit's political design is James C. Scott's classic political-science text, Seeing Like a State. Urbit is not in any sense a state, but its fabric has the regularity that, according to Scott, is essential for the construction of anything like a civilized society. But of course, a basically virtuous society, in which antisocial behavior is not tolerated and easily excluded or destroyed, can only be built from virtuous users." [http://web.archive.org/web/20131014210123/http://www.urbit.o...](http://web.archive.org/web/20131014210123/http://www.urbit.org/2013/08/22/Chapter-7-security.html)

It goes on in that vein. After re-reading that, I guess it's debatable whether Urbit's politics are neoreactionary or merely pretty socially conservative, but they're somewhere in that spectrum.

Previous related HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8579542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8579542)

<comment><USER15> Well, then, obviously his writings should be ceremonially burned and he should be sent to the camps. Case closed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't Urbit named for the Mencius Moldbug blog, whose writer repeatedly refers to same as "UR"?

How distinct is Urbit and Yarvin from the advocacy of the Moldbug UR blog?

The association between Yarvin and that blog isn't exactly cryptic; for instance, Yarvin has given somewhat recent video-recorded talks espousing many of the same ideas as the blog, purposefully and in some depth.

Is it possible that the most boring interpretation of facts is once again correct? That Urbit itself is a relatively obscure project with very few users and was accepted to Strange Loop as a sort of, "huh, interesting" kind of thing, by a panel not fully acquainted with "Moldbug"? And that once they were more fully informed of what Yarvin stands for, the costs of giving him a stage outweighed the benefits?

Talk proposals aren't binary things. Program committees weigh pros and cons for most submissions. Some of them are so clearly important that they'd get in no matter how _outre '_ their authors politics are. But it seems like it'd take some retconning to suggest that Urbit is _that_ kind of subject.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, but no. urbit, from the Latin _urbs_ == city, is actually a good bit older than UR.

The initials are somehow very compelling - another couple of great literary UR blogs are the Unz Review (unz.com) and Uncouth Reflections (uncouthreflections.com).

I will admit that urbit has very few users, as technically we're really not launched at all. We were thinking Strange Loop might be a good place for this, but I guess not.

<comment><USER16> I stand corrected about the name.

Here's an honest summary of what I think:

I find it very easy to see the importance of a serious general-purpose overlay network, since I think that's the future of the Internet, so much so that I think something _like_ Urbit will make IPv6 irrelevant. I'm philosophically inclined to appreciate that work.

I find that the programming model you've attached to it --- the Nock/Hoon stuff --- makes it easy to dismiss the work. I think you winkingly acknowledge and encourage that (for instance: the new pronunciation of ASCII characters), but don't really know why.

The combination of relentless idiosyncrasy, world-building ambition, and your many tens of thousands of words of (to me) odious philosophical writing leaves me in a place where I can empathize with the dilemma you'd post to a conference organizer. Your defenders on this thread seem to take it as an axiom that you'd just get up on stage, explain why you decided to code in line noise instead of Lisp, and talk about our beautiful overlay network future. I'd like to see that talk, too. But I don't think that's actually an axiom. It's seems just as likely that you'd use your network design as a launching point for a 5 minute digression on the evils of democracy.

 _Later: I just want to be clear that I 'm writing for the thread, not directly to you. I don't know which if any of these points you even disagree with._

<comment><USER18> Yarvin has had at least one other talk (that I know of) about Urbit, and he did not so much as mention anything non-technical. I don't see what grounds you have to assume such a thing about him without any prior evidence of such behaviour having occurred previously.

<comment><USER16> If you'll read a little more carefully, you'll see that what I'm doing is _not_ making assumptions about what he'd talk about. What you're arguing is that I _should_ make an assumption.

<comment><USER19> _If you 'll read a little more carefully, you'll see that what I'm doing is not making assumptions about what he'd talk about_

There is a common fallacy whereby people assume that "unknown odds" should be estimated as having a 50% chance of occurring. Your phrase "it seems just as likely" could easily be interpreted to mean that you think there is a 50:50 chance that Yarvin would ignore the tech and speak instead about his political views. Were you to believe this, you'd be making a fairly strong assumption.

I don't think this is what you meant, but I think it's a reasonable reading of your words as written. For the respondent to politely point out that Yarvin stuck to the technical details in a previous talk is constructively responsive to this reading.

If a reader doesn't interpret something you've written in the way you intended it's possible (but not "just as likely") that the reader is not the one at fault. Telling them to "read a little more carefully" is being unnecessarily rude to someone who was contributing useful information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is germane to point out that it isn't simply "political" writing or blogging. Moldbug has several essays that are explicitly racist, and though he would no doubt dispute the relationship, the vocabulary and arguments he uses are virtually the same as those of modern Nazis.

Strangeloop, in the past, has explicitly tried to foster a minority-friendly environment. Many of the other speakers are from minority groups. It's easy to see that having a speaker with Moldbug's history would do irreparable damage to what Alex has been trying to do.

You can still disagree with the decision, but that at least is the context in which it was made. It isn't just that he's politically conservative or holds to some unusual opinion - he has _literally_ written that several of his co- speakers are genetically more fit to be slaves while he, a white male, is genetically designed to be a master.

I don't blame Alex for wanting to avoid that dynamic at his conference.

Call it "culture fit", if you must. Can't he have the culture he wants at his conference?

<comment><USER21> Could you provide citations for those posts? This is the first I have heard of either Curtis or Moldbug, and I'm having trouble seeing the connection you're drawing. However, it seems to be the consensus. [edit: I see that there are secondary sources — but I'm curious about a primary source. Shouldn't that be the most important?]

<comment><USER20> [http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why- carl...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2009/07/why-carlyle- matters.html?m=1)

Relevant obnoxious quote, in a sea of drivel:

      In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship parameters emerging whether the relationship of domination originates as a hereditary obligation, or as a voluntary obligation, or in a state outside law such as the state of the newly captured prisoner (the traditional origin of slave status in most eras). This is a pretty good clue that this structure is one to which humans are biologically adapted.

      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.

<comment><USER22> "He has _literally_ written that several of his co-speakers are genetically more fit to be slaves while he, a white male, is genetically designed to be a master."

Certainly a powerful use of the word _literally_.

Frankly, I'm actually considering recanting. Who wouldn't rather be Galileo than Giordano Bruno? But recanting is a serious matter - it's the sort of thing you need to get right the first time.

To appear at future conferences without my fellow speakers worrying that I'll enslave them or kick off Holocaust 2.0, it'd be ideal if someone can tell me what I have to believe. I'm guessing it's either:

(a) all human beings are born with identical talents and inclinations.

(b) human beings may be born with different talents and inclinations, but these talents and inclinations are distributed identically across all living populations.

Let's face it, Strange Loop is an awesome conference - there's a reason I applied. And I think Alex's decision is totally understandable for practical reasons, as someone downthread explains. If there's a chance of being invited back next year, I could totally go for (b). But if it has to be (a), I might still be all "e pur si muove" and stuff.

<comment><USER23> I don't normally get involved in these types of discussions on the Internet, but I met you when you presented Urbit in SF a couple years ago, and thought your work was very interesting.

Have you heard of "Yali's question"? [1] This is the framing of Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel. I believe this is a question that you think people are dodging, perhaps with politically correct wish-wash.

Apparently you think the answer is that some races are genetically superior to others. Jared Diamond of course has a different answer than you.

I tend to believe Diamond, as he lived among various tribes of New Guinea, studied them professionally, and wrote multiple well considered books about the topic. He also speaks simply and plainly, whereas you have a penchant for sophisticated arguments, whether they are true or not.

Let me also say that this type of thinking isn't exactly unique to whites. In my family are various Chinese academics (professors, Ph.D.'s, etc.) In this company, it's not unusual to hear an assertion that the Chinese are genetically superior to other races.

I think you should recant, but only if you have arrived at the conclusion honestly. I think you should also consider the possibility that some past emotional experience is driving all these rationalizations.

[1] [http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/gungermsteel.html](http://www.mcgoodwin.net/pages/gungermsteel.html)

<comment><USER24> Here's the crux of the problem: Jared Diamond's answer to Yali's question is not mutually exclusive with the converse of (b). In other words, _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ argues persuasively that environmental factors played a major role in observed group outcomes, but it does _not_ argue persuasively (or at all) that those environmental factors left no imprint on the genomes of the groups in question.

To put it in concrete terms: Do you believe that, say, Scandinavians and Australian Aborigines have—on average or at the extremes—identical talents and inclinations for playing chess? If so, what is your basis for this belief?

<comment><USER23> This is the kind of discussion that doesn't end anywhere productive, but I don't have any reason to believe that those two groups have substantively different inclinations for playing chess. As others have said, the individual variations drown out the group differences.

Look at how superior Americans are to Europeans economically. Americans invented the iPhone, Google, and could best all of Europe combined in a military battle. Does that mean that Americans are genetically superior to Europeans? No, it's that they had access to more resources on a bare continent, which led to a positive feedback loop of wealth and creation.

You can perhaps make fuzzy statements about averages or extremes, but what matters is how you act on those beliefs. Are black people better at basketball than whites or Asians? Hard to say on average, but maybe at the extremes? Does that say anything about which races should play in the NBA? No. It's not like Larry Bird or Jeremy Lin don't exist. There might be some differences there, but they're not substantive.

The minute you start using this to justify slavery, that's when it becomes racism. If you are white, would you accept an Asian person's claim to enslave you based on the fact that their IQs are higher on average?

Even if you accept that intelligence implies a right to rule, there are plenty of dumb Asians that don't deserve to rule over a smart white person, and likewise for whites and blacks. This is a simple consequence of the fact that individual variation is greater than group variation.

<comment><USER24> I appreciate your thoughtful comments. Inspired by these discussions, I believe I've sharpened my understanding of this subject considerably. When it comes to accounting for observed differences between different groups, the following statements are the only two possible explanations:

(a) Genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes

(b) Non-genetic factors contribute to differences in outcomes

Note that the two are _not_ mutually exclusive. For example, when you write

 _Does that mean that Americans are genetically superior to Europeans? No, it 's that they had access to more resources on a bare continent, which led to a positive feedback loop of wealth and creation._

you are arguing for (b). But because (a) and (b) are not mutually exclusive, this is not a valid argument against (a). Indeed, virtually the entire mainstream discussion around group differences consists of increasingly strong statements in favor (b), without ever addressing (a) directly.

This isn't to say (a) is always true, just that you need direct evidence to dismiss it. For example, given the observation that any human being with the ability to learn _a_ language can learn _any_ language, (a) appears to be false with respect to acquiring specific natural language (as opposed to language acquisition generally, which of course is genetically based).

So, why is it that so many otherwise clear thinkers fail to see that arguments _for_ (b) aren't arguments _against_ (a)? My guess is that most people who believe in (b) and _only_ (b) implicitly apply the following reasoning:

 _The non-genetic factors in group differences are so numerous, egregious, and well-documented that they plausibly account for all known differences in outcomes between people of different ancestry. Therefore, genetic factors are probably irrelevant or negligible._

Unfortunately, this reasoning is faulty. For example, there is no _a priori_ way to know how big an effect discrimination will have, and hence no way to rule out (a) without direct evidence.

As to your other points, I agree completely that we should treat people on an individual basis, without discriminating on the basis of ancestry, gender, etc. Furthermore, I believe in finding and cultivating talent anywhere it exists, regardless of background. I hope you agree.

<comment><USER23> This is too meta -- they're not exclusive, but the structure of the argument is pretty clear.

The burden of proof falls on the one making the claim. If you are claiming (a) or (b), you need to justify it. I haven't seen credible evidence for (a). I'm not refuting it because I don't have the burden of proof.

Answering Yali's question requires at least one of (a) or (b). If (b) were false, then that would imply (a). Providing evidence for (b) rules out the argument based on elimination.

<comment><USER24> No, the burden of proof is on those who claim not-(a), because it is evident at a glance that there are at least some genetic difference between groups. (Detailed genetic analysis, of course, confirms this. Noted anti-racist Henry Louis Gates Jr. has a whole show about it. [1]) There's no law of biology that says evolution only works on physical traits; quite the opposite. Therefore, the burden of proof is on the claim that any particular cognitive or behavioral characteristics have no genetic component.

 _Answering Yali 's question requires at least one of (a) or (b). If (b) were false, then that would imply (a). Providing evidence for (b) rules out the argument based on elimination._

It is impossible to use the process of elimination when the alternatives are not mutually exclusive. I.e., this reasoning is specious: _Why are men generally stronger than women? Well, men lift weights more often than women. Therefore, strength differences have no genetic basis._ So it goes with Yali's question. You, and Jared Diamond, are obviously smart enough to understand this completely. But the conclusions are heretical, which is the only reason I can think of for why you fail to do so.

[1]: [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your- roots/](http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/)

<comment><USER23> There are genetic differences between groups, but claim (a) is that there are such differences _that contribute (substantively) to different outcomes_ \-- as you wrote yourself. I don't know of any such evidence. It's controversial to say the least, but if you are engaging me in a discussion, you have the burden of proof on that point.

As mentioned, I don't really care for these types of discussions, because either way, it's not going to lead me to change my actions. My original motivation was to see what moldbug thinks of Jared Diamond's work (i.e. if he tries to refute it)

(a) and (b) aren't exclusive, but it could be that one contributes vastly more to the observed outcomes than the other. I happen to believe that this is the case with (b), as Jared Diamond explains. There is just much less evidence supporting (a) compared to that supporting (b).

I think you misread my last statement. Providing evidence for b means that you can't apply the argument that if b were false, then a. They are not exclusive, but at least one of them is necessary. I would assume (b) is false without evidence as well.

<comment><USER24> _claim (a) is that there are such differences that contribute (substantively) to different outcomes_

That is not claim (a). Claim (a) is that there are genetic factors in group differences, but makes no assertion about their magnitude. You believe that genetic factors make at most a small contribution. You may well be right. But you have offered no evidence for this assertion, and the burden of proof is on you to show it.

 _I would assume (b) is false without evidence as well._

Given that different groups live in manifestly different physical and social environments, this assumption is also wrong. The null hypothesis is that both (a) and (b) contribute; the burden of proof in both cases is on those who think one or the other is false. Confusing this issue, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is perhaps the most common source of crimestop on this subject. (Not that I blame you; as a crimethinker myself, I can assure you that volunteer Thought Police are everywhere, even—perhaps especially—on HN.)

Of course, in reality the discussion usually goes something like this:

"There might be genetic factors accounting for differences in group outcomes."

"I doubt it, but even if there are such factors, they're small."

"How do you know they're small?"

"Well, how do you know they're not?"

[Caught in trap] "I don't. So let's investigate the magnitude of the effect by examining the direct evidence…"

"That's racist."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What outcomes do actions like this encourage? Well, it encourages controversial writers to stay in the shadows, hide their real identities, lest the vigilante mobs find them. This outcome also encourages people in general to say less, creates an atmosphere of self-censorship, and so harms our free society.

Whatever happened to _" I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."?_

If we can not learn to tolerate others and respect their opinions, even those we find distasteful or deplorable, we will reap the consquences, and stagnate as a culture.

<comment><USER26> > Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll > defend to the death your right to say it."?

Marxism happened. Limiting speech has always been a tactic employed by the political left. Words like "racist", "sexist" and "homophobe" were designed to shut down free speech. It's extremely effective at silencing any opposition.

<comment><USER27> The political left in America were made enemies of the state during the era of McCarthyism. People's careers and personal lives were ruined during that Red Scare. That is "silencing". That is "limiting speech".

Who on the right today has been similarly "silenced"? If someone is called out for racism and then voluntarily chooses to exit public life or withdraw further commentary, that's their own cowardly choice. Being criticized does not "silence" anyone.

The right in America has a political and media apparatus that far outstrips that of the left in funding. Worry not: hate is no danger of being silenced in this country. Far-right demagogues continue to fill newspapers, magazines, think tank briefing, the Internet, and airwaves with their ideas despite decades of criticism from the left.

<comment><USER13> _Who on the right today has been similarly "silenced"?_

Here is a very long list: [https://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and- bad...](https://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-badgered- pressured-and-purged/) Congratulations on getting the last and final scalp.

 _The right in America has a political and media apparatus that far outstrips that of the left in funding._

The left has 99% of the university system including the entire Ivy league, which in total receives hundreds of billions of dollars in funding. The left also has most major media ranging from PBS and the NYTimes to CNN (although some are only partially under left-wing control, and will play cheerleader for war due to their own profit, not out of any right-wing ideology).

The only way you can define the "right" as being stronger is if you find the left-most country out there as being the true way, and anything less than that as being rightist. A better way to look at strength is to look at who has been winning the battles. If you look at the past 50 years, the left has won most of them. If you look at the past 100 years, overall, the nation has moved way left on virtually every single issue. There has been some back-and-forth on individual issues, but overall, the direction is very clear.

 _Worry not: hate is no danger of being silenced in this country._

I don't actually have a problem with silencing hateful people. But Curtis was never hateful to minorities. He is a good person trying to make an honest critique based on the evidence as he saw it. When you purge people like that, you only make your own movement and group stupider. And that is a problem, because if you cannot investigate the true causes of a social ill without forcing people to self-censor and avoid crime-think, then you can never fix the problems.

<comment><USER28> _A better way to look at strength is to look at who has been winning the battles. If you look at the past 50 years, the left has won most of them._

And as others have noted, they are now reduced to policing the battlefield and shooting the survivors, which of course Curtis _was_ one.

(EDITED: "is" to [star]was[star], because having been "read out of polite society" anything he's trying to accomplish right now, like urbit, is over.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder - suppose someone Alex Miller agreed with, but who also caused controversy, was met with opposition by folks who disliked her.

For example, suppose a bunch of gamergate types were to complain about Brianna Wu giving a purely technical talk about pathfinding and AI. Would all the folks who are so quick to defend Strangeloop also defend it in this case?

Somehow I doubt it.

<comment><USER30> In the same vein I would love to see the people defending the talk arguing in favor of a Noam Chomsky presentation

<comment><USER29> I would absolutely defend Noam Chomsky's right to give a talk on, e.g., context free grammars.

Strangely, neoreactionary and libertarian types aren't so aggressive at shutting down debate. It's almost as if they feel they can win in the marketplace of ideas.

<comment><USER30> Meh, I'm pretty sure we won't hear from the same guys if the speaker were somebody else, but I can't prove it so I leave it here :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm sort of baffled by this: why would anyone care if he's giving a tech talk? It reminds me of the Brendan Eich situation. I disagree with his political views, but also.. who gives a shit? It's immaterial to the job.

I used to read moldbug and I thought he was really incisive for a while, but his blog kept getting more and more, uh, esoteric. (basically unreadable -- it got hard to figure out what point he was even trying to make) All the same though, I don't really care about moldbug's political affiliations in a tech talk, I'd rather just hear what he has to say.

(Also: how many attendees would even really know who he was or care enough to protest it?)

<comment><USER27> There were a number of people who voiced their objections on Twitter. It's easy to ask the rhetorical question here, but if you really want an answer, go check out what they said.

In particular, people who represent groups that Moldbug treats as subhuman in his writing expressed concern and dismay. Perhaps looking through their eyes for a moment might illuminate why a person would care.

<comment><USER22> Ironically, the St. Louis hacker who first suggested urbit would be a great fit for Strange Loop (hi Justin!) is an African-American.

An obsession with collective identity and collective characteristics - <USER2> proletarians are noble, all Germans are masters, all rednecks are racists, etc, etc - is common, perhaps for obvious reasons, in the democratic era. And in particular, all parties responsible for the atrocities of the 20th century - Nazi and Communist alike - were thinking very much this way.

This insistence on generalization would seem very strange to most of our ancestors, who would find the leap from collective differences to collective uniformity quite irrational. For instance, Cardinal Wolsey, who governed England for Henry VIII, was a butcher's son. Englishmen of his time did not find this at all strange, though hardly any of them agreed that nobles and butchers were statistically identical.

Also, for some reason which is perhaps less obvious, not all of us have to "represent groups." It does not seem likely that either Alex Payne or Alex Miller sees himself as representing white males, for instance. Perhaps this freedom to see oneself as just an individual is the most subtle form of privilege - but I think everyone should have it.

<comment><USER19> Urbit --

Since we have you have you here, could you respond to the accusations of racist views that are being attributed to you? In particular, do you consider yourself to be "racist", and if so, what does this term mean to you?

I read your blog for years, and I never got that sense that you were advocating for personal or institutional discrimination against individuals on the basis of their race. Did I miss this point among all the others?

<comment><USER17> I shouldn't post as urbit. Quite a few other people, few of whom agree with me on anything, have worked on the project.

The word "racist" and its conjugations does not appear in the English language until the 1920s - see Peter Frost's cultural history [0]. If you asked Shakespeare if he was a "racist," he would not know what you meant.

"Racist" is essentially a term of abuse which no group or party has ever applied to itself. Like most such epithets, it has two meanings - a clear objective one, describing a person who fails to believe in the anthropological theories of human equality which became first popular, then universal in the mid-20th century; and a caricature of the vices, personal or political, typically engaged in by such a foul unbeliever.

I actually like the answer given by Steve Klabnik above [1]. To call Steve a communist is a serious personal insult, and you can get banned for it [2]. However, Steve reserves the right to call himself a communist, or not, as he likes. This is actually kind of cool...

[0] - [http://www.unz.com/pfrost/age-of- reason/](http://www.unz.com/pfrost/age-of-reason/) [1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676630) [2] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9676861)

<comment><USER32> _" Racist" is essentially a term of abuse which no group or party has ever applied to itself._

To be a little pedantic, that's not _strictly_ true; as Frost points out, "racist" was originally intended as a literal translation of the German _völkisch_ , which the Nazi Party certainly self-described as. But I suppose you could say that's the exception which proves the rule.

<comment><USER33> A similar point applies to the term 'Christian' and to the term 'Monarchist' \- whereas it would be interesting to see the etymology of Marxist, Socialist or Communist.

'Capitalist' has the same issue, interestingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am curious, could someone link to the most objectionable content by Curtis Yarvin? I don't think prohibiting someone from speaking at a private tech conference due to offensive views is necessarily a bad thing (e.g. prohibiting a KKK member from speaking), however without seeing his objectionable content I don't know if it's appropriate in this circumstance.

Alex Miller said he made his decision without reading any of Curtis's content, and I don't think that's a good idea. Otherwise any group loud enough could get anyone blocked from speaking, regardless of whether they did anything wrong.

<comment><USER35> Those calling for his removal from the conference cited this six-year-old blog post about Thomas Carlyle as their only specific complaint.

[http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why- car...](http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-carlyle- matters.html)

<comment><USER36> This is factually not true, and since you claim to have read my complaints, this comment appears disingenuous.

More specifically, I linked [http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing- machiavellis/](http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/) and [http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for- monarchy/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/) as a brief introduction if you don't want to wade through the torrent of Dark Enlightenment shenanigans.

<comment><USER31> Why does it matter what his political beliefs entail on a technical subject?

More to the point, while I'm guessing you didn't dox him or whatever, the fact that he wrote under a pseudonym and (as a person having read his blog) had no idea of his actual name, I get the impression you went out of your way on this one. I don't really care about right or left (I think both sides are idiotic), but it seems like you're going out of your way on this one.

<comment><USER36> Your first sentence implies that technology and politics are divorced. I disagree with this. Furthermore, _certain_ views merit more consideration than others, especially with regards to something like a conference, see raganwald's comment elsewhere in this thread about conferences being cultural.

Second, I've been aware of Yarvin long enough that I am not particularly aware of how I came to know the psudonym. I don't remember it as being particularly private. I did not go out of my way, I saw his name on the program and instantly remembered. I'm not in the habit of digging through histories, but when I see a name I recognize, I recall a history like anyone else.

<comment><USER31> > Your first sentence implies that technology and politics are divorced. I > disagree with this.

I find that perspective strange. Machinery does not particularly care what end it's put to.

> Second, I've been aware of Yarvin long enough that I am not particularly > aware of how I came to know the psudonym. I don't remember it as being > particularly private. I did not go out of my way, I saw his name on the > program and instantly remembered. I'm not in the habit of digging through > histories, but when I see a name I recognize, I recall a history like anyone > else.

You try to minimize your association, but you took the effort to get him banned from speaking about a neutral topic because you dislike his political views. You ARE a censor. Frankly I think you're way worse than him, because at least he'd let you talk.

Amusingly it appears I have been slowbanned because of my participation in this conversation. Oh well.

<comment><USER7> Moldbug's fundamental definition of Left and Right is that the most purely Left organisation makes everything political, because everything is effected by persuasion, and the most purely Right organisation makes nothing political, because everything is by compulsion.

This is becoming a pretty fruitful way for me to analyse sentences along the lines of "the code is political." The interpretation is that if you 'accept' the code in some fashion, you are implicitly persuaded of some political proposition. This is a complete funhouse way of looking at what Yarvin might actually be doing: providing a structure that you can choose to execute, and that will instantiate certain unbreakable rules under which you must (are compelled to) operate. There's no subtext, it's right there in front of you in the most immediate manner possible. You either run it or you do something else.

Two branching lines of thought from here are that a) even as people like Klabnik try to separate the 'acceptable' political thought from the unacceptable residue of racism etc., they are constantly attacking at a political level, and b) looking at a rigorously defined computational system and trying to work out what the deep hidden politics of it are, is rather like the beginning meditator's mistake of thinking that mindfulness involves access to some distant source of knowledge. Rather, mindfulness involves noticing literally the most immediate possible thing, the activity of your own mind, which is with you every moment of your waking life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kicking people from your tech conference because they were racist outside of it hands veto power to whoever determines what racism is and when something is 'too racist'. The same goes for the other beyond-the-pale isms like sexism, fascism, etc.

I commented on a flagged post on why this is an issue for me personally: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9674958](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9674958)

<comment><USER37> > it hands veto power to whoever determines what racism is and when something > is 'too racist'

This sounds like the function of the free marketplace of ideas. One is allowed to espouse any ideology that you wish. However, other people are allowed to respond with their own speech. They can call the idea racist if they want. They can take away speaking platforms if they want.

Whether a statement is "racist" is a determination made by the current social taboos and mores of a society. I think there are a lot of terrible ideologies out there, and I like that we don't have to give them equal platforms. The free marketplace of ideas means we _don 't_ have to "teach the controversy" and give both sides "equal opportunity for debate".

Which is great. There are plenty of people who's methods and ideas I so disagree with that I don't think it's worth my time to listen to them (neo- nazis, members of the Westboro Baptist Church).

<comment><USER29> Similarly, if Jessitron (singling her out solely because she wrote a really good blog post today [1]) wants to talk about microservices in clojure, and folks want to keep her out because of her views on women in technology, you are ok with that also?

Let me also emphasize that no one disputes that strangeloop has the _legal right_ to do this. The discussion is simply over whether the strangeloop organizers are a bunch of anti-intellectuals who deserve to be in the spotlight for their decisions.

[1] [http://blog.jessitron.com/2015/06/ultratestable-coding- style...](http://blog.jessitron.com/2015/06/ultratestable-coding-style.html)

<comment><USER37> Again, a disclaimer: I know pretty much nothing about this specific instance except the linked article. I don't know the candidate speaker, their political views, or anything of that nature. No examples in this comment are meant to be reflective of this specific situation.

> "wants to talk about microservices in clojure, and folks want to keep her > out because of her views on women in technology"

For me, it comes down to how they express their opinions in the public sphere.

This matters a lot. If someone develops a persona known for lobbing rhetorical grenades, making ad hominem attacks, or is unnecessarily mean or negative, then I don't have a problem holding them out of a conference — even if I agree with their viewpoints.

If they, on the other hand tend to behave in a reasonable way, and are capable of having calm and rational debates, then I would want to see them included in the conference — even if I disagree with their viewpoints.

<comment><USER15> Then it sounds like you're fully on the side of Yarvin and fully opposed to Strangeloop's actions, since (even when he dared to write about unpopular political opinions) he was never anything less than calm and rational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's funny because he definitely saw this coming.

[http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technol...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technology-communism-and-brown-scare.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> An analogy can be made here to the famous case of Michael Servetus. Please note that I am not saying that Curtis Yarvin is the most important scientist of our era. I'm not suggesting that Curtis Yarvin is necessarily of unusual brilliance. He could easily be wrong regarding all of his political writing. This is just an analogy.

Servetus had a lot of unusual ideas. He was a fantastic medical researcher, and, in 1533, he was the first to publish the idea that the heart was the center of a circulatory system, which pumped blood throughout the body. He also decided the Doctrine Of The Trinity (that the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost were 3 aspects of one god) was entirely false. Therefore he was arrested and put to death, and thus Europe lost one of the greatest medical researchers of the 1500s.

You might ask, what is the connection between the pulmonary system, and the the Doctrine Of The Trinity? There is none, save that creative people tend to have original ideas in several areas. If you want the benefits that derive from allowing creative people to have original thoughts, you have to also pay the price, and the price is that they sometimes have ideas that make people uncomfortable.

Where 2 subjects overlap, such as math and computer programming, then a grave error in one area might call into question a person's expertise in that other subject. But where 2 subjects do not overlap, then errors in one area do not necessarily bring into question the person's expertise in the unrelated subject.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus)

<comment><USER40> I don't think Curits Yarvin is going to be put to death for his rather far right political beliefs. That you'd compare him to Servetus is...well, rather ridiculous TBH.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The repeated kills of previous threads on this topic illustrate the problem goes much deeper than Strangeloop. HN itself has long been policed by left wing stormtroopers eliminating anything they disagree with.

I used to believe it could be saved but now I generally believe that the era of technology having a place for iconoclastic freethinkers is long over.

<comment><USER37> The great thing about technology is you can always make your own space. You _can_ have a niche website — or other technological forum — that is a bastion of iconoclastic freethinkers.

The problem that you're experiencing is that the mainstream public is now very much using technology. That means the average opinions expressed on the web on the internet have become much more mainstream. Which, pretty much by definition, means the average opinion has become much more hostile to iconoclastic thoughts.

<comment><USER35> I'm not talking about the mainstream. I'm talking about hiring and funding within our industry. If you haven't noticed a chilling effect over the last few years, maybe you don't have any nonconforming opinions.

<comment><USER37> I run my own (self-funded) company, so I haven't been subject to hiring or funding in a few years.

I wouldn't be shocked if a future client held our espoused opinions against us. I tend to strongly stand by any opinions that I advocate for publicly, and I'm willing to handle the repercussions from those opinions.

If I felt the repercussions of those opinions were disproportionate I would advocate for those opinions anonymously. The ability to espouse unpopular opinions is the main reason why I strongly advocate for allowing anonymous speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In the context of views that are potentially odious but are tolerated in technology, it's perhaps worth noting that two of the instigators of this decision [1, 2] are respectively an avowed communist [3] and a socialist who serves on the board of a magazine that literally takes its name from the people who brought us the Reign of Terror [4]. Should they be barred from speaking at conferences because people might feel "unsafe" in the presence of someone who holds such views? Or should we learn to leave politics at the door, and be willing to listen to tech talks even from people whose politics we find repulsive? I for one endorse the latter view. Strange Loop is entitled to its decision, but I find it both craven and sad.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/606219754513264640](https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/606219754513264640)

[2]: [https://al3x.net/2015/06/04/wouldn't-censorship-be- exciting....](https://al3x.net/2015/06/04/wouldn't-censorship-be- exciting.html)

[3]: [http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-12-15-marx- anarchism...](http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-12-15-marx-anarchism- and-web-standards)

[4]: [https://al3x.net/2015/03/03/jacobin.html](https://al3x.net/2015/03/03/jacobin.html)

<comment><USER28> And [1, 3], in reference to explicitly violent European "antifascists", in the context of a "sorely needed" but inchoate as of last October "tech antifa[scist]" movement, is "100% okay with that, personally."([https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/523497129772613632](https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/523497129772613632)).

I assure you that people of the right like me feel "unsafe" about the presence of people like them in American society, and I wonder if they've thought about the consequences of that, of their programs in general, etc. I see no way for this to end well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Interesting -- another discussion of this incident was at the top spot of HN some 30 mins ago, and was flagkilled.

Is it that we're not interested in discussing it, or only interested in discussing it if certain people / viewpoints are not allowed?

<comment><USER42> Pretty sure that the concensus is that the author of that submission is insane and trying to read his screed as something coming from a mentally healthy person is a waste of time.

<comment><USER41> I've read a lot of extreme things from both the left and right, and seen a lot of "insane screeds", but this wasn't one of them: [https://improprietaryinfluence.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/a-st...](https://improprietaryinfluence.wordpress.com/2015/06/06/a-strange- loop/)

<comment><USER43> "After all, the people we are talking about are communists... Similarly, today, with the exception of a few points of economics, the ideas that almost everyone in communion with Harvard University believes are communist ideas, and would have been labelled as such even fifty years ago."

This is a core tenet of Moldbuggian neoreaction, that American and European politics are run by a "Cathedral" that adheres to communist beliefs. Claiming that mainstream political positions are communism is absolutely insane.

<comment><USER44> His view is _almost_ coherent and makes me reflect on how I unconsciously polish the edges of my own ideas to make them fit. I can see him doing the kind of thing you or I or anyone sane might do to smooth out the rough spots in our belief systems, and seeing him do those apparently innocuous things with ideas that are obviously crazy encourages me to ask if I'm believing anything crazy myself. It has happened before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Many people smugly note that the Constitution only stops the state from punishing speech. Private parties are free to do whatever they want (including blacklisting the speakers), and those silly free speech defenders are confusing the state with private parties.

But that misses the bigger point, which is that the Constitutional guarantee originates from the principle that free exchange of ideas is a social good. The founders believed in free speech because they believed in enlightenment and in pursuit of truth. They were unafraid of ideas.

These blacklisters fundamentally have an anti-enlightenment mentality, as they have elegantly shown. Yarvin's most basic point in his writings was not that different people are different (this is so obvious that truthful people do not dispute it, although the anti-enlightenment types find it convenient for trying witches), but that the modern Left polices against heresy with the rigor of the Christian church of the long ago past.

It is fitting then that events in Yarvin's life should form a well-publicized proof of his main point.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Because of this, I am sorry that I must rescind your invitation and I will > not be able to accept or include your talk at the conference. My apologies > if this causes you any inconvenience.

At least give a straight apology without mealy-mouthed "if..."

<comment><USER47> Normally I agree with this point, but in this case it seemed like the "if" might actually be correct: because the time from invitation to rescission was so short, it's entirely possible that the invitation caused Yarvin no inconvenience; that he had not yet, for example, bought plane tickets to St. Louis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Alex Payne founded a socialist blog: [https://www.jacobinmag.com/](https://www.jacobinmag.com/)

Why is writing about certain political ideas OK, but writing about certain other political ideas not OK? Why are those certain other political ideas "not OK" enough for someone to be banned from a technology conference?

<comment><USER49>
        > Why is writing about certain political ideas OK, but
        > writing about certain other political ideas not OK?

Calling socialism and racism the same thing, just a "certain political view", is about as intellectually honest as calling speeding and murder the same thing, just a "certain sort of crime".

<comment><USER50> racism has killed very few people compared to socialism.

<comment><USER51> If you sum over all micro-insults suffered by victims of racists, caused by billions, possibly trillions of micro-aggressions, who knows how many death- equivalents you might get?

Anyway, whomever socialists might have killed, it was long ago: smack in the middle of the dark ages of widespread racism, to be exact. Which means those so-called victims of socialism probably all were racists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Institutional Endorsement versus Heckler's Veto makes for some interesting situations. I often wonder what would happen if an organizer going with the Heckler's Veto published all the "please remove this person" communication.

</comment><comment><USER53> As of 12:30pm EDT, this has been flagged down to #111. Some people _really_ don't want to discuss this.

<comment><USER13> I think posts with a high ratio of comments to up-votes automatically get buried. So I'm not sure that this was deliberately moderated, or it was just the automated flame-war detection being set off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah if one wants a discussion like this to stay above water, then upvote the post _but don 't comment on it_. But actually it's probably OK if stuff like this drops off the front page, because it's inherently more political than other subjects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I want to make sure I understand the situation. A conference, designed to disseminate information, choose the best talks among those that entered. But one of the speakers has some beliefs that so e conference attendees do not share. These beliefs have nothing to do with the talk. So the conference choose to dismiss one of the top selections, meaning knowledge so etching perceived as good won't be shared. Because a few people didn't like the guy? Isn't this a disservice to the other attendees who might have wanted to hear the talk? Doesn't this mean the conference is less than what it could have been?

</comment><comment><USER55> We're now going to have to deal with more outrage-as-a-weapon-to-silence- opponents. I wonder how the outraged would feel if it was, say, religious conservatives getting so upset that the organizers de-invited LGBT speakers.

</comment><comment><USER4> Coming soon: left and right wing tech conferences.

<comment><USER56> The "No Voice, Free Exit" response: Hopefully right next to each other, dutifully segregated with freedom of movement maintained between each.

Edit: Now, certain of the neo-reactos are hyper-cautious about the effects of entryism, which the above scenario would seem powerless to prevent, but so long as public displays of political identification have no effect on the actual behavior of the governors in the NVFE world the only thing for agent provocateurs to enter would be social circles, whose burden of maintaining memetic purity under fire would not be substantially different from the present, with even less down-stream stakes (as the strengthening or dissolution of such societies would not change sovereign policy).

<comment><USER53> Sorry, but yuck!

Must politics divide everything in our lives? That sounds like a horrible world to live in.

<comment><USER56> The advocatus diaboli is obliged no apology (nor the promotor fidei for that matter), being (ideally) merely hypothetical, to be spun-up and shut down as dialectic requires. However, do note that there is a difference between political divisions existing, and political divisions having effects beyond the groups of their self-identified constituents. The former, like the poor, will always be with us [0], differing only in visibilty. But, if visibility is a no-op, meaningless to the res publica's execution of policy, then is not the venom neutralized? We currently live in a world of political polarization, but worse, one's affinity towards those poles has material impact on one's life. Surrender Voice, NVFE claims, let like associate with like via Exit, and never be troubled by politics again.

[0] Until humans are so radically different that neither remains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Having a Department of Political Police, or policing yourself makes no difference. You are still curtailing somebody's right to the free market of ideas because of "hurt feels". And even if you have the right to do so, it is still wrong.

</comment><comment><USER50> All this shows is that Moldbug and others are exactly right about the tech industry. It is a cesspool of neo-Bolshevist Prog political correctness, rather than somewhere in which people's talent is paramount.

Liberals believe that history favors them always. Within this century, we'll see if that hypothesis is correct. The geopolitical death of the West will be the end of this wretched ideology, just as the geopolitical death of the east was the death of Marxism.

</comment><comment><USER58> Some commentary: [http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2015/06/moldbuggery.html](http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2015/06/moldbuggery.html) The first link there offers a theory of how nerd culture interacts (or tries to avoid interacting) with politics to produce things like libertarianism and neoreaction.

</comment><comment><USER59> The incentives facing event organizers are quite bad. If only one side throws a fit then non-martyr event organizers will normally capitulate to their demands. Its hard to align the incentives without suggesting people on the free speech side act like the SJ types.

</comment><comment><USER60> I wonder how many of the conference goers use reiserfs or its derivatives.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is that guy still a thing?

<comment><USER61> What I mean was that I hadn't heard anything about the Neo-reactionaries for over a year! Damn it with the downvotes!</comment></comment>