4 ms·
That's not really an argument because you don't define any selection criteria, which is what the whole issue is about. Would you say that it's acceptable to hav
by woah 11y ago
That's not really an argument because you don't define any selection criteria, which is what the whole issue is about. Would you say that it's acceptable to have a neonazi speak, who charged $10000 per minute?
- malandrew 11y agoI would call that an ad hominem justification and a poor use of financial resources (a reasonable thing to object to). What matters is what this individual (regardless of which of the many labels that apply to them you want to focus on will talk about). For an example, check out the Curtis Yarvin Strangeloop situation: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/curtis_yarvin_booted_from_strange_loop_it_s_a_big_big_problem.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/06/cur... Furthermore, your argument is a strawman. Where is the line drawn? How about a neocon? A communist? A socialist? A fascist? A liberal? Lots of people have ideas that are objectionable to someone. If they are talking about something unrelated to those ideas you find objectionable, what's the problem?
- tptacek 11y agoWhat of Yarvin? A small private conference invited a speaker to talk about a marginal piece of technology, unaware that the speaker was best known as a noisome defender of chattel slavery. The invitation was rescinded. I don't know why Auerbach sees this as a "big problem", but then, I don't know why Auerbach writes much of what he writes at Slate. He's not very good. Slate was probably better off with Farhad Manjoo.
- SamReidHughes 11y ago> > For an example, > What of Yarvin? It was an example.
- tptacek 11y agoOf what? There's bogus demand for "safe spaces", but there's also bogus whatever- the- opposite- of- that- is, and that's what the Yarvin case is.
- SamReidHughes 11y agoAn example of people trying to stop somebody from giving a talk for trumped up political reasons. Heck, between him, Rice, and Maher, he's the least unsavory.
- tptacek 11y agoDisagree, strongly, but not worth hashing out.
- SamReidHughes 11y agoEven with a very negative equivocation of "defender of chattel slavery," which I'm guessing -- I don't have the time or the spare IQ to decipher his writings -- is a hostile simplification, the right thing to do is to forgive him. The reaction to the news he'd be speaking was made of base disgust and deliberate malice. The venue's different, but the mindset of the complainers is similar, albeit not with the same proportions of raw cynicism. If it's not worth hashing out, then it wasn't worth objecting to a detail of a 7-day-old post in the first place. (Here's another example for the corpus: When Hillary Clinton was scheduled to speak at the RPI Commencement, there was no end to the whining by the College Republicans. This was in 2005.)
- tptacek 11y agoNo, it is not a hostile simplification. Unfortunately, I believe I captured it pretty well. Unless you'd like to argue that he's playing a character when he writes as Mencius Moldbug. Apparently unlike you (and who can blame you?), I took some time to work through the writing.
- 11y ago