4 ms·

I 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 (re

I 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 ago
What 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 The invitation was rescinded.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 ago
    Of 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 ago
      An 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 ago
        Disagree, strongly, but not worth hashing out.
        SamReidHughes 11y ago
        Even 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 ago
        No, 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.
        SamReidHughes4 11y ago
        I have paid my dues, thank you. Here is what is happening: His writing has evolved to be laced with honeypot objectionables (on top of general obfuscation) so that he can sit on his mountain, avoid direct refutation, and look down at people that obviously don't get what he's saying. That they conveniently map with his ur-self's tonal ambitions is icing on the cake. You're hitting a honeypot, flavored by all the pickup from his ur-self that's present in everything about what he chooses to write about. Your statement, which is about what he says, is not the true true (about what he says) because it's poisoned by what he is. You can unsimplify it back up to a lot of stuff that he doesn't say (in fact, stuff he doesn't believe he believes). If you have an alternate theory, I should point out that mine also explains Urbit. Does yours?

tptacek 11y ago

What 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 ago
  Of 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 ago
    An 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 ago
      Disagree, strongly, but not worth hashing out.
      - SamReidHughes 11y ago
        Even 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 ago
        No, 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.
        SamReidHughes4 11y ago
        I have paid my dues, thank you. Here is what is happening: His writing has evolved to be laced with honeypot objectionables (on top of general obfuscation) so that he can sit on his mountain, avoid direct refutation, and look down at people that obviously don't get what he's saying. That they conveniently map with his ur-self's tonal ambitions is icing on the cake. You're hitting a honeypot, flavored by all the pickup from his ur-self that's present in everything about what he chooses to write about. Your statement, which is about what he says, is not the true true (about what he says) because it's poisoned by what he is. You can unsimplify it back up to a lot of stuff that he doesn't say (in fact, stuff he doesn't believe he believes). If you have an alternate theory, I should point out that mine also explains Urbit. Does yours?