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Is LambdaConf for Conservative Christians, Too?
- carsongross 11y agoMy God. An adult.
- davidbhayes 11y agoCONTEXT: Linked post is from Feb 29, 2016. Before the recent tumult about LamdaConf announcing their intention to host a speaker who is also a "fascist", and "slavery apologist." (Post explaining their logic there is: http://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-inclusion http://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-inclusion .) Not sure why it's being posted now.
- andrewflnr 11y agoSpeaking as a conservative Christian, that's a pretty tame pledge of conduct. The only thing that bothers me about it is that it demands that you go straight to a staff member if you see a violation, rather than try to resolve it peacefully. I certainly wouldn't feel like I was going to be asked to compromise my beliefs. Maybe the one who asked the question was extrapolating or asking based on other sources?
- gedy 11y agoDo tech conferences honestly need codes of conduct? Feels a bit like living in a home - some folks hate the idea of Home Owner Associations with their explicit rules, others can't imagine living next to people without everything spelled out.
- smt88 11y ago> Do tech conferences honestly need codes of conduct? Yes. "Common sense" and "common decency" aren't universal, even in situations that seem to fall under obvious and well-established social norms. It's better to have these things written out so that no one can claim they didn't know any better. No one is asking the attendees to take this conduct into the rest of their lives -- it's just a way to behave that everyone can agree upon ahead of time to keep things civil.
- someguydave 11y ago> It's better to have these things written out so that no one can claim they didn't know any better. No, it's not better. One cannot substitute common decency with a document, and it's a fool's errand to try.
- smt88 11y agoYou're right. We should have no laws. /s
- rboyd 11y agoWhy not just reject a speaker if you think it will hurt ticket sales? You don't have a duty to stand up for free speech, or whatever. You host a conference, you protect your brand, and if people don't like it they can start their own.
- sanxiyn 11y agoThis is the same principle that restaurants probably shouldn't reject homosexual people even if it may hurt sales.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago"Leaders of the dark enlightment" is not a protected class.
- vowelless 11y agoI wonder if the original email was more about this point in the "Pledge": > That I shall not talk or act in ways that could make minority groups feel bullied, harassed, intimidated, stalked, stereotyped, or belittled; examples of minority groups include women, people of color, lesbians, gays, and people who are disabled, bisexual, transsexual, asexual, intersex, transgender, and gender-variant; It specifically talks about "minority groups". Presumably, the person who emailed John felt himself part of the "majority", or at least not covered in the "minority" groups. I wonder why the pledge explicitly talks about minority groups? Why not just say that there should be no bullying, harassment, etc. period. FWIW, I am a "person of color" (I do dislike using that phrase).
- smt88 11y ago> I wonder why the pledge explicitly talks about minority groups? Why not just say that there should be no bullying, harassment, etc. period. I think those groups are explicitly listed because not everyone believes all of those groups really exist. Similarly, some people believe that belonging to some of those groups is a choice. Further, I'd imagine that all of those groups will be minorities at LambdaConf, but not all of them are minorities everywhere (women, people "of color", etc.) I, too, am "of color" and dislike that phrase because A) it means nothing, B) it implies that being "of color" is abnormal and requires someone to quality the word "person", and C) there are way more of us than of non-colored people (whatever that means).
- ikeboy 11y agoWell, some in the trans group consider being a woman a choice.
- smt88 11y agoNo, they consider your sex and gender to be determined by your brain, not by your body. Traditionally, society thinks that they have a choice. They have told us that they do not.
- sheepdestroyer 11y ago
- lhnz 11y agoHe seems like a nice, reasonable guy. I actually think that he's more tolerant than most people, and that the radical left could learn something from him.
- pklausler 11y agoAs opposed to the radical right, you mean?
- lhnz 11y agoIn this particular case it's the radical left that is irate, so yes. Also, in general the radical right (when this is used to refer to neoreaction) tends to just opine with long blog posts where they capitalise words like Tradition, Civilization and Enlightenment. They don't like to angrily point fingers as they feel this is unbecoming of gentlemen/women. (I'm being honest about their pretensions here.)
- pklausler 11y agoAttendees at Trump rallies are not exactly known for writing long blog posts, suggestively capitalized or not.
- lhnz 11y ago...? You are aware that all of this drama relates to the creator of Neoreaction, right? That vein of the Right has little to do with Trump rallies. It's this kind of stuff: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/ http://thefutureprimaeval.net/ (and more generally: http://www.socialmatter.net http://www.socialmatter.net) My description is apt.
- pklausler 11y agoThanks for the link and the clarification!
- wtbob 11y ago
- sanxiyn 11y agoI applaud LambdaConf's decision, compared to Strange Loop which caved to bullying. Neoreaction is not a powerful movement. Attacking neoreaction is not punching up.
- dominotw 11y agoAll their sponsors are pulling out, it remains to be seen if conf is still going to happen.
- wtbob 11y agoSounds like the definition of bravery to me: doing the right thing even when it hurts one.
- SturgeonsLaw 11y agoPunching up or down doesn't matter in this case, as long as someone's punching. Fascism is not something which should be left to fester.
- 13thLetter 11y agoIndeed. If self-important bullies are demanding that folks get thrown out of professional conferences because of their personal political opinions, men and women of good will everywhere need to forthrightly stand up against that.
- dogecoinbase 11y agoI believe that “good” can only, ever mean, “I like it,” and bad can only, ever mean, “I don’t like it.” Morality, in my view, is just how we try to objectify what are inherently subjective personal preferences. This is... a ridiculously oversimplified caricature of atheistic philosophy, presumably now posted (as the original post predates the current controversy[0]) to imply the obviously incorrect syllogism that if we accept people who are privately religious we're somehow obligated to not only accept outspoken racists, but put them on a stage. [0] The idea that it should be controversial to deny a platform to someone who's chosen to become a public figure by promoting racist violence is absurd, regardless of any technical accomplishments (which would be a pretty strong characterization of the pointless Turing trap that is urbit). I've already canceled my flight for LambdaConf and in the future I will happily decline to work with people who failed to do so.
- lhnz 11y ago> public figure by promoting racist violence is absurd There haven't been any instances of this that I've seen - I tried to describe the offending paragraph as best I could here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11363002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11363002).
- smt88 11y ago> a ridiculously oversimplified caricature of atheistic philosophy It seemed to me that the author was offering an explanation of amoral atheism, which he explicitly mentioned several times.
- dllthomas 11y agoWouldn't that apply just as well to an amoral theism?
- sanxiyn 11y ago> someone who's chosen to become a public figure by promoting racist violence Maybe Mencius Moldbug is such a public figure, but Curtis Yarvin isn't. Mencius Moldbug was doxxed, not chosen to become a public figure. Do you support doxxing?
- Renaud 11y agoI am always amazed at how religion is such a hot and polarizing topic in the US. Political debates in the US presidential election are baffling at best and often utterly cringe-worthy. I don't even understand why someone would ask if a tech conference, a topic that has zero to do with religion, is 'for them too' because they're Christian? Is proselytizing part of the conference's aim? no? Then why even ask? Is it non-obvious enough that you would need to ask? This is really weird.
- thescribe 11y agoContex wise: This is because some many US events now have codes of conduct that play into identity politics.
- sheepdestroyer 11y agoReligion is not part of your identity, it's at best an opinion that you are (potentially temporary) holding now. And this is wrong for CoCs to include religions, or political views, on the same level as identity defining traits like gender and race.
- iamnotyou 11y agoIs gender on the same level as race though? You can't change your race but you can change your gender - both in cases it's warranted (gender dysphoria) and in those it's not (otherwise). Also it's disingenuous that you say religion is not a part of a person's identity, when in fact there are people to whom it's an important part of their identity as a person. Sure you can argue relision is a choice - and I can grant you that - but then it's the same with non-gender-dysphoric transpeople;they just chose a different gender than their biological sex for an arbitrary reason.
- humanrebar 11y agoMany people feel like religion is more of a defining characteristic than politics, country of origin, marital status, and even ethnicity. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/22/1473694/-Ted-Cruz-I-m-a-Christian-first-American-second-Imagine-if-Muslim-or-Jewish-politician-said-that http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/22/1473694/-Ted-Cruz-I-...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- emkk 11y agoWe've had a week that went from a fascist AI bot that was taken down immediately to a real fascist who is being tolerated. This person thinks the "weak" should be enslaved by "strong", nonsensical and subjective categorizations where no doubt "strong" probably includes him and means people like him in this view. There is definetly a camp of developers (not outsiders) who have denigrated StrongLoops decision and praised LambdaConf. These are engineers who may work with members of groups targeted by this fascists' views, engineers who may review a Black / Latino applicant for a job, contribute to the overall work environment for them. To my point, what I see is a co-optation of the meaning of the world tolerance. When there is an fascist antagonist on minority groups, it is easier for these "tolerant" everyday individuals to say hey fascists should matter too at tech conferences. Because thats what tolerant means, even the fascists and racists matter, no? Things that appear logically equivalent are not always the best things to do. Part of me thinks this is part of antebellum United States' original sin; the wealthy white class using race and slavery to spur hate-mongering from working-middle class whites, who saw Black people as their problem and not class inequity. This is the "vicious lie" that MLK talked about and continues to manifest today as Tim Wise deals with: www.timwise.org/2015/04/how-racism-explains-americas-class-divide-and-culture-of-economic-cruelty-an-excerpt-from-under-the-affluence/
- humanrebar 11y agoNot sure I follow all that, but MLK's theology (and the Declaration of Independence) recognize people as being special creatures. And each person is given an inherent dignity by his or her Creator. In American culture, this means limiting someone's freedom of expression (legally) has to come after some due process involving proof of real harm. The same impulse applies to social conventions, though there isn't the same bright line between tolerance and censorship. Anyway, AI twitter bots aren't people, so they don't get the same benefit of the doubt. The false equivalence here is that "person" applies to robots as easily as human beings.
- tzs 11y ago> This person thinks the "weak" should be enslaved by "strong", nonsensical and subjective categorizations where no doubt "strong" probably includes him and means people like him in this view. Citation needed. Based on this conversation in his recent AMA that does not seem like his position: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/d1da212 https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv... He seems to believe that some groups are better (from the slaver's point of view) at being slaves than others are. Namely, when enslaved to do agricultural work those from agricultural societies are better slaves than those from hunter-gatherer societies. That's quite different from saying that anyone should be enslaved.