9 ms·

A response to LambdaConf's decision by someone who was consulted

24 points by exolymph 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
calibraxis 11y ago
The author decided not to go. In other news (of the weird), Lambdaconf now promotes this political blog which sponsors them: https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/716427389350359040 https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/716427389350359040
- mcphage 11y ago
  Well, that's a sponsor which probably can't be pushed to drop support. Not ideal, but when people are sealioning their other sponsors...
  - calibraxis 11y ago
    At least StrangeLoop's clearly vindicated now. Unlike Lambdaconf, they didn't stoop to getting cash from KKK-types like (https://twitter.com/clarkhat/status/682022959830151168 https://twitter.com/clarkhat/status/682022959830151168): Neil deGrasse Tyson: "There's nothing you can ever tell scientists about the natural world that will hurt their feelings." Grim Dark Future Hat: "Blacks have lower average IQs. Your move." Guess there's reasons not to invite speakers notorious for advocating racism against fellow conference-goers and their families! [1] (And why one hires knowledgeable diversity consultants who've seen these dynamics a thousand times.) [1] "It was really quite lovely. Later that day, in the jeep to the ranch house where everyone was staying, he started up with the casual racism, and everyone ignored him." (https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/606799534983770112 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/606799534983770112)
    - devalier 11y ago
      So are the 52 psychologists who signed this scientific consensus about the bell curve all KKK-types -- https://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf https://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstrea... ? Guess there's a reason we don't invite speakers notorious for advocating enslaving fellow conference-goers' families So our standard is, if diversity activists can lie, and make the lies stick, then we don't let the target of their lies speak anywhere? Sounds reasonable.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - calibraxis 11y ago
        > we don't let the target of their lies speak anywhere Speaking of "lies": not inviting him to a private event != not letting him speak "anywhere". (Furthermore, this response came 9 minutes after mine, and carries a quote I immediately edited and cited evidence for. While fuming about the Lambdaconf sponsor author's attempt to "hurt" Neil Degrasse Tyson, I was momentarily careless.) > signed this scientific consensus about the bell curve If you'll excuse me, I do not have any interest in debating The Bell Curve (I believe about race & IQ?) with people who rapidly show up to support obvious racists and write stuff like: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10945507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10945507)
        not_that_scott 11y ago
        So, you're refusing to discuss their claim, on the grounds that they previously made claims that you would also refuse discuss? Now this is a fun little recursion puzzle.
        calibraxis 11y ago
        Why? It's a non-sequitur. Neil Degrasse Tyson said "the natural world". IQ tests are fleeting human-made constructs which have nothing to do with laws of the universe. And to talk of "scientific consensus" regarding social pseudo-science... The whole point is to attack Blacks using techniques of so-called "scientific racism". (And not discussing racist pseudo-science is merely protection of your own intelligence. My brief neglect to cite evidence warned me that exposure to low standards made my own slip! :)
draw_down 11y ago
Wait, they opted to keep the Yarvin guy in the conference?! This post says readers are "undoubtedly" aware of the decision De Goes made, but I was not (though I was aware of the controversy itself). I read De Goes's blog post about the decision just now, but it's so mush mouthed I still can't tell if they opted to keep him. If so, wow. The only thing I don't really agree with here is talking about this in terms of labor. I mean, just imagine if they decided to only send the questionnaire to white men, to avoid visiting this labor upon minorities and women. Usually this logic goes something like: since minorities and women have already suffered oppression and discrimination, they should not also be responsible for arguing against or affecting change against that oppression/discrimination. But if white people and men were going to just do the right thing on their own, then we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. I like Fredrik DeBoer on this particular point, he talks about it in this post: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/12/26/race-science-and-shoulds/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/12/26/race-science-and-shoulds...
- theorique 11y ago
  Whatever decision the conference leadership made, it would offend someone. Apparently, making women and minorities decide whether Yarvin would be permitted to present was too much for some, since it put the onus on those "oppressed" individuals. But if they had just made an executive decision, they would have been castigated for "erasing voices of oppressed persons" or some similar complaint. Under the circumstances, they made the only plausible decision: in favor of free expression and sharing of ideas, and against the awful "no-platforming" that the Left seeks to promote against all their political opponents.
jakejnichols 11y ago
"Let me say this unequivocally: Yarvin chose to produce this controversy. This is not an accident. He is not a pitiable figure who is persecuted for his beliefs. He is not simply an eccentric functional programmer who, like you or me, happens to hold a couple of beliefs out of the mainstream. Nope. Yarvin’s hobby is writing hateful things, publishing them, and cultivating a movement of hateful people working toward hateful ends. This controversy serves those ends. He knew when he submitted his proposal that, if accepted, he could count on at least a brief flurry of interest in his ponderous, indulgent treatises." This is a really twisted view. Yarvin has been working on Urbit for many years and it is his life now. He signed up for the conference to promote it. His political blog has been dead for over two years. I don't see any reason why he would want this controversy, and he claims himself he signed up for the conference to talk about Urbit -- https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-media-inquiries-2ce34b7ba8a6 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-... I also think it's a major stretch to call his blog "hateful." (And what does that even mean, OP is pretty hateful toward Yarvin, should OP be banned too?) Yeah, his Moldbug character was an edgelord, writing in the style of 18th century pamphleteer. So what. The supposedly terrible quotes were taken out of context and misunderstood or distorted (again, see link above). Much of the blog is quite fascinating history and political analysis, written in ironical style. I'd hate to see the next interesting, edgy blog scared to start writing, even under a pseudonym, for fear someday people would try to ruin their careers.
- lake99 11y ago
  From Yarvin's medium article, I kinda feel bad for him that he had to endure all this. I don't understand how Tess Townsend could ask such questions after she says she has read Yarvin's previous Medium post. She was incredibly rude! And I agree, Amar Shah comes across as a hateful person.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Are we talking about the same Medium post? The one where Yarvin spends a couple very short paragraphs talking about his functional programming work, and then over fifty talking about how his racial supremacist views deserve more respect because he got messed with in high school?
ageofwant 11y ago
Its your conference and you decide who you your speakers are. But I, for one, appreciate being exposed to "non aligned" viewpoints and those that spruik them, even if only to re-affirm my biases. As a rule I object to being censored, on any grounds. I'm going to assume that all inquisitive open-minded people will have the same objections.
tzs 11y ago
> But then, I think, do I really want to be at this conference if all of my people – people who care deeply about justice, equality, freedom, and compassion – won’t be there? If your church or your political party is not full of "your people" then you've got a problem, because the things that make people "your people" are the foundations for organized religion and political parties. That's not so for science and technology. One can be an excellent scientist/engineer/technician while holding pretty much any set of religious or political beliefs [1]. If you are unwilling to learn science or tech from people who would not be acceptable in your church or political party then you are going to have a much harder time becoming a first rate scientist/engineer/technician than those who do not so limit themselves. I recognize that when you attend a conference and you do not have friends there then you might find yourself having to choose between being alone or socializing with strangers during those times when there are no actual conference events that you are attending. If you cannot socialize with with who are not "your people" that too is going to limit you. Those who are able to figure out how to have social relationships with people based on their common interests despite also having areas in which they have major disagreements have an advantage. They'll have bigger, more diverse, social networks which are more likely to be able to help them when they need it. This will extend to the workplace, unless you limit yourself to only working at small companies. At medium and large companies you will almost certainly find coworkers who are on the opposite side from you on many issues that are important to you. Take Google. About 1/3 of the Congressional donations from Google employees and PACs go to Republicans. Even Ted Cruz and Lamar Smith get donations from them. Are you going to scratch Google off your list of potential employers because you might find yourself having to interact civilly with a Ted Cruz supporter? Similar for Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft (although the distribution is different...from Apple about 1/7th or so goes to Republicans, and it is around 40% or so from Amazon and Microsoft). [1] With exceptions for those religious or political systems that do not allow one to do science, of course.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Don't retcon Lambdaconf. Lambdaconf isn't an academic conference. I've been involved with academic conferences (I co-chaired one for USENIX last year), and I've been involved with things like Lambdaconf. Both kinds of thing are valuable and important, but they're also different. The purpose a conference is to select works for inclusion in the citation record for a field. The conference presentations themselves are secondary to the proceedings of the conference. A good way to know you're looking at an scientific conference is to find the Program Committee, which is the group responsible for determining which papers will and won't be accepted. Most scientific conferences are defined by their Program Committee. I can't find Lambdaconf's PC online. I assume it has one? Lambdaconf is an industry event. It's a gathering of enthusiasts that is mostly commercial and social in nature. Its presentations will be cited online informally. Because many of them are presentations by the authors of open source functional programming software, the subjects of those presentations may even be cited formally --- but it's unlikely that any of the talks themselves will be. If Lambdaconf were an academic conference, I would have different feelings about their pointed inclusion of a noisome white supremacist. But it isn't; it's fundamentally a commercial event. It can't hide behind "science".

24 points by exolymph 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

The author decided not to go. In other news (of the weird), Lambdaconf now promotes this political blog which sponsors them: https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/716427389350359040 https://twitter.com/aphyr/status/716427389350359040

mcphage 11y ago
Well, that's a sponsor which probably can't be pushed to drop support. Not ideal, but when people are sealioning their other sponsors...
- calibraxis 11y ago
  At least StrangeLoop's clearly vindicated now. Unlike Lambdaconf, they didn't stoop to getting cash from KKK-types like (https://twitter.com/clarkhat/status/682022959830151168 https://twitter.com/clarkhat/status/682022959830151168): Neil deGrasse Tyson: "There's nothing you can ever tell scientists about the natural world that will hurt their feelings." Grim Dark Future Hat: "Blacks have lower average IQs. Your move." Guess there's reasons not to invite speakers notorious for advocating racism against fellow conference-goers and their families! [1] (And why one hires knowledgeable diversity consultants who've seen these dynamics a thousand times.) [1] "It was really quite lovely. Later that day, in the jeep to the ranch house where everyone was staying, he started up with the casual racism, and everyone ignored him." (https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/606799534983770112 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/606799534983770112)
  - devalier 11y ago
    So are the 52 psychologists who signed this scientific consensus about the bell curve all KKK-types -- https://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf https://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstrea... ? Guess there's a reason we don't invite speakers notorious for advocating enslaving fellow conference-goers' families So our standard is, if diversity activists can lie, and make the lies stick, then we don't let the target of their lies speak anywhere? Sounds reasonable.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - calibraxis 11y ago
      > we don't let the target of their lies speak anywhere Speaking of "lies": not inviting him to a private event != not letting him speak "anywhere". (Furthermore, this response came 9 minutes after mine, and carries a quote I immediately edited and cited evidence for. While fuming about the Lambdaconf sponsor author's attempt to "hurt" Neil Degrasse Tyson, I was momentarily careless.) > signed this scientific consensus about the bell curve If you'll excuse me, I do not have any interest in debating The Bell Curve (I believe about race & IQ?) with people who rapidly show up to support obvious racists and write stuff like: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10945507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10945507)
      - not_that_scott 11y ago
        So, you're refusing to discuss their claim, on the grounds that they previously made claims that you would also refuse discuss? Now this is a fun little recursion puzzle.
        calibraxis 11y ago
        Why? It's a non-sequitur. Neil Degrasse Tyson said "the natural world". IQ tests are fleeting human-made constructs which have nothing to do with laws of the universe. And to talk of "scientific consensus" regarding social pseudo-science... The whole point is to attack Blacks using techniques of so-called "scientific racism". (And not discussing racist pseudo-science is merely protection of your own intelligence. My brief neglect to cite evidence warned me that exposure to low standards made my own slip! :)

draw_down 11y ago

Wait, they opted to keep the Yarvin guy in the conference?! This post says readers are "undoubtedly" aware of the decision De Goes made, but I was not (though I was aware of the controversy itself). I read De Goes's blog post about the decision just now, but it's so mush mouthed I still can't tell if they opted to keep him. If so, wow. The only thing I don't really agree with here is talking about this in terms of labor. I mean, just imagine if they decided to only send the questionnaire to white men, to avoid visiting this labor upon minorities and women. Usually this logic goes something like: since minorities and women have already suffered oppression and discrimination, they should not also be responsible for arguing against or affecting change against that oppression/discrimination. But if white people and men were going to just do the right thing on their own, then we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. I like Fredrik DeBoer on this particular point, he talks about it in this post: http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/12/26/race-science-and-shoulds/ http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/12/26/race-science-and-shoulds...

theorique 11y ago
Whatever decision the conference leadership made, it would offend someone. Apparently, making women and minorities decide whether Yarvin would be permitted to present was too much for some, since it put the onus on those "oppressed" individuals. But if they had just made an executive decision, they would have been castigated for "erasing voices of oppressed persons" or some similar complaint. Under the circumstances, they made the only plausible decision: in favor of free expression and sharing of ideas, and against the awful "no-platforming" that the Left seeks to promote against all their political opponents.

jakejnichols 11y ago

"Let me say this unequivocally: Yarvin chose to produce this controversy. This is not an accident. He is not a pitiable figure who is persecuted for his beliefs. He is not simply an eccentric functional programmer who, like you or me, happens to hold a couple of beliefs out of the mainstream. Nope. Yarvin’s hobby is writing hateful things, publishing them, and cultivating a movement of hateful people working toward hateful ends. This controversy serves those ends. He knew when he submitted his proposal that, if accepted, he could count on at least a brief flurry of interest in his ponderous, indulgent treatises." This is a really twisted view. Yarvin has been working on Urbit for many years and it is his life now. He signed up for the conference to promote it. His political blog has been dead for over two years. I don't see any reason why he would want this controversy, and he claims himself he signed up for the conference to talk about Urbit -- https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-media-inquiries-2ce34b7ba8a6 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-... I also think it's a major stretch to call his blog "hateful." (And what does that even mean, OP is pretty hateful toward Yarvin, should OP be banned too?) Yeah, his Moldbug character was an edgelord, writing in the style of 18th century pamphleteer. So what. The supposedly terrible quotes were taken out of context and misunderstood or distorted (again, see link above). Much of the blog is quite fascinating history and political analysis, written in ironical style. I'd hate to see the next interesting, edgy blog scared to start writing, even under a pseudonym, for fear someday people would try to ruin their careers.

lake99 11y ago
From Yarvin's medium article, I kinda feel bad for him that he had to endure all this. I don't understand how Tess Townsend could ask such questions after she says she has read Yarvin's previous Medium post. She was incredibly rude! And I agree, Amar Shah comes across as a hateful person.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Are we talking about the same Medium post? The one where Yarvin spends a couple very short paragraphs talking about his functional programming work, and then over fifty talking about how his racial supremacist views deserve more respect because he got messed with in high school?

ageofwant 11y ago

Its your conference and you decide who you your speakers are. But I, for one, appreciate being exposed to "non aligned" viewpoints and those that spruik them, even if only to re-affirm my biases. As a rule I object to being censored, on any grounds. I'm going to assume that all inquisitive open-minded people will have the same objections.

tzs 11y ago

> But then, I think, do I really want to be at this conference if all of my people – people who care deeply about justice, equality, freedom, and compassion – won’t be there? If your church or your political party is not full of "your people" then you've got a problem, because the things that make people "your people" are the foundations for organized religion and political parties. That's not so for science and technology. One can be an excellent scientist/engineer/technician while holding pretty much any set of religious or political beliefs [1]. If you are unwilling to learn science or tech from people who would not be acceptable in your church or political party then you are going to have a much harder time becoming a first rate scientist/engineer/technician than those who do not so limit themselves. I recognize that when you attend a conference and you do not have friends there then you might find yourself having to choose between being alone or socializing with strangers during those times when there are no actual conference events that you are attending. If you cannot socialize with with who are not "your people" that too is going to limit you. Those who are able to figure out how to have social relationships with people based on their common interests despite also having areas in which they have major disagreements have an advantage. They'll have bigger, more diverse, social networks which are more likely to be able to help them when they need it. This will extend to the workplace, unless you limit yourself to only working at small companies. At medium and large companies you will almost certainly find coworkers who are on the opposite side from you on many issues that are important to you. Take Google. About 1/3 of the Congressional donations from Google employees and PACs go to Republicans. Even Ted Cruz and Lamar Smith get donations from them. Are you going to scratch Google off your list of potential employers because you might find yourself having to interact civilly with a Ted Cruz supporter? Similar for Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft (although the distribution is different...from Apple about 1/7th or so goes to Republicans, and it is around 40% or so from Amazon and Microsoft). [1] With exceptions for those religious or political systems that do not allow one to do science, of course.

tptacek 11y ago
Don't retcon Lambdaconf. Lambdaconf isn't an academic conference. I've been involved with academic conferences (I co-chaired one for USENIX last year), and I've been involved with things like Lambdaconf. Both kinds of thing are valuable and important, but they're also different. The purpose a conference is to select works for inclusion in the citation record for a field. The conference presentations themselves are secondary to the proceedings of the conference. A good way to know you're looking at an scientific conference is to find the Program Committee, which is the group responsible for determining which papers will and won't be accepted. Most scientific conferences are defined by their Program Committee. I can't find Lambdaconf's PC online. I assume it has one? Lambdaconf is an industry event. It's a gathering of enthusiasts that is mostly commercial and social in nature. Its presentations will be cited online informally. Because many of them are presentations by the authors of open source functional programming software, the subjects of those presentations may even be cited formally --- but it's unlikely that any of the talks themselves will be. If Lambdaconf were an academic conference, I would have different feelings about their pointed inclusion of a noisome white supremacist. But it isn't; it's fundamentally a commercial event. It can't hide behind "science".