5 ms·

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 s

by 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?
- Goladus 11y ago
  This is so dishonest. The medium post[1] is about a specific media enquiry, which did not ask about his functional programming work at all. Yarvin stated, for good or ill, that he intended to answer the questions honestly. Your criticism in context is thus completely out of line. You are blaming a guy being asked about his political views for answering those questions. Your summary of the rest of the article is ridiculously biased and unfair. You present no syllogisms, no evidence, no logic, no conclusions. Just an extraordinary claim of white surpremacy.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    We're strangers to each other. Don't call me "dishonest" ("ridiculously biased and unfair" is fair game, though, obviously, I disagree). I'll similarly refrain from doing the same to you. I've read both of Yarvin's Medium posts. I think perhaps you only read one of of them. Given the degree of stridency in your objection to my comment, I'm guessing you also haven't carefully read the Mencius Moldbug posts that kicked all this stuff off (that's fine: he writes in a deliberately obscurantist fashion in order to foment exactly these kinds of misunderstandings). A few weeks back, one of the most ardent supporters of his Lambdaconf talk (who went on to raise a not-insignificant amount of money to help sponsor it!) reported attending a Founders Fund event with Yarvin. In person, Yarvin was evidently so flagrantly racist that he was ostracized by other attendees. Doubtless, Yarvin would respond by objecting to the concept of race, or to the assertion that "suitability for slavery" is a bad thing, or that intelligence is generally a good thing, or by juxtaposing some ridiculous bit of pop culture ("do you believe in the Holocaust? Well, I mean, you're saying the Holocaust as portrayed in Inglorious Basterds...?") against the circumstances of Epictetus, or whatever the fuck else is in his tiresome bag of rhetorical tricks. People aren't making this stuff up about him.
    - lake99 11y ago
      To prevent ambiguity, these are the posts I read: [1] https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-media-inquiries-2ce34b7ba8a6 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-... [2] https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam... I have not read Mencius Moldbug posts, and I don't think I'll do so in the foreseeable future. Chalk it up to a lack of interest. > In person, Yarvin was evidently so flagrantly racist that he was ostracized by other attendees. I would like to judge this for myself. It's not personal; I won't take anyone's word for it. I'm not the same race as Yarvin. I'm Indian. Being a different race, and given India's history, I think I'll be sensitive enough to racism. And if I don't like Yarvin in person, I'll avoid personal interactions with him too. And if they ask me after that, I'd still support allowing Yarvin to attend the conference the next year. The only way I'll change my mind is if Yarvin doesn't stick to his proposed (technical) agenda during his talk, or if he is personally responsible for being disruptive to other people interacting with each other. For example, someone getting too drunk and creating a ruckus would be grounds for exclusion, in my book. In contrast to all this, there are extremely well-known companies that are adversely affecting my life with their abuse of patent laws. Yarvin and Urbit have zero impact on my life, one way or another.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        That is a completely legitimate perspective to have, and I personally have no issue with it. I gather, from the hyperventilation I'm seeing elsewhere, that there exist people who are not OK with you being OK with Lambdaconf. I am not one of those people, and generally would not want to hang out with those people either.
        Goladus 11y ago
        > I gather, from the hyperventilation I'm seeing elsewhere I suspect a lot of the people "hyperventilating" are legitimately scared by social justice activism. I look at Yarvin and see a guy who wrote a blog for 7 years as a creative, intellectual, philosophical outlet. Some of his ideas are controversial and some are just weird. Paul Graham paraphrasing Michel de Montaigne wrote: Expressing ideas helps to form them. If you can't express ideas that might be controversial then what is the point? I don't see any coherent argument presented for why his work is particularly dangerous, threatening, or otherwise worth punishing him individually for writing it. How would you feel, Thomas, if a very small but aggressive, dedicated, and unethical group of activists decided to start hounding you? How would you feel if these activists spread grossly unfair characterizations of your body of comments here at Hacker News? How would you feel if media ran thoughtless clickbait hit pieces at your expense? How would you feel when posters on Hacker News parroted these uncharitable and unfair opinions about you? If you find yourself thinking, "well I am a virtuous person and never say things that could be used against me," then you are naive. When twitter activists (social justice or otherwise) choose to target you, the truth will not matter. Your intent will not matter. All that matters is whether they can succeed in ruining your life as an example for others. THEY will decide the narrative. They will shape perceptions. So yes, this scares me. And what scares me the most is when people who are considered to be smart, objective, and rational fall for it. And what I hate are the terrorizing "activists" who legitimately want me to be scared out of some warped idea that I deserve it.

by lake99 11y ago

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?

Goladus 11y ago
This is so dishonest. The medium post[1] is about a specific media enquiry, which did not ask about his functional programming work at all. Yarvin stated, for good or ill, that he intended to answer the questions honestly. Your criticism in context is thus completely out of line. You are blaming a guy being asked about his political views for answering those questions. Your summary of the rest of the article is ridiculously biased and unfair. You present no syllogisms, no evidence, no logic, no conclusions. Just an extraordinary claim of white surpremacy.
- tptacek 11y ago
  We're strangers to each other. Don't call me "dishonest" ("ridiculously biased and unfair" is fair game, though, obviously, I disagree). I'll similarly refrain from doing the same to you. I've read both of Yarvin's Medium posts. I think perhaps you only read one of of them. Given the degree of stridency in your objection to my comment, I'm guessing you also haven't carefully read the Mencius Moldbug posts that kicked all this stuff off (that's fine: he writes in a deliberately obscurantist fashion in order to foment exactly these kinds of misunderstandings). A few weeks back, one of the most ardent supporters of his Lambdaconf talk (who went on to raise a not-insignificant amount of money to help sponsor it!) reported attending a Founders Fund event with Yarvin. In person, Yarvin was evidently so flagrantly racist that he was ostracized by other attendees. Doubtless, Yarvin would respond by objecting to the concept of race, or to the assertion that "suitability for slavery" is a bad thing, or that intelligence is generally a good thing, or by juxtaposing some ridiculous bit of pop culture ("do you believe in the Holocaust? Well, I mean, you're saying the Holocaust as portrayed in Inglorious Basterds...?") against the circumstances of Epictetus, or whatever the fuck else is in his tiresome bag of rhetorical tricks. People aren't making this stuff up about him.
  - lake99 11y ago
    To prevent ambiguity, these are the posts I read: [1] https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-media-inquiries-2ce34b7ba8a6 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/how-to-respond-to-hostile-... [2] https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam... I have not read Mencius Moldbug posts, and I don't think I'll do so in the foreseeable future. Chalk it up to a lack of interest. > In person, Yarvin was evidently so flagrantly racist that he was ostracized by other attendees. I would like to judge this for myself. It's not personal; I won't take anyone's word for it. I'm not the same race as Yarvin. I'm Indian. Being a different race, and given India's history, I think I'll be sensitive enough to racism. And if I don't like Yarvin in person, I'll avoid personal interactions with him too. And if they ask me after that, I'd still support allowing Yarvin to attend the conference the next year. The only way I'll change my mind is if Yarvin doesn't stick to his proposed (technical) agenda during his talk, or if he is personally responsible for being disruptive to other people interacting with each other. For example, someone getting too drunk and creating a ruckus would be grounds for exclusion, in my book. In contrast to all this, there are extremely well-known companies that are adversely affecting my life with their abuse of patent laws. Yarvin and Urbit have zero impact on my life, one way or another.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      That is a completely legitimate perspective to have, and I personally have no issue with it. I gather, from the hyperventilation I'm seeing elsewhere, that there exist people who are not OK with you being OK with Lambdaconf. I am not one of those people, and generally would not want to hang out with those people either.
      - Goladus 11y ago
        > I gather, from the hyperventilation I'm seeing elsewhere I suspect a lot of the people "hyperventilating" are legitimately scared by social justice activism. I look at Yarvin and see a guy who wrote a blog for 7 years as a creative, intellectual, philosophical outlet. Some of his ideas are controversial and some are just weird. Paul Graham paraphrasing Michel de Montaigne wrote: Expressing ideas helps to form them. If you can't express ideas that might be controversial then what is the point? I don't see any coherent argument presented for why his work is particularly dangerous, threatening, or otherwise worth punishing him individually for writing it. How would you feel, Thomas, if a very small but aggressive, dedicated, and unethical group of activists decided to start hounding you? How would you feel if these activists spread grossly unfair characterizations of your body of comments here at Hacker News? How would you feel if media ran thoughtless clickbait hit pieces at your expense? How would you feel when posters on Hacker News parroted these uncharitable and unfair opinions about you? If you find yourself thinking, "well I am a virtuous person and never say things that could be used against me," then you are naive. When twitter activists (social justice or otherwise) choose to target you, the truth will not matter. Your intent will not matter. All that matters is whether they can succeed in ruining your life as an example for others. THEY will decide the narrative. They will shape perceptions. So yes, this scares me. And what scares me the most is when people who are considered to be smart, objective, and rational fall for it. And what I hate are the terrorizing "activists" who legitimately want me to be scared out of some warped idea that I deserve it.