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> I gather, from the hyperventilation I'm seeing elsewhere I suspect a lot of the people "hyperventilating" are legitimately scared by social justice activism

by 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.

tptacek 11y ago
If you think you're going to get me to reconsider my take on Yarvin by empathizing with the amount of flak he's taking, you have a higher bar to clear than you might think. I come from 1990s vulnerability research. Look into how intractable grievances got resolved there, and get back to me. To fully empathize, have all your utilities turned off, first. Yarvin is a racist. It's not a secret. He couldn't even help himself from pitching racism (I'm sorry, "HBD") in his Lambdaconf announcement! He's not exploring the idea as an essayist. He's also a third-stage guild navigator grade message board nerd (it takes one to know one) with the full bag of tricks ready to deploy for when plausible deniability becomes convenient to him, as it has with you. It's much more fun to get people like you twisted up into knots about the fairness of it all than for him to face the social consequences of the odious beliefs he's preaching. But by all means, anonymous HN commenter, do continue telling me how scared I should be of people mining what I've written and using it against me. There's a lot of that writing to find, an embarrassing amount here in particular, and I've signed my name to all of it. I am unlikely to see any reply you write to this, given how old the thread is. Sorry.

by Goladus 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

If you think you're going to get me to reconsider my take on Yarvin by empathizing with the amount of flak he's taking, you have a higher bar to clear than you might think. I come from 1990s vulnerability research. Look into how intractable grievances got resolved there, and get back to me. To fully empathize, have all your utilities turned off, first. Yarvin is a racist. It's not a secret. He couldn't even help himself from pitching racism (I'm sorry, "HBD") in his Lambdaconf announcement! He's not exploring the idea as an essayist. He's also a third-stage guild navigator grade message board nerd (it takes one to know one) with the full bag of tricks ready to deploy for when plausible deniability becomes convenient to him, as it has with you. It's much more fun to get people like you twisted up into knots about the fairness of it all than for him to face the social consequences of the odious beliefs he's preaching. But by all means, anonymous HN commenter, do continue telling me how scared I should be of people mining what I've written and using it against me. There's a lot of that writing to find, an embarrassing amount here in particular, and I've signed my name to all of it. I am unlikely to see any reply you write to this, given how old the thread is. Sorry.