32 ms·

I was looking into this, as I have connections to the devs via our hackerspace. After research, I steered away, and hard. 1. Newbies trying to grok the platfo

by kefka 10y ago

I was looking into this, as I have connections to the devs via our hackerspace. After research, I steered away, and hard. 1. Newbies trying to grok the platform are mocked mercilessly. Publicly over reddit and twitter. 2. The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Now, ad hominems aren't "good"... but if I work on it, I get lumped into the similar group. Just no. 3. It uses "Hoon" to program, which is in reality a Lisp variant. They wanted something completely foreign so "only dedicated people would learn it". Seriously. Use Lisp. 4. It's another company interests driving the project. Projects like these have the potential of changing everything on the internet. Locking it behind a company "firewall" means if they die, the project does as well.

Church- 10y ago
Got any sources to back this up? I'd rather not believe, but if it's so...
- kefka 10y ago
  Sure do. Yarvin's AMA. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv... http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/sjws-urge-programming-conference-to-ban-speaker-over-political-views/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/sjws-urge-programmi... Its the sum of these views, writings, and his own AMA that steered me clear of his stuff. Mainly, if he treats fellow members of the community like this, I'm sure not going to have a good fit in ... wherever he works on.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - zimbu668 10y ago
    "As for "race," you can learn way more about someone from a minute of conversation than from a full genome sequence -- even if we knew how to decode the information in the sequence, which we don't. As for politics, there is essentially no one sane who thinks of themselves as evil or wanting to do evil. I have lots of progressive friends, and you'd be surprised how many ways we can find to see the world in the same way." What a monster!
    - pvg 10y ago
      It's the paragraph before that. "It's actually quite possible to recognize that human population genetics has a lot of impact on politics and history, and also recognize that human population genetics has nothing at all to do with your individual, personal and professional human relationships. Nor does politics." You can't really make that non-racist by adding "I have progressive friends and quite like puppies"
      - corndoge 10y ago
        Can you explain how that sentence is racist? I legitimately do not understand how it is.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - internaut 10y ago
    If you're an advocate for Social Justice then please apply your exorcism elsewhere. Surely we can discuss computing without beating the drum for morality every time. If I brought up the abortion issue in every biotech thread I'd get panned and rightly so.
adbge 10y ago
> The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Oh, good. This again. Curtis has stated publicly, "I am not an 'outspoken advocate for slavery,' a racist, a sexist or a fascist." See: https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d#.qyt5cdzh3 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  "I'm not racist, but..."
  - yarvin9 10y ago
    "I'm not a communist, but..."
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      I mean, it is possible that hundreds, possibly thousands, of people have misinterpreted your writing on colonialism, human biodiversity, etc. However, you seem to be smart and a better than average writer (if florid, at times). It seems like someone of your intelligence and writing ability would be able to make a point effectively, without so many misunderstandings. But, I hope that I have misunderstood your writing on those subjects.
- zardgiv 10y ago
  He also claims that some ethnic groups are genetically predisposed to being good slaves. Please think critically about this, instead of just saying "well, he says he's not racist!"
  - lhnz 10y ago
    He tried to explain that opinion further: "The ability to survive as an agricultural slave is a talent." I've no idea whether Spaniards and Englishmen really did find Indians unfit for slavery but I guess the argument that is being made is that more of them might have been kept alive if they were able to provide greater economic value to their conquerors. Sick, I know. Agree that it's not an opinion fit to be voiced in modern society, however, it doesn't seem to be the opinion that people are trying to cast it under. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/d1dlkjd https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...
ZenoArrow 10y ago
I can't comment on all of your points, because I don't have any evidence for or against them, but regarding your first point I found this Reddit AMA containing responses from at least a couple of the Urbit devs: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv... They don't seem that antagonistic here. Do you have any evidence that supports your point?
joeykrug 10y ago
1. Where? I don't see any of that on the sources you linked [AMA on Reddit] 2. Where [breitbart article linked doesn't really get into it beyond other people saying it]? 3. I do think Hoon is a bit too complex 4. If the company dies the project doesn't die. Curtis has been working on this for years from what I've read
state 10y ago
Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs. 1. Has this ever actually happened? I'd be quite disturbed by that. We're more than happy to have people learning about Urbit, although we're not particularly active on social media. 2. Curtis is certainly controversial. None of us share his views, but we do enjoy working together. I'd like to think we live in a world where people who don't agree can still collaborate professionally. 3. Learning Hoon is much easier than it looks. In my experience it's absolutely designed for usability — although it doesn't appear that way at first. We're actively working to better explain how Hoon works and teach people the language. It would be totally against our interests to do otherwise. I do think our new docs do a much better job: http://urbit.org/docs http://urbit.org/docs 4. There is a company behind Urbit, but it's not technically possible for us to control the project in the long term. Urbit is definitely not behind any kind of 'firewall' — it's designed to be owned by the community. I'd encourage you to check out the posts on our beliefs and principles [0], address space [1] and company [2]. 0 - http://urbit.org/posts/principles/ http://urbit.org/posts/principles/ 1 - http://urbit.org/posts/address-space/ http://urbit.org/posts/address-space/ 2 - http://urbit.org/posts/company/ http://urbit.org/posts/company/
- zardgiv 10y ago
  "Controversial" is the pinnacle of weasel words. How do you feel about his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves, and do you think that his views would make people from those ethnic groups feel welcome in your community?
  - mundo 10y ago
    It would demonstrate a lot about the HN community if we could get through an entire Urbit post without it devolving in to yet another debate on Curtis Yarvin's (incredibly lengthy, vague and contradictory, and entirely irrelevant) views on race.
    - kefka 10y ago
      Its the whole of collections of views he is public about. We talk a great deal of "Good Fit" and the like when working on projects with others, or working for someone. This is a case where he would work better with his own kind: racists, sexists, and bigots. Like attracts like.
chc4 10y ago
1. I'm really not sure how that happened to you. I'm interested in Urbit and play around with it (and actually own a galaxy), but am not an employee, and I've been more than happy answering questions from people via :talk who are starting out or wanting to learn more. I've never seen anyone mocked, publicly nor privately, and I really hope that it isn't still happening if it was. 2. The author had an alt-right blog under a pseudonym. Some people think that makes him literally a Nazi. I don't agree with, er, basically any of his views, but I do enjoy reading his posts simply because they are fun to read. They aren't racist, except in the non-PC way, and has been nothing but nice when interacting with his online. None of those views bleed into Urbit, so I really don't care what political views Yarvin holds on his own. 3. Saying "only dedicated people would learn it" is just being mean. Hoon is unique from Lisp, and isn't even intentionally hard to learn - it's just different from nearly all other languages, because it compiles down to Nock, and builds primitives that make sense in the context of running on that VM. It's strongly typed, unlike Lisp, along with being pure. It's analogous to Lisp that you write code that is turned directly into an AST, but quite different. The part that is "completely foreign" is the weird syntax, which looks much harder to learn than it is, which they've recently admitted is too hardcore for newbs: They added keyword style in the last Hoon revision, so that you can code in nearly normal looking syntax, if you want. `:if(a b c)` instead of `?:(a b c)`. Nock is kinda a Lisp variant, but there is a good reason behind having a small, perfect VM that never changes with some nice features, which are iterated in the docs and LambdaConf slides. 4. Urbit is open-source. https://github.com/urbit/urbit https://github.com/urbit/urbit. If you read the website, they pledged a lot of the galaxies and Urbit namespace to what will become a non-profit spinoff. Not only that, but you can fork the entire network if Tlon turns out to be Evil Company Inc., by changing the hard-coded galaxy keys. I'll admit that there is a big difference between "open source" and actually being developed in the open, and hopefully they will open up about where they want to go with Urbit more, but it's by no means behind a company firewall.
- zardgiv 10y ago
  Claiming that some ethnic groups are genetically good slaves is "not racist except in the non-PC way?"
Karunamon 10y ago
Regarding point 2... Now, ad hominems aren't "good"... but if I work on it, I get lumped into the similar group. Just no. "Just no", indeed. This is tremendously faulty thinking; damning someone and their entire endeavor, bypassing any and all rationality by your own admission, not because they've committed some great evil, not based on such a trivial concerns as the merits of the project, ...but because they have thoughts outside of that scope you don't particularly like. Ad hominems are not bad out of some mystical universal constant, they're bad because they necessarily short circuit rationality by appealing to emotion, while saying nothing of actual substance. They are antirational and as such, as I put on my Sith Lord helmet, always absolutely bad. Okay. He's a racist. And? Unless he's making a racial gating API[1], or otherwise taking evil actions, it doesn't even begin to have anything to do with the project. This problem that you mention, "getting lumped into a similar group", is entirely self perpetuating. The statement "But he's a racist!" has zero professional value. The moment (the royal) you stops making such statements, the moment they cease to have value. [1]: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/23andme-api-blocks-based-on-race-gender http://www.wired.co.uk/article/23andme-api-blocks-based-on-r...
- sawthat 10y ago
  You have a right to say or think whatever you like, but that doesn't mean people are going to like it. I find what Yavin has written to be so odious it taints the entire project (which isn't common, normally I just don't are). It sounds interesting, but I just don't want to even touch it
yarvin9 10y ago
#1 is a pretty serious charge. You posted this four hours ago and haven't posted any evidence to substantiate it. Maybe you confused Urbit with another project, and would like to retract? It's certainly an understandable mistake. #2 is not worth bringing up again, but you might want to look carefully at the dictionary meaning of the word "avowed." If a person denies being a communist, it is still possible for him to be a communist, but perhaps it doth protest too much if you go all the way to "avowed communist." #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp, and (b) Hoon is a typed language. "Only dedicated people would learn it" sounds like an interesting marketing tactic which must involve some kind of strong reverse psychology. Frankly, I have enough trouble with basic forward psychology. #4 would be perfectly true, except that the company owns less than half of the Urbit namespace. The rest has been distributed across about 50 more or less random individuals. (I think I know the hackerspace you mean -- Bloomington? A bunch of them drove to LambdaConf and interned. Incredibly smart, nice and wonderful young people, needless to say. I'd hang out with them all the time if I lived there.)
- lisper 10y ago
  > #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp It is not hard to re-invent/re-discover Lisp. In fact, it happens all the time. So just because you don't know Lisp doesn't mean you haven't re-invented it, though it does likely mean that you have re-invented it badly. Re-inventions of Lisp are sadly common. Good re-inventions of Lisp are rare. And good re-inventions of Lisp by people who don't know Lisp are unheard of. I have never understood, and still don't understand, why you choose to wear your ignorance with such pride. BTW: > Hoon is a typed language So is Lisp.
  - yarvin9 10y ago
    Learning Lisp is easy. Learning Haskell is hard. But unlearning either is next to impossible. So anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem. Now, one might feel differently if Lisp, or Haskell, or any other functional language, was such a conspicuous market success. Under the circumstances, however, I don't think one can be faulted for the suspicion that perhaps functional programming is too important to be left to the functional programmers. I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. I realize that people with IQs of 175 have an uncanny knack for taking indefensible positions and then defending them, but I'll just have to take this one on trust. While we're measuring our respective equipment, however, we can agree that Lisp has macros. Hoon does not have macros, because it's a pure typed language and a pure typed language doesn't need macros. If Hoon did have macros, however, they would be inherently hygienic, without anything like a gensym. If this is a good time for you to favor us with a lecture on the virtues of Lisp, perhaps you could start with gensyms and their place in "Maxwell's equations of software."

by kefka 10y ago

Church- 10y ago

Got any sources to back this up? I'd rather not believe, but if it's so...

kefka 10y ago
Sure do. Yarvin's AMA. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv... http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/sjws-urge-programming-conference-to-ban-speaker-over-political-views/ http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/sjws-urge-programmi... Its the sum of these views, writings, and his own AMA that steered me clear of his stuff. Mainly, if he treats fellow members of the community like this, I'm sure not going to have a good fit in ... wherever he works on.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- zimbu668 10y ago
  "As for "race," you can learn way more about someone from a minute of conversation than from a full genome sequence -- even if we knew how to decode the information in the sequence, which we don't. As for politics, there is essentially no one sane who thinks of themselves as evil or wanting to do evil. I have lots of progressive friends, and you'd be surprised how many ways we can find to see the world in the same way." What a monster!
  - pvg 10y ago
    It's the paragraph before that. "It's actually quite possible to recognize that human population genetics has a lot of impact on politics and history, and also recognize that human population genetics has nothing at all to do with your individual, personal and professional human relationships. Nor does politics." You can't really make that non-racist by adding "I have progressive friends and quite like puppies"
    - corndoge 10y ago
      Can you explain how that sentence is racist? I legitimately do not understand how it is.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- internaut 10y ago
  If you're an advocate for Social Justice then please apply your exorcism elsewhere. Surely we can discuss computing without beating the drum for morality every time. If I brought up the abortion issue in every biotech thread I'd get panned and rightly so.

adbge 10y ago

> The "leader" is an avowed racist and nasty person in general. Oh, good. This again. Curtis has stated publicly, "I am not an 'outspoken advocate for slavery,' a racist, a sexist or a fascist." See: https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d#.qyt5cdzh3 https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...

SwellJoe 10y ago
"I'm not racist, but..."
- yarvin9 10y ago
  "I'm not a communist, but..."
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    I mean, it is possible that hundreds, possibly thousands, of people have misinterpreted your writing on colonialism, human biodiversity, etc. However, you seem to be smart and a better than average writer (if florid, at times). It seems like someone of your intelligence and writing ability would be able to make a point effectively, without so many misunderstandings. But, I hope that I have misunderstood your writing on those subjects.
zardgiv 10y ago
He also claims that some ethnic groups are genetically predisposed to being good slaves. Please think critically about this, instead of just saying "well, he says he's not racist!"
- lhnz 10y ago
  He tried to explain that opinion further: "The ability to survive as an agricultural slave is a talent." I've no idea whether Spaniards and Englishmen really did find Indians unfit for slavery but I guess the argument that is being made is that more of them might have been kept alive if they were able to provide greater economic value to their conquerors. Sick, I know. Agree that it's not an opinion fit to be voiced in modern society, however, it doesn't seem to be the opinion that people are trying to cast it under. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/d1dlkjd https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...

ZenoArrow 10y ago

I can't comment on all of your points, because I don't have any evidence for or against them, but regarding your first point I found this Reddit AMA containing responses from at least a couple of the Urbit devs: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarvin_developer_of_urbit_ama/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv... They don't seem that antagonistic here. Do you have any evidence that supports your point?

joeykrug 10y ago

1. Where? I don't see any of that on the sources you linked [AMA on Reddit] 2. Where [breitbart article linked doesn't really get into it beyond other people saying it]? 3. I do think Hoon is a bit too complex 4. If the company dies the project doesn't die. Curtis has been working on this for years from what I've read

state 10y ago

Hello! I'm one of the Urbit devs. 1. Has this ever actually happened? I'd be quite disturbed by that. We're more than happy to have people learning about Urbit, although we're not particularly active on social media. 2. Curtis is certainly controversial. None of us share his views, but we do enjoy working together. I'd like to think we live in a world where people who don't agree can still collaborate professionally. 3. Learning Hoon is much easier than it looks. In my experience it's absolutely designed for usability — although it doesn't appear that way at first. We're actively working to better explain how Hoon works and teach people the language. It would be totally against our interests to do otherwise. I do think our new docs do a much better job: http://urbit.org/docs http://urbit.org/docs 4. There is a company behind Urbit, but it's not technically possible for us to control the project in the long term. Urbit is definitely not behind any kind of 'firewall' — it's designed to be owned by the community. I'd encourage you to check out the posts on our beliefs and principles [0], address space [1] and company [2]. 0 - http://urbit.org/posts/principles/ http://urbit.org/posts/principles/ 1 - http://urbit.org/posts/address-space/ http://urbit.org/posts/address-space/ 2 - http://urbit.org/posts/company/ http://urbit.org/posts/company/

zardgiv 10y ago
"Controversial" is the pinnacle of weasel words. How do you feel about his belief that some ethnic groups are genetically better slaves, and do you think that his views would make people from those ethnic groups feel welcome in your community?
- mundo 10y ago
  It would demonstrate a lot about the HN community if we could get through an entire Urbit post without it devolving in to yet another debate on Curtis Yarvin's (incredibly lengthy, vague and contradictory, and entirely irrelevant) views on race.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Its the whole of collections of views he is public about. We talk a great deal of "Good Fit" and the like when working on projects with others, or working for someone. This is a case where he would work better with his own kind: racists, sexists, and bigots. Like attracts like.

chc4 10y ago

1. I'm really not sure how that happened to you. I'm interested in Urbit and play around with it (and actually own a galaxy), but am not an employee, and I've been more than happy answering questions from people via :talk who are starting out or wanting to learn more. I've never seen anyone mocked, publicly nor privately, and I really hope that it isn't still happening if it was. 2. The author had an alt-right blog under a pseudonym. Some people think that makes him literally a Nazi. I don't agree with, er, basically any of his views, but I do enjoy reading his posts simply because they are fun to read. They aren't racist, except in the non-PC way, and has been nothing but nice when interacting with his online. None of those views bleed into Urbit, so I really don't care what political views Yarvin holds on his own. 3. Saying "only dedicated people would learn it" is just being mean. Hoon is unique from Lisp, and isn't even intentionally hard to learn - it's just different from nearly all other languages, because it compiles down to Nock, and builds primitives that make sense in the context of running on that VM. It's strongly typed, unlike Lisp, along with being pure. It's analogous to Lisp that you write code that is turned directly into an AST, but quite different. The part that is "completely foreign" is the weird syntax, which looks much harder to learn than it is, which they've recently admitted is too hardcore for newbs: They added keyword style in the last Hoon revision, so that you can code in nearly normal looking syntax, if you want. `:if(a b c)` instead of `?:(a b c)`. Nock is kinda a Lisp variant, but there is a good reason behind having a small, perfect VM that never changes with some nice features, which are iterated in the docs and LambdaConf slides. 4. Urbit is open-source. https://github.com/urbit/urbit https://github.com/urbit/urbit. If you read the website, they pledged a lot of the galaxies and Urbit namespace to what will become a non-profit spinoff. Not only that, but you can fork the entire network if Tlon turns out to be Evil Company Inc., by changing the hard-coded galaxy keys. I'll admit that there is a big difference between "open source" and actually being developed in the open, and hopefully they will open up about where they want to go with Urbit more, but it's by no means behind a company firewall.

zardgiv 10y ago
Claiming that some ethnic groups are genetically good slaves is "not racist except in the non-PC way?"

Karunamon 10y ago

Regarding point 2... Now, ad hominems aren't "good"... but if I work on it, I get lumped into the similar group. Just no. "Just no", indeed. This is tremendously faulty thinking; damning someone and their entire endeavor, bypassing any and all rationality by your own admission, not because they've committed some great evil, not based on such a trivial concerns as the merits of the project, ...but because they have thoughts outside of that scope you don't particularly like. Ad hominems are not bad out of some mystical universal constant, they're bad because they necessarily short circuit rationality by appealing to emotion, while saying nothing of actual substance. They are antirational and as such, as I put on my Sith Lord helmet, always absolutely bad. Okay. He's a racist. And? Unless he's making a racial gating API[1], or otherwise taking evil actions, it doesn't even begin to have anything to do with the project. This problem that you mention, "getting lumped into a similar group", is entirely self perpetuating. The statement "But he's a racist!" has zero professional value. The moment (the royal) you stops making such statements, the moment they cease to have value. [1]: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/23andme-api-blocks-based-on-race-gender http://www.wired.co.uk/article/23andme-api-blocks-based-on-r...

sawthat 10y ago
You have a right to say or think whatever you like, but that doesn't mean people are going to like it. I find what Yavin has written to be so odious it taints the entire project (which isn't common, normally I just don't are). It sounds interesting, but I just don't want to even touch it

yarvin9 10y ago

#1 is a pretty serious charge. You posted this four hours ago and haven't posted any evidence to substantiate it. Maybe you confused Urbit with another project, and would like to retract? It's certainly an understandable mistake. #2 is not worth bringing up again, but you might want to look carefully at the dictionary meaning of the word "avowed." If a person denies being a communist, it is still possible for him to be a communist, but perhaps it doth protest too much if you go all the way to "avowed communist." #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp, and (b) Hoon is a typed language. "Only dedicated people would learn it" sounds like an interesting marketing tactic which must involve some kind of strong reverse psychology. Frankly, I have enough trouble with basic forward psychology. #4 would be perfectly true, except that the company owns less than half of the Urbit namespace. The rest has been distributed across about 50 more or less random individuals. (I think I know the hackerspace you mean -- Bloomington? A bunch of them drove to LambdaConf and interned. Incredibly smart, nice and wonderful young people, needless to say. I'd hang out with them all the time if I lived there.)

lisper 10y ago
> #3 seems improbable, as (a) I don't know Lisp It is not hard to re-invent/re-discover Lisp. In fact, it happens all the time. So just because you don't know Lisp doesn't mean you haven't re-invented it, though it does likely mean that you have re-invented it badly. Re-inventions of Lisp are sadly common. Good re-inventions of Lisp are rare. And good re-inventions of Lisp by people who don't know Lisp are unheard of. I have never understood, and still don't understand, why you choose to wear your ignorance with such pride. BTW: > Hoon is a typed language So is Lisp.
- yarvin9 10y ago
  Learning Lisp is easy. Learning Haskell is hard. But unlearning either is next to impossible. So anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem. Now, one might feel differently if Lisp, or Haskell, or any other functional language, was such a conspicuous market success. Under the circumstances, however, I don't think one can be faulted for the suspicion that perhaps functional programming is too important to be left to the functional programmers. I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. I realize that people with IQs of 175 have an uncanny knack for taking indefensible positions and then defending them, but I'll just have to take this one on trust. While we're measuring our respective equipment, however, we can agree that Lisp has macros. Hoon does not have macros, because it's a pure typed language and a pure typed language doesn't need macros. If Hoon did have macros, however, they would be inherently hygienic, without anything like a gensym. If this is a good time for you to favor us with a lecture on the virtues of Lisp, perhaps you could start with gensyms and their place in "Maxwell's equations of software."