10 ms·

Unfortunately this all started with the decision that it was okay to ostracize some people for their unrelated political views. It's a little late to say "wait,

by mzw_mzw 10y ago

Unfortunately this all started with the decision that it was okay to ostracize some people for their unrelated political views. It's a little late to say "wait, wait, I just meant those guys!" now that you've given this unstoppable superweapon to every grasping, sociopathic political activist in the industry.

tptacek 10y ago
No, it's not. This Manichaean view of intolerance to overt racism, sexism, classism, whatever --- it's bogus, and deserves to be challenged. When spelled out: "opposition at private events to (say) racism requires that event to make common cause with the evil, gathering forces of political repression", it doesn't even sound credible. But that view in fact appeals superficially to message board nerds because it triggers the circuit in our brain that wants social problems to be solvable with simple boolean logic, and that recoils from subjective, contextual, or situational judgement calls. It's easy to invoke it and conjure an argument that will garner upvotes and spproval. The real world is usually not describable in an if statement that fits neatly into 80 columns. Some judgements even require iteration! That's what "judgement" is about. Schools. Hospitals. Academic conferences. Political office. Probably even jobs. These are places where the bar for exclusion is much harder to clear. If Curtis Yarvin gets accepted to a postdoc program at Berkeley and leftist programmers picket, I'll be right there with you. But events like Nodevember, Strange Loop, and Lambdaconf are not academic conferences, they're not a serious part of the citation record for their field, they're put on by private citizens with their own objectives, they're fundamentally about entertainment, and they can make whatever calls they want. From what I can tell, it looks like Strange Loop handled their problem pretty OK, that LambdaConf probably made a mistake, and that this Node.js conference in Tennessee is also probably making a mistake. But, again, we don't know all the details here. We knew a lot more in the previous two conference cases.
- mzw_mzw 10y ago
  "But events like Nodevember, Strange Loop, and Lambdaconf are not academic conferences, they're not a serious part of the citation record for their field, they're put on by private citizens with their own objectives, they're fundamentally about entertainment, and they can make whatever calls they want." Claiming that a technical conference is "fundamentally about entertainment" is about as convincing a dodge as those "for entertainment purposes only" notices on pirate video sites. Technical conferences are an important way people in a field network, educate themselves, and advance their careers. You're stating that it's okay to blacklist people from advancing their careers because they have a political viewpoint that you don't like. Were you okay with the Hollywood blacklist in the '50s? Because that's what this is. (And to forestall it: of course they have the legal right to do this, just as the blacklisters in Hollywood did. That doesn't make it morally right.)
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I am very much a message board nerd; it has never been my intent in invoking that term to set myself apart from other people. You can verify that for yourself with the search bar at the bottom of the page: I'm usually pretty careful to include the words "like us". I wasn't this time, but now you know, and we don't need to litigate that point anymore. Your latter point is pure relativism. What can't you say that about? People make important business connections by going to bars together, by asking their friends for favors, by selecting cofounders, by playing in the same video game leagues. The argument about the Hollywood blacklist would be biting if I hadn't foreclosed on it in the comment you responded to without reading very carefully. Perhaps you thought that point was crafty or subtle, but it is in fact banal, lumbering, noisome; you can see it coming on the horizon from the first words typed on a thread like this. You might as well invoke Nazism. My argument is simple, and you'll need to address it head on. The people suggesting that excluding any speaker ever is some kind of Pandora's Box that opens every event up to trolling and zealotry are making two untenable arguments: * That there is a set of principles about exclusion OR inclusion that is somehow immune to gaming and manipulation by bad faith participants. No, any set of principles you conjure will be gamed if you don't use judgement. * That there even exists some simple set of rules we can all follow, something that fits in 80 columns to match our source code style guide, that will resolve all these problems. No, these problems are complicated. You want this problem to be so simple that you can beat people over the head with the obvious right answer. It's not simple. It's complicated, multi-segmented, floppy, unwieldy. You swing it through the air at people's heads, but it curls up on itself as you do, and the only thing that hits your opponents argument is a bit more air.
    - mzw_mzw 10y ago
      If someone is marching around in jackboots and a swastika armband talking about how we need to invade Poland, then it is indeed appropriate to invoke Nazism. And if someone is advocating that people should be blackballed in an industry purely because of their unpopular but also completely unrelated political views, then it is indeed appropriate to invoke the Hollywood blacklist. Anyway, we're getting way off my original point, which was that this weapon of yours doesn't care who it's pointed at. Once you've unleashed the blacklisting, it'll get used against people you don't want it to. As has happened here.
- DrJokepu 10y ago
  Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't think it's possible to consistently apply good judgement about subjective and polarising issues in highly visible contexts without excessive costs. Judgement is often possible in business because good judgement and self interest are frequently closely aligned. It is also often possible in government, because there are laws and rules in place that try to ensure an impartial and fair process. On the other hand, projects with high visibility such as conferences are very much exposed to mob justice fuelled by social media and I don't know if it's possible at all to apply consistently fair and good judgement in a context like that. Really the only example I can think of is dang's and sctb's excellent work here on HN and quite frankly I don't know if that model would work anywhere else.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Your argument here is that it's harder to moderate a small, in-real-life, private, subject-focussed event than it is to moderate one of the Internet's most popular open- to- all- comers technical message boards?
    - DrJokepu 10y ago
      No, that wasn't my argument. Obviously moderating HN requires a lot more effort. That being said, an argument could be made that the HN's status and the people it has access to makes it easier to successfully implement a decent system of moderation. My actual argument was that it's rather difficult to exercise consistently good judgement when surrounded by an angry mob, if that makes sense.
- nkurz 10y ago
  If Curtis Yarvin gets accepted to a postdoc program at Berkeley and leftist programmers picket, I'll be right there with you. But events like Nodevember, Strange Loop, and Lambdaconf are not academic conferences, they're not a serious part of the citation record for their field, they're put on by private citizens with their own objectives, they're fundamentally about entertainment, and they can make whatever calls they want. I realize it wasn't directed toward me, but I genuinely appreciate hearing that distinction. Unless things have changed, though, it seems unlikely that Curtis would go back to Berkeley. He describes his disappointment with his academic time there in an eloquent if verbose essay: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-navrozov-moments.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-navr.... In particular, you might enjoy the contrast between his preferred "adversarial approach to CS papers" and what his description of the politicized situation at Berkeley. --- Did you happen to see this comment on your "winding down Starfighter" thread? I'd never seen that twitter account before. Not my cup of tea. Things that seemed cool until I looked (even a little) closer at the people behind them: urbit, stockfighter, and ESR's homepage. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12416612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12416612 I'm not sure how to interpret it, but I found it ironic that you (or at least Starfigher) is being lumped in with Curtis. If the trend continues, perhaps in a few years you'll both be on the same side of that picket line!

by mzw_mzw 10y ago

tptacek 10y ago

No, it's not. This Manichaean view of intolerance to overt racism, sexism, classism, whatever --- it's bogus, and deserves to be challenged. When spelled out: "opposition at private events to (say) racism requires that event to make common cause with the evil, gathering forces of political repression", it doesn't even sound credible. But that view in fact appeals superficially to message board nerds because it triggers the circuit in our brain that wants social problems to be solvable with simple boolean logic, and that recoils from subjective, contextual, or situational judgement calls. It's easy to invoke it and conjure an argument that will garner upvotes and spproval. The real world is usually not describable in an if statement that fits neatly into 80 columns. Some judgements even require iteration! That's what "judgement" is about. Schools. Hospitals. Academic conferences. Political office. Probably even jobs. These are places where the bar for exclusion is much harder to clear. If Curtis Yarvin gets accepted to a postdoc program at Berkeley and leftist programmers picket, I'll be right there with you. But events like Nodevember, Strange Loop, and Lambdaconf are not academic conferences, they're not a serious part of the citation record for their field, they're put on by private citizens with their own objectives, they're fundamentally about entertainment, and they can make whatever calls they want. From what I can tell, it looks like Strange Loop handled their problem pretty OK, that LambdaConf probably made a mistake, and that this Node.js conference in Tennessee is also probably making a mistake. But, again, we don't know all the details here. We knew a lot more in the previous two conference cases.

mzw_mzw 10y ago
"But events like Nodevember, Strange Loop, and Lambdaconf are not academic conferences, they're not a serious part of the citation record for their field, they're put on by private citizens with their own objectives, they're fundamentally about entertainment, and they can make whatever calls they want." Claiming that a technical conference is "fundamentally about entertainment" is about as convincing a dodge as those "for entertainment purposes only" notices on pirate video sites. Technical conferences are an important way people in a field network, educate themselves, and advance their careers. You're stating that it's okay to blacklist people from advancing their careers because they have a political viewpoint that you don't like. Were you okay with the Hollywood blacklist in the '50s? Because that's what this is. (And to forestall it: of course they have the legal right to do this, just as the blacklisters in Hollywood did. That doesn't make it morally right.)
- tptacek 10y ago
  I am very much a message board nerd; it has never been my intent in invoking that term to set myself apart from other people. You can verify that for yourself with the search bar at the bottom of the page: I'm usually pretty careful to include the words "like us". I wasn't this time, but now you know, and we don't need to litigate that point anymore. Your latter point is pure relativism. What can't you say that about? People make important business connections by going to bars together, by asking their friends for favors, by selecting cofounders, by playing in the same video game leagues. The argument about the Hollywood blacklist would be biting if I hadn't foreclosed on it in the comment you responded to without reading very carefully. Perhaps you thought that point was crafty or subtle, but it is in fact banal, lumbering, noisome; you can see it coming on the horizon from the first words typed on a thread like this. You might as well invoke Nazism. My argument is simple, and you'll need to address it head on. The people suggesting that excluding any speaker ever is some kind of Pandora's Box that opens every event up to trolling and zealotry are making two untenable arguments: * That there is a set of principles about exclusion OR inclusion that is somehow immune to gaming and manipulation by bad faith participants. No, any set of principles you conjure will be gamed if you don't use judgement. * That there even exists some simple set of rules we can all follow, something that fits in 80 columns to match our source code style guide, that will resolve all these problems. No, these problems are complicated. You want this problem to be so simple that you can beat people over the head with the obvious right answer. It's not simple. It's complicated, multi-segmented, floppy, unwieldy. You swing it through the air at people's heads, but it curls up on itself as you do, and the only thing that hits your opponents argument is a bit more air.
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    If someone is marching around in jackboots and a swastika armband talking about how we need to invade Poland, then it is indeed appropriate to invoke Nazism. And if someone is advocating that people should be blackballed in an industry purely because of their unpopular but also completely unrelated political views, then it is indeed appropriate to invoke the Hollywood blacklist. Anyway, we're getting way off my original point, which was that this weapon of yours doesn't care who it's pointed at. Once you've unleashed the blacklisting, it'll get used against people you don't want it to. As has happened here.
DrJokepu 10y ago
Yeah, I don't know about that. I don't think it's possible to consistently apply good judgement about subjective and polarising issues in highly visible contexts without excessive costs. Judgement is often possible in business because good judgement and self interest are frequently closely aligned. It is also often possible in government, because there are laws and rules in place that try to ensure an impartial and fair process. On the other hand, projects with high visibility such as conferences are very much exposed to mob justice fuelled by social media and I don't know if it's possible at all to apply consistently fair and good judgement in a context like that. Really the only example I can think of is dang's and sctb's excellent work here on HN and quite frankly I don't know if that model would work anywhere else.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Your argument here is that it's harder to moderate a small, in-real-life, private, subject-focussed event than it is to moderate one of the Internet's most popular open- to- all- comers technical message boards?
  - DrJokepu 10y ago
    No, that wasn't my argument. Obviously moderating HN requires a lot more effort. That being said, an argument could be made that the HN's status and the people it has access to makes it easier to successfully implement a decent system of moderation. My actual argument was that it's rather difficult to exercise consistently good judgement when surrounded by an angry mob, if that makes sense.
nkurz 10y ago
If Curtis Yarvin gets accepted to a postdoc program at Berkeley and leftist programmers picket, I'll be right there with you. But events like Nodevember, Strange Loop, and Lambdaconf are not academic conferences, they're not a serious part of the citation record for their field, they're put on by private citizens with their own objectives, they're fundamentally about entertainment, and they can make whatever calls they want. I realize it wasn't directed toward me, but I genuinely appreciate hearing that distinction. Unless things have changed, though, it seems unlikely that Curtis would go back to Berkeley. He describes his disappointment with his academic time there in an eloquent if verbose essay: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-navrozov-moments.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-navr.... In particular, you might enjoy the contrast between his preferred "adversarial approach to CS papers" and what his description of the politicized situation at Berkeley. --- Did you happen to see this comment on your "winding down Starfighter" thread? I'd never seen that twitter account before. Not my cup of tea. Things that seemed cool until I looked (even a little) closer at the people behind them: urbit, stockfighter, and ESR's homepage. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12416612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12416612 I'm not sure how to interpret it, but I found it ironic that you (or at least Starfigher) is being lumped in with Curtis. If the trend continues, perhaps in a few years you'll both be on the same side of that picket line!