9 ms·

Hereticon

46 points by tempsy 7y ago

busterarm 7y ago
There will be pitchforks...
pjc50 7y ago
This is going to have people reading out the blood libel on stage, isn't it?
- youdontknowtho 7y ago
  Or a session on protocols...
  - HyperTalk2 7y ago
    Conducted by a panel of various learned elders...
- defen 7y ago
  It sounds like they're going for new, potentially-interesting heretical ideas, not stupid old ones.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    The old ideas always try to dress themselves up in new clothes, but I can't imagine they'll be able to escape the usual suspects.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
    And yet it always seems to be the stupid old ideas that crop up. Sometimes in a good disguise, sometimes in a thin disguise. Is Milo Yiannopoulos onto this yet?
  - theamk 7y ago
    Is there such a thing? Do you have an example? Because every time I heard about people getting banned / disinvited, it was usually because of old ideas.
    - defen 7y ago
      Ideas don't just appear out of the ether, so for any given idea, it's possible to point to influences and declare the idea therefore "not new". So, by "new", perhaps what I really mean is "newly considered acceptable in a small but influential or passionate community". The conference also doesn't seem to be exclusively devoted to "ideas that get you banned from things." To pick a seemingly non-political example from the list - are there any mainstream medical or nutritional experts talking about the benefits of starvation?
      - theamk 7y ago
        Well, they are pretty clear that they are looking at "ideas that get you banned": > heretical thinkers have been met with hostility, even death, and vindicated by posterity. > Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences. .. which actually brings the good question: why is "benefits of starvation" listed in the topics list? Pubmed lists over 120K articles for "fasting", and some of them seem to be pretty positive: [0] (disclaimer: I have not read the paper, only glanced at abstract) Why would someone recommending starvation may be banned from the conferences, if there are many people who are doing research in this area? I have a couple of ideas, and they are pretty grim. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29086496 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29086496
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    It would also be good to spend some time on the defects in those stupid old ideas, to counter the undeserved street cred from being continually banned.
Jotra7 7y ago
Fashiecon?
pwinnski 7y ago
Yes, profoundly good ideas have historically been met with resistance. So have profoundly bad ideas, and I suspect the ratio approaches a googol to one.
ardillamorris 7y ago
I clicked on this thinking there was a new font, maybe a cousin of Helvetica...
Chris2048 7y ago
> Topics including but not limited to: biological self-determination (modification, design), geo-engineering, transhumanism, the abolition of college, transgressive media, sex, the softer side of doomsday prepping, the nature of conspiracy, the benefits of starvation, constitutional monarchy (what?!), revisionist demography, immortality, drag culture, and building nations Nothing actually Heretical then.
- defen 7y ago
  "Heretical" is not an objective measure - it's used in reference to an existing belief system. I suspect most "normies" would be shocked or at least suspicious of those ideas.
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    I would define "heretical" as "risky to talk about" - as in people will target you; Things that people simply dislike talking about are more "unpopular" or "perverse".
- pjc50 7y ago
  Most of those I'd class as "left-wing" or "futurist/transhumanist" .. except for "constitutional monarchy". That suggests it's probably going to be Menicus Moldbug and a bunch of "dark enlightenment"/"alt-right" people there. But I can't see how they wouldn't clash horribly with whoever they've got in to discuss e.g. drag culture. Edit: ah, of course it's going to be someone who's against drag, isn't it?
  - Chris2048 7y ago
    I doubt it will be alt-righters. Instead, it will be left-to-middle pushing mainstream left-to-middle ideas as if they are "heretical".
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Well, for any of the topics listed I can recall an idea I've seen, mentioning which would get one ridiculed and in some cases probably Twitter-mobbed, so I don't see how they can't get actual heretical ideas there. (Geoengineering is probably the least heretical on the list, but for some reason there's apparently something close to an UN moratorium on the topic. Which is sad, because I'm not having much hopes we'll survive this century without some large-scale intervention to Earth's carbon and heat exchange cycles.) Also, I see zero relevance between being "left" and "right". Personally, I think these labels are doing huge damage, pretty much stopping all thinking.
chasing 7y ago
> Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences. Sounds like a nightmare. Anyway, maybe it's just the conferences I go to. But. I've never heard of someone getting kicked out for offering a controversial but considered opinion on something. "Y'know, we've found that PHP is really the best tool fo---" "OUT WITH YE, HERETIC. DO NOT RETURN." Usually people are banned for, y'know, doing something destructive or offensive that's out of the bounds of normal discourse. The idea being that banning them improves the experience for everyone else, which is (usually) a good thing.
- daxorid 7y ago
  I've never heard of someone getting kicked out for offering a controversial but considered opinion on something "Kicked out" is stronger than what usually happens. More like "disinvited". Yarvin/Strangeloop is the canonical example. More recently it was Hurd/BHUSA. It usually takes the form of speakers being dis-invited because they hold opinions, unrelated to the topic of their talk, that are unacceptable to a vocal minority of the attendees.
  - chasing 7y ago
    'Yarvin's opinions have been described as racist, with his writings interpreted as supportive of slavery, including the belief that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons... [He] has argued that some races are more suited to slavery than others. "It should be obvious that, although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff," Yarvin wrote.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin Yeesh.
    - ScottFree 7y ago
      So? It's not like he goes around shouting racial slurs at everybody who passes. His strangeloop talk had nothing to do with his political beliefs. People who have unpopular opinions are capable of behaving like adults in public.
      - 7y ago
Crinus 7y ago
Instead of a conference why not just an internet forum that focuses on user anonymity (not even nicknames) so that writers can both express exactly what they think and readers can focus on the messages instead of the posters? After all the idea is about the messages themselves being the "heretic" aspect, not the people.
- nicolashahn 7y ago
  I think you're looking for https://4chan.org/ https://4chan.org/
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Or voat, the refuge for communities banned from Reddit.
    - evv 7y ago
      Correct, the refuge for cesspools banned from Reddit.
    - Crinus 7y ago
      AFAIK Voat requires registration so it is more pseudonymous than anonymous. Also the up/down voting interfere with the messages themselves as people use them as quick "agree/disagree" without engaging in actual discussions (this is an issue anywhere such voting is implemented, not just Voat).
- pohl 7y ago
  ...and name it with a numeric prefix followed by the suffix "chan".
  - Crinus 7y ago
    I do not think chans are very discussion friendly (in terms of layout and functionality, not culture) though and AFAIK there is optional registration that can make people focus on the messenger instead of the message.
egypturnash 7y ago
> Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences. So 90% dudes who grope people without permission and 45% right-wing jerkoffs? Sounds like a great party! You're gonna bomb the convention center at the height of the festivities and make everyone's lives better, right?
mlvljr 7y ago
Financed via hereticoin!
ixtli 7y ago
Is anyone else worried about this trend where people seem to believe the more angry someone gets at the things they say the more correct they must be?
- ohduran 7y ago
  Oh, you're going to love this[1]: > "Ladran, luego cabalgamos" ("They bark, therefore we ride") or "Ladran, Sancho, señal que cabalgamos" ("They bark, Sancho, sign that we ride") is also atributed to the book but it actually comes from Goethe's 1808 poem Kläffer ("Barker"; obviously, without the interjection of "Sancho": :But their strident barking / is only a sign that we ride"). In its stock phrase version, it's used to say that an attack from one's enemies over a recently taken action is a sign that you are doing the right thing. There is an even more insulting version, "Ladran, señal que son perros" ("They bark, sign they are dogs"). [1]https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DonQuixote https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DonQuixote
  - ixtli 7y ago
    Amazing. Don Quixote is a very underrated book.
    - ohduran 7y ago
      True. Every TV trope you can think of is already there.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Which direction? Reversed stupidity is not intelligence so I don't see people being angry as evidence towards the target of that anger being correct, but witch hunts tend to be done by people who are either wrong or malicious or both, so I read that as evidence against the hunters.
  - ixtli 7y ago
    I'm not sure I understand. I've just observed a staggering amount of internet commenters (often, but not at all limited to, people who are made very upset by people they label "sjw"s) assert either directly or by implication that the fact that people get angry at them is evidence that they are right.
lukifer 7y ago
I support the idea in principle, but it's inevitably going to serve as a flame to bad-actor moths. Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread... I think Haidt's Heterodox Academy has a better approach, focused around academia, and all the accompanying values and norms which often aren't present in "heretical" ideospheres. (Perhaps there's a corollary to Gresham's Law regarding emotionally inflammatory ideas?)
- itsarnavb 7y ago
  There are controls. I believe they're selective about who they let in, and let present.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
And it's from Peter Thiel Which makes complete sense; of course it's old bigoted nonsense in new guises. https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-vc-firm-founders-fund-hereticon-conference-immortality-ufo-2019-10?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-vc-firm-founders... https://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-couldnt-vote https://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-coul...
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
How does one obtain a pass or ticket or invite or whatever to attend Hereticon? If its the same folks who will be curating topics and speakers at Hereticon as in: https://foundersfund.com/anatomy-of-next/ https://foundersfund.com/anatomy-of-next/ then, count me in! They had me at the "Sex in Space" podcast. Bonus points for having two parts. Part 1: [..]Sex, reproduction, and marriage have been linked for most of human history, but today that paradigm is evolving. This season of Anatomy of Next we’ve looked at every aspect of turning Mars into a habitable world. Now what about the changes in biology that are going to alter the way we populate our world? From artificial gametes derived from skin cells and genetically-modified embryos to artificial gestation – this is the future of sex.[..] Part 1 is more interesting than Part 2. Part 2 beckons Heinlein. Two thumbs up! I wish Quanta Mag and Nautilus Mag would have live events too.

Hereticon

46 points by tempsy 7y ago

busterarm 7y ago

There will be pitchforks...

pjc50 7y ago

This is going to have people reading out the blood libel on stage, isn't it?

youdontknowtho 7y ago
Or a session on protocols...
- HyperTalk2 7y ago
  Conducted by a panel of various learned elders...
defen 7y ago
It sounds like they're going for new, potentially-interesting heretical ideas, not stupid old ones.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  The old ideas always try to dress themselves up in new clothes, but I can't imagine they'll be able to escape the usual suspects.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
  And yet it always seems to be the stupid old ideas that crop up. Sometimes in a good disguise, sometimes in a thin disguise. Is Milo Yiannopoulos onto this yet?
- theamk 7y ago
  Is there such a thing? Do you have an example? Because every time I heard about people getting banned / disinvited, it was usually because of old ideas.
  - defen 7y ago
    Ideas don't just appear out of the ether, so for any given idea, it's possible to point to influences and declare the idea therefore "not new". So, by "new", perhaps what I really mean is "newly considered acceptable in a small but influential or passionate community". The conference also doesn't seem to be exclusively devoted to "ideas that get you banned from things." To pick a seemingly non-political example from the list - are there any mainstream medical or nutritional experts talking about the benefits of starvation?
    - theamk 7y ago
      Well, they are pretty clear that they are looking at "ideas that get you banned": > heretical thinkers have been met with hostility, even death, and vindicated by posterity. > Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences. .. which actually brings the good question: why is "benefits of starvation" listed in the topics list? Pubmed lists over 120K articles for "fasting", and some of them seem to be pretty positive: [0] (disclaimer: I have not read the paper, only glanced at abstract) Why would someone recommending starvation may be banned from the conferences, if there are many people who are doing research in this area? I have a couple of ideas, and they are pretty grim. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29086496 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29086496
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  It would also be good to spend some time on the defects in those stupid old ideas, to counter the undeserved street cred from being continually banned.

Jotra7 7y ago

Fashiecon?

pwinnski 7y ago

Yes, profoundly good ideas have historically been met with resistance. So have profoundly bad ideas, and I suspect the ratio approaches a googol to one.

ardillamorris 7y ago

I clicked on this thinking there was a new font, maybe a cousin of Helvetica...

Chris2048 7y ago

> Topics including but not limited to: biological self-determination (modification, design), geo-engineering, transhumanism, the abolition of college, transgressive media, sex, the softer side of doomsday prepping, the nature of conspiracy, the benefits of starvation, constitutional monarchy (what?!), revisionist demography, immortality, drag culture, and building nations Nothing actually Heretical then.

defen 7y ago
"Heretical" is not an objective measure - it's used in reference to an existing belief system. I suspect most "normies" would be shocked or at least suspicious of those ideas.
- Chris2048 7y ago
  I would define "heretical" as "risky to talk about" - as in people will target you; Things that people simply dislike talking about are more "unpopular" or "perverse".
pjc50 7y ago
Most of those I'd class as "left-wing" or "futurist/transhumanist" .. except for "constitutional monarchy". That suggests it's probably going to be Menicus Moldbug and a bunch of "dark enlightenment"/"alt-right" people there. But I can't see how they wouldn't clash horribly with whoever they've got in to discuss e.g. drag culture. Edit: ah, of course it's going to be someone who's against drag, isn't it?
- Chris2048 7y ago
  I doubt it will be alt-righters. Instead, it will be left-to-middle pushing mainstream left-to-middle ideas as if they are "heretical".
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Well, for any of the topics listed I can recall an idea I've seen, mentioning which would get one ridiculed and in some cases probably Twitter-mobbed, so I don't see how they can't get actual heretical ideas there. (Geoengineering is probably the least heretical on the list, but for some reason there's apparently something close to an UN moratorium on the topic. Which is sad, because I'm not having much hopes we'll survive this century without some large-scale intervention to Earth's carbon and heat exchange cycles.) Also, I see zero relevance between being "left" and "right". Personally, I think these labels are doing huge damage, pretty much stopping all thinking.

chasing 7y ago

> Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences. Sounds like a nightmare. Anyway, maybe it's just the conferences I go to. But. I've never heard of someone getting kicked out for offering a controversial but considered opinion on something. "Y'know, we've found that PHP is really the best tool fo---" "OUT WITH YE, HERETIC. DO NOT RETURN." Usually people are banned for, y'know, doing something destructive or offensive that's out of the bounds of normal discourse. The idea being that banning them improves the experience for everyone else, which is (usually) a good thing.

daxorid 7y ago
I've never heard of someone getting kicked out for offering a controversial but considered opinion on something "Kicked out" is stronger than what usually happens. More like "disinvited". Yarvin/Strangeloop is the canonical example. More recently it was Hurd/BHUSA. It usually takes the form of speakers being dis-invited because they hold opinions, unrelated to the topic of their talk, that are unacceptable to a vocal minority of the attendees.
- chasing 7y ago
  'Yarvin's opinions have been described as racist, with his writings interpreted as supportive of slavery, including the belief that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons... [He] has argued that some races are more suited to slavery than others. "It should be obvious that, although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff," Yarvin wrote.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin Yeesh.
  - ScottFree 7y ago
    So? It's not like he goes around shouting racial slurs at everybody who passes. His strangeloop talk had nothing to do with his political beliefs. People who have unpopular opinions are capable of behaving like adults in public.
    - 7y ago

Crinus 7y ago

Instead of a conference why not just an internet forum that focuses on user anonymity (not even nicknames) so that writers can both express exactly what they think and readers can focus on the messages instead of the posters? After all the idea is about the messages themselves being the "heretic" aspect, not the people.

nicolashahn 7y ago
I think you're looking for https://4chan.org/ https://4chan.org/
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Or voat, the refuge for communities banned from Reddit.
  - evv 7y ago
    Correct, the refuge for cesspools banned from Reddit.
  - Crinus 7y ago
    AFAIK Voat requires registration so it is more pseudonymous than anonymous. Also the up/down voting interfere with the messages themselves as people use them as quick "agree/disagree" without engaging in actual discussions (this is an issue anywhere such voting is implemented, not just Voat).
pohl 7y ago
...and name it with a numeric prefix followed by the suffix "chan".
- Crinus 7y ago
  I do not think chans are very discussion friendly (in terms of layout and functionality, not culture) though and AFAIK there is optional registration that can make people focus on the messenger instead of the message.

egypturnash 7y ago

> Imagine a conference for people banned from other conferences. So 90% dudes who grope people without permission and 45% right-wing jerkoffs? Sounds like a great party! You're gonna bomb the convention center at the height of the festivities and make everyone's lives better, right?

mlvljr 7y ago

Financed via hereticoin!

ixtli 7y ago

Is anyone else worried about this trend where people seem to believe the more angry someone gets at the things they say the more correct they must be?

ohduran 7y ago
Oh, you're going to love this[1]: > "Ladran, luego cabalgamos" ("They bark, therefore we ride") or "Ladran, Sancho, señal que cabalgamos" ("They bark, Sancho, sign that we ride") is also atributed to the book but it actually comes from Goethe's 1808 poem Kläffer ("Barker"; obviously, without the interjection of "Sancho": :But their strident barking / is only a sign that we ride"). In its stock phrase version, it's used to say that an attack from one's enemies over a recently taken action is a sign that you are doing the right thing. There is an even more insulting version, "Ladran, señal que son perros" ("They bark, sign they are dogs"). [1]https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DonQuixote https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/DonQuixote
- ixtli 7y ago
  Amazing. Don Quixote is a very underrated book.
  - ohduran 7y ago
    True. Every TV trope you can think of is already there.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Which direction? Reversed stupidity is not intelligence so I don't see people being angry as evidence towards the target of that anger being correct, but witch hunts tend to be done by people who are either wrong or malicious or both, so I read that as evidence against the hunters.
- ixtli 7y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. I've just observed a staggering amount of internet commenters (often, but not at all limited to, people who are made very upset by people they label "sjw"s) assert either directly or by implication that the fact that people get angry at them is evidence that they are right.

lukifer 7y ago

I support the idea in principle, but it's inevitably going to serve as a flame to bad-actor moths. Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread... I think Haidt's Heterodox Academy has a better approach, focused around academia, and all the accompanying values and norms which often aren't present in "heretical" ideospheres. (Perhaps there's a corollary to Gresham's Law regarding emotionally inflammatory ideas?)

itsarnavb 7y ago
There are controls. I believe they're selective about who they let in, and let present.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago

And it's from Peter Thiel Which makes complete sense; of course it's old bigoted nonsense in new guises. https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-vc-firm-founders-fund-hereticon-conference-immortality-ufo-2019-10?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-vc-firm-founders... https://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-couldnt-vote https://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-coul...

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

How does one obtain a pass or ticket or invite or whatever to attend Hereticon? If its the same folks who will be curating topics and speakers at Hereticon as in: https://foundersfund.com/anatomy-of-next/ https://foundersfund.com/anatomy-of-next/ then, count me in! They had me at the "Sex in Space" podcast. Bonus points for having two parts. Part 1: [..]Sex, reproduction, and marriage have been linked for most of human history, but today that paradigm is evolving. This season of Anatomy of Next we’ve looked at every aspect of turning Mars into a habitable world. Now what about the changes in biology that are going to alter the way we populate our world? From artificial gametes derived from skin cells and genetically-modified embryos to artificial gestation – this is the future of sex.[..] Part 1 is more interesting than Part 2. Part 2 beckons Heinlein. Two thumbs up! I wish Quanta Mag and Nautilus Mag would have live events too.