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The original Urbit system also included a scheme of political "banners" so that you could avoid speech which was unpalatable to you, in order to allow conscious

by yebyen 7y ago

The original Urbit system also included a scheme of political "banners" so that you could avoid speech which was unpalatable to you, in order to allow conscious self-organizing into groups of like-mindedness, and as I recall also wrote about the idea that political speech being shared across these boundaries was necessarily violent (and as such clearly undesirable, as all violence.) edit: this system was removed, I should have mentioned, although I'm not sure it substantially changes the design of the overall system at all. Some of Yarvin's writings are at best eccentric, but as he has not been a part of the project for some time already, I think it's fair for today's contributors to the project to ask you to set aside his intent, or your impressions of it. I don't want to make any enemies here, but I'm not sure how one can objectively establish that a design is feudal, or what that would mean. I'm going to take a stab at it, as I don't want to simply dismiss your argument out of hand. Oxford defines feudalism as: > The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labour, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection. If that means: a system where we carve all the land up into /8 and dole them out, then divide those tracts into /16, and further into /24 and /32, and so on, then sure, Urbit is feudal. I think that's as far as the point can stretch, though. Planets are not "beholden" to their stars, as far as I understand it, they are mostly independent entities after the initial bootstrapping process is over. There's no planet tax or military organization, protection, etc. Did you have a somehow different interpretation that you were trying for?

iudqnolq 7y ago
There's also the voting power for sale. It's not completely clear to me what the power of the senate is, but it seems more than deciding the size of the namespace from the voting info on Github
- yebyen 7y ago
  Sale is one way the power gets more concentrated or distributed, perhaps unfortunately universal truth in today's world, not only for Urbit galaxies. I am a galaxy holder and, as the record may show if the record remains intact, all I did was show up and keep coming back, at a time when lots of people were not coming back due to technical issues or whatever other issues. I'm also not sure what actual power I have as one of these senators, for whatever that's worth (it's not clear to you, it's not clear to us!) although I have heard these galaxies keep going up in value, I will note second that at least as of today, I have not benefited in any way financially from this notion of value that I received.
  - iudqnolq 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing your perspective. I think we can all agree it would be great if the internet became more private, secure, accessible, and decentralized. I hope Urbit provides that because I hope anything provides that. Whether it lives up to its promises will depend on so many factors I'm not interested in getting involved, but I wish you the best of luck. I'll be cheering if you succeed, for what that's worth.
    - yebyen 7y ago
      Likewise! And thanks to you too!
blotter_paper 7y ago
> Some of Yarvin's writings are at best eccentric, but as he has not been a part of the project for some time already, I think it's fair for today's contributors to the project to ask you to set aside his intent, or your impressions of it. "Some time" is pretty vague. He left the project earlier this year, and the project is still named after his fascist blog. I asked one of the Tlon employees in this comment section why the project is still named after Unqualified Reservations (UR), and so far haven't gotten a response. I think it's fair to expect a project with this history to address it head on and actually denounce the views of Yarvin/Moldbug if they are trying to be viewed as non-fascist. A project can be apolitical, but a project with a political past doesn't get to act like it's apolitical just because the founder steps away on good terms and nobody else is blogging a racist and anti-democratic ideology. If the current contributors don't agree with Yarvin/Moldbug's intent, it seems fair to expect them to actually make that clear.
- yebyen 7y ago
  When I was made aware of Urbit, there was someone prominent related person, a friend project of Nock or something, who had developed another competitive functional OS of his own, some kind or other, if memory serves, who had also parted ways with the community over some controversy which nobody wanted to talk about, and at the same time nobody else on the outside of it evidently wanted to ask about. I don't want to mis-attribute anything, because I am light on details, I won't try to recall his name, or what it was over, being from the outside myself, but I distinctly remember some part of the controversy being about someone or other "refusing to put up [some kind or other] sign in their window," (I inferred that it was metaphorically speaking.) It was a metaphor for something I didn't know, but I distinctly remember coming away with the feeling that I also didn't want to end up displaying that sign in my own window. To restate what I'm dancing around, in no uncertain terms, it seems to me that you're asking for a sign in the window. "No Moldbugs Allowed."
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    I see how I could come off that way. FWIW I don't personally wish to exclude people from contributing to projects based on their views and conduct outside of the project; I would accept pull requests from Jeffrey Dahmer. But if Jeffrey Dahmer started a decentralised social network with dog whistles towards cannibalism, I would wonder whether other contributors to the project supported cannibalism. If the project removed some but not all of the cannibal dog whistles, Dahmer stepped away on good terms, and the current project maintainers didn't make any statements for or against cannibalism, I would still wonder. It's not that Yarvin/Moldbug contributed to Urbit, it's that he purposefully associated it with his ideology from the beginning. That seems different to me, and without explicit clarification to the contrary I think it's fair to associate this project with that ideology.

by yebyen 7y ago

iudqnolq 7y ago

There's also the voting power for sale. It's not completely clear to me what the power of the senate is, but it seems more than deciding the size of the namespace from the voting info on Github

yebyen 7y ago
Sale is one way the power gets more concentrated or distributed, perhaps unfortunately universal truth in today's world, not only for Urbit galaxies. I am a galaxy holder and, as the record may show if the record remains intact, all I did was show up and keep coming back, at a time when lots of people were not coming back due to technical issues or whatever other issues. I'm also not sure what actual power I have as one of these senators, for whatever that's worth (it's not clear to you, it's not clear to us!) although I have heard these galaxies keep going up in value, I will note second that at least as of today, I have not benefited in any way financially from this notion of value that I received.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing your perspective. I think we can all agree it would be great if the internet became more private, secure, accessible, and decentralized. I hope Urbit provides that because I hope anything provides that. Whether it lives up to its promises will depend on so many factors I'm not interested in getting involved, but I wish you the best of luck. I'll be cheering if you succeed, for what that's worth.
  - yebyen 7y ago
    Likewise! And thanks to you too!

blotter_paper 7y ago

> Some of Yarvin's writings are at best eccentric, but as he has not been a part of the project for some time already, I think it's fair for today's contributors to the project to ask you to set aside his intent, or your impressions of it. "Some time" is pretty vague. He left the project earlier this year, and the project is still named after his fascist blog. I asked one of the Tlon employees in this comment section why the project is still named after Unqualified Reservations (UR), and so far haven't gotten a response. I think it's fair to expect a project with this history to address it head on and actually denounce the views of Yarvin/Moldbug if they are trying to be viewed as non-fascist. A project can be apolitical, but a project with a political past doesn't get to act like it's apolitical just because the founder steps away on good terms and nobody else is blogging a racist and anti-democratic ideology. If the current contributors don't agree with Yarvin/Moldbug's intent, it seems fair to expect them to actually make that clear.

yebyen 7y ago
When I was made aware of Urbit, there was someone prominent related person, a friend project of Nock or something, who had developed another competitive functional OS of his own, some kind or other, if memory serves, who had also parted ways with the community over some controversy which nobody wanted to talk about, and at the same time nobody else on the outside of it evidently wanted to ask about. I don't want to mis-attribute anything, because I am light on details, I won't try to recall his name, or what it was over, being from the outside myself, but I distinctly remember some part of the controversy being about someone or other "refusing to put up [some kind or other] sign in their window," (I inferred that it was metaphorically speaking.) It was a metaphor for something I didn't know, but I distinctly remember coming away with the feeling that I also didn't want to end up displaying that sign in my own window. To restate what I'm dancing around, in no uncertain terms, it seems to me that you're asking for a sign in the window. "No Moldbugs Allowed."
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  I see how I could come off that way. FWIW I don't personally wish to exclude people from contributing to projects based on their views and conduct outside of the project; I would accept pull requests from Jeffrey Dahmer. But if Jeffrey Dahmer started a decentralised social network with dog whistles towards cannibalism, I would wonder whether other contributors to the project supported cannibalism. If the project removed some but not all of the cannibal dog whistles, Dahmer stepped away on good terms, and the current project maintainers didn't make any statements for or against cannibalism, I would still wonder. It's not that Yarvin/Moldbug contributed to Urbit, it's that he purposefully associated it with his ideology from the beginning. That seems different to me, and without explicit clarification to the contrary I think it's fair to associate this project with that ideology.