3 ms·

> 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 contributor

> 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.
core-questions 7y ago
Why do you have such a bone to pick on this? So one eccentric political commentator has a pet project - do you need to go piss in his cornflakes? Moldbug is not a fascist (and he'd make the claim that most folks like yourself have no idea what that even means). He's a neoreactionary, which seems to be a mostly dead movement usurped by traditional Catholics of all things these days. Moldbug himself moved on from Urbit a year ago. It's time to stop evaluating the software (well, _all_ software) based on whether you're in some kind of complete ideological harmony with its authors. It's not like you apply that same rubric to the food you eat or the clothes you wear, at least some of which came from totalitarian regimes implemented in modern reality that are far harsher than anything Moldbug's internet commentary seems to be after. The "denouncement" crap you're after never appeases people like yourself, anyway, so how about you move along with your life and stop preventing someone interested in the actual technology from potentially joining up based on your witch hunt?

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.

core-questions 7y ago

Why do you have such a bone to pick on this? So one eccentric political commentator has a pet project - do you need to go piss in his cornflakes? Moldbug is not a fascist (and he'd make the claim that most folks like yourself have no idea what that even means). He's a neoreactionary, which seems to be a mostly dead movement usurped by traditional Catholics of all things these days. Moldbug himself moved on from Urbit a year ago. It's time to stop evaluating the software (well, _all_ software) based on whether you're in some kind of complete ideological harmony with its authors. It's not like you apply that same rubric to the food you eat or the clothes you wear, at least some of which came from totalitarian regimes implemented in modern reality that are far harsher than anything Moldbug's internet commentary seems to be after. The "denouncement" crap you're after never appeases people like yourself, anyway, so how about you move along with your life and stop preventing someone interested in the actual technology from potentially joining up based on your witch hunt?