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There's being aware of Lisp and then there's having learned Lisp's lessons. Urbit is interesting to me but it is also interesting for me to imagine what it woul
by vzcx 5y ago
There's being aware of Lisp and then there's having learned Lisp's lessons. Urbit is interesting to me but it is also interesting for me to imagine what it would be like if, perhaps, Curtis had attended MIT instead of Berkeley.
Where you see nefarious intentions I see someone pursuing their own aesthetics, something that is very admirable and that I think more systems engineers should do. It's obviously not your aesthetic. It's not even really my aesthetic. It's Curtis's. But isn't "radically different from anything that has gone before" just a roundabout way of saying "cool?"
As far as the "cult" goes, I am reminded of that part in Jodorowsky's Dune where he's all "I am looking for my holy warriors!" For any system, whether technological, religious or philosophical to remain living and breathing, it needs its adherents and believers, and I see neither bad intentions nor bad outcomes here. Maybe that's just what happens when you are deep enough in the cult. But the cult is... calm. Cozy, even.
Is that so bad?
- lisper 5y agoIf Urbit were only a bad reinvention of whatever it's a bad reinvention of I would be totally unconcerned. The world is full of bad reinventions of all kinds of things. I've built a few myself. But Curtis is more than just a bad reinventor of things. He is also Mencius Moldbug, a prolific pseudo-intellectual influencer of the alt-right. His politics worry me much more than his coding style. And because of my personal dealings with him, I am not sanguine about his ability or that of his followers to separate the two.