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The tone of this post is strange to me. The author says things like, "To them, it is an absolute requirement that anyone who utters opinions they consider unacc

by gaoshan 11y ago

The tone of this post is strange to me. The author says things like, "To them, it is an absolute requirement that anyone who utters opinions they consider unacceptable must be excluded from their society." and "They “would not feel comfortable” being forced to treat him as a respectable human being. As a matter of tactics, this is perfectly reasonable. ...the people we are talking about are communists." and "...the ideas that almost everyone in communion with Harvard University believes are communist ideas" and on and on in this vein. The author clearly has a curiously well defined political ax to grind but to conflate the issue of this speaker being banned with what looks like a 1950's style anti-communist fetish is bizarre. There are so many assumptions and leaps of extremist faith in the post that I'm surprised something like this would get so highly ranked on Hacker News. As someone who has attended the conference in the past and who is diametrically opposed with the political views of the extreme right (being a moderate, normal, person), I don't have a problem with someone like Yarvin speaking about tech at the conference. What's more, we can discuss his banning without the issue turning into a ridiculous red baiting diatribe framed in terms more suited to the crazy wing of the extreme American Right. p.s. look at the comments on that post! It's just ridiculous that such insane extremism (of any sort) should elbow its way into such a topic.

RichardZBrookes 11y ago
Well, as Moldbug pointed out http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technology-communism-and-brown-scare.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technol..., at the height of the 1950’s anti-communist fetish, being a right-wing extremist in America was still much less acceptable than being a communist. You don’t have a problem hearing about Urbit, but various other people, some of whom identify themselves as socialists or Marxists, such as Klabnik or Payne, have a great problem. If it’s not because of their left-wing politics, then why do they not agree with “a moderate, normal person” like you? If it is because of their left-wing politics, isn’t that an interesting fact?
RichardZBrookes 11y ago
The tone is a bit strange, and there's a reason for that. I'm avoiding the question of whether Yarvin _deserves_ to be excluded. There are three answers to that: a) Nobody deserves to be punished for expressing a political opinion b) Some political opinions people should be punished for, but not his c) Some political opinions people should be punished for, including his. (a) is quite a popular view, and many people hold it, and some people claim to hold it but act otherwise, but I do not actually hold it myself, so I can't advance it in good faith. Given (b) or (c), the set of opinions that a person does deserve to be punished for expressing is unavoidably a matter of opinion. Given that I share Moldbug's views, my opinion on whether they should be punishable is both inevitable and uninteresting. Therefore I was carefully avoiding the "justice" argument, and instead making a very limited practical argument. If you care about technology working well, it is better not to exclude people, and in particular better not to let political partisans decide who is and is not excluded. That is true irrespective of what I or Curtis Yarvin or anyone else "deserve". Now, if you dig into theories of where justice comes from, you can develop that argument into a grounds for a "right to free speech", as an instrumental rather than axiomatic good. But I've already gone way over what is reasonable in a HN comment.

by gaoshan 11y ago

RichardZBrookes 11y ago

Well, as Moldbug pointed out http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technology-communism-and-brown-scare.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/09/technol..., at the height of the 1950’s anti-communist fetish, being a right-wing extremist in America was still much less acceptable than being a communist. You don’t have a problem hearing about Urbit, but various other people, some of whom identify themselves as socialists or Marxists, such as Klabnik or Payne, have a great problem. If it’s not because of their left-wing politics, then why do they not agree with “a moderate, normal person” like you? If it is because of their left-wing politics, isn’t that an interesting fact?

RichardZBrookes 11y ago

The tone is a bit strange, and there's a reason for that. I'm avoiding the question of whether Yarvin _deserves_ to be excluded. There are three answers to that: a) Nobody deserves to be punished for expressing a political opinion b) Some political opinions people should be punished for, but not his c) Some political opinions people should be punished for, including his. (a) is quite a popular view, and many people hold it, and some people claim to hold it but act otherwise, but I do not actually hold it myself, so I can't advance it in good faith. Given (b) or (c), the set of opinions that a person does deserve to be punished for expressing is unavoidably a matter of opinion. Given that I share Moldbug's views, my opinion on whether they should be punishable is both inevitable and uninteresting. Therefore I was carefully avoiding the "justice" argument, and instead making a very limited practical argument. If you care about technology working well, it is better not to exclude people, and in particular better not to let political partisans decide who is and is not excluded. That is true irrespective of what I or Curtis Yarvin or anyone else "deserve". Now, if you dig into theories of where justice comes from, you can develop that argument into a grounds for a "right to free speech", as an instrumental rather than axiomatic good. But I've already gone way over what is reasonable in a HN comment.