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There are probably lots of people who need to hear this, and given the people who'll be attending and made it clear how much of a fuss they would make, it was o

There are probably lots of people who need to hear this, and given the people who'll be attending and made it clear how much of a fuss they would make, it was obviously the right call to disinvite him. I think it's still worth briefly lamenting that our culture is heading in this direction. I see more and more echoes of the worldview and tactics that ultimately killed just shy of a hundred million people or so last century, and yes, it scares me. Do you have any thoughts you'd be disinvited via public pressure from the best conferences for having? Will you in the culture of twenty or thirty years from now? Grist for the mill.

paxdickinson 11y ago
FWIW I only saw two twitter comments complaining before the disinvitation, and one of those was proud communist Steve Klabnik.
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  A few things. I was not planning on getting involved in this conversation, but since dang decided to un-flag it, I'm going to leave one or two comments, but don't plan on sticking around very much. As tptacek said elsewhere in this thread, politics + HN == nightmare. First of all, many more people complained than me. You didn't look very hard. Second, I'm not _strictly_ a communist: I'm certainly very left-wing, and I often role-play a communist, because I think Americans need a connection to an actual left. My allegiance is ultimately to Deleuze, not Marx. To put it in terms of a meme image I saw the other day, around non-leftists, I usually use 'communist' as a shorthand, but amongst leftists, a more nuanced discussions can be had, for sure. EDIT: ahh, here we go: http://m.imgur.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/MLlIQAS http://m.imgur.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/MLlIQAS Finally, since you're dragging personal views into this, I'll just leave this here: http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-new-tech-bro-nightmare-1280336916 http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne...
  - topynate 11y ago
    Few quick questions: I'm a Zionist (see my top-level post and its link.) Does that make me unacceptably racist, in your view? I know Deleuze thought Zionism was a racist ideology. Given that, in a conference as large as Strange Loop, there are undoubtedly people who do think Zionism is a proper subset of racism, would you support them in a call to have me excluded from that conference? If not, what exactly about either my views or those people's intensity of repugnance for them is insufficient to get me kicked? If so, then as there are by far more racists of the Zionist stripe likely to attend, shouldn't you be looking into that? Why aren't you?
    - tptacek 11y ago
      I'm not sure how this is a fair question to ask Klabnik, since the issue in Yarvin's case isn't whether somewhat obscure namedropped French philosophers think his views are racist. Edit: It seems to me like there's no controversy about whether Yarvin's views are racist; it's barely controversial to suggest that he's a white supremacist (if that's something he wants to distance himself from, he's done himself no favors by overtly nodding to white nationalism in his own writing). I'd also suggest you keep in mind that Urbit is, as technical ideas go, both marginally impactful (at least today), and extraordinarily idiosyncratic (see: the Nock ASCII pronunciation guide). It is not remotely unreasonable for conference organizers barely acquainted with Urbit to be concerned that Yarvin's strident philosophical views might be entwined with his technical ideas, which one could fairly argue are --- unlike his politics --- obscurantist. If Urbit was more important, I'd understand more about the controversy. But this doesn't seem like a difficult call.
      - topynate 11y ago
        I assure you that the racism of, for example, Yitzhak Herzog (who heads Israel's main centre-left party), is as obvious to the ideological opponents of Zionism as Yarvin's is to you. If you doubt me, ask them. It should be clear from my other comments that I am concerned with the principle of excluding people from apolitical fora on the grounds of racism alone. How justified or controversial it is to call someone a racist fails to engage the argument that it's a social evil to apply that test. As to the technical value of Urbit itself, having passed a process explicitly designed to support neutral evaluation (blind review and ranking) it's unfair to start picking holes. (One thing I saw was a bit of point-and-laugh at the style of the C code used to implement it, which frankly is no worse or different than I've seen used in some more obscure languages like False, for example.)
  - paxdickinson 11y ago
    It was relevant to the statement I was replying to: "I see more and more echoes of the worldview and tactics that ultimately killed just shy of a hundred million people or so last century, and yes, it scares me." You've labeled yourself a communist in the past, if that's not strictly accurate I stand corrected. My personal background is well known. I'm here logged in with my real name, I'm not hiding it. I don't know how Gawker's opinion of me is exactly relevant to whether or not you're a communist but that's fine. If there's nothing wrong with being a communist why are you acting like I've slandered you by bring your background into this? It doesn't add up.
- tptacek 11y ago
  There was a way to point out that Klabnik's politics may conflict him out of this debate, but calling him a "proud communist" wasn't it. Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN. Sometimes the line between personal attack and ideological critique is blurry. The closer you get to that line here, the more carefully you need to write.
  - throwaway_s 11y ago
    Whether or not Klabnik is a real communist, this raises what I consider to be a pretty interesting thought experiment for testing our intuitions: Suppose that a speaker were accepted to a tech conference who either jokingly or seriously described himself as a communist (I assure you that there are many such people here in the valley). And suppose that the organizer of the conference then disinvited that speaker saying: "We have striven to create an open and inclusive conference representing many diverse viewpoints. Mr X's views were recently brought to my attention by a number of people. In light of the fact that some of our attendees were raised in the Former Soviet Union, Former Yugoslavia, and Mainland China, many of them having fled from considerable persecution, some of whom had close family members murdered by the regimes; I do not think Mr. X presenting here would be conducive to these individuals having a pleasant and safe experience at the conference." How all would we react to such an event? Would you all be taking the same sides that you are now? If not, why not?
  - amcastillo 11y ago
    If CY's writing on Carlyle is relevant, why is noting that SK lobbies for more programmers to integrate Marx and other left-radical writers beyond reproach? http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-12-15-marx-anarchism-and-web-standards http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-12-15-marx-anarchism...
    - tptacek 11y ago
      It isn't. The manner in which it was evoked in the above comment was rude and dismissive, and that's the problem. Incidentally, I'm irritated by Klabnik's politics. But I don't find them disqualifying. I am not so sure about Yarvin's. Can I reliably articulate why I think that's fair? No, I don't think so. And I can live with that.

paxdickinson 11y ago

FWIW I only saw two twitter comments complaining before the disinvitation, and one of those was proud communist Steve Klabnik.

steveklabnik 11y ago
A few things. I was not planning on getting involved in this conversation, but since dang decided to un-flag it, I'm going to leave one or two comments, but don't plan on sticking around very much. As tptacek said elsewhere in this thread, politics + HN == nightmare. First of all, many more people complained than me. You didn't look very hard. Second, I'm not _strictly_ a communist: I'm certainly very left-wing, and I often role-play a communist, because I think Americans need a connection to an actual left. My allegiance is ultimately to Deleuze, not Marx. To put it in terms of a meme image I saw the other day, around non-leftists, I usually use 'communist' as a shorthand, but amongst leftists, a more nuanced discussions can be had, for sure. EDIT: ahh, here we go: http://m.imgur.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/MLlIQAS http://m.imgur.com/r/FULLCOMMUNISM/MLlIQAS Finally, since you're dragging personal views into this, I'll just leave this here: http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-new-tech-bro-nightmare-1280336916 http://valleywag.gawker.com/business-insider-ctos-is-your-ne...
- topynate 11y ago
  Few quick questions: I'm a Zionist (see my top-level post and its link.) Does that make me unacceptably racist, in your view? I know Deleuze thought Zionism was a racist ideology. Given that, in a conference as large as Strange Loop, there are undoubtedly people who do think Zionism is a proper subset of racism, would you support them in a call to have me excluded from that conference? If not, what exactly about either my views or those people's intensity of repugnance for them is insufficient to get me kicked? If so, then as there are by far more racists of the Zionist stripe likely to attend, shouldn't you be looking into that? Why aren't you?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I'm not sure how this is a fair question to ask Klabnik, since the issue in Yarvin's case isn't whether somewhat obscure namedropped French philosophers think his views are racist. Edit: It seems to me like there's no controversy about whether Yarvin's views are racist; it's barely controversial to suggest that he's a white supremacist (if that's something he wants to distance himself from, he's done himself no favors by overtly nodding to white nationalism in his own writing). I'd also suggest you keep in mind that Urbit is, as technical ideas go, both marginally impactful (at least today), and extraordinarily idiosyncratic (see: the Nock ASCII pronunciation guide). It is not remotely unreasonable for conference organizers barely acquainted with Urbit to be concerned that Yarvin's strident philosophical views might be entwined with his technical ideas, which one could fairly argue are --- unlike his politics --- obscurantist. If Urbit was more important, I'd understand more about the controversy. But this doesn't seem like a difficult call.
    - topynate 11y ago
      I assure you that the racism of, for example, Yitzhak Herzog (who heads Israel's main centre-left party), is as obvious to the ideological opponents of Zionism as Yarvin's is to you. If you doubt me, ask them. It should be clear from my other comments that I am concerned with the principle of excluding people from apolitical fora on the grounds of racism alone. How justified or controversial it is to call someone a racist fails to engage the argument that it's a social evil to apply that test. As to the technical value of Urbit itself, having passed a process explicitly designed to support neutral evaluation (blind review and ranking) it's unfair to start picking holes. (One thing I saw was a bit of point-and-laugh at the style of the C code used to implement it, which frankly is no worse or different than I've seen used in some more obscure languages like False, for example.)
- paxdickinson 11y ago
  It was relevant to the statement I was replying to: "I see more and more echoes of the worldview and tactics that ultimately killed just shy of a hundred million people or so last century, and yes, it scares me." You've labeled yourself a communist in the past, if that's not strictly accurate I stand corrected. My personal background is well known. I'm here logged in with my real name, I'm not hiding it. I don't know how Gawker's opinion of me is exactly relevant to whether or not you're a communist but that's fine. If there's nothing wrong with being a communist why are you acting like I've slandered you by bring your background into this? It doesn't add up.
tptacek 11y ago
There was a way to point out that Klabnik's politics may conflict him out of this debate, but calling him a "proud communist" wasn't it. Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN. Sometimes the line between personal attack and ideological critique is blurry. The closer you get to that line here, the more carefully you need to write.
- throwaway_s 11y ago
  Whether or not Klabnik is a real communist, this raises what I consider to be a pretty interesting thought experiment for testing our intuitions: Suppose that a speaker were accepted to a tech conference who either jokingly or seriously described himself as a communist (I assure you that there are many such people here in the valley). And suppose that the organizer of the conference then disinvited that speaker saying: "We have striven to create an open and inclusive conference representing many diverse viewpoints. Mr X's views were recently brought to my attention by a number of people. In light of the fact that some of our attendees were raised in the Former Soviet Union, Former Yugoslavia, and Mainland China, many of them having fled from considerable persecution, some of whom had close family members murdered by the regimes; I do not think Mr. X presenting here would be conducive to these individuals having a pleasant and safe experience at the conference." How all would we react to such an event? Would you all be taking the same sides that you are now? If not, why not?
- amcastillo 11y ago
  If CY's writing on Carlyle is relevant, why is noting that SK lobbies for more programmers to integrate Marx and other left-radical writers beyond reproach? http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-12-15-marx-anarchism-and-web-standards http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-12-15-marx-anarchism...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    It isn't. The manner in which it was evoked in the above comment was rude and dismissive, and that's the problem. Incidentally, I'm irritated by Klabnik's politics. But I don't find them disqualifying. I am not so sure about Yarvin's. Can I reliably articulate why I think that's fair? No, I don't think so. And I can live with that.