Definitely yes.
Local impact of one lousy murder of some nobody vs the global impact of something everybody of us could use.
A balanced view is needed here.
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I’m sure her family wouldn’t mind.
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No one is entitled to a space at a conference. They are entitled to start their own conference.
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Why does the interest of one family have more weight than the interest of all the filesystem users worldwide?
Said family can also easily just not go to said conference.
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The point I’m trying to make is that including some people can make others very uncomfortable, which has the chilling effect of condoning and perhaps eventually expecting racist and sexist attitudes from an industry where white men are already extremely over-represented.
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Why should wealthy people ever have to face the consequences of breaking the law? Isn’t that bad for the economy and progress in general?
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Yeah but I think the market has already spoken. That’s why everyone thinks he’s an ass. He’s already spoken, and people have already judged, otherwise they wouldn’t have an opinion on him.
It’s like when people say:
“Why isn’t the genetics dept at the university allowing the preacher to speak about how evolution is wrong? Why do they hate free expression? Why won’t they let the marketplace of ideas work?”
Don’t they know that scientists have heard all this stuff already? They only want to listen to people who tell them things they don’t already know.
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In my opinion, fuck this guy. It seems to me that acting as if letting him talk is ok because it is a conference where he is an expert isn’t a very good argument because it isn’t like there aren’t other people who are experts on worthy topics. It seems like his spot in the conference could be filled by someone else who isn’t currently presenting that is also an expert on a relevant topic. He may be an expert who is doing something interesting and unique but there are tons of people who are experts who are doing something interesting and unique and have the bonus of not being a racist. invite that person instead of him. Hell, even if he is the most unique and special snowflake ever and no one is doing anything 1/10 as interesting then replace him with 10 people…
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Nods.
The programming approach or programming ideas he is associated with aren’t being suppressed by the conference in any case.
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Ever tried to replace one good racist cook with a dozen of non-racist mediocre ones?
Hint: you wouldn’t want to eat the result.
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Then shouldn’t it have some basis in fact? The frequent use of the term “invite”, like “honoring”, is spin verging on fabrication. It says a lot more about the spinners than it does about the conference. When people say “invite” they mean (knowingly or not) “did not intervene to exclude”. Nobody sat down and said “You know who would really round out this conference? Curtis Yarvin!”
Yarvin submitted his talk all by himself, it was selected in a blind process, and then “invitations” were sent to the speakers behind those talks. He was not specially selected, there is no tickertape parade. He is being treated like any other speaker.
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I’m going to make the assumption that he’s not from the planet Krypton until he leaps a tall building in a single bound. I’m sure he thinks otherwise about himself, but I need evidence.
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Boing boing has a proven history of respecting people’s choices to choose new names for themselves in lieu of their birthnames: Spider Robinson, Violet Blue, hell, even Xeni.
It seems really petty to ignore Moldbug’s preference on this just because he has offensive beliefs.
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Dear all,
I am a little disappointed that so many of you (especially Mr. Beschizza) have not bothered to look up whether or not Mr. Moldbug uses conferences as a bully pulpit to spread his views on things other than functional programming. In the time it took you to post your “high-handed” comment asking the question, you could’ve researched the answer.
The answer, incidentally, is that he does.
Publish is papers (like the fictional Mr. Lecter’s)? Fine. Force conference staff to be in his physical proximity? Not okay. Give him a platform to talk about his racist bullshit? Not okay.
This now concludes your daily dose of “this really isn’t that hard.”
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Providing sources really is that hard, I take it. In this you are only following the lead of typelevel, which when asked for sources supporting their claim that he is an “unapologetic proponent of bigotry” responded with “you’re more than capable of finding it yourself”.
This all must be very convincing to people who start out convinced.
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this is really about the fear that unless people like this are supplicated to, the community will lose something important: skills, experience, the joy of sneering, etc
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Ummmm… where’s the problem? Is he significantly radioactive?
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No, but he is toxic.
I’ve been in environments like that before, where I had to be in the same room who believed they had the right to physically and verbally abuse me. You really can’t get out of there quickly enough, but if you do you then start feeling like you are being punished for the other person being an arsehole.
As for Mencius himself, i’d say let him have his talk so long as he doesn’t start talking about the neo-reactionary movement or any of it’s connected political beliefs. If he does then don’t even wait for him to finish, just pull the power and eject him from the conference. If he complains about freedom of speech, remind him that you are not the government and that he doesn’t even believe in it himself.
And if anyone doesn’t want to work with him, move them to somewhere else in the conference. Don’t punish them for his toxic views.
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Friend of mine was having a conversation with him at a previous programming conference about some programming concept, and he was saying sensible and interesting things. They reached the end of that thread and he started in on racist trolling, and she and other people in the elevator stopped paying attention to him. But she’s also somebody who’s got a high tolerance for people who are assholes but also have interesting technical ideas; there are other people who’d be creeped out by just having him in the room.
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This has never been in question. At all. If he blinked once and it seemed like a neoreactionary blink, he’d be ejected. There is probably nowhere on earth where he will be less free to speak about the subject matter which has drawn such heavy interest.
