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0 pointssillysaurus38y ago0 comments

I've spent the last 15 minutes reading everything I can find about the subject, and honestly nothing seems very inflammatory. Have you read this?

https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...

He seems like a reasonable, intelligent person, and people have gone out of their way to mischaracterize what he did say and to label him a racist.

He was also writing under a pen name, and -- believe it or not -- roleplaying is common recreation. Just because Moldbug believed something doesn't mean Chris believed those things.

All in all, I think this is just another example of the insular tribalism present in all of Silicon Valley. It's ironic that the place that prides itself on being the most tolerant and the most progressive is in fact so victorian and reductionist that their ideas can't withstand a simple debate.

Easier to label and shun, eh? I'm not a fan.

It's somewhat ridiculous that I have to add a disclaimer that I don't share any of their ideology, even in secret. I'm proud of my beliefs, and this has nothing to do with the politics at play. If you're going to be inclusive, then be inclusive. To shun someone so intelligent and to reduce their entire body of work to a few glib sentences isn't a productive strategy.

From my perspective, it seems strange that anyone could read that Medium post and come away hating Chris. He's clearly here to talk tech, not politics. So what's the problem?

When you join a Twitter mob and serve as a sort of informal government — by deciding, for instance, who can speak at a conference — you’re feeding your inner chimpanzee. It feels good. Your conscience may be convinced that it’s spiritually the right thing to do. But your limbic system is just plain high. Twitter is a drug cartel. The drug is power. Or at least, apparent power.

Hear, hear. When you seek to suppress an idea, people like me get curious. Why are you so worried that Chris is the founder? It makes me want to dig in to their beliefs and decide for myself.

Don't you see? Speaking out like this actively helps the very side you're trying to defeat. They come off looking reasonable, whereas your argument boils down to "He's toxic because reasons."

One of the most persuasive things you could do in this situation would be to post a quote written by Chris. Posting a quote from Moldbug would be the second most persuasive thing. Failing either of those, are we supposed to just take your word for it that the dude should be excluded from society?

This whole "label and exclude" thing is for the birds. Why not judge ideas instead of people?

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218931209758y ago

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> One of the most persuasive things you could do in this situation would be to post a quote written by Chris. Posting a quote from Moldbug would be the second most persuasive thing. Failing either of those, are we supposed to just take your word for it that the dude should be excluded from society? > This whole "label and exclude" thing is for the birds. Why not judge ideas instead of people?

Don't mind if I do:

- From my perspective, Urbit is culty vaporware which does nothing out of the ordinary that actually DELIVERS. CY (or MM, whatever) seems to me what can best be described as an edgelord, using sophistry to make himself sound smarter than he is (which might still be plenty smart) and stirring controversy by going against mainstream views just because.

Arguements: Urbit ticks all of the boxes for techno-cults like we saw in the 60s and 70s.

* invent their own special language * reinvent everything from scratch to improve group cohesion * dismiss any criticism as "not getting it"

I will be convinced if anything USEFUL comes out of urbit. Not "can't you see that it WOULD be useful", but "here, I built this thing". That settles the technical argument for me

On the edgelord topic, two quotes, one from the link you gave and one form the AMA he gave (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4bxf6f/im_curtis_yarv...)

Quote 1:

> HNU(“human neurological uniformity”). is not a natural null hypothesis. Its doubters don’t need to disprove it. It needs to prove itself. Genetic and anatomical inhomogeneity is normal in the species. Statistically, its presence is expected and its absence would be remarkable. No such absence is found.

I don't want to judge the politics, but just on the intellectual criticism and CONTENT:

1. He switches and dodges between "statistical" and absolutist language. A uniform distribution is something very different than uniformity. 2. Without any external bias or information, neither presence or absence of a uniform distribution is expected, or remarkable. 3. To just assume HNU or non-HNU as a given without asking for "why" and just attributing it to species/genome is simplistic

Notice how he never makes an actual CLAIM, or clarifies everything, just uses vague language and puts himself in the persecuted role

Quote 2, answering what I think is a...fan? who asked for some clarifications to the writings (broken apart by me):

>Fascism no longer exists. It's as dead as Odinism. You can reinvent Odinism, but it's not Odinism, it's fake Odinism. Unless it's a joke (and don't get me wrong, Nazi Microsoft chatbots are funny), it's pathetic. Actually, the fact that /pol has made Hitler funny is the best possible evidence that Hitler is completely dead.

Ok so far,though you could start arguing that this is weasely sophistry by arguing about the exact definition of "fashism", and you can disagree on whether fashism in the hitler style is truly dead, but nothing evil. It's a bit of a tautology (nothing can exist exactly like it was before), but ok.

>What's alive is the ideological system that defeated fascism -- which committed plenty of atrocities of its own. Of our own. When we think about crimes from the last century, it seems more relevant to think about the crimes we committed, not those they comitted

Here the little bit of sophistry turns into a blatant misdirection: instead of talking about fashism, he's talking about general human attrocities while creating a false equivalency. But let's assume he means it in an innocent way, just badly phrased, and REALLY cares about the current attrocities and problems in modern society and will take actual positions.

>What is fascism? It's exactly what everyone thinks it is. The conventional wisdom is perfectly correct. Our historians have a merciless, laser-sharp understanding of everything bad that fascism was and everything it did wrong. What hasn't been done is turning this same laser on our own institutions.

Except, yes, it has. Ask any civil rights advocate, ask ACLU, ask anyone outside of the mainstream for the last 50 years. Criticism has been abound, it was just silenced. Blatant misrepresentation

>As for the word "slavery," it means too many things at the same time. Robert Nozick in the '70s devised a beautiful little paradox for people who think they can define "slavery": [http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/no...]. Try it.

Again, instead of talking about the THING, playing with definition. By this point we might want to abandon the hypothesis of innocence and assume sophistry. But nothing horrible yet (except the blatant misrepresentation in the last sentence). Just because words change over history does not mean they don't carry specific meaning right now

>For example, is "debt slavery" slavery? Or is it only slavery when you can't declare bankruptcy? Oddly enough, our society has one form of debt that can't be shed in bankruptcy: student loans. The institutions that benefit from it are our most powerful and privileged.

Good point, if taken alone. Notice here he ACTUALLY makes a statement for once. There are other people who'd argue that student loans, prison labor etc. are modern forms of slavery.

>What Carlyle said about slavery is that you can ban the word, but not the institution.

You can also ban the institution. Look at norway, germany, any other country. And yes, there is no perfection, but that is missing the point.

>There are plenty of people today who will be paying off their student loans until they die. Is this the same as being whipped by Leonardo DiCaprio unless you chop your quota of sugarcane? It is not.

Correct, nobody claims it is. But he implies people claim that.

>Is it "slavery"? Dunno, you tell me. Are they both bad things? Sure. Is everything that can fit, or has in the past fit, under this label, evil? If so, it would be a very unusual label.

Actually, from our perspective: yes, it would. Some forms might be more acceptable (house slaves in ancient greece/rome), but nobody would choose to be a slave coming from our society. Just because the world changes, doesn't mean you can dismiss it.

>As for your last question, it's simply a matter of who has actual power in our society. Everyone wants to think of themselves as powerless and/or oppressed. But actual power dynamics are not hard to find.

This is true. You can argue it is also shying away from taking a stand, but it's implied that he did that somewhere else, so ok.

Synopsis:

In a question for clarification asked by someone who seemed to express sympathy, we have enough dodging and sophistry to severely question the intellectual merit of his position. Without taking any other judgement, I classify him as "edgelord". I couldn't find an email, but I would love to interview him via a GPG signed email chain, so there is accountability for statements. My keys for this:

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sillysaurus3OP8y ago

This is a great reply, and I felt myself being persuaded by it. Then I thought about it. Your criticism of his writings appears to boil down to "He's not taking a stance." Is that an accurate summary?

If so, then it's impossible to be ok with excluding him.

2 more replies

218931209758y ago

Wanted to edit, but can't, so here: I assume hn will mess up the signature with formatting, here is a pastebin https://pastebin.com/mzxtFGWS

archagon8y ago

Frankly, intelligence is not very high on my list of attributes I value in people. Plenty of terrible people are intelligent. And although I'm not deeply versed on the collective works of Yarvin/Moldbug, I know enough from osmosis, and also that, a) dark enlightenment type discussions that I've witnessed on Reddit et al. over the past few years — which have seemingly morphed into today's alt-right — are downright nauseating in their toxicity, and b) "roleplaying" and/or "it was just a joke" is one of the most disingenuous and overused excuses on the internet today. I equally loathe Thiel's ideas, and he appears to be closely tied to the project. There's really not much wiggle room here, even if the tech is great.

Tribalism. Is something like GNU equally tribalistic, then? Are we not permitted to shape the world by selectively choosing which personalities and projects will help us towards a better future? Tech by itself is worthless; it's the people who handle it and the social contexts in which it exists that make all the difference.

As for debate, there's the sea lion principle[1][2]. Unfortunately, with some genres of ideas, prim and proper debate is simply impossible. You're pitting reason against waves of the unreasonable. It is a war of attrition and you will lose.

It makes no difference to me whether any one particular person will "dig in to their beliefs and decide for [themselves]". I am personally not concerned with changing hearts and minds, but as a member of the community I do want to make my personal line in the sand clear and hope that others feel the same way. The coddling and back-patting that SV folks give these kinds of idealogues really upsets me.

[1]: http://wondermark.com/1k62/ [2]: https://www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/

sillysaurus3OP8y ago

Listen to what I'm saying. If you want to exclude him, the very least you owe him is to paste an actual quote written by him as justification. Without that, this is straight-up libel.

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