
Why We're Sponsoring LambdaConf 2016 - waffle_ss
http://argumatronic.com/posts/2016-03-29-LambdaConf-sponsorship.html
======
bsder
I have a _VERY_ deep problem with this that has nothing to do with the views
of anybody involved.

The problem I have is that this is a mob turning its power on someone with
_FAR LESS_ power than the mob in question. It is one thing when the mob
attacks someone of greater power as greater power can defend itself. It is
something else when a mob expresses itself with positive support for the
downtrodden--that's still okay. However, _attacking_ someone unable to match
with equal social defense is _NOT_ okay. We have a word for that--it's called
"bullying".

The people involved may feel righteous, but that doesn't change the fact that
they are bullies. And, I am disappointed that a conference of geeks can't seem
to identify social bullying when it occurs in front of them.

As always, people only seem to be able to empathize when they are on the
receiving end of the pointy stick.

~~~
mcphage
> this is a mob turning its power on someone with FAR LESS power than the mob
> in question

Most of the discussions and conversation about power deal with 1-on-1
situations: person X has more power than person Y, for reasons A, B, and C.
But group action—that's a different matter, and I don't know how it figures
into the picture. Person X may have more power than P, Q, R, S, or T—but P, Q,
R, S, and T together may have more power than X. Or they may not. When and how
they do is an important question, that I wish we had better answers to.

~~~
bsder
> but P, Q, R, S, and T together may have more power than X. Or they may not.
> When and how they do is an important question, that I wish we had better
> answers to.

There are rarely clean answers when the problem is social.

In this instance, however, it is very clear that the mob has far more power
than the individual they are targeting.

For the person in question, if he had equivalent power, he could simply
replace the sponsors and lost speakers with people who shared his views. At
that point, the mob would be _VERY_ reluctant to pull out for fear of leaving
the stage to people whom they find distasteful.

The fact that this mob would have a very different behavior if he actually had
real power is telling and disappointing.

------
soapdog
As someone who is not aware of what is all the problem about and couldn't
really understand from the linked text, can someone provide me with some more
context please. What is the difficulty that is affecting lambdaconf? What
happened?

~~~
incepted
A speaker invited to that conference has posted racist and bigoted statements
on his blog. Lambdaconf is (currently anyway) deciding to invite him to speak
anyway, causing all kinds of chaos.

That same person was once invited at another conference (QCon I think?) but
was then uninvited after the organizers of that conference were made aware of
that person's posts.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It's also far from clear how "racist" the statements were - most of the people
on twitter don't seem to have actually read Moldbug/Yarvin. Proponents of
ostracizing Yarvin are notably unwilling to actually discuss why they believe
it's racist.

(I admit, I've not come anywhere near reading his entire work. He's longwinded
and that's a big barrier.)

The actual blog post that's criticized is here: [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-car...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html)

My best summary of the controversial part of the blog that I can come up with
is this: _Suddenly we see the relationship between slavery and government.
Serfdom and slavery can be described as microgovernment and nanogovernment
respectively. In government proper, the normal human role of patron is filled
by a giant, impersonal, and often accidentally sadistic bureaucracy...In
serfdom, this role is filled by a noble house...In slavery, mastership is
exercised by a mobile individual whose slaves go with him._

 _We see these same relationship parameters emerging...This is a pretty good
clue that this structure is one to which humans are biologically adapted._

Nozick had a much shorter essay (Yarvin is not known for brevity) which
expresses the same idea:
[http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/no...](http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/nozick_slave.html)

The larger part of the essay is about creating order in society and Robert
Carlyle's views on that.

The specific quote which is interpreted as supporting slavery is this: _Thus,
Spaniards and Englishmen in the Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries,
whose sense of political correctness was negligible, found that Africans
tended to make good slaves and Indians did not. This broad pattern of
observation is most parsimoniously explained by genetic differences._

This is mostly tangential to his main points, however.

~~~
tunesmith
He's basically a very effective troll. It seems an actual technique in that
community is to write turgidly about a bunch of provocative-but-plausibly-
deniable points, and then leave out the therefores except for doing a
rhetorical wink/nudge. It's exhausting.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Have you considered the possibility that maybe he actually believes the ideas
he is promoting? I.e., rather than writing with the goal of trolling a bunch
of people who only read his blog years later, maybe he was actually interested
in the ideas he's writing about?

Sometimes people write a lot about esoteric topics - my blog is a ton of
statistics and code. Maybe Yarvin is just a nerd?

~~~
tunesmith
I'm more referring to his effect than his intent. Call it accidental trolling.

~~~
yummyfajitas
So after effort which you describe as "exhausting" you can find racism in
Moldbug's writing that you acknowledge he may not have intended.

Yep, he's definitely a villain of the worst sort.

~~~
tunesmith
This strikes me as a willful misinterpretation of what I meant, so I'll stop
engaging with this thread here.

------
lhnz
An interesting titbit of information from LambdaConf's organiser: "In the past
few days, we’ve also seen a huge bump in the number of people applying for our
diversity scholarship program (49 applications so far), and we’re doing
everything in our power to give out as many scholarships as possible." [0]

It's good of Julie and Chris to continue supporting the conference, and (I
think) a real shame how quick the other sponsors were to bow out. Hopefully in
future people will try to think more about the positive work they can do and
less about how they look. (Obviously, for those that really have strong moral
reasons to exit, it's a shame but completely understandable.)

I guess one of the positives is that we now have two conferences [1], so those
that can't stand the idea of being in the same room as Yarvin can be around
other people that think exactly the same.

[0] [http://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-
controversy](http://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-controversy)

[1] [http://moonconf.org/](http://moonconf.org/)

~~~
teacup50
Anyone thinking about attending moonconf should take a quick look at their
Code of Conduct:

 _No one at any events associated with Maitria, may speak to, touch, stare at,
follow, or otherwise engage someone without their consent. Making jokes within
earshot of someone you know (or even think) is upset by them is a violation of
consent. Acting as though someone 's gender is other than what they say it is
is also a violation of consent. Doing things that people feel shitty about is
often a violation of consent. Doing them more than once is even more likely a
violation of consent._

[http://maitria.com/coc](http://maitria.com/coc)

Given that Orwellian monster, I'd feel a lot safer at LambdaConf than
Moonconf.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> No one at any events associated with Maitria, may speak to [snip] someone
> without their consent.

Taken literally, that means that nobody can ever initiate a conversation
there.

Taken just slightly less literally, though, it means that if you go up to
someone and ask "Can I talk to you?" and they say "No", then you can't talk to
them. That seems like the way reasonable human beings ought to behave.

I agree that the last two sentences seem easy to abuse.

~~~
teacup50
This also requires a pretty extreme degree of a priori self-censorship just to
be safe: "Making jokes within earshot of someone you know (or even think) is
upset by them is a violation of consent"

~~~
HCIdivision17
There seems to be a signal of intent there; some people are accidentally
senseless jerks (including yours truly), and a simple reprimand is enough to
tone it back. By contrast, the sort this seems to be aimed at would likely
scoff it off. I guess like "Hey man, don't be a jerk" followed by either "Oh
sorry, didn't mean any offense" or "Hey! I'm not a jerk!"

Like many moderation policies, I guess we can just hope the moderators are,
well, moderate.

~~~
nordsieck
This sounds like a recipe for politics.

The rule of law was created because prosecutorial discretion is awful.

------
tunesmith
Does free speech have the power to corrupt other minds at a level that that
free speech should instead be controlled? I get the general sense that a lot
more people answer "Yes" to that question than has been historically true (at
least, post-1776 American true).

~~~
defen
I see a disturbing amount of rhetoric online (primarily from the hard left,
but both sides are doing it now), portraying "freedom of speech" as not a
_principle_ worth defending, but rather a very limited proscribed set of
freedoms spelled out in the First Amendment. In other words, the state cannot
take action against you because of your speech (jail, fines, etc), _but_
arbitrary non-state, non-violent punishments are allowed and even encouraged.

So, in this worldview, if someone produces unacceptable speech, it would be
_entirely legitimate_ to: get him fired from his job, ensure that he never
gets hired again, get him evicted from his apartment, not allow him to shop at
your store, disallow his attendance at any private functions, etc. This xkcd
perfectly summarizes this worldview, although I think it was produced
earnestly and not as a demonstration of how terrible it is:
[https://xkcd.com/1357/](https://xkcd.com/1357/)

Note that "unacceptable speech" is entirely undefined - it's whatever the
community (which could be any arbitrary subset of humans due to the global
reach of the internet) deems to be unacceptable.

~~~
MichaelGG
What's wrong with that worldview? Seems like the only issue is employers and
landlords (??) overreacting. Why shouldn't someone be able to say "No soup for
you 'cause I think you're an asshole?" Or why shouldn't I be able to not want
to work with someone because they think npm did nothing wrong?

I find it troubling what people get upset about these days. But it seems
entirely their right to be upset about whatever they feel like. And others'
right to mock them for it.

It's disappointing that platforms like Facebook and Google don't seem neutral
(the latter two taking steps to prevent gun sales). But until they're
regulated it seems entirely OK for them to promote their own views.

~~~
defen
> Seems like the only issue is employers and landlords (??) overreacting

[http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/no-trump-voters-
allo...](http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/no-trump-voters-allowed)

> I find it troubling what people get upset about these days. But it seems
> entirely their right to be upset about whatever they feel like. And others'
> right to mock them for it.

The thing is, any individual actor doing these things is fine, and can look at
their own actions and feel that they are acting ethically. But when that gets
scaled up to the entire society, especially with outrage culture and mass
coordination via instant worldwide communication it doesn't work. I don't
know, it's like some weird variation on the prisoner's dilemma or something.

------
brighteyes
The activists trying to get him banned are not achieving anything useful.

They are raising awareness of the man, his online persona "Moldbug", and the
writings of that persona. This is the Streisand effect. If your goal is to get
fewer people to read his views, then causing drama around him is completely
counterproductive. I only heard about him from the previous drama (Strange
Loop), and more people are hearing about him for the first time now.

And he's not writing under that persona anymore. There is no stream of new
articles coming out. The only news about him is when activists try to get him
banned.

~~~
erichocean
In addition, Yarvin may be _wrong_ , but he's also wrong in (at least to me) a
unique way.

Ironically, what little I read of his when he was linked to by Scott Alexander
at Slater Star Codex awhile back made me appreciate the US bureaucracy a lot
more than I had prior to reading him. If anything, I went away feeling much
_more_ comfortable with how the current US government operates day to day and
far less troubled by how little effect "democracy" actually has in this
country.

I doubt that's what Yarvin intended, of course, but if I had just heard
"racist" and "bigot" and shunned him entirely, as many people seem to think I
should have, I'd be less informed today and substantially less positive about
our government. I'm glad I didn't.

------
colllectorof
The fact that sponsoring a _functional programming conference_ elicited an
explanation of this length shows that something in our society is profoundly
fucked up.

~~~
brighteyes
Some interesting thoughts on that by one of the relevant people in this story
are here: [http://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-
controversy](http://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-controversy) , in the
"Professionalism" section. He explains why, in his opinion, these clashes
between the private and the professional are becoming more common.

~~~
erichocean
From the link:

> _Personally, if a conference allows all peaceful people to attend and speak
> so long as they treat attendees exceedingly well, then guess what I think
> it’s going to select for?_

> _Wait for it… a diverse community of peaceful people who are willing to
> treat attendees exceedingly well, even when they strongly disagree with
> them!_

> _That doesn’t sound terrible to me. In fact, I wish the whole world were
> more like this._

Agreed. The more I learn about this, the happier I am that LambdaConf has
taken the stand they have. It's not about Yarvin, it's about _everyone else_ ,
and they seem to get that.

------
pklausler
If the LambdaConf 2016 web site is accurate, haskellbook.com is the _only_
sponsor of the conference.

~~~
jauer
It looks like they had six other sponsors before this kerfuffle:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160321025225/http://lambdaconf...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160321025225/http://lambdaconf.us/)

------
ankushnarula
Related: "What Went Wrong? Campus Unrest, Viewpoint Diversity, and Freedom of
Speech" [http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/campus-unrest-
viewpoint-...](http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/campus-unrest-viewpoint-
diversity-and-freedom-of-speech/)

------
wutf
In the limit it is hypocritical to select against someone who wants to select
against people. This is where moonconf falls short - in the limit, they would
kill in the name of empathy. Complete hypocrisy.

------
Chris2048
Just to establish something, What is a good example of the worst example of
racism in MMs blog?

What is considered an unacceptable level of "racism", or racism at all differs
wildly between people.

~~~
nmrm2
See tome's reply and keep the following in mind.

MM is rarely explicitly racist; it's more like he espouses ideas that
_obviously_ entail racial superiority and then stops shy and pretends like
you're an idiot if you actually believe those "obvious" entailments The
Progressives or whoever have been selling you.

(Preface: It's hard to explain, and the following might _sound_ like a bit of
an ad hom, but that's not how I mean it. It's just a really useful lense
through which to view MM's writing -- especially if you find yourself thinking
"he's just saying kinda true things that aren't very PC!". Understanding the
rhetorical ploys an author is using can help you see through the trees to the
heart of the author's argument and then -- in MM's case -- be sure you're
well-founeded in summarily rejecting it.)

Reading MM is like reading an above-average-but-not-exceptionally-bright high
schooler who went on a depth-first search of Google for every topic he writes
about. The authority emaninating from a depth-first search is obviously flawed
because it ignores the forest for the trees, but can be oddly convincing if
you don't notice what's going on. Or at least difficult to refute in a clear-
headed and logical way because you get stuck in the quagmire of meaningless
specificities.

Concretely, MM's writing generally has a well-developed thesis with logical
arguments and reasonable citation, but falls flat on its face for reasons that
can only be described as "common sense". MM's hope -- or maybe his own blieve
-- is that his authoritative knowledge of particularities supporting his point
trumps the forest of "common sense" generalities.

But the dozens of obvious objections that _aren 't_ addressed by MM -- or are
just hand-waved away with a bit of rhetoric about some evil other
(progressives, etc.) -- really are at the heart of the matter. A few
historical examples really are no replacement for a global view of historical
reality.

Of course MM is smart enough to be well-aware of the elephants in the room.
However, he's maybe more interested in trolling than in debate. Or maybe
really does blieve they're unsubstantiated progressive lies. IDK. In any case,
instead of addressing these elephants head on, he kind of summarily dismisses
the most obvious rebuttals with a bit of a literary eye roll.

For example, in one comment he rambles on about colonialism being not-so-
impeachable because those Africans were brutes prior to and after
colonization. The problems with a statement like this really are quite
obvious, but his comment goes on at length about particularities of specific
European leaders and African dynasties instead of addressing head-on the
litany of common-sense high-level objections to his poisition.

It's like when a high schooler puts forth a totally untenable position that is
_just wrong_ , and considers himself unimpeached because no one in the room
has a response to the particular arcane knowledge he used to backup his point.
Even though that knowledge was totally tangential or at best provided one
supportive data point in an infinite sea of data suggesting he's dead wrong.

I think people who disagree that MM's writing is racist are mostly just
hoodwinked by the above rhetorical ploy -- getting so specific about a few
trees that the reader forgets about the forest, and therefore conclusing that
the author doesn't need to be held responsible for the obvious historical
entailments that follow from his advocacy.

~~~
Chris2048
> Concretely, MM's writing generally has a well-developed thesis with logical
> arguments and reasonable citation, but falls flat on its face for reasons
> that can only be described as "common sense". MM's hope -- or maybe his own
> believe -- is that his authoritative knowledge of particularities supporting
> his point trumps the forest of "common sense" generalities.

This is a little disturbing, the idea of something being wrong due to "common
sense", (or maybe popular perception?) despite being logically argued and well
cited.

If MM cherry picks historical examples, fair enough, but then the work needs
to be matched to refute - to present all the counter-examples that where
omitted.

~~~
nmrm2
I'm not going to actually respond to a decade of writing in one comment.

My comment was not meant as an indpendent discrediting of MM.

My comment was meant as a reading guide for someone who wants to read MM in
good faith without wasting their time "down in the (irrelevant) weeds". A
guide to the systematic flaws in MM's reasoning and writing style.

The process really is common sense:

1\. Figure out what MM is actually saying, the evidence he provides, and then
-- instead of engaging with that evidence -- first look for the obvious
counter-evidence.

2\. Beware of implicit theses. If the post doesn't _directly_ and
_unambiguously_ address some point of interest -- but instead of just kind of
rhetorically implies a position on that point of interest -- then ignore it.

It's not that MM is wrong "because common sense". It's that he's wrong, and
the way of demonstrating he's wrong is by using common sense reasoning
techniques instead of engaging with his inane details.

~~~
Chris2048
This is fine. I'd argue how common this sense is though.

Usually "common sense" refers to popular opinion, or at least in my humble
experience, so I usually object tot he term.

Bringing this back to topic though, sounds like MM should be refuted, not
censored.

------
Mithaldu
Today i learned why anyone cares what lambdaconf does: The ticket prices sit
at an absolutely ridiculous minimum of $500. I can't imagine what could
possibly justify that expense.

For context: I've attended many conferences, in the sizes of 100 to 4000:
Purely technical; technical with lots of music and beer; focused on arts,
crafts and acting. Never have i seen a regular price over $150.

Now here comes LambdaConf, a con about a niche language, with a sponsor that
describes it as "a lot of those speakers are new to speaking at tech
conferences" and "reasonably priced".

I can't help but feel something is amiss here, either in their self-portray,
or my understanding.

~~~
jaegerpicker
I've attended quite a few national conferences and all of them were higher
priced.

~~~
busterarm
Shit, I want to go to SHARE and that conference is ~$2000.

And there's like 2 of them a year. Also Blackhat.

------
codygman
There's a simple way to preserve free speech and have inclusion here:

Don't allow any speakers whose beliefs are based on the supremacy of one race.

~~~
brighteyes
The principle sounds appealing, but

1\. This speaker denies fitting that description, and of those that read his
work, some agree that he isn't, while some disagree, and some aren't sure.
Perhaps not surprising, since he wrote a lot, and it's fairly complex. This is
therefore not a clear-cut case.

2\. Worse, what racial supremacy means depends on who is talking. For example,
Black Lives Matters protestors have claimed that a public library, which by
federal law cannot exclude people based on race, is white supremacist for that
very reason: [http://www.infowars.com/black-lives-matter-accuses-public-
li...](http://www.infowars.com/black-lives-matter-accuses-public-library-of-
white-supremacy/)

There is no simple way or simple solution here. These are hard questions, with
no clear answers.

~~~
tzs
Infowars is generally not a very creditable source. For those leery of
believing something from there, here is the same story from The Tennessean,
which is part of USA Today:
[http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson%20/2016/...](http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson%20/2016/02/19/black-
lives-matter-color-only-rule-runs-afoul-nashville-library/80606970/)

~~~
brighteyes
Thank you for the better link, I wasn't aware that the first source wasn't
reputable.

------
incepted
It's clear that whether you invite or don't invite someone to a conference,
you are making a stand.

What the organizers of that conference fail to see is that inviting someone
with such a toxic and racist personality will only encourage that person to
keep posting their hateful comments.

~~~
saryant
That's not clear at all. In fact, this episode has shown that many disagree
with that statement.

