Personally I believe there's a place for CoCs in any large organization or group but I think the content of CoCs should never include any political ideological opinions. If professionalism, respect, and separation of one's political and/or religious beliefs from a project/event is impossible for some then they shouldn't be part of it. Honestly, I wouldn't know or care if one programmer was a devout Mormon that donated to Prop 8 if all my interactions with said person (obviously mentioning Brenden Eich here) were purely within the confines of a project or convention regarding programming of some sort. Nor would that person ever have to know that I'm a Christian Gnostic, Georgist, bisexual, trans woman (the last part would probably be obvious but immaterial still) in the same context. We're two programmers coming together in common cause to produce something cool (I hope).
Yet it seems there are those on the left (and to some extent on the right) that demand ideological purity in all things. "You must be the right kind of [ideological stance/trait], lest you offend someone..." Seriously, I've seen flaps over Laura Jane Grace's book being titled Tranny (she's trans) over the last week. It's just as bad when you look at how fellow libertarians go at each other (see Jeffrey Tucker's essay on Libertarian Brutalism and the resulting fallout).
It's absurd how bad things have gotten in this regard and I honestly am concerned we'll see ideological puritanism infect various F/LOSS projects and events. Just keep the CoC to the absolute essentials (don't be a perv/jerk/stalker/etc and don't have sensitive topics in conversations...).
One thing that belonging to a political fringe has taught me, is that either you decide to live your life in constant conflict, or you learn to ignore the politics of a person when it has no direct impact on a given situation, even when it to you is utterly distasteful.
The latter leads to a far happier life. And often you'll find even people who hold views you find offensive can be perfectly nice people most of the time.
This just in: preventing people to come to your conferences because of their beliefs is actually inadvisable and really, really difficult to make good on.
I don't agree with the guy's views either, but I wouldn't disinvite him just because he thinks that way.
Good on LambdaConf for letting him come anyway. Many of the quotes from this piece were shockingly powerful. I'm happy I took the time to read it.
Note that not simply not attending isn't a boycott; a boycott implies some sort of protest: not attending and inducing others not to attend. And that would probably not be appropriate at the conference.
If your conference will dis-invite / "de-platform" people based on their opinion about topic {foo}, you are in fact hosting a conference about {foo}, regardless of what your name, official agenda, or spokespeople say.
Kudos to LambdaConf for actually keeping on focus in the face of dissent.
Well, this works the other way around too, right? If you invite, or accept applications from, someone who is primarily noted for {bar}, then whatever your name, official agenda, or spokespeople say, you are now hosting a conference tolerant or supportive of {bar}.
You seem to be making a declaration that acts are inherently political, and I'm all for that. It's just that the standard works both ways.
The participants were picked in a blinded process, and the participant in question agreed to leave their personal politics at the door as they would at work.
I mean, okay, maybe, but that just means that they'd be hosting a conference about "nazis suck" and hey, I'm okay with that. That's a message I can get behind.
Yes, I am perfectly okay with discriminating against Nazis.
Since when is ALL discrimination bad? I discriminate against shitty people all the time, and so do you. Don't even pretend you don't, no one will believe you.
Kudos are actually due to all the normal people, outside the echo-chamber. Who not only declined to participate in fear or politics but in many cases wrote movingly about the value of open access.
"In the end, we all converged on the same opinion: that LambdaConf should focus on the behavior of attendees, rather than their belief systems."
What you believe in, in everyday society, shouldn't matter either. It is how you treat others and if you do so with politeness and respect, you should expect the same in return.
Curtis Yarvin is a professed fascist who has written about his belief that some races are more suited to slavery than others.
That _does_ matter; it makes large swaths of the potential talk audience (and other attendees) feel unwelcome. How can you engage in polite, respectful discussion with someone who believes that you're more suited to be a slave than a free man?
Yarvin's political tracts seem to specifically reject fascism, Communism, and modern liberal democracy; you may not like his politics, and may find them analogous to fascism in key and dangerous ways, but it seems factually inaccurate to call.him a "professed fascist".
> How can you engage in polite, respectful discussion with someone who believes that you're more suited to be a slave than a free man?
Well, if the discussion is about technical matters, that's easy. (As long as CY is willing on his own part to talk politely and respectfully to people he considers his racial inferior, of course, which is not a given.)
Even on the actual matter of contention: yes, that's harder (albeit utterly irrelevant to Lambdaconf). But why should even that be impossible? CY's 'contribution' to politics seems to consist entirely of taking the vulgar prejudices of certain degenerate corners of the internet and giving them a superficially erudite and sesquipedalian form, without actually strengthening the intellectual content. His arguments are laughable. I'd probably pay good money to see someone politely, respectfully leave the whole edifice in smoking ruins.
This entire thread is a pretty depressing indictment of the sorts of people who hang out on HN. Seriously, nobody should care about offending Curtis Yarvin or any of his ilk.
> If personal politics and beliefs are not apart of the talk, I don't care.
You can't separate the two. Spouses invited to a speakers dinner? What if my spouse is also a man? What if my spouse is a different race? Should we give priority to people of color and women in the speaker selection process? Are trans people allowed in whichever bathrooms they want? Giving a talk on preventing fraud and abuse, where part of your belief system is "women should be free to give opinions online without bullying, trolling and harassment?" How are you supposed to give that talk without communicating a value system?
I'm always wary when people call someone racist/fascist. I'd like to see some definitive proof otherwise you're just labeling him without providing anything to backup your claims. Isn't that essentially just hearsay and libel?
Just to clear any ambiguity, I don't accept the modern definition where you can call someone racist because you don't like their writings in sensitive topic. I'd like to see some hard evidence where said person has actively discriminated against someone with different racial background.
Well done, John & Co. StrangeLoop caved to the threats of a vocal minority and, to my lights, made the wrong decision. Not only the wrong decision, but for the wrong reasons. Good for you for taking this principled -- and responsible -- stance.
There's this weird thing where libertarians go so far right they become neoreactionaries, and vice versa. It's sort of the horseshoe theory for the authoritarian-libertarian spectrum I guess. I don't really understand it.
I think "conduct vs beliefs" is the right metaphor by which to make these sorts of decisions. After all, we talk about a 'Code of Conduct' and not a 'Code of Belief' (the latter, in my opinion, would edge too close towards totalitarianism.)
As long as Curtis stays professional and speaks only on Urbit [0] he is doing the right thing and should be allowed to speak.
At what point does someone's routine vocal endorsement of racial superiority and advocation of violence become problematic? Or are we obligated to welcome these people into our conferences (workplaces? homes?) so long as they confine their exhortations to speech and only work to encourage others to perform the actual violence?
The idea of a "Code of Belief" is a strawman -- the issue at hand is the expectation not of freedom of thought or freedom of speech, but a desire for speech without consequences (which inevitably requires that the freedom of speech of others be quashed).
> At what point does someone's routine vocal
> endorsement of racial superiority and advocation of
> violence become problematic?
The Americans have a whole load of case law around First Amendment rights, it would be worth familiarizing yourself with that for a few hundred years worth of considered thought.
> Or are we obligated to welcome these people into
> our conferences
Well in this case, their conferences - he's there under his own technical merit, isn't he? Do you really get to exclude him because you don't like his views, even though he may well be more qualified than you to claim a right to be there?
> (workplaces?
Conveniently there's case law in employment too.
> homes?)
Weird strawman.
> the issue at hand is the expectation not of freedom of
> thought or freedom of speech, but a desire for speech
> without consequences
I would be curious to know what you think free speech means, if it doesn't mean speech without consequence. "We're free speech in this country, except you can go to jail for saying the wrong thing".
You have no understanding of the first amendment. It applies, of course, only to the government's response to speech.
I would be curious to know what you think free speech means, if it doesn't mean speech without consequence.
You can say anything you want, and the government won't intervene. That's all free speech means. Other people, groups, and corporations are free to judge you, criticize you, exclude you from their platforms and private events, organize boycotts against you, criticize people who agree with you, criticize people who choose not to exclude you, and so forth. You may dislike that they do those things, but they are free to do so without government interference, because of free speech.
You, in turn, are free to criticize and exclude them in a similar manner. This is dialogue, and a desire to promulgate your opinions but have others not promulgate their opinions (including when they're about you) is the height of hypocrisy.
> You have no understanding of the first amendment. It applies, of course, only to the government's response to speech.
Darn it, I thought we were going to get all the way through this discussion without someone wheeling out that old nag.
Once again: Attempting to ban people from unrelated fora based on their political views is not against the letter of the First Amendment to do this. But attempting to ban people from unrelated fora based on their political views is quite certainly against the spirit of the First Amendment.
What?! That has no support in law, history, or the documents surrounding the creation of the bill of rights. The idea that private fora would be required to accommodate all comers is antithetical to the ideas behind the Enlightenment philosophy which engendered the first amendment.
I honestly can't believe someone could be dumb enough to think that the founders would want the government to dictate who people were required to admit to non-public settings. There's no way you're being sincere.
You think that the fundamental principle behind the First Amendment and Enlightenment philosophy was that we really needed a natural rights justification to have people whose politics we disagree with ostracized from public life and prevented from earning a living?
Along with any other politician who has people removed from events for disrupting them and preventing him from being heard by the other participants?
FIFY.
If you can cite cases where people silently disagreeing, e.g. with t-shirts or signs that didn't block the view of others, were removed, I'm all ears. But while I haven't watched this closely, I'm under the strong impression the removees were shouting him down, and were often physically violent.
To quote Ronald Reagan in an analogous situation, "I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Green".
> The Americans have a whole load of case law around First Amendment rights, it would be worth familiarizing yourself with that for a few hundred years worth of considered thought.
The First Amendment cannot prevent social ostracization.
He already has a platform for those views. What, is they guy's very presence at a conference going to make other people more racist by osmosis? Come on now.
And frankly, I am of the view that it's better for views like Yarvin's to be out in the open where they can be challenged, rather than left to fester. That means - yes - that his speech must be allowed "without consequences" for his employment, etc.
All this childish feelings based barbage has got to stop.
No, really. People have different opinions, and are allowed to have them, even if they hurt your feelings or you disagree. Since when did this thought crime bullshit take over? Orwell would never have thought that self policing, not Big Brother and his armed henchmen, were what would do in individual thought.
Saying "People have different opinions" about nazi bullshit is kindergarten-level analysis.
Nazis are bad. Racists are bad. Claiming these "opinions" are equivalent to any other is childish and immature. Grow up and realize you live in a society with other people, and the positions you advocate for (and encourage others to advocate for) have real consequences.
Grow up and argue with people's ideas instead of banning them from conferences unrelated to said ideas. You stop bad ideas from proliferating by showing how they're wrong, not by acting like children and banning what you don't like.
Something is "bad" as you've decided, and you're going to actively take it upon yourself to enforce consequences for those who believe in the "bad" thing.
Think about that for a minute - then remember that interracial marriages used to be banned, and a person with your operating principles would have actively made it worse for those people to enforce the norm.
But this is different! You say - missing entirely the point.
"i have no idea why minorities have a problem with someone telling them they're inferior being elevated and celebrated by the conference they're paying money for."
Well today in "tech", if you openly support a republican candidate, good luck being invited at tech events or conferences as a speaker.
That's wrong of course and I say that as a non republican. The Tech industry has become so politicized positions that used to be seen as extreme are considered "normal". I mean how can an article such as this one can be deemed acceptable on a tech blog ? : https://archive.is/elvvc
Replace white people by black people and racism, defined as broad generalizations based on the color of skin, becomes obvious. Yes the article linked is racist period.
"Include all! White supremacists, non-white... If a few people (say non-white) feel uncomfortable and don't want to come, we're OK with that 100%!
Everyone should feel included! Racists, homophobes... Respect the beliefs of everyone, like believing there is a god, or that white people are superior, or believing you are being discriminated, or believing people will insult you or assault you at a whim for who you are, or believing you belong in a community full of racist assholes. It's OK 100%, all beliefs are equal, so we shouldn't discriminate people based on that!
That would be even worse than racism if you think about it."
Discriminating against homophobic people is going to discriminate against a lot of Muslims, Russians etc. Discriminating against racists is going to discriminate against a lot of people from all over the world. Are you OK with that?
Who is Yarvin? How is that relevant? I am not talking about a specific person, I am talking about the argument being made for accepting everyone no matter their "belief".
"White" is a social construct that changes with politics. Hilariously, the Irish weren't considered "white" in the US, and had to achieve whiteness. Moldbug is surrounded with white privilege in a country where blacks are regularly murdered by the state in broad daylight.
If I ever organize a conference (unlikely) I will return here and adopt LambdaConf's policy along with a link to this very open and thoughtful consideration as justification.
Disregarding irrelevant political views and focusing on the technical content is what every conference should do. It's too bad that this is less common than it should be.
If you don't care about political views of presenters, there's no need to bring inclusion to the table; just consider their technical talents and call it a day.
If you actually care about inclusion, you need to think about how including backwards-views that oppose inclusion itself could affect your effort. Banning only physically violent behavior is behind the times, it's obvious there are many ways of harming someone without lifting a finger. If you're supporting inclusion for inclusions's sake, including everyone may make sense. But if you really care about people who depend on you including them, it's obvious some measures must be taken to create a safe environment for the underrepresented.
> some measures must be taken to create a safe environment for the underrepresented.
Then it comes down to defining what "safe" means. To most people, that does mean basic physical safety, meaning you won't be physically assaulted or have your stuff damaged/stolen.
However, once you get into subjectivity of a listener's interpretation of others' words or social actions (like disinterest in their topics or cultural mismatch), calling any difference from their beliefs or expectations "unsafe", all procedural sanity flies out the window. The only types of meetings that can be rationally and formally capable of running under such specific clauses would be particularly exclusionary meetings of only certain beliefs.
Inclusivity means exposure to difference, and if exposure to difference means "unsafe" to someone, then inclusivity itself is unsafe to them. There are those who also simply equate "socially uncomfortable" with "unsafe", and social discomfort can come from literally anything.
(Edit: I would strongly prefer responses from the downvoters. Defining some specific, actionable policy capturing subjective interpretation by attendees without becoming exclusionary is something I'd be interested in actually seeing. I'm not talking about subjective application of policy, but actual full capture within policy.)
They didn't say hate speech was not bannable. They simply confirmed that the potential of hate speech is not sufficient to preemptively ban an individual without significant evidence. That seems about as much protection as you can provide without just permanently banning people who have ever expressed non-inclusive world views.
define safety. The problem is right there with all these words "safe","diversity","inclusiveness" which now means something different than what they are supposed to mean at first place.
And people are tricked into agreeing with this narrative because of course, people want to be safe, people want diversity, people want inclusiveness. But by safety you do not mean physical safety. By safety you mean "a environment where radical left-wing ideas cannot be challenged". By diversity you mean "people being there not because of their skills but because of their gender,race or sexual orientation". By inclusiveness you do not mean more of everybody, but "less white males". That's "newspeak" and it's misleading on purpose.
> But if you really care about people who depend on you including them, it's obvious some measures must be taken to create a safe environment for the underrepresented.
Please be specific: how is Yarvin's presence making you unsafe? Are you concerned he'll physically attack you, or insult you personally or as a member of a group? If not, you have no reason to feel unsafe.
(And if you feel unsafe anyway and believe that's a reason to ostracize him, well, I have bad news: your viewpoints make me feel unsafe. So sounds like you're not going to be attending, either.)
There is an extremely simple test for such arguments: would anyone make this argument if the person in question was Osama bin Laden? Suppose old Osama was a Haskell wizard. Would anyone argue he should still be at the talk? No.
But Nazis? Who make bin Laden's terrorism look like a rounding error? They're A-OK!
And people wonder about why there's a diversity problem in tech.
1. Bin Laden actually killed thousands of people. If, instead, your example was a Muslim preacher who advocated controversial views, but was not violent himself nor the head of a violent organization, then yes - we should accept such a Muslim preacher, if he has an interesting technical talk to give.
2. Has Moldbug actually self-identified as a Nazi? He has offensive views to many, to be sure, but Nazi is much more specific, and to me, a weird way to interpret what he writes. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that what you call "Nazi" I would call "disgusting, wrong, and troubling." The fact we don't agree on what precisely he is - even if we both dislike him - is one reason why we should not ban him. Especially since on other people we might not agree on who to ban (e.g. some consider abortion doctors to be literal murderers; should they ban such doctors from a programming conference?).
3. About the diversity situation in tech: the article mentions how another industry, medicine, handles this kind of thing. LambdaConf's decision is the default in that industry. In fact, in practically all industries. Yes the gender difference in tech is larger than in medicine. That is inconsistent with your claim.
But Marxists, they're cool right? Edgy even! If you want to hold these standards and exclude someone like Moldbug, fine by me. But if you do that there, do it consistently.
Newsflash: Che Guevera executed blacks, gays, nuns, and more in cold blood; his face is now considered a bland apparel decoration. Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot and Mengistu and many others killed and caused the deaths of 10s of millions of human beings, far more than Nazis could hope for. Marxism has never gone out of fashion on the left, and prominent tech speakers display their Marxist colors proudly.
Who will boycott them and stand for the memory of the millions killed in Marxist suppression, genocide, and famine?
This is an odd perspective on inclusivity, but I understand where it comes from.
I would think it would be well within the mandate of the conference organisers to pick talks that reflect the material they want to see presented and the conversation they want attendees to be able to participate in. The conference is a curated collection of talks, and will necessarily reflect an active political position held by the organising committee and a passive political position shaped by systemic issues. For almost all tech conferences, even the very large ones, the politics expressed are so bland and so unfocused that no one really cares about them. Almost no tech conference has the capability to seriously address systemic issues of inclusivity.
I imagine LambdaConf's view resonantes with the audience on HackerNews, because it addresses primarily the former politics. The latter politics aren't a danger to most of the commentators here.
The inclusivity of attendance seems to be much more defensible. Even under great pressure, I can see an event being reluctant to bar attendance. I don't know that any tech conferences ask unpopular people to simply stay away (even if they promise to be on best behaviour.)
Given how most codes of conduct are written there is virtually no difference between the two. If a code of conduct in a community applies everywhere its members might be on the internet or in the real world, then they are not free to say what they want publicly anymore. If one can be excluded from an opensoure community because of a totally unrelated comment on some obscure forum as stated by codes like the "contributor covenant", it's pretty clear that this kind of code of conduct is a code of thought.
No, this is just not true. You're arguing for speech without consequences, which is just a fancy way of saying that some people should have the right to speech, but others should not have that same right in return.
You'd think that someone could just come out and say exactly which of his views are so terrible, instead of pointing at his entire multiple-book-length blog and "wow just wow"ing.
The character of Moldbug (which I don't even know if it is actually what the author truly believes, it was always designed as a pen name) is a neo-reactionary. Ex: He is definitely a racist, with the belief of genetic differences in attitude that contributed to slavery. [1]
Now, I don't like those beliefs at all. I do think that LC made the right decision though. Inclusiveness is a good policy, and no matter how certain more authoritarianly inclined progressives are spinning this, that's what this is. Assuming no one is threatened, and he isn't promoting his politics, he should have a chance of going through the (anonymized!) entry process and talking about the really weird and awesome Urbit.
edit: One of my main philosophical issues with Moldbug (besides the repugnancy), is that he is internally inconsistent. He might refute that later on. I dunno, he's spewed out literally tens of thousands of pages of text.
It's likely that many on Hacker News join you in your condemnation of 'right-thinking' persons who happened to have lived in the past. An unsolicited word of advice to this audience: challenge yourself by considering the worldview of your forefathers before summarily condemning them.
This is a good primer on "neoreaction" [0]. To tell you the truth, what makes it a good primer is that it doesn't begin to describe the so-called solutions to democracy (this is where it gets weird/awful, as you see people recommending aristocracy, autocracy and monarchy, etc).
Thanks for the link. Neoreaction seems superficially similar to Marxism, in that it makes some interesting criticisms but would probably lead to millions of deaths if actually implemented.
There is nothing even remotely similar to Marxism about it (and it wasn't "the implementation" of Marxism that lead to millions of deaths).
Neoreaction is just another form of asshole-ism in the blogosphere.
People have strong reactions to it and thus its proponents should not be surprised when their belief colors other peoples' judgement of them when they want to talk about something unrelated at a conference.
How right you are! Let's ostracize and noplatform all the wrongthinkers. How about we start by banning those horrendous muslims whose beliefs are homophobic, sexist, calls for the death of apostates and atheists etc. Or maybe those sexist homophobic christians?
Embryonic CRISPR is here and humanity is not only hereditary. It's the genetics debate that needs to happen. Moldbug's racist viewpoint is now irrelevant.
How much should the State intervene? Wrath of Kahn and GATTACA were both dystopian. Roe v Wade will reopen soon on CRISPR grounds.
I'm sorry, did you take that at face value? I thought it was so over the top and ridiculous that people would get that it was sarcasm, but I guess I still have a lot to learn.
My bad, sometimes someone's satire is just someone else's actual thoughts...
I'm pretty sure secret societies and private groups will start forming as a result of people being pushed out of their right to speak openly about what they believe for fear it will offend others and ruin their careers.
Communism has killed millions and millions of people yet its advocates don't get blacklisted for wrongthink.
And despite Klabnik's efforts to police the ideas of tech speakers, his chosen software licenses don't prohibit use of his software by repressive regimes:
He's an anarchist of some sort, just like many. Anarchists generally want to replace the violent top down nation-state with bottom-up democratic forms. Real democracy, not fake doublespeak democracy where no one feels like their voice matters.
He says the single word which best describes him is small c communist, so at best this sort of anarchism is a violent tactic, and historically a very unwise one. And would be a quickly lethal one in the well armed US.
It's good to be cautious when people say they believe in "democracy" or "communism". (Does democracy mean killing people for billionaires and their 4-year king? Serious democracy proponents must say things like "bottom-up democracy." Same with communism: does it mean marxism/maoism/leninism/stalinism?)
Anyway, anarchists generally strive towards communism, if that means an advanced future society where you're free from boss-subordination, and some don't have to be "poor" to scare everyone else into obedience.
And anarchists don't bomb people, unlike adherents of every other political philosophy in the last decades. Certainly the US is always bombing people. Even Bernie Sanders supports it.
Anarchists don't generally strive towards communism because they recognize what history shows: communist states are even less accountable than modern oligarchal democracy.
Nothing rattles the "diversity" warriors cages than acceptance of diverse thoughts. From my experience, all notions of acceptance and diversity goes out the window when you disagree or have a different political opinion with said warriors. It's a good way to dehumanize us for having the wrong thought.
"It's okay, you can kick him, he thinks X, Y, Z so he's practically Hitler"
> In the end, we all converged on the same opinion: that LambdaConf should focus on the behavior of attendees, rather than their belief systems.
And that wasn't the starting point? What a joke!
> We would never allow a violent criminal to attend LambdaConf.
Yes, you would. You'd be sued if you didn't. They did their time and (presumably) got out or the question would be moot. If they (or anyone else) threatened someone, see the next point.
> There is always a line. There must be one. The question is, where do we draw that line?
I've run conferences for years where the only policy of that sort is that we won't hesitate to call the police.
It's worked perfectly because if someone follows someone else to harass them that's illegal despite the subject matter. Harassing someone for liking the wrong pokemon is just as actionable as harassing them because they're the wrong gender. If the person isn't harassing anyone they're free to their opinion no matter how odious.
The police are very helpful in explaining "a disturbance" and how someone is creating one!
And here's the answer to threats, violence, etc. They get arrested. Not expelled. Not shamed. Arrested. Treat it like you'd treat random street crime and have them arrested.
Ok, but that's not everything. What about talks with sexist content? Remember the "Perform like a porn star" talk (http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2009/04/25/why-rails-is-still-a...)? The person giving the talk might not be actively harassing someone, but they're clearly making the conference a place where women do not feel welcome.
You need a code of conduct to prevent that if you are not to pre-vet all slides, which is excessively bureaucratic and creates an implicit code of conduct anyway.
No, it's pretty easy. If you have a mandate you ruthlessly cull anything not on that mandate. You don't need a blacklist of banned topic, you have a whitelist of worthwhile ones and you ignore anything else.
Lambda is pretty solidly about functional programming. Maybe extending to programming/admin in general but not to politics.
Speakers should always be tweaking their talk for the audience anyways to handle different durations, venues, crowds, time of day, etc. If there's anything you don't want you can fix it here.
From the article: "Well, I believe in free-market capitalism. A well-known and popular programmer has tweeted, repeatedly, that he supports violence (real violence, e.g., the firing squad) for people who believe that."
Well, that's a political position with sizable historical backing. The people behind the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and China's revolution would all have agreed.
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" - Marx.
The relevance is that this guy isn't the only one who believes it, just the only one we're currently talking about for being honest on social media.
His speech is no more actionable (and thus no more worrying) towards any individual than "Just bomb Iraq" was in late 2001. Cough.
In lieu of threats you don't get safer for banning him because 1) bans don't actually work against criminals (not that he is, but if he was) and 2) if you're really at risk there are billions more who feel the same way he does. Better to avoid a false sense of security and just be on your toes.
"That I shall not talk or act in ways that could make minority groups feel bullied, harassed, intimidated, stalked, stereotyped, or belittled; examples of minority groups include women, people of color, lesbians, gays, and people who are disabled, bisexual, transsexual, asexual, intersex, transgender, and gender-variant;"
So as a member of the majority, I'm expressly the only person bound by these rules of behavior in this pledge. My allowed attendance would be contingent on remaining silent the entire time on premises.
No, one member of such a group is also bound to conduct themselves relative to members of another such group.
One way that one could attend is to not say offensive things. Yes, anything could be offensive and you have no way of knowing a priori. But a reasonable person should be able to sort things out.
"But a reasonable person should be able to sort things out."
We have two articles on the front page condemning a two second soundbite at a keynote which was vetted by one of the most image conscious companies on the planet. I don't think your statement is true. If a code of conduct does not treat everyone as equals then it sets up a dynamic that will cause some group of people to shutdown and not participate.
You will need to remain silent if you bully, harrass, intimidate, stalk, stereotype, or belittle. It's contingent on actual behavior. Which was kind of the point of the whole article.
Since you're apparently talking about how unreasonable LambdaConf's code of conduct is, "donglegate" seems totally irrelevant given that it didn't involve the consequences of violating any conference's code of conduct, much less this one.
"Donglegate" involved person a being offended by what another person said whilst at a conference, and somebody else - not the conference organizer, or indeed anyone at the conference at all - punishing the person who caused offence.
You, like many others, miss the most important part of DongleGate. She shamed the supposed dongle-joke offender on Twitter with their picture, which was unambiguously against the Code of Conduct, for it bans harassing photography. She did not only fail to see the hypocrisy, her actions were deemed heroic and she compared herself to Joan of Arc.
This was a clear sign to anyone paying attention that Codes of Conduct were never about policing behavior objectively, but instead were to be wielded as a weapon to shame and attack particular groups of people based on a political ideology of victimhood.
Donglegate isn't about conference staff having a quiet word with people in private. It's about one person getting fired for offending another, and that person eventually getting fired because of community lacklash.
If all that had happened was that somebody got offended, privately told a staff member, and then the person causing offence had been privately spoken to - which is what the PyCon code of conduct required - we would never have heard about it.
Now, the possibility that the offendee might shame me publicly and cause me to get fired might have a chilling effect. But that's nothing to do with codes of conduct. If anything, publicly shaming somebody that offends you would be in violation of the code.
Your assertion was "You will need to remain silent if you bully, harrass, intimidate, stalk, stereotype, or belittle." The guys in donglegate did none of those things, and yet they were in fact reported to staff. Over private words.
My point is that you never know what is going to offend someone. This CoC says that you agree to be removed from the premises if someone gets offended, provided they are of proper minority status, which in itself invalidates the whole idea that this is a non-political CoC.
The code actually says that you agree to be removed if you "wantonly behave in a manner inconsistent with" it, and only one of the paragraphs mentioned minorities: they chose to lead with a general requirement to treat others with respect, dignity and empathy, regardless of who they are.
This is not a code of conduct designed to punish accidental "thought crime" against minorities: it is designed to prevent intentionally or recklessly offensive behaviour towards any and all conference attendees.
I do not doubt the good intentions of the authors. They clearly spent a lot of time thinking it through, and came up with something they felt was the most inclusive, and opened it up for comment. None of that was required of them, yet they did it, and that is admirable.
Sure, it was just one paragraph (or 1 of 5 bullet points in the pledge). Let's look at another:
"That if I become aware of any behavior by others which is inconsistent with this pledge, I shall take immediate action to report such behavior to event organizers;"
Coupled with this in particular from the previous quote: "examples of minority groups include..."
40% of this pledge says: If an event-goer commits and/or witnesses a behavior that could be offensive to a minority group of some sort, thanks for your money but we'll be taking those badges back, unless this hourly event staff member thinks you're cool.
This is exactly the point I'm making. Their problem was that they spoke aloud in a manner that does not properly reflect the sensibilities of someone they weren't even addressing.
EDIT: Herein lies the rub, and some might say the whole purpose behind CoC's. As a cop might say, you might beat the charge, but you won't beat the ride. Even if you've been tried by event staff for wrongspeak and found innocent, your whole experience is ruined.
If one did that one would, of course, be wrong, both in the general case (the jokes were silly grade-school level puns that would concern no well-balanced person) and the specific case (if anyone was being stereotyped or belittled, it would be males, given that they were telling the jokes about a male presenter.)
"My allowed attendance would be contingent on remaining silent the entire time on premises."
Only if you are incapable of acting like an adult human being. As someone who is also a member of the majority, I would find no problem in being able to follow the rules, because I can behave like an adult.
From one of Moldbug's many vocal supporters at a "Founders Fund-sponsored retreat": "It was really quite lovely. Later that day, in the jeep to the ranch house where everyone was staying, he started up with the casual racism, and everyone ignored him." (https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/606799534983770112)
The status quo: highly funded white people in a ranch house, obsessive dreams of white supremacy floating into the night...
(Unfortunately in the real world, very few "technologists" have any sort of progressive future vision. Most just chase money and perks, building bureaucratic tech. Politically regressive.)
> we wrote the speaker and asked for a public statement clearly stating the speaker’s views on violence.
What does "violence" mean here? We're talking about Moldbug's acts of spreading white supremacy whenever he gets a platform. Including tech conferences and good ol' boy networking.
> Social media has muddled this issue so much
"Social media"... as in this blogpost? Twitter & HN? Techies sound suspiciously like oppressive governments, blaming "social media" when it threatens actual disruptive change.
> Last year, StrangeLoop rescinded an invitation to a speaker because of the controversy that erupted (nay, exploded) when his talk was announced.
People pointed out the error, and StrangeLoop promptly fixed it. This is in keeping with previous actions, like implementing dozens of tips from a highly respected diversity consultant.
There's a reason StrangeLoop is considered way ahead of the curve. Other confs aren't willing to do what it takes to be excellent. (And anyway, StrangeLoop is more than just about a single style of programming, unlike LambdaConf.)
> Would this be the end of LambdaConf???
How many tech conferences ended so far because they give high-profile white supremacists a platform? Just look at the racially-skewed audiences.
> Feedback Highlights: Below are a few quotes from some of the amazing feedback we received:
7 in favor of giving Moldbug a platform. 1 unclear. That's all he decided to list.
> The status quo: highly funded white people in a ranch house, obsessive dreams of white supremacy floating into the night...
Were you there? If not, then you're projecting. As it happens, the participants were at best plurality white. And no, the PoC weren't all Asians either.
Also, because Twitter requires short statements, there are multiple readings of "ignored" there. I see you're taking the least charitable one, i.e., "everyone let it slide." That interpretation is incorrect. People stopped talking to him. Isn't shunning what you progs want?
