13thLetter
That sounded awfully like you were accusing him of doing all this deliberately. But if you think it was all an accident, then okay.
Thought experiment: Your name is De Goes. You strongly believe that people's political opinions or personal characteristics should have no bearing on their professional life; to that point, you made sure to set up a blinded system for choosing LambdaConf speakers so nobody's prejudices, conscious or unconscious, could play a role. As a reward for actually practicing what Internet slacktivists merely preach, you have just discovered that one of the selected speakers turned out to be the infamous criminal Goldst -- er, Moldbug.
What's the PR move that gets you through this without fundamentally betraying your principles by giving in to the baying mob?
For starters, how does De Goes benefit from generating this drama? Most of the sponsors pulled out and he's been smeared as a racist from one end of the Internet to the other, in an era where that accusation is literally career-ending. Do you really think he decided to blow up LambdaConf in an enormous suicide bomb, and that all the fellow conference managers were okay with that?
We live in a culture where people have been primed to go nuclear, not just at the tiniest slight against them, but at the faintest media-driven rumor that some other person somewhere, who may not even exist, may have in theory been slighted. If those people cause drama, it is the fault of those people, not anyone else.
There were no real-world experiences of UFOs, but it's not correct to say that pilots didn't know what to expect -- flying saucers with a very specific description were a well-established part of popular culture. A saucer-shaped object at a great distance that moved quickly, made sharp turns which would be impossible for a fixed-wing aircraft, and which would eventually disappear as if it had moved straight away at high speed, was the standard description. It would have been in the mind of any pilot, and indeed exactly that description popped up innumerable times in the UFO reports.
Those actions by themselves are not necessarily right or wrong; it's the reason for the action which makes the difference.
It was right to mount a massive conventional invasion of Europe in order to defeat Nazi Germany's campaign of conquest. It would not be right to mount a massive conventional invasion of Europe because of someone jaywalking in Berlin.
It was right to mount a boycott campaign of South Africa and call the rulers of South Africa racists in order to end apartheid. Is it right to mount a boycott campaign against LambdaConf and call its organizers racists because in a blind evaluation they selected a speaker whose personal politics, which will not be touched on in any way at the convention, you find repellent?
We're unlikely to have a productive discussion if you think that. More accurately, you are unlikely to have a productive discussion in any context whatsoever, because you will be unable to evaluate ideas outside the context of the man who holds them.
If you want to complain loudly about the conference as you don't attend, go for it. But once you're pressuring sponsors into pulling out, once you're running a weeks-long harassment campaign against the organizers, and especially once you're pitching a fit about the conference managing to find other funding despite your best efforts, that goes way, way, way beyond mere complaining. You are making an affirmative effort to prevent the conference from happening at all, and at the very least I'd suggest that you own it.
If the anti-inclusion folks were merely "publicly expressing market preferences" they wouldn't be so furious about how LambdaConf managed to find enough funding to keep going. They're already not going, and they've said so loudly and publicly, right? So why are they so bothered that anyone is going, that the conference continues to exist at all?
It's not about justice; it's about power. Simple as that. It's not enough to not attend a talk by Yarvin, or even to not go to a conference he's attending; it's about making sure he can't speak, anywhere, pour encourager les autres.
It's really easy to forget this. Ads can be a good thing! Anyone ever pick up Computer Shopper magazine in the '90s? It was a giant phonebook full of practically nothing but ads for computer hardware and software. And not only did people voluntarily read it, they paid money for the privilege, because it was useful to them.
Google offered a high quality service for free. (Well, "free" as in they're selling eyeballs to advertisers, but, you know. Internet free.) They aggressively promoted it to the entire world. Literally a billion people took them up on it and, after years of reliable service, have made it a central part of their professional and personal lives.
What is Google's responsibility at this point to not grief those billion people? Whether by bad April Fool's pranks, or anything else?
If the takeaway from your comment is that the world would be better if people paid for their email service, I wouldn't disagree. But how we get back to that point is not at all clear.
If you think that was an unfair summary, well, a) it was, and b) it also quite clearly explains why "privilege" is a losing argument if you're actually interested in increasing the amount of justice in this world. Privilege sounds automatically unfair and feels unfair and people's minds will slam shut. Do you really want to expand the reach of your ideas, as opposed to just virtue-signal to fellow activists? Then drop "privilege."
How about if nobody gets punched. Don't roll out demeaning stereotypes against any groups; instead, treat people like human beings. Who knows, it might work out!
I'll freely grant that I don't know what, specifically, they should do, but "sorry lol" doesn't really cut it.
Oh, is there? That's quite a harsh accusation -- it can get people instantly fired nowadays -- so I'm sure you can back it up.
> It's like a dog whistle in that certain audiences hear the message, and others don't.
You seem to be very good indeed at hearing this alleged dog whistle. Perhaps the problem is a little closer to home than you realize.
If there's no problem with B's behavior, the takeaway is that no one can say anything that anyone would take offense to, because they'd be putting their employment at risk. No thanks.
There are ways besides government force to chill free speech.
In that case, you must believe that Yarvin is not a racist, because he has stated at great length (not that he's capable of talking at other lengths, of course) that the value of other people has absolutely nothing to do with their intelligence, whether it's 0% genetic or 100%.
Make no mistake, in an actual fascist regime people like this would be the first to knuckle under.
Or, for that matter, if you're a fundamentalist Christian, Trump supporter, gay marriage opponent.
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0469559,-118.2309557,926a,20...
If their values are "we cannot interact in a professional manner with people who hold views we dislike," their values are bad and they should compromise them. If we can't get along with those with whom we disagree when necessary to accomplish unrelated things, we might as well disband this country and start arming up for civil war, because that's where this road ends.