I wonder if the original email was more about this point in the "Pledge":
> 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;
It specifically talks about "minority groups". Presumably, the person who emailed John felt himself part of the "majority", or at least not covered in the "minority" groups.
I wonder why the pledge explicitly talks about minority groups? Why not just say that there should be no bullying, harassment, etc. period.
FWIW, I am a "person of color" (I do dislike using that phrase).
> I wonder why the pledge explicitly talks about minority groups? Why not just say that there should be no bullying, harassment, etc. period.
I think those groups are explicitly listed because not everyone believes all of those groups really exist. Similarly, some people believe that belonging to some of those groups is a choice.
Further, I'd imagine that all of those groups will be minorities at LambdaConf, but not all of them are minorities everywhere (women, people "of color", etc.)
I, too, am "of color" and dislike that phrase because A) it means nothing, B) it implies that being "of color" is abnormal and requires someone to quality the word "person", and C) there are way more of us than of non-colored people (whatever that means).
I really do think that there is a very important distinction to be made between what intrinsically makes people who they are and what is just their opinion, a matter of choice.
I may not be very articulate but race/ethnicity/origin/gender/nationality/sex/sexual-orientation/ice-cream-flavor-preferences (I do not list everything and may even be confused myself for some of them, hope I can get explained which and why if I am wrong) are fundamentally part of yourself as a human being. I mean that being challenged to change them is obviously not a process prone to success (if even technically possible for some).
However, I cringe a lot when religion is packed in the same bag. That's a matter of opinion and all opinions are in my book welcome to be challenged. You can be wrong about ideas/opinions. Being religious only means that, right now, you believe something. And people have shown again and again that they can change their mind, be converted to a new one or even just reject the current one without choosing an other one.
Protecting religions as being a defining part of the human being is not only wrong but so dangerous too for freedom of though. I dislike that so much when their are put on the same plan as really person(human-being?)-defining things that people have fought for in order to be acknowledged as equal-rights humans. Especially when so many religious systems refuse to recognize those equal rights.
P.S. : I also do think that political affiliation is exactly on the same level as religion. They are just a choice and it's problematic (even damageable) equating them with the rest in CoCs.
>I really do think that there is a very important distinction to be made between what intrinsically makes people who they are and what is just their opinion, a matter of choice.
I really don't think people actually choose their opinions. Humans' opinions are affected by a wide variety of different conscious and unconscious stimuli, such as culture, socio-economic background, and even genetics. Humans are illogical, and will likely post-hoc rationalize their biases rather than logically thinking up an ideology.
For example, you may be religious because you sincerely believe in it, or because you just happen to grow up in a religious family. Or you may adhere to a political affiliation because you sincerely think it was a good idea...or because you live in an area that shares that same political affiliation and associate with friends with that political affiliation. Or because some celebrity endorses a political affiliation and so you follow that celebrity and so on and so forth.
Assuming humans are fully rational beings is problematic (and damageable), and it's better to provide protections than to take them away just because your own bias makes it seem okay to do so.
> [Religion is] a matter of opinion and all opinions are in my book welcome to be challenged.
Religion is a strange word that means different things to different people. It's worth mentioning that whether God actually exists is not a matter of opinion. If everyone was omniscient, agnosticism would be moot. We'd all be atheists or deists.
With that in mind, the religious don't see God's existence as a matter of choice any more than someone's ethnicity is a matter of choice. In fact, many sooner believe they'd change their ethnicity before their relationship with their God (Galatians 3:28).
That being said, healthy challenge and discussion are good things.
If you were right, apostasy would not be a thing. Obviously it is always possible, and it does happen, for religious people to stop being so.
Because of this, equating religion and ethnicity is can of wrong and (dare I say) "bigoted". You should think of people who are attacked because of their ethnicity (say) and as such touched in their inner human nature. That is the worse attack one could have to sustain.
Now, show me someone technically changing his ethnicity to keep its relationship to god, and I would admit that we live in a different reality than I thought. Of course they may not want to, but the possibility, therefore the choice, of apostasy, is always present. For anyone.
You're still not seeing reality as a believer would. It's not a matter of choice whether God exists any more than it's a matter of choice whether gravity exists. And, in fact, gravity could cease to exist before God could.
> ...it is always possible, and it does happen, for religious people to stop being so.
But it's not possible for people to wish God in or out of existence. It's easier to wish yourself into being a parent. Or married. Or disabled. But we protect those classes. And rightly so.
You mention inner human nature, but in Judeo-Christian teaching, humanity was created in the image of God (imago dei). To deny that everyone was not created in the image of God actually does attack their nature. Though Christians are taught not to retaliate in kind, it is reasonable for them to insist that others are treated with dignity and respect.
So there's a lot there, some of it subtle at first glance:
1. believers don't believe God's existence is a choice
2. God created us in His image so it is a question of identity and human nature
3. mature Christians aren't supposed to be offended if they are mistreated for their beliefs
4. ...and they certainly don't need codes of conduct since God will enforce justice at the end of time
5. though it's also good for Christians to make sure people are not mistreated because of their beliefs
No, they consider your sex and gender to be determined by your brain, not by your body. Traditionally, society thinks that they have a choice. They have told us that they do not.
I took at it the other way. In my experience, and I think it's not controversial to claim this, devout (is there a better word? active?) Christians are in the minority in technology context. And especially so in 'tech cities' like NYC and SF. Specifically recognizing some minorities as protected and others as not protected can come across as antagonistic.
Of course that's just anecdotal, but it's worth considering that Christians do feel pressure to 'stay in the closet', so to speak.
CONTEXT: Linked post is from Feb 29, 2016. Before the recent tumult about LamdaConf announcing their intention to host a speaker who is also a "fascist", and "slavery apologist." (Post explaining their logic there is: http://degoes.net/articles/lambdaconf-inclusion .)
Speaking as a conservative Christian, that's a pretty tame pledge of conduct. The only thing that bothers me about it is that it demands that you go straight to a staff member if you see a violation, rather than try to resolve it peacefully. I certainly wouldn't feel like I was going to be asked to compromise my beliefs. Maybe the one who asked the question was extrapolating or asking based on other sources?
Indeed. If self-important bullies are demanding that folks get thrown out of professional conferences because of their personal political opinions, men and women of good will everywhere need to forthrightly stand up against that.
He seems like a nice, reasonable guy. I actually think that he's more tolerant than most people, and that the radical left could learn something from him.
In this particular case it's the radical left that is irate, so yes.
Also, in general the radical right (when this is used to refer to neoreaction) tends to just opine with long blog posts where they capitalise words like Tradition, Civilization and Enlightenment. They don't like to angrily point fingers as they feel this is unbecoming of gentlemen/women. (I'm being honest about their pretensions here.)
I am always amazed at how religion is such a hot and polarizing topic in the US.
Political debates in the US presidential election are baffling at best and often utterly cringe-worthy.
I don't even understand why someone would ask if a tech conference, a topic that has zero to do with religion, is 'for them too' because they're Christian?
Is proselytizing part of the conference's aim? no? Then why even ask? Is it non-obvious enough that you would need to ask?
Religion is not part of your identity, it's at best an opinion that you are (potentially temporary) holding now.
And this is wrong for CoCs to include religions, or political views, on the same level as identity defining traits like gender and race.
And that may be one of the big cultural difference between the US and my country.
Here the generally shared idea is that people are citizens of the republic first, before anything else. Such a comment from a politician would elicit a terrible uproar.
That being said, anything can be part of your identity, you can define yourself as punk rock if you want. What I mean and thought you understood is the difference between what is intrinsically you and not. Yes of course, to many, religion is important like veganism can be. But it remain a mere choice to keep it that way.
Apostasy is always a possibility and that makes it different in a way that equating both kinds of identities is lessening the damages one sustains when attacked on a fundamental part of its person-hood. If your race is criticized, that's an attack on your humanity. If someone criticize your belief system : meh none is challenged otherwise than on a thought level.
Is gender on the same level as race though?
You can't change your race but you can change your gender - both in cases it's warranted (gender dysphoria) and in those it's not (otherwise).
Also it's disingenuous that you say religion is not a part of a person's identity, when in fact there are people to whom it's an important part of their identity as a person. Sure you can argue relision is a choice - and I can grant you that - but then it's the same with non-gender-dysphoric transpeople;they just chose a different gender than their biological sex for an arbitrary reason.
As spiritual being maybe but not as human being, that is technically wrong. Your race is intrinsically you and being derogatory to it is lessening you as a fellow human.
Since that even in the most fundamentalist country, the most devout person has technically the possibility to personally wake up and change his mind (apostasy), religion is fundamentally an other, lesser kind of identity. As being vegan.
Giving religions more respect than they deserve is wrong and extremely dangerous. See Salman Rushdy and Charly Hebdo to see what this kind of thinking leads to.
We've had a week that went from a fascist AI bot that was taken down immediately to a real fascist who is being tolerated. This person thinks the "weak" should be enslaved by "strong", nonsensical and subjective categorizations where no doubt "strong" probably includes him and means people like him in this view.
There is definetly a camp of developers (not outsiders) who have denigrated StrongLoops decision and praised LambdaConf. These are engineers who may work with members of groups targeted by this fascists' views, engineers who may review a Black / Latino applicant for a job, contribute to the overall work environment for them.
To my point, what I see is a co-optation of the meaning of the world tolerance. When there is an fascist antagonist on minority groups, it is easier for these "tolerant" everyday individuals to say hey fascists should matter too at tech conferences. Because thats what tolerant means, even the fascists and racists matter, no? Things that appear logically equivalent are not always the best things to do. Part of me thinks this is part of antebellum United States' original sin; the wealthy white class using race and slavery to spur hate-mongering from working-middle class whites, who saw Black people as their problem and not class inequity. This is the "vicious lie" that MLK talked about and continues to manifest today as Tim Wise deals with: www.timwise.org/2015/04/how-racism-explains-americas-class-divide-and-culture-of-economic-cruelty-an-excerpt-from-under-the-affluence/
> This person thinks the "weak" should be enslaved by "strong", nonsensical and subjective categorizations where no doubt "strong" probably includes him and means people like him in this view.
He seems to believe that some groups are better (from the slaver's point of view) at being slaves than others are. Namely, when enslaved to do agricultural work those from agricultural societies are better slaves than those from hunter-gatherer societies.
That's quite different from saying that anyone should be enslaved.
Careful. Yarvin takes pains to be cryptic about his beliefs in his writing on line, but people who have spent time with him in the real world report that he's much more up front about it in person.
The popular interpretation of Yarvin's UR posts is probably not incorrect.
Not sure I follow all that, but MLK's theology (and the Declaration of Independence) recognize people as being special creatures. And each person is given an inherent dignity by his or her Creator. In American culture, this means limiting someone's freedom of expression (legally) has to come after some due process involving proof of real harm. The same impulse applies to social conventions, though there isn't the same bright line between tolerance and censorship.
Anyway, AI twitter bots aren't people, so they don't get the same benefit of the doubt. The false equivalence here is that "person" applies to robots as easily as human beings.
I believe that “good” can only, ever mean, “I like it,” and bad can only, ever mean, “I don’t like it.” Morality, in my view, is just how we try to objectify what are inherently subjective personal preferences.
This is... a ridiculously oversimplified caricature of atheistic philosophy, presumably now posted (as the original post predates the current controversy[0]) to imply the obviously incorrect syllogism that if we accept people who are privately religious we're somehow obligated to not only accept outspoken racists, but put them on a stage.
[0] The idea that it should be controversial to deny a platform to someone who's chosen to become a public figure by promoting racist violence is absurd, regardless of any technical accomplishments (which would be a pretty strong characterization of the pointless Turing trap that is urbit). I've already canceled my flight for LambdaConf and in the future I will happily decline to work with people who failed to do so.
> someone who's chosen to become a public figure by promoting racist violence
Maybe Mencius Moldbug is such a public figure, but Curtis Yarvin isn't. Mencius Moldbug was doxxed, not chosen to become a public figure. Do you support doxxing?
Do tech conferences honestly need codes of conduct?
Feels a bit like living in a home - some folks hate the idea of Home Owner Associations with their explicit rules, others can't imagine living next to people without everything spelled out.
> Do tech conferences honestly need codes of conduct?
Yes. "Common sense" and "common decency" aren't universal, even in situations that seem to fall under obvious and well-established social norms.
It's better to have these things written out so that no one can claim they didn't know any better. No one is asking the attendees to take this conduct into the rest of their lives -- it's just a way to behave that everyone can agree upon ahead of time to keep things civil.
Why not just reject a speaker if you think it will hurt ticket sales? You don't have a duty to stand up for free speech, or whatever. You host a conference, you protect your brand, and if people don't like it they can start their own.
> 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;
It specifically talks about "minority groups". Presumably, the person who emailed John felt himself part of the "majority", or at least not covered in the "minority" groups.
I wonder why the pledge explicitly talks about minority groups? Why not just say that there should be no bullying, harassment, etc. period.
FWIW, I am a "person of color" (I do dislike using that phrase).