| > included as a speaker at an important conference gives a person prestige and credence for his ideas The question is does it give credence to the ideas presented at the conference or does it give credence to all of his ideas? On a somewhat unrelated note, I find that we place people that give talks at conferences, on a way to high pedestal. It feels like presenting oneself has become more important than writing code. > Communism, in the theoretical sense, wouldn't be guilty of that either. Neither does racism "in the theoretical sense" as the author of the article argues. And I'm not buying his argument either, so you simply can't ignore the the fact that communism produced the biggest genocides. >Why aren't people outraged about that one? To be honest I actually would be all in to ban a person developing military drones that can be used for "offensive" attacks from the conference. A person directly developing tools for murder has crossed the line of non-violence I talked about earlier. > racism ... being the justification ... to most wars ... So would you ban all religious people because religion has been used as a justification for war over and over again? To me there is a difference between believing something bad and having the intention to act on it.
I don't care about the author as long as he doesn't go out the next day to spit on a black person. And from what I've read the author has this weird "different but equally worth" racism that is somewhat "benign" (as in tumor). The person developing the drones however is directly ruining peoples lives. Of course he doesn't pull the trigger, but he willingly gives a gun to a psychopath. > First of all we aren't talking about what is legal. Why would we? If he had planned on doing something illegal at a conference and then got banned for it there would be zero discussion. > in my country at least UK? And I'm pretty sure that you won't be persecuted for causing "emotional harm" but for "disturbing the peace" or "inciting violence" or something similar. Note that in this case people claim that the emotional harm isn't caused by him giving a racist talk (which would be hate speech and which he's not going to give), but _his mere presence_. And I think as an adult one should be able to tolerate the presence of another person no matter how much one hates their views. > people are always free to organize events that accept this person (with LambdaConf choosing this path) and the author can even start his own conferences and communities. >that doesn't mean people can't exercise their own freedom of speech or freedom of association. Of course people are free to not attend. But then they should accept the vote people cast and stop the brigading. I am very sure that the people most vocal about this right now would try to stop and ruin any "racist" conference by putting pressure on sponsors and speakers. |