[archagon]

Frankly, intelligence is not very high on my list of attributes I value in people. Plenty of terrible people are intelligent. And although I'm not deeply versed on the collective works of Yarvin/Moldbug, I know enough from osmosis, and also that, a) dark enlightenment type discussions that I've witnessed on Reddit et al. over the past few years — which have seemingly morphed into today's alt-right — are downright nauseating in their toxicity, and b) "roleplaying" and/or "it was just a joke" is one of the most disingenuous and overused excuses on the internet today. I equally loathe Thiel's ideas, and he appears to be closely tied to the project. There's really not much wiggle room here, even if the tech is great.

Tribalism. Is something like GNU equally tribalistic, then? Are we not permitted to shape the world by selectively choosing which personalities and projects will help us towards a better future? Tech by itself is worthless; it's the people who handle it and the social contexts in which it exists that make all the difference.

As for debate, there's the sea lion principle[1][2]. Unfortunately, with some genres of ideas, prim and proper debate is simply impossible. You're pitting reason against waves of the unreasonable. It is a war of attrition and you will lose.

It makes no difference to me whether any one particular person will "dig in to their beliefs and decide for [themselves]". I am personally not concerned with changing hearts and minds, but as a member of the community I do want to make my personal line in the sand clear and hope that others feel the same way. The coddling and back-patting that SV folks give these kinds of idealogues really upsets me.

[1]: http://wondermark.com/1k62/ [2]: https://www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/

[sillysaurus3]

Listen to what I'm saying. If you want to exclude him, the very least you owe him is to paste an actual quote written by him as justification. Without that, this is straight-up libel.

[archagon]

Libel? That’s laughable, given that the only thing I pointed to was Yarvin’s very clear intellectual ties to the dark enlightenment school of thought, further reinforced by his connections to people like Thiel and Bannon. I am not going to go spelunking for quotes just to win some karma on the internet. I have better things to do with my time. Obviously.

[sillysaurus3]

Right, so you get to drop a molotov here in hopes that you'll sway people from supporting Chris. The moment you have to do real work, you're out.

You posted here because you thought you'd influence people. My mind is open. Do you want to influence them or not?

It's not even hard. A single quote along the lines of "I support murdering people I dislike" would do it.

(Meanwhile, soon: "'I support murdering people I dislike' -- quote penned under handle sillysaurus3 casts serious doubts about the author's moral compass")

You're not even allowing for the possibility that his followers took his writings and morphed them into whatever ideas offended you. (You still haven't specified those.) If hypothetically some alt-right fanatics seized pg's essays and lauded them as an example of white supremacy, are we to exclude Paul from polite society too?

[archagon]

First, I expressly did not post here to have debates or convince people. Rather, it was a comment-vote in favor of “this guy has shitty beliefs and we should not support him”. In some threads, this line of thinking wins out; in others (like this one), it loses. Over time, these individual battles help shape the zeitgeist of the site. I am not good at debate, but I hope to do my part in any small way I can.

Second, as with many nefarious types, Yarvin knows full well that outright saying “I fully embrace monarchical white supremacy” will bomb his reputation, so he carefully scatters bits and pieces of his beliefs throughout his missives and couches it all in a thin veneer of plausible deniability.

I mean, you can read as well as me. Just delve into these quotes[1] and tell me they don’t reek of white supremacy. Does “breeding colonies of foreigners” and “debased, para-human dregs” not tip you off? FFS. Consider also the audience of every paragraph on that page — the implicit “us”. It’s the same exact white-fright garbage that the alt-right is spewing and that racists and xenophobes have peddled for centuries, just with an odd philosopher thrown in here and there.

[1]: https://peppermintfrosted.wordpress.com/moldbug-quotes/