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by esperent 28 days ago
Someone else mentioned that her problems are more likely stemming from her involvement in the neoreactionary (alt-right) movement circa 2015.

I've never heard of this and generally would say people should be given space to grow from things they said ten years ago... But...

> The Dark Enlightenment, also called the Neo-Reactionary movement (abbreviated to NRx), is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian,[1] and reactionary philosophical and political movement

> The Dark Enlightenment has been described as part of the alt-right, as its theoretical branch,[15][16] and as neo-fascist.[15][17] It has been described as the most significant political theory within the alt-right,[2] as "key to understanding" the alt-right political ideology

> The Dark Enlightenment has been described as part of the alt-right, as its theoretical branch,[15][16] and as neo-fascist.[15][17] It has been described as the most significant political theory within the alt-right,[2] as "key to understanding" the alt-right political ideology

And it continues with gems like "freedom is incompatible with democracy" and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

It's not like she made a few of the cuff statements here. She was so deeply involved in this movement that people were writing articles about her.

> And then there’s Justine Tunney, “co-founder of Occupy,” proud Google employee and self-declared defender of the tech elite.

Tunney does not just flirt with neoreactionary ideology, the way self-congratulatory “open-minded iconoclasts” like me did in high school and college. She goes full throttle in her embrace of it, doubles down on it, rejects every “politically correct” rejection of sexism or racism or classism that define the modern world.

She makes bold statements that IQ, law-abiding or -breaking tendencies and political alignment are all genetically determined.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/occupying-the-throne-justine-t...

As someone else mentioned below, this is why she was uninvited from speaking at the Internet Archive. It seems the llama.cpp drama had little if anything to do with it.

At the very least, if she has grown beyond this, I would expect or rather need her to acknowledge it and distance herself and explain how and why she's grown since then. Otherwise, I can only assume that she hasn't and is still basically that same trollish reactionary from 2015 and that's not someone I would want either working at my company or speaking at my convention.

1 comments

Justine might have - or perhaps used to have, seeing as this was over a decade ago - political views that are unorthodox and unpopular in mainstream tech circles. I don't agree with these views myself. But shunning him forever for this seems wildly disproportionate.

He is clearly a highly intelligent and highly accomplished individual, and an eloquent communicator. Indeed he is exactly the sort of person who organizations like the Internet Archive should be delighted to have speak on technical matters.

It comes across as very petty and short-sighted of the IA to rescind the invitation based on a handful of complainers complaining about non-technical issues that they are personally offended by.

Whatever happened to being tolerant of the perspectives and opinions of others, even if you strongly disagree?

It's a bad take to suggest that organizations should look past a person's loud supportive positions on eugenics because they might give a good tech talk. If Justine is as controversial as this post suggests (and it doesn't even name the controversial views!) why on earth would any organization want to give them a platform?

"Because they're smart" isn't a good enough reason. I wouldn't want to listen to a podcast that hosts eugenicists. I wouldn't want to appear on a podcast that hosts eugenicists. Even if they didn't talk about their problematic beliefs on the podcast.

There's no shortage of smart folks that don't have a complicated reputation. Organizations like the Internet Archive simply don't have to host them. And frankly, it sounds like they gave her the opportunity to explain her beliefs, and she chose not to. In a way, that's worse: it says "I don't want to explain my beliefs, because they're going to make me look worse" or "I don't want to disavow my problematic beliefs because I don't want to alienate people who share(d) those beliefs".