[overgard]

Why does it matter what his political beliefs entail on a technical subject?

More to the point, while I'm guessing you didn't dox him or whatever, the fact that he wrote under a pseudonym and (as a person having read his blog) had no idea of his actual name, I get the impression you went out of your way on this one. I don't really care about right or left (I think both sides are idiotic), but it seems like you're going out of your way on this one.

[steveklabnik]

Your first sentence implies that technology and politics are divorced. I disagree with this. Furthermore, _certain_ views merit more consideration than others, especially with regards to something like a conference, see raganwald's comment elsewhere in this thread about conferences being cultural.

Second, I've been aware of Yarvin long enough that I am not particularly aware of how I came to know the psudonym. I don't remember it as being particularly private. I did not go out of my way, I saw his name on the program and instantly remembered. I'm not in the habit of digging through histories, but when I see a name I recognize, I recall a history like anyone else.

[overgard]

> Your first sentence implies that technology and politics are divorced. I disagree with this.

I find that perspective strange. Machinery does not particularly care what end it's put to.

> Second, I've been aware of Yarvin long enough that I am not particularly aware of how I came to know the psudonym. I don't remember it as being particularly private. I did not go out of my way, I saw his name on the program and instantly remembered. I'm not in the habit of digging through histories, but when I see a name I recognize, I recall a history like anyone else.

You try to minimize your association, but you took the effort to get him banned from speaking about a neutral topic because you dislike his political views. You ARE a censor. Frankly I think you're way worse than him, because at least he'd let you talk.

Amusingly it appears I have been slowbanned because of my participation in this conversation. Oh well.

[topynate]

Moldbug's fundamental definition of Left and Right is that the most purely Left organisation makes everything political, because everything is effected by persuasion, and the most purely Right organisation makes nothing political, because everything is by compulsion.

This is becoming a pretty fruitful way for me to analyse sentences along the lines of "the code is political." The interpretation is that if you 'accept' the code in some fashion, you are implicitly persuaded of some political proposition. This is a complete funhouse way of looking at what Yarvin might actually be doing: providing a structure that you can choose to execute, and that will instantiate certain unbreakable rules under which you must (are compelled to) operate. There's no subtext, it's right there in front of you in the most immediate manner possible. You either run it or you do something else.

Two branching lines of thought from here are that a) even as people like Klabnik try to separate the 'acceptable' political thought from the unacceptable residue of racism etc., they are constantly attacking at a political level, and b) looking at a rigorously defined computational system and trying to work out what the deep hidden politics of it are, is rather like the beginning meditator's mistake of thinking that mindfulness involves access to some distant source of knowledge. Rather, mindfulness involves noticing literally the most immediate possible thing, the activity of your own mind, which is with you every moment of your waking life.

[steveklabnik]

> you try to minimize your association

I did not, I am saying that when you claim I'm putting in a lot of effort to dig through someone's history, that's wrong.

> you took the effort to get him banned from speaking

If by 'took the effort' you mean 'sent a few dozen tweets over a few hours', then sure, that's effort. I didn't even particularly strongly argue that he should be banned, though I am certainly happy about the outcome here. I never even directly contacted the organizers, just stated my opinion in public, just as you're doing here.

[Dewie3]

> I find that perspective strange. Machinery does not particularly care what end it's put to.

Well it's a human activity like anything else. The technology itself might not be "political" [though that's debatable], but the attitudes and views of the practitioners will colour everything surrounding it. And Klabnik has shown that he has a big enough personality to impact the communities that he chooses to involve himself with, for better or for worse.