Scott Alexander summarizes the latest hullabaloo:
Curtis Yarvin (aka “Mencius Moldbug”) was invited to give a presentation on his new computer system Urbit to the Strange Loop tech conference. Then some of his ideological enemies (actually literal Communists) found out, objected to his political views, and he got banned from the conference. Article here, Hacker News thread here, impressively prescient Moldbug post here, demonstration of inevitable Streisand Effect here. I did consider not linking this since it’s so obviously toxoplasma, but I was convinced to do so by this letter where the conference organizer states he’s never read any Moldbug himself, but decided to cave to the ban request because otherwise politics overshadow the conference, which was supposed to be about tech. This kind of crystallizes a pattern I’ve been noticing recently where some social justice activists use a tactic along the lines of “Nice institution youse gots here, shame if somebody were to politicize it”. I sympathize with the desire to give into that to avoid trouble, but I think maybe the only way to avoid enshrining that kind of heckler’s veto always working is to make it clear that the choice to give in will also be politicized. Maybe if organizers know that banning all insufficiently-leftist-people and not banning all insufficiently-leftist-people will both result in politicization and Internet firestorms, they’ll say “screw it” and just follow their principles.
There’s a bug in the Matrix. Popper wanted to protect the open society from its enemies in part by declaring the only thing intolerable was….”intolerance”. Now, all one need do to declare something intolerable and basically criminal, like murder or kidnapping — and sanction it accordingly, namely by force — was to label it “intolerant”.
Of course, it wasn’t Popper’s intention that people sling around words and their definitions like bonobo feces, and he never intended “intolerant” to mean “anything I don’t like”. But…here we are.
It’s horrifying, actually. MM gives us the amazing UR….then the diamond-perfect and zero degree kelvin Urbit and gets whacked for both.