Of course, LambdaConf has every right to define its community in the way it sees fit.<p>While their explanation does have a lot of logical appeal (see: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/satnam-singh/dr-spock-vs-diversity/10154092724913630" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/notes/satnam-singh/dr-spock-vs-dive...</a>), it's important to remember that prospective attendees and speakers <i>also</i> have the right of free association.<p>The fact is, I <i>do</i> wish to exclude myself from any community that deliberately includes Yarvin and his ilk. I would encourage others to make the same decision. I will happily discuss or debate ideas with them on any topic, in any forum where it makes sense to do so. They are human beings and deserve all the rights and privileges thereof.<p>But I'm not obligated to drink beer and break bread with them, pretending nothing is wrong.<p>This isn't a free speech issue, this is a "who do you want in your community" issue. In the light of a community, you can't, and you shouldn't, pull one aspect of a person's character and isolate it from the rest of their identity.<p>I hope people give me the same treatment. I am more than the content of my technical talks, and so is Yarvin.
This is really a wonderful post. Too many open source projects, conferences, and the like have turned into witch hunts by, as John mentions, the morality police. Maintainers are bullied into adopting CoCs even if there have been no issues at all in their community, and distancing themselves from valued members of their community for something dumb they may have said or done in entirely different contexts or years ago.<p>The whole set of posts John has provided on the matter have been extremely fair and thoughtful.
I read an FAQ on neo-reactionism and it's totally insane. But I would be fine with the guy lecturing about computers if he knew his stuff. Honestly I find intelligent, rational people who come to radically different conclusions about society to be fascinating.<p>On the other hand, if Hitler himself was alive and gave a speech on art, I wouldn't want to hear it because of his politics and actions. So clearly there is a spectrum for me, and at some point the politics become so bad I can't stand the person.<p>Also, by giving this person a speaking role, he becomes more authoritative in all subjects, so it probably is better not to help him. In summary, lots to think about!
How crazy -- I'm vaguely familiar with Curtis' work, and would have never known (or cared) about his political views until the people looking to "no platform" him gave him a platform.<p>Streisand effect, people.
Quoting from a Lobste.rs post [1] on the other side of this issue:<p>> Here’s a different approach, which explains this quite reasonably: LambdaConf made a lot of effort to contact organisations involving PoC, introducing diversity scholarships etc. to gain some fame. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, they decide to run a person which is clearly incompatible. These organisations cut their ties and oppose the project they supported. It’s all very unsurprising. You can’t shout “everyone is equal, please spread!” and then invite someone on the speakers list who wrote hundreds of thousands of words how he thinks people are fundamentally unequal by disposition and some should be slaves.<p>> I’d be far less aggravated if LambdaConf had just been a run-of-the-mill conference, but it tried to be <i>the diverse conference in FP</i>. Now it shows that they actually meant “libertarian”. Appropriating terms like “inclusive” or “diverse” for that is just a recipe for disaster...<p>> LambdaConf chose to be a temporary, short space where anything goes unless it’s not physically violent. What they <i>communicated</i> was something different though. And that difference is biting them now, making sponsors jump off and people protest.<p>In sum: people are upset because they feel used - that LambdaConf made one set of promises and advertised in a specific way to gain fame, then flipped on those values afterward.<p>[1] <a href="https://lobste.rs/s/dibl7y/why_we_re_sponsoring_lambdaconf_2016/comments/x7kpvy#c_x7kpvy" rel="nofollow">https://lobste.rs/s/dibl7y/why_we_re_sponsoring_lambdaconf_2...</a>
What an amazing article; cool-headed, rational and very well-argued. Especially the "Appendix" containing definitions and short doscussions/arguments is worth reading.
I think the policy to ignore social media is a valuable innovation. For a couple of years, I have hoped to see companies adopt this policy to protect their employees from being capriciously let go.
Exceptionally lucid and captures every this I think of and aligns well with my position.<p>It is ironically said that fundamental Christians of today would give Jesus the hardest time if this was his Era.<p>Likewise, I have observed that the most "militantly liberal expousers" seem to be the most intolerant of other views.(I speak as an observer from outside the western world where this is prevalent)<p>I hope this is the end of this issue.<p>This response will serve as template for future moral police people
I read Yarvin's response to this whole incident: <a href="https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lambdaconf-anyway-35ff8cd4fb9d#.6xux1ooek" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@curtis.yarvin/why-you-should-come-to-lam...</a><p>Could someone provide a link to his pro-slavery arguments?
I'm not a part of LambdaConf, nor would I plan to (not because of the controversy, but just because I don't have the time/money to attend any US-based conference)...<p>But these discussions remind me a lot of the "censorship" discussions that have been had both on places like reddit or twitter.<p>For the longest time, code of conducts were a thing that were accepted. Don't be a jerk, don't spout racist stuff at people. Loads of forums had it, and the places that didn't basically became 4chan (which is interesting in its own right but filled with pretty rude people).<p>Sometime between 1995 and 2015, we started thinking that rules that basically say "don't be a jerk" stopped being the norm.... I really wonder why. Now it gets classified as "censorship".<p>That being said, my understanding is that this guy's talk wasn't "How FP advances the causes of Stormfont", which makes it pretty hard to say outright "gotta kick him out".<p>But I wouldn't want Marine Le Pen or Trump at my FP conference, no matter how subtle and developed their views on FP are. My opinion does not entire conference submission guidelines make, but I can understand fighting against that. Social interactions don't work in a vacuum...<p>Glad I don't have to participate at this
From the article:<p>> Someone with progressive political views might feel emotionally threatened in the presence of rabid and well-known Trump supporters who are openly contemptuous of progressives in their personal lives […]<p>Ugh. I’m not sure how I would have selected examples of potentional emotional distress but a laundry list of caricatures of political, sexual, and religious attitudes wouldn’t have been my first choice.
This is a divisive issue, and originally I found myself agreeing with this post, because, in general, I expect a conference to about mature professionals focusing on the craft.<p>That said, LambdaConf advertises itself as a "magical place" with a "passionate and friendly community of like-minded souls."<p>Given that, I understand why people are upset. They are trying to have it both ways.
> Free speech advocates have gathered on one side, advocates for social justice on the other<p>wtf<p>Those two are supposed to be the same side. There's some really perverse twisting of words here to put social justice in opposition to free speech. How has the debate come to this?
About the chart on "moral reasoning", consequentialism, the idea that only the outcome is what matters, <i>is</i> an ethical system that one can base their morals off of. I'm not sure where they got the idea that they're two separate things.<p>Also the whole "xyism" thing seems to be their own made-up terminology for the idea of an illusory correlation in social psychology. Why not just say stereotyping groups is a bad idea instead of the weird references to logic and set theory?
I do not understand the prevailing opinions in this thread and I must confess that, even though I disagree respectfully with LambdaConf's choices (respectfully as in, hey, it's their conference and I can even understand their reasoning), seeing the uncertainty and the doubt and the bullying and the lack of empathy for the less fortunate, this is the first time I'm ashamed of being a software developer.<p>For those with doubts, here's one of his posts that is racist by definition: <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.ro/2009/07/why-carlyle-matters.html?m=1" rel="nofollow">http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.ro/2009/07/why-carl...</a><p>And given his now infamous Medium post, given that it can be hard to parse English, here's a review of the book that he's recommending in support of his racist views: <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2014/troublesome-sources" rel="nofollow">https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...</a><p>I personally don't understand how anybody can claim that his views aren't racist in the most profound hate-inducing ways, and for every such assertion it feels like a spit in the face at least of those that have had grandfathers surviving WWII, let alone the minorities amongst us that fear not for their job, but for their personal safety.<p>But keep thinking that hate speech is just political opinion that needs to be protected. And keep demeaning and silencing those that ring alarms, as if "SJWs" are amongst your biggest problems. Yeah, that worked out well in the past.
I don't recall this kind of brouhaha affecting more "academic" conferences, e.g. ISCA or Supercomputing, but I can't come up with a decent reason why that might be the case. Did the LambdaConf organizers just get unlucky?
An attempt to derive a concept of “inclusivity” from first principles, complete with made-up jargon words and <i>diagrams</i>.<p>DeGoes wants to be thought of as “inclusive” but doesn’t understand that the purpose of inclusivity is to hear from marginalised voices you might be systemically excluding. He thinks “ah, we’ll achieve ‘inclusivity’ by including everyone, even the odious!” Thus achieving literally the opposite. But that’s okay, he can show his working.<p>His new reactionary fandom (~ 0 of whom give two hoots about functional programming) are fully onside. Everyone else has left them to it; it’s unclear if DeGoes understands in any way that this is what has happened.
There's no such thing as "not becoming political". Hosting an event is a political act; so is selling tickets to the event or paying people to help you run it. These acts might be _normal_ but they're still _political_.<p>When someone says, "I don't want this to get political", what they're really saying is "I'm comfortable with the politics of the status quo and I want things to stay the way they are". Sometimes that's totally fine. In this case it means giving a voice to a racist advocate of slavery.<p>De Goes can have his conference, but arguing that this isn't a political decision is simply incorrect.
This is probably the most reasonable response to these sorts of pressures I've ever seen. One can hope that other groups will follow their lead and strive to act like fully-grown, professional, adults.<p>I'm sure they'll get eviscerated for it, though.
This is the blog in question: <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/</a><p>Honestly, I can't make heads or tails of it. There's some racist lingo, but more than anything <i>this guy seems unhinged, like the kind of person I wouldn't want to be in a room with, let alone have a conversation with.</i>
Apropos of anything else, the 'lawyer' example is a bad one, and contrived for the purpose of example.<p>If an attorney "knows" that their client is guilty, they are duty-bound as officers of the court to make that knowledge known.<p>Obviously that doesn't happen as much as it should...
This is an open letter of people protesting LambdaConf's decision: <a href="https://statement-on-lambdaconf.github.io/" rel="nofollow">https://statement-on-lambdaconf.github.io/</a><p>I invite anyone to peruse that list and tell me these aren't some of the brightest professionals and integral community members in functional programming (subtracting me of course). I welcome anyone to make the claim that these individuals haven't come to their positions through reason and deep consideration for the ramifications of how this issue is resolved.
This may not be a very popular belief but I honestly don't care what other people believe/think/worship/do as long as it doesn't harm any one else or me. I have extreme liberals on my Twitter feed as do I have extreme conservatives. People post stuff every now and again that kind of turns me off, but I still follow them because they have good stuff to say tech wise. I'm always open minded to what they post though.<p>In our profession we can't always work with the most open minded people(politically) but as long as the work gets done and they are open minded technically that's all that matters to me. I work with and hang out with people I don't agree with on certain things, drink beer, go over for dinner. No issue for me. I'm Libertarian, so politically I have something I can agree with on both sides usually.<p>As long as this guy doesn't give any hate speech or harm someone then I honestly don't see the problem.