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lambdaconf
Mar. 28th, 2016 06:03 pmWas more or less planning on going to Lambdaconf this year. Lots of folks at the company recommend it.
Come this last week, I find out Moldbug was going per Degoes' blog post. whatevs. But it looks like the angry Social Justics Twitter Mob is working on revoking sponsorship of Lambdaconf. I wonder if it will happen.
It seems as if my beloved hacker community is now policing thinking. Being on the conservative side of things appears to be unacceptable (B. Eich @ Mozilla), and whatever lunacies Moldbug came up with are apparently unacceptable. Whatever happened to freedom to be weird, to believe odd things? There used to be all sort of fun and strange eccentricities. Selecting for high variance of ideas... And, worse, whatever happened to actual debate of ideas you disagreed with? That's gone the way of the dino, I guess.
(side note: long story over the past 18 months about uncomfortable ideas in universities being banned. Stupid. Break the bad ideas, don't avoid them).
There's a tradition in the Western Enlightenment about allowing debate of ideas: angry loud vehement debate of ideas; quiet long rationalization of ideas; sniping back and forth of ideas. This has fuelled the best of Western traditions. Idealogical purity across a society was a feature of tyrants; the Communists are the most present heirs of the approach; others have existed. Ideological purity in the software world will not be a pleasant place.
this story won't end well.
(Personal side note: I am of a faith tradition (Radical Reformation) which was persecuted brutally for thinking different. It is terribly straightforward for me to connect the current ideas over to that, even if they aren't being transferred to that right now. It's incredibly important we can yell at each other, then shake hands and not destroy each other's lives over our disagreements).
In any case: I do not support this kind of behaviour. If you want my (rather non-influential) support for this, you don't have it. If you want to argue with me: go for it.
Come this last week, I find out Moldbug was going per Degoes' blog post. whatevs. But it looks like the angry Social Justics Twitter Mob is working on revoking sponsorship of Lambdaconf. I wonder if it will happen.
It seems as if my beloved hacker community is now policing thinking. Being on the conservative side of things appears to be unacceptable (B. Eich @ Mozilla), and whatever lunacies Moldbug came up with are apparently unacceptable. Whatever happened to freedom to be weird, to believe odd things? There used to be all sort of fun and strange eccentricities. Selecting for high variance of ideas... And, worse, whatever happened to actual debate of ideas you disagreed with? That's gone the way of the dino, I guess.
(side note: long story over the past 18 months about uncomfortable ideas in universities being banned. Stupid. Break the bad ideas, don't avoid them).
There's a tradition in the Western Enlightenment about allowing debate of ideas: angry loud vehement debate of ideas; quiet long rationalization of ideas; sniping back and forth of ideas. This has fuelled the best of Western traditions. Idealogical purity across a society was a feature of tyrants; the Communists are the most present heirs of the approach; others have existed. Ideological purity in the software world will not be a pleasant place.
this story won't end well.
(Personal side note: I am of a faith tradition (Radical Reformation) which was persecuted brutally for thinking different. It is terribly straightforward for me to connect the current ideas over to that, even if they aren't being transferred to that right now. It's incredibly important we can yell at each other, then shake hands and not destroy each other's lives over our disagreements).
In any case: I do not support this kind of behaviour. If you want my (rather non-influential) support for this, you don't have it. If you want to argue with me: go for it.
