Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

I am highly opposed to this kind of screening, mainly because there's no objective measure of what "decent" speech is. There are highly politicized topics - think abortion rights - where the "common sense, decent" opinions on either side seem like radical extremism to the other.

There is literally not an opinion you can hold that won't offend a significant portion of attendees. Do you believe in global warming? You might seem to be an environmentalist whacko to the conservatives in the audience. Vocally support second amendment rights on Twitter? Some liberals might think you're a dangerous gun nut. Believe that misandry and reverse racism are real? A good chunk of the crowd will believe you're sexist and racist. Don't believe that they're real? Another group will think you're a hardline SJW weirdo.

I have no idea about the political opinions of most of the people I've seen speak. Maybe they'd be my best friend in real life, or maybe they're despicable. I don't know; I don't care. I'm not endorsing or condoning their personal opinions by listening to and benefitting from their technical experience in the subjects I'm interested in.

As it has been pointed out my many comedians, they intolerance of college campuses has become too burdensome to even bother with. Even some college professors and adjuncts have posted similar problems.

We have entered an era of selfishness. Where nothing is permitted to annoy the individual. We have moved beyond groups taking to shouting down they oppose; they still do; to where now the "feelings" of individuals are enough to silence speech. In groups defined as liberal it has to be the about as opposite as you can get from the definition.

Yes there are people who say stupid things, but that does not remove value from all their thoughts. Who needs the government thought police when the current generation wants that role?

In the same vein, if you as a conference organizer don't want to deal with the drama that an attendee might bring, you should have every right to exercise your freedom to deny speakers. The same people who would criticize you for being racist will criticize you for screening racists from speaking. There is no winning in these situations.

I personally value individual freedom over anything else. If you want to be a bigot and make people uncomfortable, or run around naked and make people uncomfortable, you should have every right to. Just as people have the right to not like you because you are doing things that make them uncomfortable.

> to where now the "feelings" of individuals are enough to silence speech

This is a straw man. People protest against hate speech not because of feelings, but because hate speech is believed to cause harm.

Either it is the case that hate speech is harmful (e.g. contributes to hateful actions, contributes to subconscious prejudice, etc) or hate speech is harmless (only feelings are hurt, but there are no other negative consequences).

So we're dealing with an empirical claim about the world. Social science departments can -- and do -- research this. Dismissing an entire field of research as "feelings" is unhelpful.

> This is a straw man. People protest against hate speech not because of feelings, but because hate speech is believed to cause harm.

I think the point was that my hate speech is often your rational, logical opinion (and vice versa). There's a lot of stuff that almost everyone can agree is horrible - when you get into extremes like burning crosses, not many people will argue for it - but the concept of hate speech is often diluted to the point of absurdity in common speech. I've personally all too frequently heard and read people define "hate speech" as "speech disapproving of my behavior or political views". I mean, I've heard sincere rants that supporting gay marriage is anti-religious hate speech. No one but the ranter was likely to agree with him, but there you have it.

It's true that many things are considered hate speech today, that weren't considered hate speech 20 years ago. Gay slurs, misogynistic slurs, ableist slurs, and so on. I absolutely don't consider this dilution to the point of absurdity, though.

Yes, the gay marriage example is silly. It's just a classic swicheroo: "They say WE practice hate speech, therefore we'll argue THEY practice hate speech. We're so clever!". It's asinine, because you can apply this kind of inversion to anything.

It's not like society is in any way suffering because people are becoming less tolerant of hate speech. The government doesn't jail people for saying politically incorrect things (that would be terrible). It's just that politically incorrect speech gets stigmatized. That's progress.

What constitutes "hate speech"? I understand and agree with your point regarding speech that is literally advocating violent action against an individual or group, but what about speech that e.g. claims that there is no sexism in tech, or that the evidence a university student committed a rape is not so good, or that such-and-such culture does not promote personal achievement, and so on? You may disagree with these claims, but do they qualify as "hate speech"?

In other words:

> contributes to hateful actions, contributes to subconscious prejudice, etc

How much does the speech have to contribute to these, before it's declared out of bounds? Does even the first paragraph of this post qualify? Is any amount intolerable (ignoring for a moment that "contributes to subconscious prejudice" seems to apply to literally any statement with a truth value at all)? What if the amount it contributes is so small, the speech so nearly benign, that any harm it might do is almost certainly outdone by the harm done by censoring it in the first place?

It seems very difficult to get precise, actionable answers to these questions out of anybody. And precise, actionable answers are what's needed, because while nebulous reasoning is probably sufficient for an individual to decide "this person is an asshole and I don't like him and don't want to interact with him", it's generally a bad idea for large groups (conference organizers, university administrations, legislatures) to do the same, because there is a big difference between having an opinion about a person and making rules for people.

We probably don't want to find ourselves in a situation where nobody wants to give their personal opinion about anything controversial at all.

Where the boundaries are drawn is a matter of linguistics. That's not all that interesting to me. I think the important question is the extent to which marginalized groups are marginalized, and the extent to which the public discourse contributes to that marginalization.

I think the evidence is fairly one-sided, so I treat claims about certain cultures not promoting personal achievement with as much disdain as phrenology.

Issues like sexism in tech, campus rape, etc are covered extensively in social science departments everywhere. Stricter enforcement of political correctness should not impede these discussions. And it doesn't, mostly. Of course, internet discussions often turn into shouting matches, and then political correctness can be used as a club. That's not good, but unproductive internet debates aren't a new thing.

it is the rare human indeed who doesn't seen the evidence leading to their opinions as one-sided. it's probably more common to find people who are willing to silence opposition so they can find the evidence even more so.

I'm sorry to hear that the boundaries themselves are not interesting to you, since you seem to have some opinions about policy itself, which ought to be informed as much as possible by actual facts. If a governing or organizing body at any level hopes to address these issues, I would hope they are very interested in where the boundaries should be drawn, and why they should be drawn there.

My bad, I think I misunderstood your previous post.

It doesn't matter to me whether certain behavior is called "hate speech" or something else. I also don't mind that the meaning of words changes over time. That's mere linguistics.

I do care about the the trade-off between preventing harm and stifling expression. However, I don't think we're anywhere close to the point where social science is hampered because certain ideas can no longer be expressed without any consequence. If there's harm being done, then where is the evidence of that harm? And if we're not close to crossing that line yet, what's the big deal?

There have always been rules about what you can and cannot say on TV, in newspapers, and on college campuses. Cliquish, cultish and insular behavior is the default. You don't get fired for recommending IBM and you don't get in hot water for agreement with the status quo. This has always been the case, and stricter PC rules won't really make an impact here. But PC rules help clamp down on casual racism/sexism/etc, and so contribute to a more inclusive environment.

Besides, who's more likely to get in trouble? The employee who claims political correctness is overblown nonsense, or the employee who keeps complaining about sexual harassment/racist jokes? The latter is career suicide. So who's fighting for their right to free speech? They're just addressing blatantly illegal behavior, after all. And yet the silence is deafening. Because apparently people should be able to say that sexism in tech isn't real without consequence, but complaints about sexism in tech get you shunned like you wouldn't believe, and nobody cares.

You're effectively arguing that's it's all relative, therefore any political opinion is tolerable. Even though this has never been the case.

There would be so much outrage if vindictive prosecutors (like Carmen Ortiz) or patent trolls would get to speak at Strange Loop. Think about it for a second. It's utterly inconceivable they would be allowed in, no matter the technical merit of their hypothetical talk.

Shunning people like Moldbug is really no different. People with such abhorrent views shouldn't get a platform or the effective endorsement from the tech community.

I think that political opinions not related to the conference are irrelevant. I'd draw the distinction that Ortiz's and Darl McBride's actions actively oppose the thing that the conference is about: technology and innovation.

It's reasonable not to invite a hog farmer to a vegan conference, but I don't think it would be right to kick him out of a hog farming convention because he also happens to be pro-choice.

I agree with the general sentiment that someone's technical experience should in almost all cases be able to be presented independent of their political views but I would append to that the following: "but conferences can do whatever they like providing it is lawful".

there are no objective measures for what a good topic for a talk would be either. why should a measure necessarily be objective?

"Is this talk on-topic and appropriate to the target technical level" is much more well-defined than whether unrelated political views are "good".

Should a tech conference in San Francisco eschew Republicans? Would it be OK if a con in Topeka shunned Democrats? And would either serve the greater public good of mixing people with different beliefs together so they can find common ground and open communication channels?

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