There are reasons why you might want to exclude HDBers that don’t depend on any particular HDB view being false. And there are reasons why you might object to including some of the people at Manifest even if you don’t think HDBers should be automatically excluded.
On the first point: The truth value of “most people who are into HDB are racist in the “dislike and are biased against Black people,” sense and many are fascists or support gross human rights violations” is independent of the truth-value of HDB. Certainly Bryan Caplan, who no one would consider a dogmatic leftist seems to think something like this (at least the human rights bit): see the blog post by him Nathan Young’s posted in another thread. The reports of slurs at the conference are evidence in favour of “invite HDB speakers, get bigots in the audience”, as is the presence of Yarvin (a genuine fascist’s) followers. (Even if Yarvin himself wasn’t there.)
It’s not low integrity to prioritise not attracting slur-chucking bigots and fascists over having speakers with a particular viewpoint even IF we assume that viewpoint includes some true and controversial claims. It is plausible that many obnoxious ideological groupings believe some true and controversial things. For all I know, Stalinists are nuch more likely to believe some true and controversial things about the US’s role in the Maidan rebellion and its influence on the later Russian decision to invade. But I would still be wary of inviting five people with that view to a prediction festival if it meant a high Stalinist attendance. I might be more inclined to invite them to an academic conference explicitly about the origins of the war in Ukraine.
This is also not an all-or-nothing matter. You can think it is possible for there to be some circumstances in which inviting some HDBers and still think these sort of considerations make it a bad idea to invite multiple people with scientific racism controversies to a fun conference on prediction.
On the second point:
Belief in HDB is not in fact the only objection to several of the the speakers and attendees. Hanania is a former white nationalist who called Black people animals. Chau seems to have made generically disparaging about women’s academic ability on twitter, and to have a general history of race/gender edgelording. Hanson said controversial (and in my view misogynistic) things about rape. The Yarvinites are followers of someone who openly supports dictatorship and praises slavery and 19th century defenses of slavery. (It’s not clear the organisers can be blamed for the Yarvinites attendance in fairness: they didn’t explicitly invite them or Yarvin.) It’s perfectly consistent to think some or all of that is ban worthy even if you also believe being a HDBer is not.
If people defending HDB and/or HDBers eant to argue all that stuff is not THAT bad, I personally think that supports the previous reason for excluding them.
(Not engaging with your central point, instead locally engaging with a bunch of sub-claims you make)
The reports of slurs at the conference are evidence in favour of “invite HDB speakers, get bigots in the audience”
To be clear, I haven’t heard of actually anyone citing any slurs (and don’t really know what you are referring to hear). I definitely did not hear any. Maybe someone mentioned this somewhere in the two comment threads numbering over 500+ comments. The closest I can find is this section of the “My experiences [...]” post, which says:
or in less sophisticated cases the use of edgy words like “based”, “fag”, or “retarded” is more than enough to do the trick. If someone asks you what you think of Bukele, you can already guess where he wants to steer the conversation to.
But that doesn’t really sound like slurs in the usual sense, or at least a stretch of the word (I use the words “based” and “retarded” occasionally. “fag” feels weirder to me, though I still wouldn’t describe it as a slur (and I am also not sure whether the author actually heard that term).
called Black people animals
Hanania seems to deny this in a public podcast and multiple people who have dug into this a good amount disagree with you on this. I think it’s bad form to cite it as a undisputed fact despite that.
The Yarvinites are followers
I think you are engaging in speculation about the type of person who attended here, or are engaging in the noncentral fallacy. My guess is there were some people at the event who liked some things about Yarvin. I am highly doubtful that your statements about “The Yarvinites” has much predictive power about what those people do or believe.
I am gay. At this point it’s a term of endearment. If someone called me a fag in an unfriendly way I’d just be a bit baffled. Of course, this is just me.
It’s a famously “reclaimed” slur: Dan Savage used it positively for decades. But there is some dispute- in particular, it seems that many older gay men still have a strongly negative view of it, whereas younger crowds seem generally more accepting. As a Millennial, but not really in “the community,” I still find it off-putting when it’s used positively.
I’ve heard that there’s some queer vs gay tension as well that people that ID as queer are turning “fag” back into a slur, but I have no clue to what extent this is an actual phenomenon instead of outrage-bait.
Yes, I agree it’s used not-that-rarely within the gay community. This is very similar to the n-word situation, and I don’t think is very material to whether it’s a slur or not.
If a gay person called me a fag, I’d update that they were more edgy than me. If a straight person called me a fag, I’d update that they were a bigot (and/or very socially inept and in need of a talking to).
I mean, I think there are many racist-associated slurs that seem much more like central examples to me. I feel like I see random Youtubers of streamers or people in live chats use words like “fag” reasonably frequently, whereas there are many slurs that would indeed peak my ears much more than that. But like, IDK, I haven’t heard it used much, so I don’t have super strong intuitions here.
FYI fag is a pretty central example of a slur in America imo.
It gets used and normalized in some edgy cultures but I think that’s sort of like how the n-word gets used in some subcultures. (When I was growing up at least it was probably in the top 5 ‘worst’ words to say, at least weighted by ‘anyone ever actually said them’)
There’s also a thing where ‘retarded’ went from ‘not that bad’ to ‘particularly bad in some circles’, although I’m not sure how that played out since it was ‘after my time’.
All of this is sort of anti-inductive and evolving and makes sense to not be very obvious to a foreigner.
Eh, I’ve been living in the U.S. for a full decade, so I think the “foreigner excuse” doesn’t really work here, I think I was mostly just wrong in a kind of boring way.
My guess is I just happened to have not heard this specific term used very much where I could see people’s social reaction to it, which I guess is a weird attribute of slurs. Reading more about it in other contexts definitely made me convinced it qualifies as a slur (but also, relatedly, would honestly be quite surprised if people used it in any kind of real way during Manifest).
I’m not sure what you mean by “real way”. One of the central ways it’s culturally understood that that word and certain uses of “gay” are bad to use is to be contemptuous about things one doesn’t like or are insufficiently masculine. That seems like an important and real way it can be used for harm, not only literally meaning to call a gay person a slur.
You use it in quotes to refer to how other people use it (as we’ve been doing in this discussion).
You use it in a clearly light-hearted ironic way (this is dicier, but clearly sometimes possible. For example, if the slur is directed at a clearly non-applicable inanimate object in an ironic way, like, if someone were to list profanities in an exaggerated and joking way against a chair they just stubbed their toe against.)
You use it in a very non-central way (like, someone talks about the historical use of the word faggot, or like, somehow uses it for it’s other meaning “a bundle of sticks or twigs bound together as fuel.”)
You have a substantially different cultural background (like, among Australians, friendly insults appear much more common, and calling each other “cunt” or “fag” seems not too rare)
There are probably some more ways I can think of, but these four seem like reasonably common causes of people using slurs with it being “real”.
I’m not aware of “fag” being a common term of endearment among Australians the way “cunt” is, though I might be wrong about that. I think it and “cunt” are in pretty different categories as far as obscene words go, at least in commonwealth countries.
In my experience of being an Australian, “fag” is not a common term of endearment I’ve encountered, except in the sense that general insults are used as terms of endearment (like “shit-for-brains” etc).
I have privately been told by someone I know who attended that they also heard slurs. (They didn’t say what other than “not the n-word”.) I’m not going to name them, because they have already said not to cite them on the forum about another thing they told me they was so my guess is they do not want to be dragged into the controversy on this.
I’d also say that I remember how certain neoreactionaries (not all of them) used to talk on SSC-these people of course eventually got banned. If that was a crowd attracted-which the Yarvin after party suggests it was-I am extremely unsurprised that people whose comments on SSC used to include things like rants about how “white gimmedats” and “white sluts” were teaming up with Black people to demand ruinous government spending, will also use racial slurs when they are not on a forum that will mod that out.
What is meant to be the non-central fallacy in this context? Are you just saying you doubt they are political supporters of Yarvin’s ideas?
(and I am also not sure whether the author actually heard that term)
I can’t confidently recall it was “fag” or “faggot” at this point anymore, but the term was definitely used.
I’m choosing to interpret this as you wondering if I used that collection of words as a representation of the kind of soft opens some of the attendees engaged in instead of real examples (as opposed to suggesting that I was lying), but “fag”, “retarded”, “based”, and “cuck” were all used quite a bit.
I’m choosing to interpret this as you wondering if I used that collection of words as a representation of the kind of soft opens some of the attendees engaged in instead of real examples (as opposed to suggesting that I was lying), but “fag”, “retarded”, “based”, and “cuck” were all used quite a bit.
Yep, that’s how I interpreted it, especially given that the other two seemed to me quite different (again, “based” really has no connotation with a slur to me and is just like a weird word that people on the Internet use, if anything it’s a compliment).
Not that Wikipedia is authoritative for anything, but it describes one of those words as “a term, usually considered a slur, used to refer to gay men.” I would personally characterize the r-word as a slur if referring to an individual with an intellectual disability (and at least as in poor taste otherwise). I’m over 40 so do not understand “based.” Of course, one can disagree with these opinions, but it would not be unreasonable for David to have characterized some of these words as slurs.
Hanania didn’t call black people animals. I reached out to him and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
Also, when I first read the tweet it was clear from the context that he wasn’t referring to black people.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
There are reasons why you might want to exclude HDBers that don’t depend on any particular HDB view being false. And there are reasons why you might object to including some of the people at Manifest even if you don’t think HDBers should be automatically excluded.
On the first point: The truth value of “most people who are into HDB are racist in the “dislike and are biased against Black people,” sense and many are fascists or support gross human rights violations” is independent of the truth-value of HDB. Certainly Bryan Caplan, who no one would consider a dogmatic leftist seems to think something like this (at least the human rights bit): see the blog post by him Nathan Young’s posted in another thread. The reports of slurs at the conference are evidence in favour of “invite HDB speakers, get bigots in the audience”, as is the presence of Yarvin (a genuine fascist’s) followers. (Even if Yarvin himself wasn’t there.) It’s not low integrity to prioritise not attracting slur-chucking bigots and fascists over having speakers with a particular viewpoint even IF we assume that viewpoint includes some true and controversial claims. It is plausible that many obnoxious ideological groupings believe some true and controversial things. For all I know, Stalinists are nuch more likely to believe some true and controversial things about the US’s role in the Maidan rebellion and its influence on the later Russian decision to invade. But I would still be wary of inviting five people with that view to a prediction festival if it meant a high Stalinist attendance. I might be more inclined to invite them to an academic conference explicitly about the origins of the war in Ukraine. This is also not an all-or-nothing matter. You can think it is possible for there to be some circumstances in which inviting some HDBers and still think these sort of considerations make it a bad idea to invite multiple people with scientific racism controversies to a fun conference on prediction.
On the second point:
Belief in HDB is not in fact the only objection to several of the the speakers and attendees. Hanania is a former white nationalist who called Black people animals. Chau seems to have made generically disparaging about women’s academic ability on twitter, and to have a general history of race/gender edgelording. Hanson said controversial (and in my view misogynistic) things about rape. The Yarvinites are followers of someone who openly supports dictatorship and praises slavery and 19th century defenses of slavery. (It’s not clear the organisers can be blamed for the Yarvinites attendance in fairness: they didn’t explicitly invite them or Yarvin.) It’s perfectly consistent to think some or all of that is ban worthy even if you also believe being a HDBer is not. If people defending HDB and/or HDBers eant to argue all that stuff is not THAT bad, I personally think that supports the previous reason for excluding them.
(Not engaging with your central point, instead locally engaging with a bunch of sub-claims you make)
To be clear, I haven’t heard of actually anyone citing any slurs (and don’t really know what you are referring to hear). I definitely did not hear any. Maybe someone mentioned this somewhere in the two comment threads numbering over 500+ comments. The closest I can find is this section of the “My experiences [...]” post, which says:
But that doesn’t really sound like slurs in the usual sense, or at least a stretch of the word (I use the words “based” and “retarded” occasionally. “fag” feels weirder to me, though I still wouldn’t describe it as a slur (and I am also not sure whether the author actually heard that term).
Hanania seems to deny this in a public podcast and multiple people who have dug into this a good amount disagree with you on this. I think it’s bad form to cite it as a undisputed fact despite that.
I think you are engaging in speculation about the type of person who attended here, or are engaging in the noncentral fallacy. My guess is there were some people at the event who liked some things about Yarvin. I am highly doubtful that your statements about “The Yarvinites” has much predictive power about what those people do or believe.
Wait what? I can’t think of many words that would be more central examples of slurs than that.
I am gay. At this point it’s a term of endearment. If someone called me a fag in an unfriendly way I’d just be a bit baffled. Of course, this is just me.
It’s a famously “reclaimed” slur: Dan Savage used it positively for decades. But there is some dispute- in particular, it seems that many older gay men still have a strongly negative view of it, whereas younger crowds seem generally more accepting. As a Millennial, but not really in “the community,” I still find it off-putting when it’s used positively.
I’ve heard that there’s some queer vs gay tension as well that people that ID as queer are turning “fag” back into a slur, but I have no clue to what extent this is an actual phenomenon instead of outrage-bait.
Yes, I agree it’s used not-that-rarely within the gay community. This is very similar to the n-word situation, and I don’t think is very material to whether it’s a slur or not.
If a gay person called me a fag, I’d update that they were more edgy than me. If a straight person called me a fag, I’d update that they were a bigot (and/or very socially inept and in need of a talking to).
I mean, I think there are many racist-associated slurs that seem much more like central examples to me. I feel like I see random Youtubers of streamers or people in live chats use words like “fag” reasonably frequently, whereas there are many slurs that would indeed peak my ears much more than that. But like, IDK, I haven’t heard it used much, so I don’t have super strong intuitions here.
FYI fag is a pretty central example of a slur in America imo.
It gets used and normalized in some edgy cultures but I think that’s sort of like how the n-word gets used in some subcultures. (When I was growing up at least it was probably in the top 5 ‘worst’ words to say, at least weighted by ‘anyone ever actually said them’)
There’s also a thing where ‘retarded’ went from ‘not that bad’ to ‘particularly bad in some circles’, although I’m not sure how that played out since it was ‘after my time’.
All of this is sort of anti-inductive and evolving and makes sense to not be very obvious to a foreigner.
Eh, I’ve been living in the U.S. for a full decade, so I think the “foreigner excuse” doesn’t really work here, I think I was mostly just wrong in a kind of boring way.
My guess is I just happened to have not heard this specific term used very much where I could see people’s social reaction to it, which I guess is a weird attribute of slurs. Reading more about it in other contexts definitely made me convinced it qualifies as a slur (but also, relatedly, would honestly be quite surprised if people used it in any kind of real way during Manifest).
I’m not sure what you mean by “real way”. One of the central ways it’s culturally understood that that word and certain uses of “gay” are bad to use is to be contemptuous about things one doesn’t like or are insufficiently masculine. That seems like an important and real way it can be used for harm, not only literally meaning to call a gay person a slur.
Some ways to use a slur in a non-real way:
You use it in quotes to refer to how other people use it (as we’ve been doing in this discussion).
You use it in a clearly light-hearted ironic way (this is dicier, but clearly sometimes possible. For example, if the slur is directed at a clearly non-applicable inanimate object in an ironic way, like, if someone were to list profanities in an exaggerated and joking way against a chair they just stubbed their toe against.)
You use it in a very non-central way (like, someone talks about the historical use of the word faggot, or like, somehow uses it for it’s other meaning “a bundle of sticks or twigs bound together as fuel.”)
You have a substantially different cultural background (like, among Australians, friendly insults appear much more common, and calling each other “cunt” or “fag” seems not too rare)
There are probably some more ways I can think of, but these four seem like reasonably common causes of people using slurs with it being “real”.
I’m not aware of “fag” being a common term of endearment among Australians the way “cunt” is, though I might be wrong about that. I think it and “cunt” are in pretty different categories as far as obscene words go, at least in commonwealth countries.
I briefly googled it and it seems at least somewhat common: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-Australian-men-like-to-use-faggot
Also, I guess Australian’s call cigarettes “fags” which I think guess is some evidence of the word being used more casually.
Not confident of this though, I’ve never been to Australia.
In my experience of being an Australian, “fag” is not a common term of endearment I’ve encountered, except in the sense that general insults are used as terms of endearment (like “shit-for-brains” etc).
Fair enough re the link!
Cigarettes are called fags in the UK and other commonwealth countries, yeah. I don’t think it has any direct connection to the slur.
I have privately been told by someone I know who attended that they also heard slurs. (They didn’t say what other than “not the n-word”.) I’m not going to name them, because they have already said not to cite them on the forum about another thing they told me they was so my guess is they do not want to be dragged into the controversy on this.
I’d also say that I remember how certain neoreactionaries (not all of them) used to talk on SSC-these people of course eventually got banned. If that was a crowd attracted-which the Yarvin after party suggests it was-I am extremely unsurprised that people whose comments on SSC used to include things like rants about how “white gimmedats” and “white sluts” were teaming up with Black people to demand ruinous government spending, will also use racial slurs when they are not on a forum that will mod that out.
What is meant to be the non-central fallacy in this context? Are you just saying you doubt they are political supporters of Yarvin’s ideas?
I can’t confidently recall it was “fag” or “faggot” at this point anymore, but the term was definitely used.
I’m choosing to interpret this as you wondering if I used that collection of words as a representation of the kind of soft opens some of the attendees engaged in instead of real examples (as opposed to suggesting that I was lying), but “fag”, “retarded”, “based”, and “cuck” were all used quite a bit.
Yep, that’s how I interpreted it, especially given that the other two seemed to me quite different (again, “based” really has no connotation with a slur to me and is just like a weird word that people on the Internet use, if anything it’s a compliment).
Not that Wikipedia is authoritative for anything, but it describes one of those words as “a term, usually considered a slur, used to refer to gay men.” I would personally characterize the r-word as a slur if referring to an individual with an intellectual disability (and at least as in poor taste otherwise). I’m over 40 so do not understand “based.” Of course, one can disagree with these opinions, but it would not be unreasonable for David to have characterized some of these words as slurs.
Hanania didn’t call black people animals. I reached out to him and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
Also, when I first read the tweet it was clear from the context that he wasn’t referring to black people.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.