The Mayor’s Speech: An Open Letter To Ray Kurzweil
[NOTE: I posted for a decade on Ray Kurzweil's "Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence". I thought it would be forever, but Kurzweil shut it down a year or two ago. All the writings there were wiped out, so links below to that site are dead. It was a tragedy.
Survivors (Ray-fuges?) formed a new site called Escape Velocity on Runboard http://bescapevelocity.runboard.com/
It's a small but vocal group, and the interface is pretty good. However, although all posts are archived, it is almost impossible to find an old post. Hence, I will be using Steemit as an archive for certain posts that may be relevant in the future to discussions on Escape Velocity.]
Circa 2014
The Mayor’s Speech: An Open Letter To Ray Kurzweil
Dear Mr. Kurzweil:
Why is the man who wrote this two years ago still posting on your forum?
"Zombiefood: only a true monster could cheer that. you horrible fucking bastard. cancer of the face for you bitch. and a long slow miserable painful death after the healthcare people deny your liver transplant or you exhaust your benefits." http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/two-solitudes-by-redq
Under a transparent alternate username he posted this the other day:
"4q2 (F*** you 2, I think): you creepy fucking chunk of shit"
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/iscience-socialism-and-stupidity/page/3
I hope that your answer is “lousy moderation”. This is a form of the Heckler’s Veto that is used all the time on your site.
I’ve enjoyed your newsletter and forum for many years, as well having read all your books. I’m also a big fan of Peter Diamandis and his book “Abundance”. Lately (well, not so lately), your forum has taken a dark turn toward allowing, condoning and engaging in censorship of legitimate speech, and the rather brutal suppression of certain individuals. I can’t believe that is what you want.
This trend is rampant in the general culture. A few recent examples of ideological suppression in our society (I’ll get to MindX shortly):
Modzilla fired its chief executive over a 6-year-old campaign contribution (to a cause supported by the Democrats at the time). USA Today writes the firing “is prompting concerns about how Silicon Valley's strongly liberal culture might quash the very openness that is at the region's foundation.”
Chick-fil-A’s owner expresses his personal views on same-sex marriage and creates a firestorm, including elected officials saying they will not permit the franchise to operate within their jurisdictions.
The L.A. Times and the Science sub-Reddit (more ‘subscribers’ than the New York Times) both announce a new policy that statements questioning catastrophic global warming will be censored. Your company, Google, seems ready to follow.
In a blatant violation of the First Amendment, the IRS suppresses rightwing political speech.
Three potential Republican presidential candidates are smeared and their prospects diminished by public prosecutions: Governors Walker (Wi.), Christie (N.J.) and Perry (Tx.). None of the prosecutor’s claims have any merit. Once is curious, twice an anomaly, three times makes a pattern. In the Walker case, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Randa wrote concerning the investigation, “attempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag.” See, e.g. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/05/07/federal-judge-halts-john-doe-probe-in-wisconsin/
These things should give us pause. Mayor Michael Bloomberg addressed this authoritarian impulse (which is, I believe, the ruling orthodoxy at MindX) in his commencement address at Harvard. I’ve included relevant selections from the speech in a footnote. Substitute ‘MindX’ for ‘institution’ or ‘university’, ‘member’ for ‘students’, and ‘moderators’ for ‘faculty’, and the speech accurately reflects the atmosphere on your forum. Bloomberg concludes:
[John Stuart] Mill would have been horrified to learn of university students silencing the opinions of others. He would have been even more horrified that faculty members were often part of the . . . censorship campaigns. For tenured faculty members to silence speakers whose views they disagree with is the height of hypocrisy, especially when these protests happen in the northeast – a bastion of self-professed liberal tolerance . . . [W]hen people seek to repress freedom for some, and you remain silent, you are complicit in that repression and you may well become its victim.
Do not be complicit, and do not follow the crowd. Speak up, and fight back.”
Are you too complicit? Hey – I spoke up! From the thread Swan Song http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/swan-song-by-redq:
“The singularity, transhumanism and all other ‘futurist’ movements are not inherently leftwing, but in practice they all have become movements of the Left. All spend immense amounts of ink on anti-capitalism, the Fed, dishing Right-wing politics, anti-Christian bigotry, bashing Israel/Jews, and generally denouncing the values of Western Civilization. ‘Those things which previous tradition or observation revealed as absolutely good must . . . be mocked.’” [Quoting David Mamet in ‘The Secret Knowledge’].
I will avoided a long series of quotes from your website to support my claims, but if you doubt my characterization, you are, I think (hope?), misinformed. See, for instance, this recent thread and the comments, which is a sort of Cliff Notes to MindX: http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/iscience-socialism-and-stupidity.
MindX has always been plagued by moderator bias, but things really ran off the rails with the recent policy of overtly prohibiting posts that were ‘divisive’. This policy was a frank cave-in to the Left and implemented a speech code of which Herbert Marcuse would be proud ("Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed"; and “Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.") Western Culture has resulted in the deepest thinking on free speech, yet futurist sites like MindX endlessly search elsewhere to find a formula that allows censorship of disagreeable opinions.
Moderation of MindX is desirable and needed, but it should be on a basis on which there is general agreement. Luckily, Western Culture provides just that! Here’s how I’d formulate guidelines for MindX:
- Comments should relate to science, technology and the future. Posts related to such things as fantasy, partisan politics, personal problems, and conspiracy theories will be given a very short leash.
- Be very circumspect before engaging in a personal attack. They will get you banned, particularly trolling and/or stalking of other members. Negative conclusions on a topic are of course acceptable, but not mere denunciations of a poster.
- Vulgarity is not permitted, and repeated vulgarity will result in banning.
- Talk of violence, either in reference to another member or as a workable solution to sociality ills, will not be tolerated.
- You have the right of self-defense. If attacked first, you should use the ‘Report function’, but responses to personal attacks will be viewed in context.
- We all know what civility is. Practice it.
Within about two weeks of applying this policy, MindX would be what it should be.
What is most desperately needed at MindX is a moderator that ascribes to the transcendental values of Western Civilization. That means someone who: embraces our Judeo-Christian values and history; believes in free minds/free markets; and embraces the ideals set forth in the book “Abundance”. I know that asks a lot, but it is what is most needed at MindX.
“RedQ”
Footnote:
A complete text of Mayor Bloomberg’s commencement speech can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/05/31/bloomberg-at-harvard-blasts-ivy-league-liberals-for-trying-to-repress-conservative-ideas/ . Selected quotes follow:
“Today, I’d like to talk with you about how important it is for that freedom to exist for everyone, no matter how strongly we may disagree with another’s viewpoint. Tolerance for other people’s ideas, and the freedom to express your own, are inseparable values at great universities. Joined together, they form a sacred trust that holds the basis of our democratic society. But that trust is perpetually vulnerable to the tyrannical tendencies of monarchs, mobs, and majorities. And lately, we have seen those tendencies manifest themselves too often, both on college campuses and in our society.
. . .
Repressing free expression is a natural human weakness, and it is up to us to fight it at every turn. Intolerance of ideas – whether liberal or conservative – is antithetical to individual rights and free societies, and it is no less antithetical to great universities and first-rate scholarship. There is an idea floating around college campuses – including here at Harvard – that scholars should be funded only if their work conforms to a particular view of justice. There’s a word for that idea: censorship. And it is just a modern-day form of McCarthyism. Today, on many college campuses, it is liberals trying to repress conservative ideas, even as conservative faculty members are at risk of becoming an endangered species. And perhaps nowhere is that more true than here in the Ivy League.
In the 2012 presidential race, according to Federal Election Commission data, 96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama. Ninety-six percent. There was more disagreement among the old Soviet Politburo than there is among Ivy League donors.
. . .
I’m sure all of today’s graduates have read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. But allow me to read a short passage from it: ‘The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.’
Mill would have been horrified to learn of university students silencing the opinions of others. He would have been even more horrified that faculty members were often part of the commencement censorship campaigns. For tenured faculty members to silence speakers whose views they disagree with is the height of hypocrisy, especially when these protests happen in the northeast – a bastion of self-professed liberal tolerance . . . [W]hen people seek to repress freedom for some, and you remain silent, you are complicit in that repression and you may well become its victim.
Do not be complicit, and do not follow the crowd. Speak up, and fight back.”
[End Thread OP]
Incidentally, this was during a period of rampant vulgarity at MindX. Ipan made several vicious and profane comments on the Mayor’s Speech thread, like calling me a ‘sheep fucker’. He liked it so much he used the same sort of stuff repeatedly against others, particularly Spike (iPan: “The ranks of Christianity are made up of sheep fuckers and paedophiles . . . Which are you Spike? I'm guessing sheep fucker. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaa” http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/future-of-american-politics/page/2#post-680853)
Any how, here are some things in the file drawn mostly from my responses to comments on “The Mayor’s Speech”:
Provoketur: "Didnt you get Banned for breaking the rules?"
I don’t think so. A week ago I wrote to the moderators and explained my ban: "The actual proximate cause for my ban was reposting a deleted thread dealing with a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience by Harvard and Northwestern researchers (it was not for engaging in personal insults as Giulio alleged): http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/just-put-a-gun-to-your-head-pot-use-by-youth-by-red"
I often pointed out that for Giulio, ‘liberal’ and ‘libertine’ were pretty similar, and one thing he was big on was drug use. The thread dealt with a study of marijuana use by youth and he didn’t like it. Here’s an example of Giulio discussing drug use:
Giulio: “Edgewise - If someone self-medicates on their own dime and cleans up their own mess, that's one thing. But, shooting-up on OPM and leaving the consequences for "someone else" to clean up is something else entirely.”
OK. I pay for recreational drugs with MY money, out of MY wallet. I use it in MY time, in MY house. There is no mess to clean up, and it is no business of anyone else."
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/libertarians-and-christians-versus-the-state-by-redq/page/2
In response to the re-posting of the “Just put a gun to your head” thread, Giulio tracked my posting history and found where I’d replied in a harsh manner to insults (two cases, the third was for jokingly referring to another poster response with the word ‘weasel’). He warned me twice and then banned me. This happened so fast, I didn’t see at least the last two, and don’t think I saw the first one until after I was banned.
It’s no secret that there is a bunch here that don’t like me, and that their motivation is ideology. This group wants to censor certain views including, in particular, mine:
This policy was a frank cave-in to the Left and implemented a speech code of which Herbert Marcuse would be proud ("Certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed"; and “Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.")
So I was clearly banned (by popular demand) for ideology on a broad range of issues. That is illegitimate, as I laid out in the OP.
By the way would you care to speak to the origin of rights?
Yes, I have:
James J quoting the OP: “The U.S. Constitution’s legitimacy is grounded in natural rights granted from a Creator, not the government. If there is no Creator, then whence natural rights? There is no valid claim to individual rights if the government is the ultimate sovereign. Then, your ‘rights’ are what government accords you. This, I have referred to as the ‘social utility of Christianity’.
This is a very important point Red_Quist makes. This point is lost on minds too deep in statist orthodoxy. Whether or not there actually IS a Creator or "God" is irrelevant. The vital point is: what is Humanity willing to assign as the SOURCE of rights. If it assigns the source of rights to the state, then it is, in essence, assigning that source to some sub-set of Humanity -- the thugs with guns. If it assigns the source of rights to a Creator, then it is, in essence, assigning that source to all of Humanity -- all individuals with reason.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/libertarians-and-christians-versus-the-state-by-redq/page/2
RedQ: . . . transcendental values of Western Civilization. That means someone who: embraces our Judeo-Christian values and history
M_AI: Is this a intentional troll, or do you genuinely believe a moderator should not strive to be impartial and unbiased (whether or not they are, is another matter).
What exactly would you replace our Judeo-Christian values with? The ‘transcendental values of Western Civilization’ are the most ‘impartial and unbiased’ set of values in the world, are they not?
Z/t: because conservatives are greedy selfish psychopaths
Glove: Right!
Sheesh – talk about a Heckler’s Veto! Don’t wonder why I think Glove is the master of z/t and his sockpuppet brood.
Z/t: those who dont know you will learn to hate you like the people you drove from the forum
I know of no one that I’ve driven from this forum, although this smear is often bandied about. Here are a few the people driven from this forum by constant harassment by youz guys:
Hgrayson
Edgewise
Beephatron
Barking Monkey
Many other good posters have left as a result of insults and abuse by youz guys.
ExaPlex: "The tortured minds of the "progressives" on this site is something to behold. They simply cannot accept disagreement with their world view and therefore must eradicate it by any means. There is no higher priority for them. If they can't get you banned, they'll paint you out of the picture. The mindset we collectively go forward into the future with will determine whether or not it was worth waiting for."
http://www.kurzweilai.net/forums/topic/how-to-hide-posts-made-by-spikosauropod