"Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority, or alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races."
The first three actions refer to value judgments ("better" / "worse" - compared to what? for what purpose?). Most people would agree that science should steer away from such judgments.
On the other hand, "classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races" seems distinctly unproblematic. There are different clusters of genetic types that arose due to relative geographic isolation, and gave rise to various differences and adaptions. Obvious examples of these include skin color, hair color and texture, average height and build, and so forth. I did not realize that making this observation, in the absence of value judgments, was now interpreted as "scientific racism".
It's really extrapolating hard to infer this from his writings. There's only one part in the Carlyle essay where he throws out a hypothesis about slavery, and nowhere does he imply that (1) this is a good thing or (2) that any persons are subhuman.
This is a perfectly sensible way to do things. The concept that a person's politics is so "evil" that their talk acceptance must be rescinded is, frankly, childish. It treats attendees like small children, who can't rationally deal with the situation of a person with opposing views.
Of course, if a person promises to speak on a technical topic, and then goes on a political rant, that's a reason to shut them down or walk out: the audience isn't getting what was expected and promised. But the mere fact of a person's unrelated political views being used to remove them from a speakers list - this is the sort of thing that you would expect from the USSR.
This sounds like the function of the free marketplace of ideas. One is allowed to espouse any ideology that you wish. However, other people are allowed to respond with their own speech. They can call the idea racist if they want. They can take away speaking platforms if they want.
Ideally, it operates like the free market of ideas.
In practice, it tends to offer a disproportionate amount of power to those who are most easily offended, and provides them with a de facto "hecklers' veto" over people with views outside the mainstream.
In the Moldbug case, some people wre "so genuinely offended" by the prospect of him speaking (or even being present at the conference) that they were willing to request that his talk offer be revoked. This was the case even when the subject of his talk is completely unrelated to his controversial politics. (Most people would probably agree that a technical conference is the wrong venue for him to speak about his controversial politics.)
Would most people attending the conference have known about his politics if there weren't this outcry to bring publicity? Unlikely. This was a deliberate message to alienate and exclude those with conservative politics from the tech industry.
An amusing satire. Not much more than that. And certainly not something that should be banned - GitHub made a severe error in bowing to the pressure of a host of noisy 'progressives'.
However, it would be interesting to see if this actually led to any useful innovations in programming languages.
I learned like this from my teacher, a man who claims Supreme Enlightenment.
No offense intended, but where's the evidence? Yes, enlightenment is a personal and subjective experience, but do you have any independent citations or accounts of your teacher's enlightenment.
The first three actions refer to value judgments ("better" / "worse" - compared to what? for what purpose?). Most people would agree that science should steer away from such judgments.
On the other hand, "classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races" seems distinctly unproblematic. There are different clusters of genetic types that arose due to relative geographic isolation, and gave rise to various differences and adaptions. Obvious examples of these include skin color, hair color and texture, average height and build, and so forth. I did not realize that making this observation, in the absence of value judgments, was now interpreted as "scientific racism".