He's self-made and not afraid to express his opinions even if they aren't politically correct. People like him should be applauded as they are increasingly rare in today's society.
I would probably not interpret his comments as racist, at least not in an obvious definition of the word.
I've also read his twitter feed a fair amount, and have not spotted any clearly racist statements.
I've also heard he is anti semitic, but haven't seen any citations.
As for the links in the parent article, saying transwomen aren't women sounds like an opinion, not hate speech.
Calling women the c word is very rude, and That could be grounds for disinviting notch. But if so, I hope MS is consistent and bars people who call men the d word, african americans the n word, and so on.
Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous. Hardly grounds for disinviting someone, unless again MS is consistent.
Misinformation driven in part by conspiracy theories has increased the spread of measles back into areas where it was thought to be eradicated.
> An unfounded fear of vaccines has spread around the world in recent years, with childhood vaccination rates reportedly declining in several countries as a result. Nothing in the belief system of Orthodox Jews makes them any more likely to oppose vaccines, and several Orthodox rabbinical organizations have called on parents to vaccinate their children. But Hasidic Jews are prey to the same misinformation that has affected others, and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis have come out against vaccines.
Alright, notch is a racist. Best case he was saying that for shock effect, and that's no excuse. So, I have to agree with Microsoft banning him from the anniversary, and it's too bad he's gone this way. I guess you can't judge a game by its developer.
Do you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions? This rhetoric plays into a common theme among extremists which is quite dangerous: "Everyone actually thinks the same way I do, they are just afraid to say it".
> Do you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions?
Repeated surveys show that the identitarian left accounts for about 8% of the population, and that their views are over represented in media, while people are genuinely afraid of being publicly lynched for saying the wrong thing.
The entire #walkaway movement started because of that.
Yes, I know many, many people who don't express their non-far left opinions for fear of losing their jobs. They are not extremists, quite the opposite, they view the current cultural zeitgeist of tech companies to be extremist but can't speak up against it.
Look at the character assassinations that have happened in the media recently. Jordan Peterson is an excellent example, not only because so many left-leaning journalists have tried to defame him by deliberately misinterpreting what he says, but also because he has successfully defended himself against this attempted assassination. Peterson has a good reason to fear the backlash you describe, but he has a stronger backbone than all of his attackers.
The current zeitgeist in the media is that past some fuzzy line, it is acceptable to defame somebody for having an opinion that is not politically correct. It is possible to cross this line by expressing facts or opinions that are entirely reasonable. The fear of backlash is real.
Anyone can express their beliefs within reason (the US courts have put some limits on what falls under the first amendment, of course) - you just can’t be surprised when there are consequences for your public expression.
Notch obviously doesn’t care what people think of him anymore, that’s not something I personally feel we should be applauding. It’s one thing if you’re using “fuck you money” to speak against the status quo, it’s another to just be a bigoted jerk on Twitter.
Saying "Pizzagate is real" or that Q is legit isn't an opinion, it's making up false facts. And that statement has been used to push Pizzagate among the masses.
I haven't been following him and his comments. And I agree it's important to call out false statements.
But believing in and promoting demonstratively false and damaging ideas is much more common than people realize.
For example, many good people who are more important and educated than game developer falsely believe that President Trump said that white nationalists and neo-nazis are fine people.
Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest --"
Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."
Does that prove something? I'm not sure what your point is.
Here is the rest of the exchange where Trump explicitly says he isn't talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists when he says 'fine people' and explicitly condemns neo-Nazis and white nationalists from the article you linked to.
Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."
Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"
Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."
Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?
"So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NEO-NAZIS AND THE WHITE NATIONALISTS -- BECAUSE THEY SHOULD BE CONDEMNED TOTALLY But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
From the links in this article: he called Zoe Quinn a c-word (which many people have), tweeted "It's ok to be white." (which it is), and says he doesn't regard biological men who identify as women are women (which is a fairly common belief). QAnon is a weird conspiracy theory, but the rest don't strike me as particularly odd.
It's probably worth having a Code of Conduct which requires explicit hard left belief systems if you're going to exclude people with mainstream beliefs.
Sounds like Microsoft won't invite those 'many people' too then.
His statements on Pizzagate being real and QAnon being legit have been used to push those theories among the alt-right and white supremacists.
>It's probably worth having a Code of Conduct which requires explicit hard left belief systems if you're going to exclude people with mainstream beliefs.
Pizzagate and QAnon theories are the opposite of mainstream beliefs.
Also companies can and should go against mainstream beliefs if those beliefs are bigoted and racist. Otherwise slavery would never have been abolished and the civil rights act never enacted. Or women would never have gotten the right to vote. All those were against the mainstream beliefs at some point.
Companies doing these things going against the mainstream can actually hurt them in the marketplace, which is more the reason to applaud them for taking the risk.
You can easily research Quinn's interactions with others online, including other left wing, trans, feminist, and activist figures.
Pizzagate is indeed a fringe belief, as the comment you're replying to already mentions, but should anyone who believes conspiracy theories be excluded? What about left wing ones like Russiagate?
Notch is not racist. If you think it's not OK to be white you may wish to look for racism closer to home.
> Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella recently emailed staff saying that if they didn’t support building a more inclusive culture, “your rewards, your career trajectory, and possibly even your employment will be impacted.”
Translation:
"If you keep pointing out we illegally discriminate during hiring and promotion, we'll fire you."
His comment is a jab at the people complaining about actual racism at Microsoft -- a veiled threat meant to appease radicals who throw a tantrum if people don't cater to their bigoted world views, which all call for institutionalized racism to be enacted.
Identity politics, and its manifestations such as "diversity", are merely authoritarian bigotry.
The entire basis of it is a kind of racial and sexual essentialism, one of the most thoroughly debunked kinds of bigoted beliefs. Without a belief in that tribal essentialism, none of what the "diversity" advocates argue for even makes sense.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, which addressed both the suppression of whistleblowers about racism at Microsoft, and the racist philosophy underpinning the "diversity" movement.
You're truly a deep thinker, who challenged and then shifted my views on this topic.
A person who stood out from the hoards who silently suppressed my view without a solid refutation, because they felt uncomfortable when their beliefs were challenged.
We've banned you for primarily using HN for ideological flamewar, ignoring our requests to stop, and using multiple accounts to do it. Would you please not create accounts to break the site guidelines with?
I do think! And we do. There is a lot of contention around which posts count as abusive vs. good-faith. Some people would like us simply to ban whoever they disagree with ideologically. Since these people disagree intensely among each other, it's impossible to satisfy all of them. In fact, even just to not intensely dissatisfy anybody is impossible. For that reason, intense dissatisfaction alone doesn't help us figure out how to do better; for that we need links and thoughtful reflections. "Racist, sexist, cunts infesting" doesn't quite get us there.
I need to address your breaking the site guidelines. If you continue to create accounts to do that, we will ban your main account as well.
Your comment is slander, but people of your ideological persuasion are habitual liars.
Look at the repeated slander of rightwing figures, particularly by those from Silicon Valley companies.
The "multiple accounts" are tied to different devices, because it's annoying to transfer credentials -- and I think you know that, if you've reviewed the server logs.
Again, you've engaged in nothing but political discrimination here, because I was referencing a factual thing: Microsoft was recently called out for their racist policies, and this response is laden with corporate speak for retribution against that. It's not a flamewar, because it's discussing a recent and on topic event -- you just don't like that discussing the racism from Microsoft is topical.
You simply don't want to talk about it, and are use propriety as an excuse to shut down the discussion.
You allow this kind of rhetoric, except when it would actually motivate people to critically examine their beliefs about certain issues.
Enlighten yourself. I have to post here with a throwaway account after my other account got shadow banned for not being PC. 99% of HN are sheep. Silicon valley is blinding you all. Logic is going down the drain. Diversity in mental illness is taking over.
Microsoft is simply applying a strategy that's known to work (see: the study confirming that banning problematic subreddits has had a positive effect on Reddit as a whole). This is what happens when you hold views decent people don't hold: you get silenced, ostracized, and your name blotted from your own work. Want decent people to engage with you? Change your mind.
It's sad how wealth affected Notch or perhaps magnified his character. A long time ago, I started following him on Twitter and I think I lasted about 2 weeks before I unfollowed him. The sheer negativity and woe is me is bananas. If there's a prime example that money doesn't buy happiness, he is one.
I don't know if that's entirely true—I followed him on twitter for a period of time before and after the sale, and post-sale his tweets got more and more unpalatable. Perhaps you're right, and he didn't change at all, but at the very least the public persona that he expressed changed.
It gets dangerous when tons of the people around you are somehow seeking to feed off your wealth and thus you get very little negative feedback anywhere. Everyone says they hate yes men. In practice most people love yes men.
In my experience this is true, that money doesn't buy happiness, but it does allow you to focus on your actual problems instead of the boring old money problems that nearly everyone else has.
In some cases, newfound wealth will not only not solve one's problems but may throw them into sharp relief, or worsen them by deflecting negative feedback. Many if not most lottery winners seem to be affected by this.
There's a saying that money magnifies who you already are. It's an important thought, even if it's not 100% accurate. If you know how to be happy, money can enable you to make yourself - and others around you - happy. If you're better at being angry or sad or anxious, money can make you miserable. That's a lot of people, perhaps including me. Having money and improving yourself are basically two separate efforts.
Given all that, it's pretty predictable what "jerk" plus "money" will add up to.
If I felt that Microsoft was delivering high quality software and was a meritocracy I would cut them a lot of slack, no matter what opinions they espoused and who they favored or excluded.
Unfortunately I have to use Skype for Business literally every working day and it's symptomatic of a company that is fat dumb and happy, secure in its cash flow.
I tried clicking the links about Notch's non-pc comments. Those took me to newsweek articles which also talked about twitter but didn't link to the offending tweets themselves. Only one article linked (someplace called "the root") actually referenced any of his words per se. Among the problematic quotes were:
"Privilege is a made up metric used to silence and repress. We are all different, and that is ok. We listen to individuals and help each other based on individual strengths and needs.
We do not generalize based on skin color, bigot."
That's a far cry from the sensationalized title of "Notch hates diversity".
So in answer to your question, my guess is Notch basically a DeMoore type character and is being crucified by the media.
If you look at the Twitter thread of the Q post, he seems sincere in his beliefs and is defending it. Given his other posts, it doesn't look like trolling.
The first "(pizzagate is real)" second "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." the second is followed with him defending the Q conspiracy in the comments, the first all the replies have pretty much been deleted.
Notch seems to have gone a bit off the deep end, and I'm not referring to his conservative views. His tweets often sound incoherent. Maybe English isn't his strongest skill? I can't tell.
Someone in the Minecraft YouTuber community speculated that perhaps he got involved with party drugs (MDMA) and it affected him permanently, as they had seen something similar happen with a friend of theirs. Pure speculation.
Notice Verge is quoting a politically-charged journal, called Roots, as proof of "problematic" language.[1]
I don't know. Microsoft can do what it wants, but as a society we need to consider doing two things:
A - Socially spurning all political language in non-political contexts.
or
B - Being tolerant of all political language that isn't DIRECTLY hateful. Using the word "white" and just saying a contextless tweet "It's ok to be white" should not offend people, or if it does, it should be tolerated. OR, we can have a long discussion about it, and go back and forth and try to figure it out.
_A_ seems wise. But society chooses [edit] neither A nor B and we get into fights over it.
And if C, allowing some opinions but not others is the course of action, then we have a real problem. We're not going to "eliminate hate" by going option C: selection of opinions that are Correct and Not Correct. Because those in the "Not Correct" category will regroup in far worse ways - don't we learn from history?
77 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadI don't think that works as a theory for how to respond to this, unless we're just going to dislike everyone.
I would probably not interpret his comments as racist, at least not in an obvious definition of the word.
I've also read his twitter feed a fair amount, and have not spotted any clearly racist statements.
I've also heard he is anti semitic, but haven't seen any citations.
As for the links in the parent article, saying transwomen aren't women sounds like an opinion, not hate speech.
Calling women the c word is very rude, and That could be grounds for disinviting notch. But if so, I hope MS is consistent and bars people who call men the d word, african americans the n word, and so on.
Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous. Hardly grounds for disinviting someone, unless again MS is consistent.
Sorry - Aren't we in the middle of a measles outbreak (U.S.A)?
> An unfounded fear of vaccines has spread around the world in recent years, with childhood vaccination rates reportedly declining in several countries as a result. Nothing in the belief system of Orthodox Jews makes them any more likely to oppose vaccines, and several Orthodox rabbinical organizations have called on parents to vaccinate their children. But Hasidic Jews are prey to the same misinformation that has affected others, and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis have come out against vaccines.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/measles-jewish-c...
So, there is a documented decline in vaccination, but is there a documented link between that and spread of measles?
http://web.archive.org/web/20190430104624/https:/twitter.com...
Repeated surveys show that the identitarian left accounts for about 8% of the population, and that their views are over represented in media, while people are genuinely afraid of being publicly lynched for saying the wrong thing.
The entire #walkaway movement started because of that.
The current zeitgeist in the media is that past some fuzzy line, it is acceptable to defame somebody for having an opinion that is not politically correct. It is possible to cross this line by expressing facts or opinions that are entirely reasonable. The fear of backlash is real.
Notch obviously doesn’t care what people think of him anymore, that’s not something I personally feel we should be applauding. It’s one thing if you’re using “fuck you money” to speak against the status quo, it’s another to just be a bigoted jerk on Twitter.
But believing in and promoting demonstratively false and damaging ideas is much more common than people realize.
For example, many good people who are more important and educated than game developer falsely believe that President Trump said that white nationalists and neo-nazis are fine people.
Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/26...
Here is the rest of the exchange where Trump explicitly says he isn't talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists when he says 'fine people' and explicitly condemns neo-Nazis and white nationalists from the article you linked to.
Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."
Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"
Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."
Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?
"So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NEO-NAZIS AND THE WHITE NATIONALISTS -- BECAUSE THEY SHOULD BE CONDEMNED TOTALLY But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
Well, Microsoft made him a billionaire—and they're also the ones choosing not to include him in the Minecraft event.
From the links in this article: he called Zoe Quinn a c-word (which many people have), tweeted "It's ok to be white." (which it is), and says he doesn't regard biological men who identify as women are women (which is a fairly common belief). QAnon is a weird conspiracy theory, but the rest don't strike me as particularly odd.
It's probably worth having a Code of Conduct which requires explicit hard left belief systems if you're going to exclude people with mainstream beliefs.
Examples?
Sounds like Microsoft won't invite those 'many people' too then.
His statements on Pizzagate being real and QAnon being legit have been used to push those theories among the alt-right and white supremacists.
>It's probably worth having a Code of Conduct which requires explicit hard left belief systems if you're going to exclude people with mainstream beliefs.
Pizzagate and QAnon theories are the opposite of mainstream beliefs.
Also companies can and should go against mainstream beliefs if those beliefs are bigoted and racist. Otherwise slavery would never have been abolished and the civil rights act never enacted. Or women would never have gotten the right to vote. All those were against the mainstream beliefs at some point.
Companies doing these things going against the mainstream can actually hurt them in the marketplace, which is more the reason to applaud them for taking the risk.
Pizzagate is indeed a fringe belief, as the comment you're replying to already mentions, but should anyone who believes conspiracy theories be excluded? What about left wing ones like Russiagate?
Notch is not racist. If you think it's not OK to be white you may wish to look for racism closer to home.
Translation:
"If you keep pointing out we illegally discriminate during hiring and promotion, we'll fire you."
His comment is a jab at the people complaining about actual racism at Microsoft -- a veiled threat meant to appease radicals who throw a tantrum if people don't cater to their bigoted world views, which all call for institutionalized racism to be enacted.
Identity politics, and its manifestations such as "diversity", are merely authoritarian bigotry.
The entire basis of it is a kind of racial and sexual essentialism, one of the most thoroughly debunked kinds of bigoted beliefs. Without a belief in that tribal essentialism, none of what the "diversity" advocates argue for even makes sense.
"Diversity" is bigotry.
You're truly a deep thinker, who challenged and then shifted my views on this topic.
A person who stood out from the hoards who silently suppressed my view without a solid refutation, because they felt uncomfortable when their beliefs were challenged.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I need to address your breaking the site guidelines. If you continue to create accounts to do that, we will ban your main account as well.
Look at the repeated slander of rightwing figures, particularly by those from Silicon Valley companies.
The "multiple accounts" are tied to different devices, because it's annoying to transfer credentials -- and I think you know that, if you've reviewed the server logs.
Again, you've engaged in nothing but political discrimination here, because I was referencing a factual thing: Microsoft was recently called out for their racist policies, and this response is laden with corporate speak for retribution against that. It's not a flamewar, because it's discussing a recent and on topic event -- you just don't like that discussing the racism from Microsoft is topical.
You simply don't want to talk about it, and are use propriety as an excuse to shut down the discussion.
You allow this kind of rhetoric, except when it would actually motivate people to critically examine their beliefs about certain issues.
You're nothing but a political censor.
Do all the comments and opinions of every other participant in the event reflect those of Microsoft and Mojang?
Private individuals and organizations should not be forced to subsidize your speech.
I think that's kind of a limited definition. You can be censored without being put in jail or forced into it by violence.
It's only Amerikkkunts who have this child-like fixation with freedom of speech, while simultaneously failing to understand their own constitution.
https://twitter.com/notch/
Sadly true.
Given all that, it's pretty predictable what "jerk" plus "money" will add up to.
Unfortunately I have to use Skype for Business literally every working day and it's symptomatic of a company that is fat dumb and happy, secure in its cash flow.
"Privilege is a made up metric used to silence and repress. We are all different, and that is ok. We listen to individuals and help each other based on individual strengths and needs.
We do not generalize based on skin color, bigot."
That's a far cry from the sensationalized title of "Notch hates diversity".
So in answer to your question, my guess is Notch basically a DeMoore type character and is being crucified by the media.
https://twitter.com/notch/status/901192994971410433?lang=en
Another 2 seconds for:
https://twitter.com/notch/status/1101794469060337664?lang=en
(pizzagate is real)
(q is legit. don't trust the media)
This really upsets my priors about the average contrarian theory believer.
I do not know the entire corpus of Notch's statements on transgender issues, but this single tweet should not crucify him.
Someone in the Minecraft YouTuber community speculated that perhaps he got involved with party drugs (MDMA) and it affected him permanently, as they had seen something similar happen with a friend of theirs. Pure speculation.
I don't know. Microsoft can do what it wants, but as a society we need to consider doing two things:
A - Socially spurning all political language in non-political contexts.
B - Being tolerant of all political language that isn't DIRECTLY hateful. Using the word "white" and just saying a contextless tweet "It's ok to be white" should not offend people, or if it does, it should be tolerated. OR, we can have a long discussion about it, and go back and forth and try to figure it out._A_ seems wise. But society chooses [edit] neither A nor B and we get into fights over it.
And if C, allowing some opinions but not others is the course of action, then we have a real problem. We're not going to "eliminate hate" by going option C: selection of opinions that are Correct and Not Correct. Because those in the "Not Correct" category will regroup in far worse ways - don't we learn from history?
[1] - Read this and judge for yourself. Please read their OTHER articles and tell me if you don't find evidence of hate. https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr...