Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker • Hacker News Board

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#81

Post by pessimizer » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #62

Analemma_ wrote: post #17

The balls on this guy. The sheer cynical audacity of trying to market yourself as a "defender of privacy" when you serve on the board of a company so antithetical to privacy that they're under federal supervision for twenty years [1] is breathtaking. Please tell me no one on Hacker News is dumb enough to fall for this. My Google-fu is failing me on the exact link (can someone help?), but Marc Andreessen once penned s…

Unless you have something specific to say regarding Peter Thiel's specific contribution to Facebook's current or past stance on privacy, I think you are being far too alarmist with an entirely unsupported position. For example, it's entirely possible that Peter Thiel is part of a losing faction of the board that values more privacy, and has actually been a force for the better with regard to privacy at Facebook? Is t…

You're intensely equivocating here. The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial, and entirely different than when you're a citizen of a country that you serve in the legislature of that decides to do things that you find morally unacceptable.

If you're on the losing faction on a corporate board that decides that the best option is to poison the city water supply, and your mournfully cash the checks, you are just as guilty as the winning faction.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#82

Post by bmm6o » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

nikcheerla wrote: post #25

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #23

FTA: I’m glad that an arena full of Republicans stood up to applaud when I said I was proud to be gay, because gay pride shouldn’t be a partisan issue. All people deserve respect, and nobody’s sexuality should be made a public fixation. From the 2016 party platform[1] of that arena full of Republicans[2]: In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority t…

Why exactly do you think those two positions are necessarily in opposition? You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both Christian and gay.

If they really respected him they wouldn't treat people like him like second-class citizens.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#83

Post by pandaman » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #58

nikcheerla wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you asking? I'm atheist, and I don't think any other posts in this discussion ever reference 'biblical models of marriage".

What do you think 'one man and one woman' is if not a biblical model of marriage?

It's called "monogamy" and existed in such biblical places as the USSR and PRC.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#84

Post by wildmusings » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:33 PM UTC

swang wrote: post #45

if we're talking about free speech here. gawker did not do anything illegal to out peter thiel. a shitty thing to do? yes. illegal? no. so essentially thiel planned revenge because they did something shitty and he did not like it. again pretty shitty of gawker to out him, also pretty shitty of thiel to chill free speech. not sure there are any real winners to root for here. bringing down gawker did bring down a lot o…

>very few sports websites were talking at all about the sexual assaults going on in colleges

Here's something to consider: a lot of that is sensationalized yellow journalism as well. They take surveys that include behavior that is usually handled at the social level (e.g. guy goes in for a kiss and girl doesn't want it) and count it as part of the headline "Sexual Assault" figure. In the most technical and pedantic sense they are correct, but no victim would ever file that complaint, no prosecutor would ever bring that charge, and no jury would ever convict on it. i.e. Most of the "sexual assaults" that are counted in those statistics wouldn't even be considered as such by the alleged victim. That's not to say that there aren't real sexual assaults that happen at colleges, but it's nothing like the sensational statistics that journalists like to throw around.

Look at what Rolling Stone did to a bunch of innocent young men at the University of Virginia when one of their reporters went "looking for a rape story". Any reputable journalist knows that if you walk around soliciting sensational stories, someone will tell you one. Ultimately, it was all proven false, but it no doubt ruined several totally innocent people. Rolling Stone and the particular journalist are now being deservedly sued for over $30 million. Free speech is not license to spread lies or to intrude into people's personal lives. Political and religious speech is very protected, but there are many reasonable limits on everything else.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#85

Post by angry-hacker » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:33 PM UTC

nikcheerla wrote: post #61

dragonwriter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can be proudly gay while still believing that 'marriage' is only between men and women. AFAIK this is a pretty common belief among those who are both Christian and gay. Is there any reason to believe this is a common alignment of views? While I haven't seen things broken out at that detail level (e.g., gay marriage views of gay Christians), in general, belief that society should accept homosexuality tracks pret…

That's a good point – I was just going off of public figures who have stated similar views. I'd like to see that data actually. I know a grand total of one evangelical and maybe 5 non-agnostic Christians, so I can't say for sure what the set of 'gay Christians' believe. Maybe that speaks to a larger problem?

Dolce and Gabbana is a good example from outside of States.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#86

Post by aaronbrethorst » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:33 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #63

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #23

FTA: I’m glad that an arena full of Republicans stood up to applaud when I said I was proud to be gay, because gay pride shouldn’t be a partisan issue. All people deserve respect, and nobody’s sexuality should be made a public fixation. From the 2016 party platform[1] of that arena full of Republicans[2]: In Obergefell, five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority t…

> And, to the people who will say 'Obergefell is simply antithetical to Republicans because it's a states' rights issue,' you're not fooling anyone. You shouldn't just dismiss the most important argument with a snarky comment. The federal government's powers are enumerated and very clearly do not include marriage. If you believe that the primary role of legal marriage in a society is to encourage child-rearing in sta…

    If you believe that the primary role of legal marriage
    in a society is to encourage child-rearing in stable
    homes, then it's a totally logical position to believe
    that there is no Equal Protection violation that would
    warrant the intrusion of the federal courts into a
    state matter.

Just to make sure I'm clear, you're not implying that gay couples are incapable of rearing children in stable homes, right?

The child-rearing argument is completely broken. If it was true, then marriage of divorced or widowed senior citizens would be forbidden.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#87

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:35 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #60

dominotw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have anything to say about the content of the article or just ad hominem attacks on the author.

A hypocrisy charge is not an ad hominen. An ad-hominen would be: "what he says is wrong because he is stupid/bribed/corrupt/a hypocrite" etc. Saying: "What he says is hypocritical" is not an ad-hominem - it's not an argument on the content or the man, but the relation between the two (what he says and what he does).

You're trying to discredit an argument because the person saying it is a hypocrite, which is also an ad-hominem. If the argument is true, then it would also be true even if the person saying it were hypocritical.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#88

Post by pessimizer » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:35 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #73

coldtea wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the decisions a company makes are influenced by more than just one person, and nothing posted here says anything of Peter Thiel's views on privacy with respect to Facebook. Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. FB's decisions might be influenced by more than just Thiel, but if Thiel feels strongly about privacy (and his views aren't heard on FB) he always…

> Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter. They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service. I know plenty of very social and successful people who don't use Facebook. Maybe you feel that there should still be additional regulations on Facebook; fine, that's a debate for another day. But it's very clearly diff…

Neither sbov nor coldtea are saying that they are comparable.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#89

Post by nikcheerla » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:36 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #81

kbenson wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have something specific to say regarding Peter Thiel's specific contribution to Facebook's current or past stance on privacy, I think you are being far too alarmist with an entirely unsupported position. For example, it's entirely possible that Peter Thiel is part of a losing faction of the board that values more privacy, and has actually been a force for the better with regard to privacy at Facebook? Is t…

You're intensely equivocating here. The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial, and entirely different than when you're a citizen of a country that you serve in the legislature of that decides to do things that you find morally unacceptable. If you're on the losing factio…

Yes, but there are varying levels of 'moral acceptability', and online privacy violations are on the low end of that. I find it hard to believe that most people would act differently from Thiel in that situation.

Re: Peter Thiel: The Online Privacy Debate Won’t End With Gawker

#90

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 11:36 PM UTC

nikcheerla wrote: post #72

jdmichal wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of what ad hominem is... Discredit the argument by discrediting the arguer. The thing is, that has zero effect on whether the argument is valid or not. The fact that I state 10 wrong facts about bananas does not mean that the next fact I state is wrong, even though I've far and away proven myself to not be a trusted expert on banana facts.

True, but that just points to the fact that ad hominem should not be dogmatically a logical fallacy.

> True, but that just points to the fact that ad hominem should not be dogmatically a logical fallacy.

No, it doesn't. OTOH, a logical fallacy isn't something that means that the conclusion that flows from it is wrong, or even that the fallacy doesn't provide a useful pragmatic filter given limited resources to devote to fully evaluating arguments.