Live data from Hacker News

Untitled topic

news.ycombinator.com

751–760 of 766 posts

Re: undefined

#751
post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to make expressing those belief dangerous to the point of losing one's job, income and business is. Trying to make not participating in implementing the above as dangerous as expressing those opinions, through guilt by association, is. If you don't like somebody's speech, speak against them, not try to ruin their life and lives of those that don't run to help you to do that.

That's exactly what's being done here. And, I'll remind you again: * Thiel is not an employee of Altman or Graham's * Graham himself publicly claims that a strength of startups is that one can choose business partners without regard for moral norms, unlike employees.

These are tiny details, which are immaterial for the large point - that supporting unpopular point should be ruinous, and mere association with somebody doing this must be a blemish one has to work to remove, or else.

Thiel is billionaire and he probably has way over fuck you money. He can do anything he wants. Most of us don't have fuck you money, and that's exactly the point - creating the climate in the industry where not being politically conformant, expressing or supporting unpopular point of view, doing something not conforming to the majority opinion or fashionable opinion - means being ostracized, being denied job prospects, being fired, being uninvited from conferences, being target of personal destruction campaigns, etc. Being a pariah.

Thiel is not the point, he'll be more fine than 99.999% of people here in any case. Creating the intolerant lynch mob culture is the point. They may be building this machine to use it against Thiel or Eich or some other large target, but once it's working, the potential target would be everybody. Such things are never put in storage after the first use, they are only used more and more. And what I am seeing that not only this machine is being created and successfully tested, people are enthusiastically cheering it because it's being used against people they dislike. That's always how it starts - but it never stops there.

Re: undefined

#752
post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PG has made a couple statements about Peter Thiel's position on Twitter[0], and PB has take a stand against ostracizing Trump supporters[1], so let's dig into this. The gist of the matter is: What should sane and compassionate people do about the Trump supporters in their lives? Many of us have them. Some of my family members support Trump, and I cannot fire them as family members or cancel Christmas, so I, and we, h…

Three comments - (0) Nice setup of the sane and compassionate versus... Trump supporters? Who cannot in any way be sane or compassionate... (1) If Trump supporters must be fought and excluded from any sort of decision-making that affects the public sphere, then why bring up US Democracy? The very nature of democracy allows the dangerous, the racist and the sexist to affect it. Are you suggesting something else? (2) W…

0) I was contrasting non-compassionate responses (such as ostracism) to Trump supporters, with a sane and compassionate response, which I attempted to describe in my second point. I clearly don't consider Trump supporters to be sane, and by definition they cannot be compassionate beyond a limited group of people, since their candidate is a bigot and a misogynist. If you can't see that, I'm not going to explain it to you. The evidence is overwhelming.

1) For a democracy to be alive, it must have the capacity to destroy itself. I think we agree on that much. Trump and his supporters represent a threat to democracy -- I'm sure we don't agree on that. I'm suggesting they be fought with democratic means.

2) I didn't mention the American revolution because it was different from the others. A bourgeois, nationalist revolution that transferred power from a tiny, foreign elite in Britain to a wider suffrage of propertied white males in America. You could argue that the deeper revolution in North America was the vast transfer of property from Native Americans to settlers, and that was indeed a terrible thing for the tribes.

Re: undefined

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nixon proposed universal health care 45 years ago. Although some said he made anti-Semitic statements, he employed a Jewish Secretary of State, Kissinger who basically ran the international part of the presidency when Nixon was in the later states of the Watergate Investigation. Over the advice of Defense and other advisors, he insisted on fully rearming a desperate Israel with a very, very impressive airlift during…

EPA was created by Nixon administration, isn't?

Yes, you are correct! Interestingly, although a Republican, his creation of EPA and his desire to create universal health care is something we today associate more with Democrats.

Re: undefined

#754
post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Freedom of speech and freedom of association are two things Donald Trump has been campaigning against. So did Clinton. To the point she promised first thing she would do is try to reverse Supreme Court decision which confirmed that people can organize to criticize her. And unlike Trump, which has neither the knowledge (President doesn't make laws, for starters) nor expertise not sound mind to actually produce anyth…

"This bullshit" is an almost direct quote from _A Theory Of Justice_ (I think I altered the pronouns). You hear it regularly because it's one of the most important works of political philosophy in the modern American tradition.

I'm sorry, you mean "A theory of justice" as 1971 book? And it says that you have to hate Trump supporters? I must admit I fail to follow your argument here.

My point is it is routine for the elections to paint the opponent in the most apocalyptic tones, Republicans will always claim Democratic candidate would immediately build USSR-type socialism, import 20 millions of immigrants to subvert the elections, and ban Christians from going to church, and Democrats will always claim Republicans would starve all the poor, reinstitute slavery and remove all the taxes from the rich. There's a tiny amount of truth in both claims, but the other 99% of it is pure bullshit.

Quoting this routine electoral bullshit as if it would be whole truth and nothing by the truth is nonsense, unsupported by any reasonable evidence, and can not be taken seriously. And I don't see how the book you mention, however are its excellent qualities, changes anything in this regard.

Whatever the book says, Trump is not going to ruin our society, he is not Hitler and he is not an indulgence to abandon all reason. He is a blowhard conman that raised to prominence because our politics and government are deeply troubled and we weren't able to find a way to fix it so far. Having people associated with his supporters to undergo struggle sessions, disarmament before the Party and a ritual purification is not going to fix it either.

Re: undefined

#755
post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what's being done here. And, I'll remind you again: * Thiel is not an employee of Altman or Graham's * Graham himself publicly claims that a strength of startups is that one can choose business partners without regard for moral norms, unlike employees.

These are tiny details, which are immaterial for the large point - that supporting unpopular point should be ruinous, and mere association with somebody doing this must be a blemish one has to work to remove, or else. Thiel is billionaire and he probably has way over fuck you money. He can do anything he wants. Most of us don't have fuck you money, and that's exactly the point - creating the climate in the industry w…

Lynch mobs were a real thing. They're aren't a literary device. Mobs of white people really did grab black men and boys, torture them, and then hang them to death from trees. People are alive today who witnessed this happening.

Nobody is "lynching" anyone here.

Re: undefined

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't know about Brendan Eich. That makes me angry. It makes me angry too, but also raises (for me) some interesting political questions around what level of disagreement is "too far." I would never fire someone for being a Republican and personally/privately opposing gay marriage. But I would also immediately fire someone if they were a Nazi. So where is the line if what's an acceptable level of tolerance (and…

I'll just repost an old comment, advocating that the limit is: is it speech and ideas? Then do not fire. "I fundamentally disagree with you about this very important issue, and we should still find a way to cooperate" is a crucial idea, hard won and, as we are seeing, easily lost. It underpins multi-religious societies, working democracies, and in general, any group of people that need to do something. Unfortunately,…

> is it speech and ideas? Then do not fire.

How far will you take that principal though?

What if you have an employee who consistently comes in and talks about how he'd like to kill all the non-white people? What if he talks about how many guns he has? I think this would make the office an unworkable environment for most of my other employees (particularly any PoC) and I would be very justified in firing them.

Re: undefined

#757
post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This bullshit" is an almost direct quote from _A Theory Of Justice_ (I think I altered the pronouns). You hear it regularly because it's one of the most important works of political philosophy in the modern American tradition.

I'm sorry, you mean "A theory of justice" as 1971 book? And it says that you have to hate Trump supporters? I must admit I fail to follow your argument here. My point is it is routine for the elections to paint the opponent in the most apocalyptic tones, Republicans will always claim Democratic candidate would immediately build USSR-type socialism, import 20 millions of immigrants to subvert the elections, and ban Ch…

Look, it's clear what you're missing here.

If you yourself support Trump, or believe that he's equivalent to Hillary Clinton, that's fine. (I mean, it's not "fine", and I implore you to reconsider, but that's as far as it goes).

But Paul Graham and Sam Altman do not agree with you. They have said, publicly and repeatedly, that Donald Trump is far more dangerous than an ordinary political candidate; that he's a dictator, a modern-day Mussolini, someone for whom we'd need to create a "resistance" were he to be elected.

The criticism animating this thread is that if Graham and Altman truly believe what they are saying, they cannot coherently continue to support one of Trump's more important surrogates and enablers.

You are welcome to disagree with Graham and Altman (and me, and most other people on HN) about this! I do not challenge your right to do so.

But please address the argument that's actually being made.

Re: undefined

#758
post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what's being done here. And, I'll remind you again: * Thiel is not an employee of Altman or Graham's * Graham himself publicly claims that a strength of startups is that one can choose business partners without regard for moral norms, unlike employees.

These are tiny details, which are immaterial for the large point - that supporting unpopular point should be ruinous, and mere association with somebody doing this must be a blemish one has to work to remove, or else. Thiel is billionaire and he probably has way over fuck you money. He can do anything he wants. Most of us don't have fuck you money, and that's exactly the point - creating the climate in the industry w…

Honest question: what makes me a large target? I'm not in the "one percent". I have to work to eat. Not whining about it, just saying: I do not have f.u. money.

I agree with you on "the potential target would be everybody."

Re: undefined

#759
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what is it about Trump that's so compelling that is not reported to us? It isn't complicated: there is an apparently large population of Americans who are tired of the establishment. Things have not been well for them for many years; wages are stagnant, they haven't benefited from the recovery much. These people don't want to see another politically established Bush or Clinton in the Whitehouse. This was embodie…

I understand that sentiment, yet am shocked that people put aside all of Trump's faults. The real issue that I wish American's focused on was their weak democracy. Why accept a two party system fuelled by private money?

I am an outsider as well, and from this side of the border it looks like Trump simpathizers in the USA are applying the "desperate times call for desperate measures" ideal with Trump.

Similarly to how German's where fed up with the war reparations and glooming economy which made them vote for the Nazi party.

https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/3560.html

Re: undefined

#760
It's fine for Thiel to prefer Trump's vision. I wonder if he had thought hard about whether Trump can deliver that vision. Trump didn't deliver well, historically. You don't get ten times return but you can destroy a country fast. Think Third Reich.
Post reply on HN