Maybe Y Combinator considers "unsupporting" Ellen Pao important enough to side with Peter Thiel and, indirectly, Donald Trump.
Shame on Y Combinator
541–550 of 1001 posts
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm deeply uncomfortable with the narrative where support for Trump is a basis for excluding a person from discussion and employment. He's a major party candidate, supported (if sometimes disliked) by roughly half the population. That's not a number of people you can fire or silence! The usual argument runs that this time is unique, that Trump has embraced racism and violence and his major-party status should not bur…
He's a major party candidate, supported (if sometimes disliked) by roughly half the population. That's not a number of people you can fire or silence! Are you sure? Prop 8 was _passed_ (i.e. it was voted in favor of by more than half of California's population), and yet we still regularly hold witch hunts for people that supported it. I've actually been asked about it on a job application.
> I've actually been asked about it on a job application.
It seems like that's probably illegal, though here's hopefully some nuance:
It probably shouldn't be illegal. The parts of the civil rights legislation that reach into the private sector should be probably be repealed/sunsetted. It should be sufficient to have the government actually recognize/implement equal protection under the law. E.g., if the KKK burns down the local shop that serves people of color or is owned by a person of color, the police should bring the KKK members to justice.
To keep going, while it shouldn't be illegal, it shouldn't be encouraged either. The employer has their right to free expression and voluntary association but they should strive/remain-vigilant to uphold the spirit of free speech and tolerance even if the law does not compel them to. For those with such self-discipline, their reward is access to the broader, richer market of rational peoples of every stripe.
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if you followed what happened to the Atheist community in the US, but its downfall was essentially the kind of witch hunt you're trying to incite. The level of virtue signaling demanded gradually increases until no one is left in the community. This invariably happens because the question you're asking ("does intolerant belief X threaten society?") has no absolute answer, so there is always a higher leve…
Atheist downfall? Since when? And what do you mean by 'downfall'? Like, they all started professing a belief in the hereafter, or like the scene in the movie 'Downfall'?
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
"hasn't been a single shred." http://www.g-a-i.org/u/2016/08/Report-Skolkvovo-08012016.pdf
Worth pointing out that GAI was co-founded by a STEPHEN K. BANNON which, coincidentally, is the same STEPHEN K. BANNON that runs Breitbart and is currently the campaign chairman for DONALD J. TRUMP. Possibly not the most unbiased of sources, I think.
Do you have an actual comment on the content of the report, or just low level FUD about its source?
This comment is actually pretty hilarious given the fact that Teneo Holdings, mentioned in the report, was founded by ex Bill Clinton staffers, and had Bill Clinton and Tony Blair as 2 of it's original 3 advisors. Huma Abedin is presently on the Teneo payroll.
If those sorts of ties between people are problematic to you, then you must ABSOLUTELY HATE the Clintons, because the same type of arrangement is how literally everyone close to them got there.
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is serious question-begging, though. Most of Trump's supporters don't accept that he's racist, or generally sexist, or the other charges being made. The ones I've talked to largely believe that he's just rude, and sometimes directs that through traits like race, gender, and disability. On policy, they would say that opposing things like illegal immigration isn't actually racism. Laugh at that if you want, say th…
> Most of Trump's supporters don't accept that he's racist, or generally sexist, or the other charges being made. I wonder if we have enough evidence to reach that conclusion? Respectfully, I'm not sure you've talked to enough supporters to generalize about the whole group. Speaking only for myself, if I end up voting for one of those two, it will be for Trump. I accept the strong possibility that every one of the ne…
This is a reasonable point.
I should probably have said "don't accept that he's racist or sexist in a way that precludes voting for him". The claim I meant to make is that most of his supporters are not voting for him because they feel that racism and sexism are good. That claim, I think, carries no matter what the breakdown between "he doesn't mean it", "he's racist but I'm not", and "he means it but I don't think it's racist". Certainly, I've seen all three assertions.
My broader point was simply that "but Trump is worse, false equivalence" is absurdly circular reasoning. There are plenty of people (yourself included?) who could make the same charge against Clinton.
For myself, I wouldn't want to be accused of 'tacit acceptance' of the stances of any of the candidates. Everyone running (third parties included) has at least one view or policy that I find abhorrent, so I get personally uncomfortable about the idea that voting for someone means accepting their stances.
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#546If you vote for Trump, you are supporting a racist, misogynistic, Islamophobic, anti-LGBTQ fascist. You are in fact voting against the very principles of equality, liberty and diversity that this country was founded on. As such voting for -- much less, actually supporting Drumpf -- means you are endorsing violence against huge portions of the American public (e.g., sexual assault against women, imprisonment of Muslims, Latinos, etc).
Therefore, not only is there nothing wrong with forward looking organizations for excluding people as dispicable as Trump supporters, they have a responsibility to do so for the safety of their members who happen to be LGBTQ, Muslim, female, People of Color and basically anyone else who isn't a straight white male.
It's 2016, about damn time we send a message to the bigots that their hate is no longer okay and we're not going to tolerate it anymore. End. Of. Discussion.
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#547Wag, fingers, wag, then gawp in wonder at the backfire leading to more trumps.
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#548I see it as a good thing that Trump is so foolishly blatant - You can SEE all the filth - It's all right there in plain sight. His ego is so huge, he couldn't even censor himself if his life depended on it; he is the perfect public figure.
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#549Maybe YC is worried that if they boot Thiel, and Trump wins, he'll be vindictive enough and powerful enough to crush YC. Like, it would be a real shame if the Attorney General started looking into Fair Housing violations by AirBnB, or if Dropbox suddenly lost the government connections it's been cultivating by putting Condi Rice on their board.
If Trump wins I suspect that the H1B program would be an obvious target for him.
And from experience in the UK referendum some recent immigrants are going to get killed as a result of the way Trump is poisoning the political arena.
Re: Shame on Y Combinator
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, Mill, On Liberty , chapter 2: > But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person…
There's no philosopher you can't enlist in the support of any view if you quote them out of context (also: you could have done far better in finding a quote to deploy here; try searching On Liberty for the word "opinion"). The part you haven't come to yet is the Harm Principle.
I don't like the insinuation that I didn't read the book I quoted. I did, and I went to the trouble of finding quotes because memory is fallible (especially in the direction one would like it to err). Using that rhetorically against me is bad for the quality of discourse here.
Yes, Mill's general principles for liberty exclude the right to harm others. But he's very very skeptical of considering speech a harm. He's not a counterexample to the literal sense of what you wrote upthread about "saying whatever we'd like without fearing repercussions": e.g. you should be legally liable for libel, and socially liable to individual opprobrium. But he was clearly against the kind of repercussions for the kind of speech we're talking about here.