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Shame on Y Combinator

marco.org

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Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#571

Posts like this play directly into Trump's hands. The entire Trump ideology is based on a belief that "real Americans" are being oppressed by a sinister "global elite". Demanding that Trump supporters be fired tells everyone that the "elites" are a) scared of Trump, b) can't win through arguments and have to resort to intimidation, and c) are a powerful, dangerous group which is hostile to average people, who need so…

>Posts like this play directly into Trump's hands.

I'm not sure that's true. Trump is a narcissist who wants to be loved. He's not trying to be hated.

What these posts do is create or reinforce cultural and political divide in a very ugly way. The message is that if you're a Trump supporter you're immoral and because you're immoral there's no way to compromise with you. The author may get brownie points from other members in his bubble, but his attitude is destructive and should be stopped. All you're doing is incentivising lying about political beliefs and further radicalizing conservatives.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#572
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do not believe that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, then, while I implore you to reconsider, I am content to agree to disagree. But you might take that disagreement up first with Paul Graham and Sam Altman. They do not agree with you. They aggressively don't agree with you. They compare Donald Trump with a fascist dictator. I think they're right about Trump, and therefore that they're ver…

Our disagreement isn't on the question of Trump's existential threat status, it's on the question of what should be done about it (incidentally, the same disagreement you seem to have with Sam Altman and Paul Graham). If you have a different solution than tossing out the heathens, I'm all ears. In Sam's blog post the solution he decides on is continuing dialogue. While this may be an imperfect solution, it seems to m…

As long as an ideology is small enough, completely shunning it's adherents is actually the best strategy, because everyone is susceptible to social pressure.

But I fear that at 40% of the population, and with the social bubble people have build around them, Trump's neo-fascist movement may be beyond the reach of such tactics.

> it's on the question of what should be done about it

Everything that is legal. When, in the past, Republicans advocated trickle-down economics you possibly had a chance to convince people with arguments.

But I'm equally pessimistic about convincing anybody rationally. Trump and his supporters live in a reality completely divorced from any actually existing facts. It's this world with FEMA death camps and vast conspiracies planning to use the national guard to invade Texas and sell it to Mexico. There is no overlap anymore in what sources, what types of arguments, what axiomatic moral laws the two tribes consider valid.

Both strategies seeming comparably useless, I decided at some point that, when my grandchildren ask me in 40 years or so I want to be able to say "I did everything that's legal".

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#573
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a simple comparison really: Trump - (paraphased) Muslims are evil, they should be registered and have special restrictions placed on them. He singled out a single religious group. Made them the target of a group of people that are disposed to hating them. It goes against the very spirit of modern western democracy. To many it represents a clear and unforseen threat to our country. Even Bush who was clearly the m…

There’s a major problem with Muslim refugees in Europe right now. My girlfriend used to love visiting Paris, now it’s basically a no-go zone even in daytime. What he’s saying is based on reality, even if it makes you feel all bad inside when you hear it. Even in the US, where the refugee problem doesn’t exist, you still learn after terrorist attacks that, f.e. the family knew, or that the attacker had bomb equipment…

My girlfriend used to love visiting Paris, now it’s basically a no-go zone even in daytime.

A bizarre thing to say, for multiple reasons. Most chiefly being, Paris has quite famously had a large Muslim population for several decades now -- which the recent refugee influx has hardly made a measurable impact on.

So he's saying his girlfriend "used to" love visiting Paris, with all its Muslims, up until about 2-3 years ago -- but now it's a "no-go zone"?

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#574
post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They compare Donald Trump with a fascist dictator. A bit childish, considering the slot the candidate is running for is not in a dictatorship. If you think Trump could convert the US to a dictatorship, I would like to see the evidence supporting this.

There's historical evidence of people being elected, in democracies, and turning them into dictatorships. Part of the process looks the same as what Trump is doing. (e.g. saying the election is rigged therefore calling the process illegitimate, saying he'd put his political opponent in jail). If that doesn't persuade you, what kind of evidence would persuade you?

Oh, I'm persuaded- just look at the actions of W and Obama - both moved the presidency closer to dictatorship.

As for elections not being legitimate, that clam was made repeatedly, with merit, after 2000. The democrats lost, and they lost due to widespread fraud.

Finally, Hillary belongs in jail. Basically all of the allegations have been proven by the wikileaks email releases.

When your opponent is a blatant criminal it's quite fair to say "you'll be in jail" and quite different than saying "I'm going to jail you for disagreeing with me" which is what people seem to want to clam he said (so basically they are lying about him. If he's so obviously reprehensible, why the need to lie about him?)

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#575
post #560
post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if workers' unions were to fire members who don't support candidate X, or fire those who do support candidate Y, after all portion of their salaries could be used to underwrite the uncandidate... Is this kind of political retribution what we're aiming for?

Quantity has its own quality. Bob the riveter donating $500 is far removed from 7-figure donations. It's an entirely different kind of relationship with the candidate and the campaign.

I think this is too arbitrary. It's making a distinction for the sake of argument. Either people can support a candidate freely or we can't and we go the way of official approved politics.

If you want to remove money from politics, go ahead, do try. But don't make arbitrary cases for when its apt and then, when it's convenient, make it not apt.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#576
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in US, and I think Trump is a terrible person. But if I lived in US, I probably would still vote for him. First, some points of why to avoid voting Hillary and voting in any of the other candidates (including the weaker ones). 1. Hillary should be in jail, specially after the home e-mail server. 2. Hillary foreign policy style caused hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. 3. Hillary want to make that…

LOL for REAL. You say Hilary should be in jail, which you're right, but Trump similarly has criminal accusations against him. > Trump, despite being a unstable madman ... REALLY?! How can anything valid proceed from that?

Trump has he said/she said accusations popping up, 20 years after, a month before election day.

Hillary has the director of the FBI calling her "extremely careless" (but difficult to prosecute) before Congress.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the end consequence of tremendous cowardice from a lot of people over a long time, starting with the owners and administrators of Hacker News. HN has – through inaction – smirkingly enabled alt-right/NRx/GamerGaters to parody-thru-libel liberal positions on equality for a long time; supporting Peter Thiel is in the same vein. That's made Hacker News racist, sexist, and (worst of all for this crowd's self-imag…

I am as troubled as you are about the uptick in overt racism and sexism on HN. But I know and trust the moderators of the site, and this is a conversation I have had with them too, and I don't have any better ideas on how to deal with it than they do. The bigger problem is that the (very large) community of reasonable nerds who care about bigotry has largely abandoned Hacker News. In doing so, they've conceded it to…

"The bigger problem is that the (very large) community of reasonable nerds who care about bigotry has largely abandoned Hacker News. In doing so, they've conceded it to the racist fringe. They, too, should reconsider."

Should they though? When the community tells them with every post that this isn't wanted here, that the community doesn't care, and that the contributions are not welcome, should they really spend (or waste) their time, effort, and keystrokes here? And if so why? This isn't rhetorical, but really something I think about often when I'm waiting for an app to deploy and choosing what to do with those free minutes. And more and more, the answer is a resounding NO.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more and more Moral Fashion Police on the democratic side of the isle This hits the nail on the head. It's a moralistic sort of righteous indignation and it's profoundly, dangerously illiberal . In addition, many of these are the same people who are pleased that HRC is not being challenged over the revelations in the email leaks so far. I want whoever takes office to have been vetted as much as possible by journali…

People keep claiming that this sentiment is "profoundly illiberal". Those people should read more liberal philosophy, because it is not as if this is the first time this issue has come up. You can bring it back to John Stuart Mill if you like, but (very unsurprisingly) it's also one of the major themes of post-World-War-2 liberal philosophy. We are not required to tolerate intolerance when intolerance poses a threat…

Just to start things off, you do realize that firing him would appear to be illegal? At least, assuming there are no arcane reasons why California's laws do not apply here:

http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToFileLinkCodeSections.htm

Labor Code section 1101

Protects employees who engage or participate in politics or who become candidates for public office. An employer may not make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation or policy that forbids, controls, directs or tends to direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.

---

On to the philosophical point, why not go back to Karl Popper? If we look carefully, though, we see that he predicated this intolerance of intolerance on protection from violence. He was not afraid of any intolerance of words so much as those who would close their ears and swing their fists. So it was more a sort of right of self defense against anyone who would use violence and not persuasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper

Note how his argument is predicated on the need to protect people from violence. Unless that is a need there simply isn't a reason to ban things.

But wait, the Trump supporters have been violent, right? That was all over the news, I'm sure. Everyone saw that. So we have good reason to suppress a violent movement now, do we not? Well, maybe, if we didn't see this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=5IuJGHuIkzY

Wait, no, that guy made ACORN videos. Can't be trusted! Must be fake! But, umm, we've seen that lady before. At about 17:40 in this video, you see the same person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uMzYaO2syE

You can even see a tiny mole on her chest in the same place. She's there, blocking the road and doing everything possible to delay the cops from clearing that out. But how do we know who she really works for? Well, what do you know, she's listed on the FEC website, they can tell us! (We can trust the FEC... right?)

https://beta.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transactio...

Spender Recipient State Purpose Disbursement date Amount STAND UP FOR OHIO PAC RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ REIMBURSEMENT FOR T-SHIRT PRINTING 06-10-2016 $320.00 STAND UP FOR OHIO PAC RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ POLITICAL CONSULTING FEE 06-01-2016 $17,500.00 MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION ZULEMA RODRIGUEZ AZ TRAVEL EXP 05-24-2016 $1,108.97 MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ REIMBURSEMENT 05-24-2016 $1,108.97 HILLARY FOR AMERICA RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ PHONE 02-29-2016 $30.00 HILLARY FOR AMERICA RODRIGUEZ, ZULEMA AZ PAYROLL 02-29-2016 $1,610.24

In other news, she brags about her work at other protests where you may have seen pictures of a very injured cop. Lest we forget, remember that they also framed Sanders supporters for some of this stuff.

Given that this violence was deliberate, do you also, based on that philosophic reasoning, support the same censure of anyone who supports Hillary? It would appear to be the logical conclusion to your argument given the campaign's deliberate violence, would it not?

For the record, I find Trump a deplorable candidate. But the very idea that people would attempt to force us into a one party system by means of organized violence or excommunication from society won't sit well with many people. Especially not when it also appears that people are also herein advocating an action that appears to be flat-out illegal!

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#579
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans (at least the left leaning ones) also love holiness spiral signalling wars. Its quite possible OP doesn't believe anything in the linked to article, but that style of writing is how the left does sophistry, its the progressive modern way to signal superiority and worth. Op wants attention and smugness, that's how its done in 2016. People who believe any of the linked article is literally true end up with th…

The right wingers love to do that too, not only the lefties. Call somebody "racist" or "socialist" and you have marked them as so bad that no further dialog is needed (or even possible).

I agree emphatically that this is on both sides. Those of us who have watched with relief and hope the decline of influence of irrational, moralizing, censoring fundamentalist Christians[1] (on the right) are somewhat shocked and disappointed to see such a dramatic uptick of irrational moralizing fundamentalist social justice activists[1] on the left.

[1] Not all of them! But enough to cause harm to society

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#580
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12734808

No no, it was a Downfall parody you were referring to! The /r/atheism split, of course!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXXnt3jm6UQ

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