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Shame on Y Combinator

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Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#721

Post by sickbeard »

DigitalSea wrote: post #2

This is a tricky situation. While many universally agree Trump is dangerous in his opinions and viewpoints on many issues, you can't just severe ties with an investor because of their political affiliation. Thiel might be supporting a candidate with racist and bigotry views, but this is his choice. When it comes to business, you should never make things personal and I think worrying about someone's political affiliat…

It's not tricky at all. YC can choose not to dump Theil and another entity can choose to criticize YC.

That's part of democracy and free speech.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#722

Post by inimino »

jshevek wrote: post #454
fisherjeff wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has the influence to convert the US to anything overnight. However, I do think that normalizing the language of authoritarianism can have long-term negative effects on our democratic process.

This is exactly why the anti-Trump hyperbole is dangerous.

If the world is ending and the country is at stake then both sides take up pitchforks.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#723

Post by SapphireSun »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #91
thght wrote: post #85

Shame on you for blaming Y Combinator. If it was 1.25 million for Clinton you would probably praise Y Combinator, no? This feels more like a clash between your personal political preferences and Mr Thiels's. You are just blaming Y Combinator to inflate this story, trying to get more people on the Clinton side. Shame on you!

Why do people keep making this false equivalence between the two options? One candidate has repeatedly taken racist and sexist stances, as well as demeaned those who are handicapped (and honestly, the list goes on and on). If people don't take a stand against this type of thing, it is a tacit acceptance.

It's worse than that. Trump is existentially dangerous for the following reasons:

1) Questioning the legitimacy of the electoral process without evidence. This could turn the US into a powder keg if he keeps it up past election day.

2) Rejecting nuclear non-proliferation and the stability of international alliances, paired with a volatile and immature temperament, could lead to the nuclear clock ticking to midnight.

3) Proposing the blacklist people based solely on a religious test. I'm not religious, but if there was one thing I learned in Hebrew school, is that we must never again allow this.

4) Obliquely threatening his political opponent with violence and directly threatening to jail his political opponent. Does this sound like a candidate from a first world country?

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#724

Post by akvadrako »

fsloth wrote: post #468
bbctol wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? People get fired over personal choices all the time. If I leered at women at the office, then told them it was fine because they secretly liked it, I'd be out in no time. It's a personal choice to do that, and to support a candidate who does the same, but the company can absolutely take your choices into account when figuring out who isn't needed.

There is a difference between having private non-conforming opinions and openly harassing colleagues. Only the latter is an obvious lack of virtue.

Although to be fair, it's not clearcut. If you quietly say you support someone who is openly harassing colleagues, that is basically harassment by proxy. Being less direct could actually be worse, since it's passive-aggressive.

I'm not implying that applies in this case.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#725

Post by phaus »

dlss wrote: post #299
tptacek wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is in fact not a fundamental principle of democracy. There is no work of political philosophy anywhere that suggests we should be able to say whatever we'd like "without fear of repercussions". What is a principle of liberal philosophy, though, is that we should be tolerant of the beliefs of others (in the sense of not intervening to suppress them), including intolerant beliefs, until those intolerant beliefs th…

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…

>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.

Did we have a community? Was there a downfall? I'm an atheist and I know more people that are comfortable being openly atheist in 2016 than at any other time in my life.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#726

Post by Dylan16807 »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #394
duncanawoods wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"First they came for the Billionaires, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a Billionaire. Then they came for the..."

You know who "they" refers to in the original poem, right?

When the whole point is showing it to be a false analogy? Yes.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#727

Post by dlss »

sqeaky wrote: post #583
dlss wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett wrote books, participated in debates, and basically reimagined atheism as a political movement. Then the question of social justice's role in atheism split the community in two via progressive purging. Splitting the community resulted in movements with significantly less political capital, and the main thinkers moved off to other projects. It's fairly political, so even though a…

I think you read the atheist situation incorrectly. When any group grows so large it splits. There are more atheists in the US than ever and the polls indicate that number is growing. The majority of atheists never had the goal of maintaining one large political power base, and the authors you mentioned mostly wanted adults to stop believing in fairy tales and wanted little to do with political power. I don't see any…

> I think you read the atheist situation incorrectly. When any group grows so large it splits. There are more atheists in the US than ever and the polls indicate that number is growing.

Re: group size being the primary cause... maybe?

There are plenty of non-split groups that are larger than the size the atheism community was before elevator gate, and most split groups (say, programmers divided by programming language) seem to coexist relatively peacefully.

To me, that suggests the size hypothesis is wrong. It'll need more variables if you'd like to explain the atheism community situation this without using elevatorgate (ie "a huge divisive political battle") as the primary cause.

Re: atheist headcount, this is why I referred to the "atheism community" rather than atheism generally. While I'm glad that atheism has grown, I find myself missing the conferences :/

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#728

Post by jshevek »

pif wrote: post #508
jshevek wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. The debate about Trump is made more complicated by the racism and sexism demonstrated by (those that happen to also be among) the most ardent Trump haters.

Following the USA campaign from far away, I hadn't yet heard of similar examples. Could you please elaborate a bit, or just post a link? Thanks in advance!

My assessment is based on (a) personal conversations with scores of strongly left-leaning people, as well as (b) many hundreds left-leaning blog posts, videos, left-leaning podcasts, and the like. Some of this evidence pre-dates Trump's involvement in the election.

Tangent, but related: I've noticed a very strong correlation between (a) those that think racism is exclusively "prejudice plus power" and (b) those who casually engage in some of the most despicable, hateful, and violent racism that I've seen in my lifetime.

When you and your community find it very easy to wash your hands of any wrong doing simply by redefining words, you are well on your path to losing your moral compass and doing terrible things in the world.

In response to your question I've looked for a blogger that has aggregated a body of evidence in one place. The only entities I found doing that are very strongly right-leaning, and I hesitate to link to them. I think it's a shame that left-leaning media seems to be ignoring this uptick in socially sanctioned racism.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#729

Post by jazzyk »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #679
jazzyk wrote: post #326

Any form of ostracism based on someone's political views scares the hell out of me. It constitutes an attempt to suppress political discourse and ultimately, freedom of speech. Disappointing to see many in the tech industry not understanding this.

This opinion makes zero sense to me. People are allowed to have opinions, and people are allowed to criticize those opinions. If you're going to publicly support something (like, say, with a million dollar donation), you should expect public feedback about said support. There's no suppression of the freedom of speech happening here - Marco is expressing an opinion about an opinion. By your logic, we should accept all…

Criticizing/arguing is fine.

But expelling Thiel from YC (a company which has nothing to do with politics), because of his views, is a form of punishment and discourages others from expressing their political opinions, in fear of the same happening to them.

So, it is suppression of free speech, through actions (not words) designed to intimidate.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#730

Post by pquerna »

lsh123 wrote: post #669
danenania wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Encouraging your well-armed nutjob supporters to go to the polls and 'monitor' them is kiiiind of on another level. Trump isn't just a moron spouting off nonsense--he's the leader of a large radicalized army, an army which includes large swathes of the police and military. Americans are so complacent and used to stability that they think this is all a crazy TV show that can't affect them personally, but this is a ver…

Any proofs for the statements above?

WaPo headline: Trump urges supporters to monitor polling places in ‘certain areas’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/10...

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