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Time to Take a Stand

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Time to Take a Stand

#461

Post by pcwalton »

refurb wrote: post #401
pcwalton wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Trump was targeting Muslims, wouldn't he have started there? He campaigned on a Muslim ban. Why try to randomly guess at his intentions, when he stated them over and over again, clear as day?

Let's focus here. The claim is this is a ban on Muslim's, yet the vast majority of Muslims in the world are unaffected.

It is a partial fulfillment of the goal Trump explicitly stated repeatedly during the campaign: "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country".

He has taken a very large concrete step toward this outcome, explicitly and obviously in service of it. To claim otherwise requires both being obtuse about the wording and the belief that Trump won't do what he said he was going to do. After the events of the past week, the latter claim seems indefensible.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#462

Post by concinds »

jowiar wrote: post #298
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone in a position of power who took a look at Trump and didn't recoil with disgust needs to be exiled from civil society. And this well represents the leftist-elitistic-rhetoric that drove so many to vote for Trump (HRC's "deplorables" comment). Five year olds say "I told you so," adults find reasonable pathways forward in difficult situations. People voted for and supported Trump for a variety of reasons, let's…

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough with "position of power". I wasn't talking about "James Wilson, truck driver in Madison" or "Allison Smith, bartender in Columbus". It's the folks who single-handed lot have power to shape the world. Thiel can grab a friendly dinner with the greatest threat to humanity on Monday, and yet Sam Altman will gladly have lunch with him on Tuesday and joke about his "friends" as though nothing…

> the greatest threat to humanity

Objectively ridiculous. Davos disagrees[0], and geopolitical experts are utterly nonplussed by Trump (Stratfor, Geopolitical Futures). What 22 year old journalism majors decry as "a systemic threat to the world order" is just seen by geopolitical observers as an interesting gambit that may pay off big. Take what they say about Trump and Taiwan[1], NATO, torture (Trump said yesterday that Mattis was in charge, and if Mattis doesn't believe in torture, he gets to override Trump's orders). Your hysteria is unfounded.

[0]: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-biggest-risks...

[1]: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/trump-taiwan-and-an-uproar/

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#465

Post by ada1981 »

lisper wrote: post #155
hackerews wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in 2017 is "calling a politician" the best way to stop an executive action? Is the goal to DDOS these offices with phone calls in hopes these politicians will rile together and pass a law?

Yes, pretty much. If enough people call to object then the prospect of losing the next election becomes real; they figure that if people are motivated enough to call then they might just be motivated enough to vote. That more than anything is what motivates politicians.

Faxes are actually the most noticeable and effective tactic.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#466

Post by carsongross »

anigbrowl wrote: post #219
djrogers wrote: post #8

> In doing so, we should not demonize Trump voters—most of them voted for him for reasons other than the promise of a Muslim ban. We need their eventual support in resisting actions like these, and we will not get it if we further isolate them. This is very important people - calling everyone who voted for Trump a racist homophobe, a moron, and not deserving of the franchise is not going to help anything. I didn't vo…

I've sen a lot of angst over the last week about people on the left expressing approval for 'punching nazis' following Richard Spencer suffering a whack on the ear during a TV interview. It's true, someone, probably form the left, carried out an act of physical violence while he was just standing there talking. But let's not forget that Spencer and various members of his social circle have - for years now - been expr…

Punching nazis is OK. The left gets to decide who is a nazi.

Punching commies is OK. The right gets to decide who is a commie.

Welcome to 2017.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#467

Post by [deleted] »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #185
facetube wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the United States is in a supply-limited triage situation right now, though. What's effectively been done is to cut off all non-Christians in certain countries – by issuing a blanket prohibition based upon a highly-religious-correlated country of origin, then an eventual exception for the religion that the president likes. This arrangement isn't prioritization, it's a ban. What's worse: the rationale gi…

Given a fixed number of refugees to be accepted, prioritization of one group means a near total ban on another. If there's a justifiable reason for that prioritization, then that's what you'll get. For example, if you had a refugee admittance process in the 1930's that was limited to N people (being a time traveler that knows the future), I might kick out a Jewish refugee in exchange for a nuclear physicist, but not…

[deleted]

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#468

Post by TuringNYC »

stale2002 wrote: post #424
TuringNYC wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note, this is far broader than the refugee ban initially discussed. The ban truly is a Muslim ban. See quote from Reuters -- it bans permanent residents (i.e. greencard holders.) Note that permanent residents have to pay taxes even if living overseas! "It will bar green card holders," Gillian Christensen, acting Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in an email. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump…

It is a ban on people coming from certain countries. Religion isn't anyone in there.

It is specifically for Muslims. Notice there is a special provision inviting Christian refugees from Syria (albeit a token quantity just for show.)

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#469

Post by yummyfajitas »

scarmig wrote: post #440
yummyfajitas wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.” – President Obama Regarding the second amendment: ".@realDonaldTrump makes death threats because he's a pathetic coward who can't handle the fact that he's losing to a girl," - Elizabeth Warren

That's mighty clever of you, but there's a world of difference between a random pseudonymous person implying we should take Second Amendment solutions to kill Trump and a Donald Trump implying we should take Second Amendment solutions to kill Clinton. You're a smart guy: you know this. You can do better.

I'm confused. Was Elizabeth Warren wrong to criticize a second amendment solution to the wrong person being democratically elected?

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#470

Post by eruditely »

eruditely wrote: post #351

Sikh here, thanks for supporting our eternal enemy without any acknowledgement on their problems, anglo-saxons will always be our post-classical enemy, we could have won the Anglo-Sikh wars if we weren't betrayed, and my grandmother didn't learn how to read because the literacy rate collapsed under colonial rule(From Ranjit Singhs empire), if Hari Singh was not betrayed by our last emperor we could have won. Duly not…

clearing up a few things about this post, that their moral intuitions are ill-suited for advisory of politics to maintain a landed empire when their morality is suited for cosmopolitan commercial areas(California, but even here we're pushing it).

So they cannot listen to their moral sentiments that are provoked or their intuitive sense of justice, it's not made for this situation! Such is the issue of politics of scale post-industry! So it's not their fault, but we're all going to get hurt if we keep listening to our english friends, no matter how sympathetic we are to their charisma and how beloved they are in trying to be our 'parents'.

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