Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shame on Y Combinator

marco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 1001 posts

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#511

Post by s_kilk »

anondon wrote: post #391
tptacek wrote: post #304

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…

> I think they're right about Trump, and therefore that they're very wrong about continuing to endorse Thiel. I think it's a very slippery slope to base endorsement on a person's political actions. It raises some important questions: -Do you stop endorsing and associating with everyone who supports Trump? Where do you draw the line logically? -Why can't people with opposing views work together and agree to disagree o…

> I think it's a very slippery slope to base endorsement on a person's political actions.

Is it though? Let's take it a bit further: would YC be expected to continue to endorse, say, a confirmed and outspoken Fascist?

How about someone who had donated to organizations with an explicit, stated objective of reducing the rights of women and minorities? Or supporting a political organization which intends to carry out ethnic cleansing?

Are we to believe there is no line to be drawn, anywhere on this continuum?

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#512

Post by chipotle_coyote »

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #408
tptacek wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you think this was a snappy response, but I'm simply paraphrasing John Rawls. If you prefer Karl Popper, you might look up "the paradox of intolerance". You could also take it back to John Stuart Mill, if you'd like.

So? Then they are wrong as well then, at least in that particular, their eminence notwithstanding. Appealing to authority makes your position no more tenable. Principles that are abandoned when under duress are no principles at all.

I'm seeing variants of this thrown around a lot here, but I don't see people engaging with tptacek's point, at least to my reading of it.

Let me turn this around. When corporations choose to get actively political, like Chick-Fil-A's support of anti-gay groups and Ben & Jerry's support of Black Lives Matter, should we not take that into account when we decide whether to do business with them? I don't think you'd make that argument, because really, it's not a very sound one. It's not a very sound one to say that we are compromising our principles if we share our stance on those corporations with others and try to get them to come around to our point of view, either, is it?

So why does it suddenly become sound in this case?

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#513

Post by crimsonalucard »

Many people think this election is different from all the past elections but I'm telling you:

When Trump or Hillary become president nothing will change in your daily lives. Mostly everything you do will remain the same.

So this election matters almost as much your favorite sport team winning some stupid sport which is to say it's a matter of life or death.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#514

Post by dibstern »

Hi Marco.

I disagree with you for a couple reasons.

(1) Seek to understand, then seek to be understood. If we want to eliminate misguided beliefs, convince anyone who thinks sexual assault and racism is okay, etc., you need to first understand them, and have them feel as though they are understood. It's a basic rule of effective communication. No one will listen to your criticisms of their arguments if they are not convinced that you have understood what they are saying and show empathy towards their position. So, a dialogue wherein all parties work together to develop shared understandings will be far more effective than the demonisation of a section of society.

(2) Supporting Trump doesn't necessarily mean Peter supports Trump's more bigoted and/or inappropriate views. This is Peter Thiel we're talking about. Peter gets excited by thinking differently to other people. If thinking differently were a sex act, it would be Peter's fetish. Peter would support a candidate only if he believes it's what the country needs to help bring back a time of growth and optimism that he thinks has been lost long ago (see: Zero to One). Now, remember, just because Peter believes something, doesn't mean that it's right (see: Clarium Capital).

So, it is my view that Sam is right in supporting the sharing of vastly different ideas, views and understandings. Thiel hasn't specifically supported any of Trump's shameful views, as you aptly describe them, so his only 'crime' is to believe that a protectionist moron (he'll perceive him differently) can do anything positive for the country - a belief that might be mistaken, but is by no means a crime or something to cause shame.

Stop demonising Trump supporters. You'll never convince idiots of anything by addressing them as such.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#516

Post by tylersmith »

ThomPete wrote: post #440
d7oaks wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think Marco’s point, which I strongly agree with, is that donating to Trump goes beyond just supporting a political candidate that you don’t happen to agree with. The fact that Trump has some valid policy ideas is completely besides the point. Amongst other things he is inciting racial and ethnic hatred, undermining trust in American democracy, encouraging violence and legitimising sexual assault. When…

So it's ok supporting Hillary even though she is largely responsible for huge parts of US foreign policy having sacrificed hundreds of thousands of innocent people as collateral damage for a bigger political goal. Yet somehow the very words of Trump is immoral. I guess I just don't get it.

She wasnt with Billy Bush while condemning people to die so it's not entertaining enough for people to care.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#517

Post by cabalamat »

There are two separate questions here:

Q1. Is Trump a spectacularly bad candidate, i.e. would he turn the USA intor a dictatorship, start a nuclear war, or do somethnig else equally damaging to society?

Q2. If Y Combinator shunned Thiel for supporting Trump, would that make a Trump presidency less likely?

If the answer to Q2 is no, as I suspect it is, then it doesn't much matter what the answer to Q1 is.

If we end up with a culture where people are shunned or lose their jobs for their political beliefs (e.g. Brendan Eich) or for who they associate with, that can only coarsen political debatre in the USA, in the long term making it more likely that it does become a dictatorship, something the people doing the shunning want to avoid.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#518

Post by widowlark »

massysett wrote: post #245
skywhopper wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel is doing just fine. If Y Combinator walked away from him, he would not be hurt or marginalized or ostracized in the least. This is not about persecuting people who vote for Trump. But to support Trump with an enormous sum of money _after_ Trump has revealed himself to be willing to resort to borderline anti-Semitic slurs, to welcome the support of the white supremacy movement, to call for locking up his p…

" is to make a statement that these are the things Thiel is okay with advocating." Clinton supporters are never held to this standard. No one calls on Clinton supporters to publicly disavow her statement about the "basket of deplorables". Clinton also shipped classified information to her basement server and destroyed thousands of records when under subpoena. No one claims that Clinton supporters are supporting this…

Because those things aren't even close to being on the same level.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#519

Post by jshevek »

mafribe wrote: post #390
rfrey wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are Trump and Thiel if not "elites"? So it seems the elites are campaigning against each other.

The socialist tradition has a suitable term: "class traitor". The ruling class is ruling, in substantial parts because they are better at cooperating than other classes (and are good at seeding discord in other classes). One aspect of ruling class cooperation is ruthlessly punishing their own class traitors. I suspect that is part of what the whole saga is about.

In a sea of partisan squabble, you've said something truly worthy of thought. This has analogs in everything from organized crime to the interactions of genes.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#520

Post by matt4077 »

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…

It's not a moral fashion to believe that jailing political opponents or advocating laws making it illegal for the NYT to criticize him is outside the boundaries of "wrong, but tolerable".

And while I'd agree that employees should be protected as long as they do not intentionally harm their employers, Thiel isn't an employee and his "firing" would have far fewer consequences for him.

Post reply on HN