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Time to Take a Stand

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Time to Take a Stand

#761

Post by cpr »

burkaman wrote: post #439
bassman9000 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's got his foot in the door. That's all he needs right now. That's a nice slippery slope you got in there. There's zero mention to muslims in the text of the order, and it's clearly stated that it's temporary, with several revision dates for assesment, the goal being to strengthen the vetting procedures. I bet most people commenting here haven't read it. Do it. Now. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/…

> Upon the resumption of USRAP admissions, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, is further directed to make changes, to the extent permitted by law, to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality. The vast majority of…

> The vast majority of Middle East refugees are Muslims in the majority in their countries, so here the Secretary of State is directed to prioritize non-Muslims.

Right, that's because those are the ones being persecuted and killed under dhimmitude by the Muslim majorities.

(Not PC to point this out, I realize.)

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#763

Post by mavelikara »

lefstathiou wrote: post #502
zeteo wrote: post #169

>1. Call 2. Participate 3. Share 4. Vote This is the same kind of bullshit that's lost Hillary the election and got us here in the first place. It might have worked in the '90s to get a gold medal for Rosa Parks. It will not work in 2017 to make Trump back off his core message. The problem here is not that your side isn't loud enough and can't get political attention for an issue. The problem is that the opposing sid…

For many Americans Sam Altman and Madonna are unrelatable so the messaging falls on deaf ears (or is potentially even counter productive). Nobody believes Google or YC is hiring refugees, or that Sam Altman and others are sending their kids to public schools attended by refugees, or living in low to middle income neighborhoods housing refugees and having to manage the increased violence that ensues. All well and good…

Furthermore, Sam Altman and crew did not utter a word when people who they _can_ relate to - thousands of legal immigrants from India and China working in technology companies - have been discriminated against by per-country green card quotas. Now the same crowd feel for refugees and other legal immigrants from certain countries being discriminated against. The hypocrisy is amusing.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#764

Post by grzm »

adamdonahue wrote: post #745
grzm wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guidelines ask us to flag and move on without comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yeah, Altman is a hypocrite. Zero respect for this guy. "Let's ban certain types of speech unless it's from me, of course."

The guidelines say don't comment on flagging. It's just not constructive. You're free to express other thoughts as long as they're civil and substantive. Why is this unreasonable?

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#765

Post by pfarnsworth »

becarefulyo wrote: post #712
pfarnsworth wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely incorrect. Empirically, the country voted with a nearly 50/50 split between the two candidates, meaning the country felt both candidates were "just as bad". Just because you have your own personal biases doesn't actually make them right, the data does.

Empirically, it wasn't 50/50, not even among the percentage of the population that actually voted.

That's pretty disingenuous. For the purpose of my argument, 48/46 is close enough to 50/50 to make my point that it was close to split.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#766

Post by hedora »

methehack wrote: post #42
_m8fo wrote: post #7

Why is that all of these posts saying to "take a stand" fail to explain the political process? I'll just quote myself here. If you want to help stop trump the most effective ways are to: 1. Call - Local congresspeople (http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/) - Senators (https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/) - Local officials (https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials) 2. Participate - Get involved in local electi…

I think Mr. Altman is largely addressing tech CEOs here and urging them to make public statements. The actions you list are great for you and me, but he's mostly not really talking to us. Supporting quotations from the post (because evidence): "The tech community is powerful. Large tech companies in particular have enormous power and are held in high regard. We need to hear from the CEOs clearly and unequivocally" "A…

Since this is HN, and, frankly, this audience is bay area centric, lobbying California to push back early and often might help.

Many of us live in "sanctuary cities" with local governments that plan to stand up to Trump's immigration policies anyway.

Strong business support here could easily inspire action by Sacramento and our congress critters.

Action now will matter a lot more than after the feds broaden their target.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#767

Post by hackuser »

I strongly agree and I believe what Sam is doing is essential: People are hard wired to follow social norms, as I once heard a social scientist describe it. If we say nothing, we allow passivity or tacit acceptance of Trump to become a norm. That especially applies to leaders in every community, who have a special responsibility. Thanks Sam for making your voice heard.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#768

Post by panic »

cmurf wrote: post #639
panic wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to know they have the support to fight in the strongest way possible. Dianne Feinstein, for example, has voted in favor of every Trump appointee so far.

I think it's short sighted; the administration is throwing a bunch of grenades up in the air counting on distraction and wearing people out. The reality is the easiest way to have flicked off this booger was the election, and that's over. Dealing with it is much harder, much more expensive. So you have to triage which battles you're going to fight, and how. Don't count on the replacement appointees being any better,…

It's not like there's some sort of fuel that is exhausted by voting "no" on Trump's appointees. We will only get worn out if we let ourselves.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#769

Post by jacquesm »

_callcc wrote: post #758
jacquesm wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, obviously not. We can disagree on all kinds of things. What we can't disagree on are facts and figures and historical lessons learned about walking certain paths. If we fail to learn from the past we will repeat it endlessly and I really could do without a repeat of the path that we are currently on. But who knows, maybe the world just needs it's population reset every half century or so, we're overdue. With the…

The sort of facts-and-figures type of Democrat doesn't realize that politics is not the same thing as the technocratic administration of society. Politics is not an optimization problem, it's not about finding the "optimal" state of affairs or whatever. It's about hopes and dreams. It forms the horizon of the destiny people imagine for themselves, both individually and collectively. It's also about virtue, morality,…

> This is why Democrats lose.

This is not about winning or losing elections. This is about winning or losing (big time) as a country in the future.

Rapid change is invariably bad, steady, slow changes and growth are good. The long view is the one to take, even if it can't be compressed down into juicy soundbites and isn't sexy.

See, if you 'win' but end up wrecking your country then you lost anyway, 'boring' in politics is good.

There is a reason that 'may you live in interesting times' is generally considered to be a curse, not a blessing.

Re: Time to Take a Stand

#770

Post by dragonwriter »

adamrezich wrote: post #450
dragonwriter wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually doesn't include any of the countries the 9/11 terrorists came from.

I keep seeing people repeating this meme everywhere, but I've yet to figure out why it's actually relevant. 9/11 was sixteen years ago.

None of the post-9/11 terrorists in the United States came from any of the targeted countries (and none were refugees) either. Both the 9/11 terrorists and the few non-domestic Muslim post-9/11 terrorists that actually carried out attacks were non-refugees from countries not covered by the order.
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