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What I Heard from Trump Supporters

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#761

Post by dboreham »

davidw wrote: post #45
dboreham wrote: post #21

Honestly not sure this sheds much light. Doesn't it boil down to: I always vote Republican regardless, sorry. I vote according to my pet wedge issue (usually guns or abortion), sorry. I'm bigoted and racist but I'm not going to admit to that. The alternative candidate wasn't very appealing so I figured why not? I liked the idea of a bomb-thrower, sorry.

There's some of that. I'm more curious about the "our world is falling apart" people though, as that seems to be a symptom of a larger problem that's less clear in its solution and less well-defined.

The downtrodden middle class (called "working class" elsewhere, fwiw) argument is a great one, but based on the data I am exposed to, it is not a big driver for people voting Trump. Everyone I know who voted for him is quite well off and doing nicely.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#762

Post by dboreham »

windsignaling wrote: post #433
dboreham wrote: post #21

Honestly not sure this sheds much light. Doesn't it boil down to: I always vote Republican regardless, sorry. I vote according to my pet wedge issue (usually guns or abortion), sorry. I'm bigoted and racist but I'm not going to admit to that. The alternative candidate wasn't very appealing so I figured why not? I liked the idea of a bomb-thrower, sorry.

Interesting. It seems as though your preconceived notions have biased how you summarized what you read. Simply reading the rest of the comments on HN should be enough to help you realize that what you posted above is not what it boils down to.

Genuinely curious why you would think that the true reasons for people voting for Trump could be divined from a statistical analysis of HN posts? Is the HN posting population likely to be representative of his voters?

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#763

Post by intended »

MK999 wrote: post #663
intended wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is there to debate on vaccines? The mechanism are known, I've studied it in basic biology classes, and all doctors have studied it in detail - you can too. The process by which our body deals with a vaccine is based on the same processes it uses to deal with any invader (and then building a repository of responses to handle such cases in future). If you don't have the time to look into it yourself, you can consi…

Vaccines sometimes cause grave injury and the vaccine court pays out. Some people aren't so keen to press their luck.

Statistically Planes fall out of the sky more frequently. But flight is amazingly safe.

Given enough N number of an event, something weird will happen.

But given that outside of America's bizarre discussion - billions of people have been vaccinated, over generations, to no known trends or losses, I'd say that vaccines are worth using.

----

This kind of debate is how Fox News and the rest of them made global warming into a debateable issue.

This is how creationism became credible to the general public.

You can ask these "reasonable" questions, and over fit on edge cases for anything. You can then present it to normal people and make it seem like that there is some issue.

Expert positions are discredited by saying there's a vast conspiracy, and that experts have a financial stake in the matter.

-------

Please stop doing this shit as a country.

You'll have perfected the art of making falsehoods credible forces in public discourse.

I could understand if this happened in some country where education was not widely available. But if it's happening in America, the first of the first world, and its deeply troubling.

These things are designed, planned and unleashed. America ends up acting as a massive proof of concept.

If you'll can't stop these kind of manufactured debates from spreading, then I don't know what the rest of the world will do.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#764

Post by [deleted] »

sdegutis wrote: post #70
shklnrj wrote: post #5

I think that when people "KNOW" that they are "RIGHT", it sometimes brings moral superiority into people. That, in addition to norms of socially acceptable behaviour, pushes people into a corner. For example - If someone goes to Bill Maher's show, anyone clapping on a conservative view point is seen as a criminal, while people with liberal point of view clap "together" as a group, with the smug arrogance of knowing t…

On the other hand, there's some dangerous censorship happening in the public school system and in the business world and in government, and I think a lot of Trump supporters recognize this and are worried about it.

[deleted]

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#765

Post by intended »

hkmurakami wrote: post #522
sgift wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the first things I've noticed when looking at political discussions. People (correctly) note the abuse of powers in others, but the moment they get power themselves they see no problem with (ab)using it to attack those who did it before. And then the power relations change again and it starts anew.

Definitely. The tactics used to shame Trump supporters, evangelicals, and the like are the exact same as the ones used to shame and invalidate people of color, women's rights, etc. In the past. It's disheartening, really.

It's natural.

Maybe people haven't seen it in America before, but this happens all the time.

Radicalism begets radical responses over enough of a time line.

People in this thread keep feeling disheartened or calling out liberals enclaves - but they completely forget that this is only 3 weeks into Trumps presidency.

As a candidate he was frightening to liberals, in a way no American presidential candidate has been in a long time.

And now he is president. He scares and disturbs people around the world. I can't imagine how liberal groups feel.

On top of that he won and is supported by people who argue that hate speech is free speech.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#766

Post by oh_sigh »

jacobolus wrote: post #693
oh_sigh wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and hasn’t read a whole book in decades source please.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-g... https://newrepublic.com/minutes/133566/- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/-/2016/07/17/d2ddf2b... http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/-898465 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd79UsXSLWg

Honest question: Do you think that any of your sources legitimately support your claim?

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#767

Post by thescribe »

davidw wrote: post #456
naravara wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Republicans were almost on board but it never got over the hump for whatever reason. The "whatever reason" you're grasping at is the latent racism of the Republican base. As much as you want to believe the focus is on "illegal" immigration the Republican base understands this as a coded dog whistle for not liking Brown people. It's not about a marketplace of ideas, it's about signaling which tribe you align with. Th…

That's part of it, but there are also "the law is the law" kinds of people, who perhaps don't realize how much more difficult it is for someone to move to the US now than it was for their ancestors. I have no idea as to the percentages of both. There are also a lot of people who are victims of zero sum thinking and the lump of labor fallacy.

Given the rise of automation, it should be far harder to migrate. Situations change, why shouldn't our immigration policy?

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#768

Post by jacobolus »

oh_sigh wrote: post #766
jacobolus wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-g... https://newrepublic.com/minutes/133566/- https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/-/2016/07/17/d2ddf2b... http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/-898465 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd79UsXSLWg

Honest question: Do you think that any of your sources legitimately support your claim?

I have seen absolutely no evidence that Donald Trump has been seen reading a book any time in the past 30 years, and there are multiple people who spent hours a day with Trump for months at a time who claim they never once saw him reading a book during that time. When asked to name recent books he has been reading, he mumbles excuses and then grasps at straws.

He has asked for all his white house briefs to be no more than a page, and multiple sources have suggested that he likes bullet points, big fonts, and lots of pictures and maps instead of prose. In a legal deposition, he went way out of his way to avoid reading a few sentences of a contract, claiming that it was because he needed glasses to read and the text was too small (but was not willing to get his glasses or have the lawyer provide a version with larger type). When he went on the comedy sketch show SNL, he wanted to ad-lib his lines instead of reading a few sentences.

It’s of course possible that Trump has managed to read one book sometime this millennium, but is embarrassed enough about his general lack of reading that he doesn’t want to discuss it in detail. That wouldn’t really change the key point, which is that he doesn’t in general like to / have the patience to read more than a few pages at a time, and certainly isn’t authoring his own books.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#769

Post by nojvek »

dahart wrote: post #327
tylerwhipple wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went from Salt Lake City to San Francisco as well. I have always been quite liberal on issues and it had never been a problem, but when discussing issues in SF I felt I had to be very careful with what I supported. I always felt my friendships/employment was threatened if I disagreed. I had a good friend/startup founder once say anyone who supported Trump deserved to be fired and blacklisted.

Ha! I'm also a Salt Lake native transplant to San Fran. In Utah, I am a socialist pinko commie. In San Francisco I'm (apparently) somewhere between a libertarian and a tea party republican. At least, that's my story. I'm exaggerating for effect, and in the spirit of fun. But I was literally publicly berated at work once on the company forum for not being liberal enough, not having views consistent with California dem…

I believe a large part of America wanted to say "fuck you" to the big system. Trump was the candidate for red states, Sanders for democrats.

I do agree with some of trumps policies. I don't agree with his behaviours though.

The simplistic tax reform makes sense. A bigger deductible would mean poor people would have middle class would have a larger net gain.

I support infrastructure investment.

I support stricter high skilled immigration.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#770

Post by lazugod »

Balgair wrote: post #600
saeranv wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. Can you elaborate on #1. I never really understood the level of hatred Hillary received. To me she seemed like any other politician.

Hillary has had a very long career with many highs and many lows, so there really isn't a single reason anymore on why she is hated; many people have many reasons that may go back 30 years or more. Here are some google hits on why: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-womack/stop-pretending-y...

Are they good reasons? Should I be hating her?
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