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

911–920 of 1001 posts

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#911

Post by soreal »

brlewis wrote: post #170

Thanks, Marco, for drawing my attention to Sam Altman's great blog post. More people should take Sam's attitude: The way we got into a situation with Trump as a major party nominee in the first place was by not talking to people who are very different than we are. The polarization of the country into two parallel political realities is not good for any of us. We should talk to each other more, not less. We should all…

This thread really reinforces my respect for Altman and others like him. Of the 1,000 or so comments in this thread, hardly anyone managed to capture this simple, yet profound concept as well as Sam.

If Trump is bad, he's a symptom more than a disease. Shunning Republicans isn't going to change their mind, it's going to drive them to echo chambers like /r/the_donald where they will have their beliefs reinforced, not challenged.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#912

Post by knodi123 »

CN7R wrote: post #677
webXL wrote: post #595

Shame on Marco. I can't stand Trump, but I also can't stand this ganging up on Thiel. I guess the fact that he's a billionaire means he can be bullied, but this political bullying has a chilling effect that leads to the lackluster choices we get for president every four years. Thiel sees Hillary as a bigger threat to his interests than Trump. To prefer an outcome does not imply you favor all aspects of that outcome.…

Thiel donating to Trump is not a big deal. Honestly, if people really wanted to solve this 'issue' instead of criticizing the business ethics of YC, they'd go DONATE TO THE OPPOSITE CANDIDATE and VOTE ON NOVEMBER 8TH. Because in the end, it's ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE, and I'm sure there's more people who disagree with Thiel than agree. But then again, media—that includes HN—needs a news story.

> Because in the end, it's ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE,

Not sure this is really true. Because in the end, ads are effective, political spending influences people, and people like Thiel have vastly more money than I do.

If we were only worried about how Thiel was going to cast his own vote, then we wouldn't be having a conversation right now. But we are having a conversation, so it's a bit disingenuous to pretend all we should care about is one man's vote.

Let me ask you this - Why do you think the FEC chose to implement a limit of $2700 for individual donations to a political campaign?

Is it possible to think that law serves a legitimate purpose, and ALSO to think it's fine for billionaires to give multiple millions to a candidate? I allege that it is not.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#913

Post by Torgo »

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…

It was not a "split." It was the social justice wing of political atheism saying to the entire group that everyone must conform to their values, or get out. And I am not exaggerating about that, not even a little bit.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#914

Post by ryanobjc »

pko722 wrote: post #239
sosodaft wrote: post #121

from: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/08/the-slate-star-codex-po... 2. The anchor of a major news network donates lots of money to organizations fighting against gay marriage, and in his spare time he writes editorials arguing that homosexuals are weakening the moral fabric of the country. The news network decides they disagree with this kind of behavior and fire the anchor. a) This is acceptable; the news network…

Sigh. People keep bringing up Brendan Eich. What happened there is very simple: a good chunk of Mozilla PR and marketing is about freedom. Software and online freedom, yes, but the word "freedom" is used a fair bit. Eich monetarily supported a cause that aimed to take away freedom for a certain class of people. This is incongruent for the face of an organization that has freedom one of its core messages. Mozilla is f…

ALSO his inability to handle the controversy demonstrated his lack of CEO abilities.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#915

Post by shruubi »

This kind of thinking is why even as a heavily left-leaning person, I have a real problem with the current attitude of the social-justice movement.

I believe Sam is right, Trump is a reprehensible person who has done horrific things and has no right being president. But just because I find him and a large majority of his supporters as ignorant, racist, homophobic and hate-filled people doesn't mean I have any right to exclude or excommunicate them just for their beliefs.

It sets a dangerous precedent to work towards silencing and vilifying a party whom you disagree with, and while it seems fine when from your point of view it is for the greater good, what happens when someone who works to silence and vilify you claims it is for the greater good?

On top of which, it makes us no better than the ultra-conservative isolationists to vilify and excommunicate based upon belief. Don't believe me? Just look at the language and justification used by Trump and his supporters and compare it to the language that we left-leaning use against Trump and his supporters.

A true democracy means every person, no matter how repugnant, gets their voice heard. A truly diverse community means that all people, no matter their race, sexual orientation or their political beliefs deserve to be heard. And a truly free society allows for the free exchange of ideas and beliefs, what defines us as people is our ability to recognize what is morally right or wrong in those ideas and rather than vilify, try to educate.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#916

Post by knucklesandwich »

ThomPete wrote: post #127

Marcos understanding of this situation is extremely telling for a fundamental problem with many americans relationship with politics. Most only get involved around election. After that their political interest is non existing. It's easy to get lured into the idea that politics is a simple choice between the moral good and the moral bad, that the choice is simple and that there is a one to one relationship between wha…

The implication here is that Trump voters are working class people who have been drawn to Trump by virtue of their economic anxiety, concern about loss of their jobs via globalization or immigration, etc. The image in mind is coal or steel workers or industrial factory workers in rust belt cities that have lost their jobs. It's a seductive narrative to Republicans to try to claim the working class, and to classist Democrats to pin Trump on dumb hicks. It's also fundamentally at odds with what all the data tells us.

The first thing that's wrong about this is the assumption that the most economically disenfranchised vote at all. The least financially secure voters have some of the lowest turnout in America, with only about 20% of them voting [1]. These people fundamentally don't vote. The second problem is to try to pretend like Trump actually has a claim on the working class as his base to a greater extent than other candidates. He doesn't [2]. The median income on Trump supporters from the primaries was higher than that of Clinton supporters or Bernie supporters. He also claims a larger take of the wealthiest voters, who compose 9% of his voters in the primary, vs. Clinton and Sanders' 7% and 5% respectively. Fundamentally, his demographic skews more wealthy than the democrats.

A recent gallop survey with a large sample size shows that Trump's base don't live in areas that experience job loss due to companies moving overseas, nor do they live in areas with large immigrant populations [3]. They live in areas that are largely racially segregated (largely white). They have tradecraft jobs like HVAC repairmen, plumber, etc. and live relatively comfortably. Fundamentally though, these people have low exposure to people of color, which might explain their bigotry. Finally, surveys tend to show that Trump voters have a more negative opinion of muslims and people of color [4], which should be of no surprise.

So no, please pedal your "Trump's voters are the economically anxious white workers of America" narrative somewhere else. The truth is that Trump voters are bigots.

[1]: http://www.people-press.org/2015/01/08/the-politics-of-finan...

[2]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...

[3]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2822059

[4]: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/15/13286498/d...

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#917

Post by uola »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #882
jazzyk wrote: post #729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's still not suppression of free speech. I know this is cliché, but freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. I can exercise my freedom of speech at my employer and repeatedly say terribly insulting and disparaging things to my coworkers. My employer can then fire me. Would you say my employer is suppressing my freedom of speech? The answer is obviously no. I still can speak freely, just not while…

As far as I know, freedom of speech protects you from the government. Since YC is not the government freedom of speech isn't applicable, but anti-discrimination or employment law could be. In fact if the government would limit YCs freedom to not associate with Theil, as guaranteed by freedom of speech, that could technically be a greater violation of rights. This is why some libertarians think that private discrimination should be legal.

> In short, we should condone private — but not government — discrimination, even if the rationale is that a service provider simply doesn’t want to deal with the persons seeking service. That rationale — however offensive it may be in some circumstances — is implicit in our right not to associate, which is the flip side of our constitutional right of association, guaranteed by the First Amendment.

http://www.cato.org/policy-report/marchapril-2016/libertaria...

But I don't have the best understanding of US laws.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#918

Post by ptaipale »

cpach wrote: post #492
dreta wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a major problem with Muslim refugees in Europe right now. My girlfriend used to love visiting Paris, now it’s basically a no-go zone even in daytime. What he’s saying is based on reality, even if it makes you feel all bad inside when you hear it. Even in the US, where the refugee problem doesn’t exist, you still learn after terrorist attacks that, f.e. the family knew, or that the attacker had bomb equipment…

Paris a no-go zone, in daytime ? That's laughable.

It is indeed a wild exaggeration, as anyone who's recently visited Paris can tell you.

But there are some problem areas where the police unions say they can't go:

https://www.thelocal.fr/20161010/are-there-police-no-go-zone...

“The police can’t apply the law in these areas, they are attacked. If the police can’t do their work it’s because there are criminals and delinquents who don’t respect the law.”

“It’s not just a problem with this government it’s a problem with all French governments over the last 20 years. Governments will never admit there are no-go zones because it’s a sign of a failed state."

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#919

Post by jessaustin »

tptacek wrote: post #254
jessaustin wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would anyone be shocked if that came up in Part II? Brendan Eich wouldn't be...

There's no political argument that you can't turn into a slippery slope like this. You can get to Brendan Eich with just a few more hops from a starting point of "refusing to donate to Trump". So that argument isn't very interesting. What might interest you more is that I agree with you about Brendan Eich. I think Eich's situation is nothing at all like that of Thiel's. Eich was a full-time employee of Mozilla. From…

OK, you'll be shocked. That's fine; politics is a matter of taste. For that reason, it is ever plagued by this sort of fuzzy, tone-policing, last-year-you-could-say-that-but-not-this-year, latest-fashion argument. Most political pundits owe their careers to that insipid bullshit. Personally I'd like both of the candidates under discussion to go jump in a lake, so we could elect someone opposed to the Eternal War on Everything. That's off-narrative, however, so it will be best to avoid both rural Arab weddings and plant-based pain control for some time to come.

Re: Shame on Y Combinator

#920

Post by morg0e »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #347
tptacek wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing anywhere gave you the right to have a "discussion about bigger issues" without "being painted" as anything. You will find no legal foundation for that entitlement in the US Constitution, nor will you find a philosophical foundation for it anywhere in the theory of liberal democracy. You have a right to express your views, and I have a right to criticize them. Both rights are inalienable.

I think OP's desire is to be able to have a debate about the topics without being met with Ad Hominem responses. Are the things Trump says and allegedly did reprehensible? Of course. But to bring them up in a conversation about the status quo in DC is still ad hominem, and to think that being right about his being a pig wins any debate about a possible evil power structure headed by Clinton is a straw man. Donald Tru…

Thom's first post explicitly states that if you disagree with him, you are less well informed than him; and that you are an autocrat who does not accept dissent.

Thom's selfish and privileged expectation is that he can open with that attack, and that we'll all be polite and civil to him; even though he started the conversation by directly claiming that only dumb autocrats disagree with him. That's not how the world works though. Thom chose to be awful to a huge group of people; and he chose not to retract his shitty, awful words. he should expect people to treat him poorly.

Further, he's a white man who decided to tell a diverse group of people (who has never met) that we don't understand sexism or racism as well as he does. This was insane. The level of arrogance required to do this is... almost unmeasurable.

So a few things:

1) he shouldn't expect us to be polite. He was rude as FUCK in his opening, and he was also incredibly arrogant with his assertions about his understanding of american sexism and racism.

2) 'ad hominem' is not what you think it is. Don't use words you don't understand.

3) It's borderline insane for you to spend your life defending OP. ThomPete made REALLY bad decisions, and you have better things to do with your life than to defend a white male asshole who isn't actually being hurt at all.

4) The amount of "oh the poor rich white men who are suffering..." bullshit is off the charts. PG and Sama are suffering no harm at all, beyond a few words on Twitter. Their lives are completely intact. They're FUCKING FINE.

5) The people who will suffer in a DJT world are all powerless. They are people whose lives will not be completely intact. They are people who will be ruined. But you don't give a fuck aobut that because you're too busy vilifying people for being mean to an awful cunt like ThomPete.

Post reply on HN