Meanwhile, all sorts of misconceptions are behind the appeal of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a monster. I do not think reasonable people are required to change their behavior to assuage the misconceptions of his deluded followers.
Such thoughtful discussion backed by so many supporting arguments.
The reason I'm not taking the bait is that the debate on this thread isn't about Donald Trump, and I'm not going to help you muddy the waters.
No, I mean what I've said repeatedly. If you support Donald Trump, or even just think he's no worse than Hillary Clinton, I'll agree to disagree with you and move on. But Sam Altman does not agree with you. Sam Altman compares Donald Trump to a dictator. Paul Graham compared him to Stalin.
The debate is about whether Altman can continue to endorse an important member of Trump's campaign while still believing that Trump is an existential threat to democracy. If Altman is sanguine about a Trump presidency, his support for Thiel is understandable. I don't think that he is.
Your willingness to stoke the red-vs-blue fires is why the US has ended up where we are. In other words, you're part of the problem.
A theme going on here is a binary state regarding how we should treat individuals and consider their positions. This idea of "endorsing" Thiel means you are supporting all of his political views and not just his business views. That if one supports Trump one is all-in on all of his positions.
For example, many of Trump's supporters are identifying with his economic message. They may find his immigration stance to be distasteful but the overriding concern is the economy, so they are willing to suck it up. Trump's bloc isn't a monolithic group with shared priorities.
Altman's position on this is exactly correct- expressing his disagreement with Thiel but with the maturity to quash the urge to run away from or "punish" Thiel. We would be better off as a society if we all adopted this mindset.
If we extend this into the realm of the individual and political speech, it is a totally different animal with clear dangers for freedom of expression.
I am not myself sure if I would consider it a moral failing to "boycott" an individual as a pressure tactic in these circumstances (or more like misguided social engineering) but it is definitely laudable to take a more nuanced view as Altman and YC have done.
A counterexample would be a situation where someone went and figured out that most of Nestle's employees were supporting Trump and then boycotted the business as a way to pressure those employees into altering their positions. That is much closer to being morally objectionable.
Outside of that, Altman _has_ criticized Thiel's views, directly. The disagreement seems to be about what to do afterwards. He is simply not willing to cut him off for this disagreement. If this way of thinking was a social norm, you would eliminate "anti-PC" griping which is important to a good chunk of Trump supporters, and you would likely see positive social change happen more rapidly (e.g. if this was the norm 50 years ago you might have seen more movement on gay marriage, etc. if people could pipe up without fear of being fired (or "boycotted")).