Comment by anondon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anondon | Hacker News Reader

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> 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 on the elections and let the votes speak?

-I imagine Trump haters and Hillary haters have very strong reasons,facts,opinions and speculative thinking to backup their claims that the other candidate is a threat to democracy, will start WW3, corrupt practices etc. This should lead to well informed debate as it seems to be happening here but without calling for distancing from person X for endorsing a different candidate. What will you achieve by distancing people based on differing views? A monoculture? Differing views and discussion on the views is one of the things that makes a democracy work.

I believe Sam is right on this. It's Thiel's money, he can support whichever candidate he wants (it's legal). His views differ from Sam's and PG's, and people seem to extend it to YC as an organization and call for distancing Thiel from YC. It achieves nothing, and if anything weakens democracy.

> 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?

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

The problem is that the line being proposed here separates roughly 50% of the population of America, possibly more. You are basically saying "I know that even though I may technically be in a minority, my moral convictions are so strong that I must impose them on you and deter you from your way of thinking by any means necessary, even if it means firing you from your job."

> The problem is that the line being proposed here separates roughly 50% of the population of America, possibly more.

That's not a moral argument, just an appeal to popularity. The same could be said in 1932 Germany and it would be just as wrong then. To be clear I'm not suggesting Trump is Hitler, but your argument is flawed.

That's a flaw in democracy, not my argument. Democracy relies on the majority having good moral judgment. If you're in the minority, too bad. I'm sure there are lots of religious people that would like to impose their morals on the majority, and I think you and I both agree that's not a good idea. But now that your group might be minority (by a slight margin), suddenly it's okay to do anything it takes to impose your morals on the majority?

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_fallacy

Moreover, loosely associating is characteristically different from positively endorsing.

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

What exactly else do you propose? Endorsing people based on their actions (all actions are political; no actions are apolitical; that's just how it works, you can't quit the game) is the only ethical position which makes any sense at all.

This has gone far enough. The only effective response is to judge by actions and refuse to work with any Y Combinator company until Thiel is fired (and Altman resigns).

> What exactly else do you propose?

Let people have differing opinions and continue working with them. If Thiel is doing something illegal, and goes against the spirit of the Constitution, call him out for and push for legal action.

> The only effective response is to judge by actions and refuse to work with any Y Combinator company until Thiel is fired (and Altman resigns).

Fire Thiel for supporting Trump with a donation? Seriously? What is this, a dictatorship? Everyone who disagrees is silenced? You want Altman to resign? Genuine question : Do you hear yourself?

Thiel cannot be fired by Sam Altman because he is not an employee of Sam Altman. His relationship with Altman is that of an endorsee, and all that's being asked of Altman is that he stop endorsing members of Trump's campaign.

> His relationship with Altman is that of an endorsee,

Noted. Should have been careful there.

> and all that's being asked of Altman is that he stop endorsing members of Trump's campaign.

Why? It makes no sense to me. Why can't people have their opinions and agree to disagree on ones they don't agree on. Don't you feel such calls go against free speech?

They can. What they cannot do is work effectively to prevent bigotry, sexism, and the destruction of the American economy and political fabric while simultaneously endorsing and working with people doing the exact opposite. People keep dancing around the fact that Thiel is not simply a Trump supporter, or even just a Trump donor. He is a Trump campaign surrogate --- a member of the campaign.

I considered responding to this, but I'm not sure how to have a meaningful conversation with someone who engages in such hyperbole.

I understand your frustration. The desire to respond in a constructive way is necessary for us to go forward, especially now. For me, a part of that is to try my best to (a) give the people I'm talking to the benefit of the doubt that they're engaging in good faith; and (b) try not to use language that escalates any tensions. Online text discussion makes this especially fraught, given its low-bandwidth: we only get the text, without the benefit of other channels such as voice inflection and body language.

One tool HN provides is the ability to view a user's other comments, which can provide a gauge to measure whether someone is engaging in good faith.

And there's always the choice to not respond. If you think someone is just looking for attention, not responding might be the right course of action. Once people get angry or frustrated, it's probably better to just back off and try again some other time. And in general I'm thinking of myself as well to those I'm engaging with.

Or if you don't think you have something meaningful to add. Sometimes that's hard to do because you think the conversation is important and want to participate.

Please don't interpret anything I've written as criticism of either you or tptacek. For the record, from what I've seen both of you are thoughtful and engaging honestly. I also hope this doesn't come off as preachy. These are just the heuristics I've been using. Some others are Rapoport's rules [0], which I think are really insightful. I'd love to hear how others approach this as well.

I've thought about all these things in writing this comment, and I'm still unsure whether I should click the "reply" button. I do think it's important to try to keep these types of conversations going, and I know I need the practice, so in good faith I'm willing to put my neck out another time.

[0] https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapo...

Valid points. My comment wasn't meant to be "frustration", but steering the conversation back toward productivity. I definitely can see why it came out as frustration, and in that sense I deserve the downvotes (this is not to imply that you were among the downvoters). Thanks for sharing the link.

>Why? It makes no sense to me. Why can't people have their opinions and agree to disagree on ones they don't agree on. Don't you feel such calls go against free speech?

I'm pretty sure this is a fundamental misunderstanding of free speech. Free speech means the governing body can't forbid you from expressing your opinion or punish you for it.

It does not mean other people or organizations can't take action based on their disagreement with your opinions and it doesn't mean expressing an opinion has to be without consequence from anything.

Legally, that's what free speech means, but philosophically Free Speech can certainly be more general than just related to the government.

Voltaire's "...but I'll defend to the death your right to say it," comes to mind.

We'd generally feel the same way if a company were enforcing completely arbitrary abridgment of free speech on its employees. Or if a private school were (legally) kicking kids out because they supported Black Lives Matter.

I did forget one thing that still falls under free speech (even legally probably), aside from the state not stopping you from expressing your opinion, it should protect your ability to do so. As in, not allowing anyone to silence you, but even that has its boundaries since silencing someone is not the same as not perpetuating what they say.

The examples you gave are ones where the effect on that person's life would be so fundamental that it could easily be considered an intrusion into their rights.

Boycotting a company or choosing to end a business partnership are completely different in that regard.

I believe Thiel only responds to economic pressure.

I am intending to use my economic leverage, and advocating others do the same, by refusing to work with Thiel and his enablers, which include Y Combinator and companies funded by them. (It's not just the Trump thing, by any means, that's the end of a very very very long list.)

Altman has also shown himself to be – at best – unaware of the moral dimensions of his actions, and that's not someone I want to have to deal with. So I won't and I suggest that you don't.

Same reason I won't work for an oil supermajor. I don't want to be party to pollution.

Everyone else is free to act as they choose, but I hope enough people agree with me that it weights the needle. If companies can't hire talent, they die; so what talent can do is refuse.

> The only effective response is to judge by actions and refuse to work with any Y Combinator company until Thiel is fired (and Altman resigns)

You want to shun people (YC companies) for not shunning people (YC) for not shunning people (Thiel) for supporting Trump?

That's people at three levels removed from Trump. Is that really what you want?

Life's too short to work with pollutors.

And yes; I want working with Thiel to be a large net economic loss, because I believe that's the language he understands. This is the only effective tool I have to try and do that. It's nowhere near enough, but it's what I've got.

So... will you actually put your money where your mouth is? Will you not associate with companies or products that were helped by Y-Combinator until they publicly reject YC?

Will you not use HackerNews, Docker, DropBox, Reddit, AirBnB, DoorDash, Stripe, Pebble, or any of the rest?

I won't work for any of them.

You say "thats the language he understands", but that's a really dangerous way to be thinking.

Look at it this way: assume you support gay marriage, and the supreme court had gone the other way. Some business partner finds out you support gay marriage, and they vehemently disagree with that, so they refuse to do business with you. They tell all of their other anti-gay acquainances to also stop doing business with you.

What would you think of that? Would it make you reconsider, would it make you suddenly be against gay marriage? More likely, it would piss you off and create even more division.

That is literally all that cutting business ties with Thiel would do, create division. Cutting a person off because you disagree on something political will never change their mind, it will only make them hate you right back, and suddenly you have two separate groups.

Remember after world war 1 when the world went "screw Germany", and ordered massive reparations, and shunned them from everything? Remember how that just caused animosity and hated right back? It triggered another, bigger war.

After WW2, on the other hand, the allies integrated. They actually worked at meshing together and creating something better, and it worked. Germany is no longer heavily nazi, or even kind of nazi.

For another great example, see the religious history of England.

Cutting off Theil and having everyone who doesn't support Trump boycott him just sends him a big middle finger, and makes a big rift that is going to keep causing problems in a big casual loop.

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