1) YC voted Thiel off the island 2) YC establishes a policy of "take money from Thiel and you are toxic to us"
Anyone in a position of power who took a look at Trump and didn't recoil with disgust needs to be exiled from civil society.
And this well represents the leftist-elitistic-rhetoric that drove so many to vote for Trump (HRC's "deplorables" comment).
Five year olds say "I told you so," adults find reasonable pathways forward in difficult situations.
People voted for and supported Trump for a variety of reasons, let's not generalize them all into one block like his administration is doing to Muslims.
This comment becomes even more bizarre whenever my comment was about acceptance of everyone, including Trump supporters, which is in line with your tao of five year old here.
The inclination to treat unreasonable people as if they're reasonable is a major and easily exploited failure of adulthood. Plenty of Trump supporters are reasonable. Peter Thiel is not.
Every five-year-old knows a dozen stories about a good king with an evil counselor, and how the king would have been better off getting rid of the counselor.
It's the folks who single-handed lot have power to shape the world. Thiel can grab a friendly dinner with the greatest threat to humanity on Monday, and yet Sam Altman will gladly have lunch with him on Tuesday and joke about his "friends" as though nothing happened?
I suppose I don't really see much of a rhetorical difference. Proposing that we exile people who disagree with you is pretty gross to me. It doesn't matter you constrained yourself to only punishing the 'powerful'.
> Thiel can grab a friendly dinner with the greatest threat to humanity on Monday
This just sounds hyperbolic. Care to back this ridiculous statement?
> and yet Sam Altman will gladly have lunch with him on Tuesday and joke about his "friends" as though nothing happened?
People are multifaceted. As much as you'd like to reduce people down to single words or ideas, they're not that simple.
Objectively ridiculous. Davos disagrees[0], and geopolitical experts are utterly nonplussed by Trump (Stratfor, Geopolitical Futures). What 22 year old journalism majors decry as "a systemic threat to the world order" is just seen by geopolitical observers as an interesting gambit that may pay off big. Take what they say about Trump and Taiwan[1], NATO, torture (Trump said yesterday that Mattis was in charge, and if Mattis doesn't believe in torture, he gets to override Trump's orders). Your hysteria is unfounded.
[0]: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-biggest-risks...
[1]: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/trump-taiwan-and-an-uproar/
Republican voters had many choices in their primary. Cruz, Carson, Christie, Huckabee, ... were just as bad. So your variety of reasons isn't very convincing. At a certain point, you have to take responsibility for your vote. Hand waving it away with a variety of reasons isn't fooling anyone.
You're not advocating "responsibility". You're saying Trump supporters are morally defective, and when they refuse that label, you say: "see! not only are you morally flawed, but you won't even admit it! proves my point!"
Is it hard to understand that Trump supporters vote for what they think is morally just and right, just like you, and not for evil, because they're evil?
At a certain point, you have to accept responsibility. Trump is your guy and he is doing your work.
I suppose you need to understand that y'all went way over the line with Trump and that we're not going to be nice about it.
Don't include me in that. I'm not even American.
"We're not going to be nice about it" is once again pretty vindictive. Is that a threat?
I don't like Trump, but fighting him isn't worth going against the very principles we fight for.
People have a right to their beliefs, even if their beliefs are stupid. If not, than what kind of country are we?
That Thiel can get a table at a restaurant in SV proves all the talk about changing the world tech leaders do is so much nonsense.
It's not even partially hypocritical to claim one is ok & the other isn't.
You realize the reason segregation was wrong was because it was based on someone's skin color, not the actions they've taken?
However, people were sent to concentration camps for their actions and beliefs, and we all think that's wrong...
Also, does that invalidate my point? I mean, I don't think it does, but I figured I might as well ask...
You and plenty of people in this thread seem to confuse "behave" and "say".
"While Trump's"enemies take him literally not seriously & friends seriously not literally", the wise looks at his acts & acts only. No words." --NNTaleb
Ostracizing others for their words is incredibly immature, petty, and vindictive. And ironically, ostracizing is an act, not words, so it does expose your character.
I don't believe Christian bakeries should be forced to bake cakes for anyone. I do believe that if they want the protections of the legal system, they must follow the same protections for others, even if they find them abhorrent. A principled stand against those protections does not mean they get to do that at no cost to themselves.
If "person who supports an abhorrent ideology" is a protected class in SV restaurant service law, I rescind my call to ban him from getting a table, and change it to "let him eat alone".
> Ostracizing others for their words is incredibly immature, petty, and vindictive. And ironically, ostracizing is an act, not words, so it does expose your character.
No its not. Its a basic component of all human interactions. We all choose to associate or not with people based on their beliefs. Those associations are powerful multipliers for both success and failure in this world. That there is not a penalty for unwanted behavior in a given society is not a mark of value.
Finally, giving money to someone is also an act, regardless of what the Supreme Court says. Thiel has exposed his character, he is not welcome at my house and I won't work for him.
Political ideologies are legally protected against discrimination in California.
But even if they weren't, why judge someone by their beliefs? The only reason you would is if you think support for Trump is a moral defect, with no exceptions. In other words you're not against him because of his political beliefs, but because of your (not universal) beliefs about what is moral and what isn't.
> We all choose to associate or not with people based on their beliefs.
Disagree. Most people judge others on social status and personal character, neither of which have any link to political ideologies or personal beliefs.
> he is not welcome at my house and I won't work for him
That's a fine personal decision, but there's a huge leap between "I don't want to be involved with him" and "everybody else should ostracize him, or they are just as evil as him". The former is "live and let live", and the latter is "the world should bow to me".
When the person's actions are directly and publicly detrimental to the business interests, the investor/backer/employee is at odds with the rest of the group and yeah at that point its not just a belief but a question of the self-interest of the business being at odds with one of its investor/employee/backers.
Let us be honest here, Thiel is also backing a man that has no trouble firing people who aren't Yesmen. If that is the sort of standard he wants applied to other people, it should apply to him as well.
There comes up a point when the pile of problems extends simply beyond belief but realized action in the real world that directly impacts other people. It is at that point, action is always taken in any situation. Please do not simply call this a 'belief' at this point when Thiel's goals and the related actions are realized in the manner he desired.
Politics is a process of conflict and negotiation between varied, competing interests. In a liberal democracy, "people have a right to their beliefs" is the starting point for that process, not the endpoint.
I think what's more important is clarifying Peter Thiel's beliefs and how he's going to make things better moving forward. The line in the sand that Sam and YC should seriously consider is when do the political freedoms of their partners supersede the actual freedoms of their founders?
The way I feel, as a founder, is slightly taken advantage of. I'm not directly part of the YC network, but there's an implicit social contract in Silicon Valley --- help others, and it will come back to you. YC's value is in fighting for founders. When a partner actively supports a vehemently anti-immigrant candidate and their political freedoms are defended at the potential expense of founders' livelihoods, it's confusing. It sends a message to founders that they're simply cattle - you can afford to lose a few along the way because you have the greenest pasture and you're confident they'll overlook the slaughterhouse.
I like YC. I love the founders and partners I've met that are part of the network and have a great deal of respect for everyone involved. There's some murky water here, though, and additional clarity would alleviate the anxieties of, I think, a lot of talented entrepreneurs, both aspiring and successful.
The hypocrisy of being anti-Trump but accepting Thiel is all over the valley.
"It goes without saying that if the people of Group X are staring at you demandingly, waiting for you to hate the right enemies with the right intensity, and ready to castigate you if you fail to castigate loudly enough, you may be hanging around the wrong group." - http://lesswrong.com/lw/42/tolerate_tolerance/
This is the guy, after all, who spent his time making "you can't take him literally" arguments about the same policies Trump is pushing forward in his very first week.
So how many degrees of separation? Let's start with "more than one, please" and go from there.
We don't work like that. If we do the next one exiled will be you.