The Strange Politics of Peter Thiel, Trump’s Most Unlikely Supporter | Hacker News Reader

The Strange Politics of Peter Thiel, Trump’s Most Unlikely Supporter

bloomberg.com

94 pointsspking167 comments

The Diversity Myth, a 1995 book [Thiel] co-wrote with David O. Sacks, railed against multiculturalism, which, they wrote, “exists to destroy Western culture.”

What is up with all these people lately thinking that Western culture is some form of homogeneous block that's been unadultered for millennia and has recently come under "multiculturalist" attack? Especially coming from the US, a country that didn't exist when my old high school was founded.

Same idea, basically, as with Putin's view that the values of modern Western societies are intrinsically hostile towards "Russian" and Eastern Orthodox values; the stance taken by generations of nationalist and autocratic leaders in Turkey that the state must protect itself against "insults to Turkishness" (and most diligently); or the belief among American conservatives that they must be ever-vigilant in their defense of "Judeo-Christian values" (whatever that means), etc.

And let's of course not forget the hard-core Islamists obsessed with the idea that Western music, Western culture, Western everything are intrinsic threats to the sacrosanct purity of "Islamic values".

Funny how it all comes full circle.

Same idea, basically, as with Putin's view that the values of modern Western societies are intrinsically hostile towards "Russian" and Eastern Orthodox values

I'm with Stratfor's analysis of this animosity: It's largely geographic.

And let's of course not forget the hard-core Islamists obsessed with the idea that Western music, Western culture, Western everything are intrinsic threats to the sacrosanct purity of "Islamic values".

Most often, they are intrinsic threats to their particular version of "Islamic values." They're also intrinsic threats to certain versions of "Christian values." Basically, any theocratic dogma is threatened.

You can flip this on it's head, and it becomes obvious. Any theocratic dogma that's against the realignment of their religion with modern humanist values is obviously intrinsically threatened.

I'd be interested in seeing what the arguments in the actual book are. I recall reading something about this before, that pointed to evidence that more diverse groups are less happy and have more conflict. And that people in general like being part of a group of similar people and having a group identity, humans being tribal creatures.

Anyway I'm not sure he's claiming western culture is homogenous. But it does seem like there is a cluster in culture space that is "western" and we don't have a better label for it.

I'm interested in what that would be. From a northern European perspective, we have strong cultural ties to the US (given that we were part of the whole colonization thing). Yet there are politicians there that question women's rights to abortions quite seriously, argue from the basis of religious rather than scientific conviction, oppose music and art and vaccinations and climate science on the same grounds that I find to be culturally much closer to hard line Islamic clerics than the culture in my immediate vicinity. So I'm not really sure if you can define that cultural cluster in a way that a majority the people in it would accept it.

Those are political values not cultural ones. And surely conservatives exist in Europe to? Perhaps there are fewer of them and they don't have the political power they do here, but conservatives exist in every country.

Of course, but that's neither here nor there. Those are not classical conservative views. The point is that you would be hard pressed to find a definition of Western culture that excludes hard line Islamism unless you also include important parts of the contemporary western political discourse.

In a conversation about the death of the west, you express shock that there remains some vestige of Christian morality, and without a hint of irony.

It's interesting that the things from xorcist's post that I think you are calling vestige of Christian morality - being anti abortion, music, art, vaccinations and science - have almost nothing to do with the teachings of Christ or much to do with morality. I'm not sure how you'd categorise those - perhaps a witch doctor style veneration of mumbo jumbo over reason for political purposes. Kind of, you must believe my smoke and bones cure all or you are an evil heretic, type stuff.

Or that "Western culture" is so fragile that it needs work to "defend" it -- against something so bland as multiculturalism? My culture is already an amalgam of many components, as you point out. Surely, whatever it is, it can expand or adapt to reckon with other cultures.

There are different levels of culture. The "happy nice version" of multiculturalism involves surface-displays of culture - different groups of people have different kinds of food, different styles of dress, different accents/languages, different skin tones, but are otherwise nice friendly liberal people who believe in the core values of Western culture, such as the rule of law, equality before the law, relatively high trust in civic institutions, etc.

Except, there are literally billions of people who don't believe in those things. There is not "magic dirt" in the USA or "The West" that gives us those things - it's a function of the people who live there. If you were to import millions upon millions of people who don't share the values, while simultaneously teaching the youngest generation that white people are responsible for all the evils of the world, and encouraging minorities to nurse racial grievances, you're going to end up with problems. But it's impossible to talk about because you have unhinged racists on one side, and people who are prepared to see unhinged racists everywhere on the other.

"teaching the youngest generation that white people are responsible for all the evils of the world"

That's a strawman. We had been talking about basic multiculturalism.

What you're talking about is the most unhinged versions of ethnocentric bigotry; say, the kind of thing Eldridge Cleaver had been associated with. These views were not widely proclaimed at the time and they are not widely followed now.

Even revisionist history (say, Howard Zinn's US history) that places significant blame at the foot of the U.S. and U.S. leadership for historical tragedies does not come close to what you're talking about above.

Western culture isn't even close to homogeneous. Really bizarre.

In terms of type, maybe. In terms of percentage, maybe not.

Considering some of the more recent research that's come out pointing at diversity as a successful business tactic, I'd be concerned about working for any company with Thiel attached to it in an advisory capacity, if only for fear of being outflanked competitively.

Could you cite one or two of those?

Etsy comes up pretty often. http://phd.meghan-smith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Cox-T...

Sorry - that's an overview of how ONE company find value in diversity.

We are asking for research that shows that companies like Etsy outperform (on any metric) companies that don't really care about diversity (judged by their actual hiring practices, not paying lip service to it).

Because the availability heuristic points to the other 99% of Silicon Valley that's doing quite well without caring about diversity.

That research does not exist, because it's astoundingly narrow and this topic is immensely difficult to research, in general, let alone compound some kind of review or whatever it is you're looking for.

Have you tried Googling? Here are some interesting results (keep in mind science is almost never a home run; that is, you're not going to ever find a study that's like, "We definitively solve this problem for all time and for all mankind"):

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stephen_Tallman/publication/228123261_Effects_of_International_Diversity_and_Product_Diversity_on_the_Performance_of_Multinational_Firms/links/00b7d5267dc1adc6d2000000.pdf

    http://asq.sagepub.com/content/44/1/1.short

    https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/diversity-work-group-performance

    http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

    http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-does-lack-of-gender-diversity-hurt-performance

    http://enewsline.aacsb.edu/diversity-in-groups-can-improve-innovation-and-performance.asp

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053482209000795

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212567114001786

> despite Trump’s advocacy of protectionist tariffs and extreme immigration restrictions, measures that would seem at odds with the radical libertarian image Thiel projects.

This is what's most baffling considering Trump is the most statist candidate in modern politics. Most of his success is built on anti-immigration and tariffs. He may agree with more non-interventionist/isolationist foreign policy of Trump, but I don't see these as the cornerstone of his campaign. Also, he's been less consistent on those issues, in one breadth suggesting he wouldn't support NATO allies, and in another saying he would be aggressive in internationalist expansion in fighting terrorism.

One theory is that he's an opportunist, and since he is such a unique surrogate of Trump, he will be in a unique position to promote his ideas. The Democratic side is likely more crowded in terms of tech-billionaires writing out checks for a sympathetic ear. He's simply hedging, which ironically he's against as well!

Perhaps out of all the morally reprehensible positions completely at odds with the notion of a free modern society Trump has espoused at one time or another, his intention to crack down on free speech by making it easier to sue those who disagree with you I think is often overlooked.

It is not as flashy as the abuse and bigotry towards every non white-male group under the sun, encouragement of political violence, advocacy of war crimes, torture, the wholehearted embrace of nationalistic fascism, etc.

But recall Thiel was recently in the news for financing the lawsuit that destroyed Gawker as part of a personal vendetta. If Trump had his way, Thiel would likely be able to simply sue them out of existence because he wanted to and was wealthy -- instead of waiting for them to do something illegal and helping to support the resulting lawsuit.

Perhaps the answer is not so strange. Thiel is wealthy and powerful and likes to use that power to reform the world around him as he sees fit, and sees voting for a wealthy and powerful person who wishes to give the wealthy and powerful more power will help to further his ends.

>He may agree with more non-interventionist/isolationist foreign policy of Trump

There's really not any good evidence that Trump would do anything of the sort. He was for the wars in Iraq and Libya at the time, and is only against them now (and pretends he always was) because he's the ultimate political opportunist. Considering that right now he's said that he will "bomb the shit" out of ISIS and "send a few troops", it's pretty clear that a Trump presidency would be anything but isolationist.

> it's pretty clear that a Trump presidency would be anything but isolationist

The only thing that is clear about a Trump presidency is that nothing is clear about a Trump presidency.

winning... winning is clear.

The only other clear thing is that Trump would be President.

Well it's a bit more nuanced. He was for the war prior to when it started but then changed his tune fairly soon after it started, even before Saddam was caught.

I'm not sure where he truly stands. But I suppose I'll take his word that he'll want the U.S. to play an active role.

Democrats decided to nominate the candidate who voted for the war and has a very Hawkish foreign policy, not the one who was against it. So one way or another, Americans are voting for interventionism.

Thiel has opposed mass [1] immigration to the United States which should not be mistaken with opposition to all immigration.

For context, only 15% of new lawful permanent residents in 2014 were selected for education or skill (the employment-preference category).

[1] like (but not limited to) anyone who likes strolling over the border or overstaying visas

As some of the siblings point out, it seems like a contradiction that he complains about the lack of tech workers but also is against mass immigration.

These aren't actually opposing when you look deeper - the US does not provide much of a means of legal immigration for high skilled worker.

On the other hand, the US also does not restrict illegal immigration so much - it's easy to get a menial job, a driver's license, just about everything without a legal visa status.

In essence, you have a defacto second class citizen type immigration with a very limited first class immigration ability of the US.

Probably this is the opposite of what would benefit the country most.

> The billionaire tech investor has been a staunch opponent of immigration. Back in 2008, Gawker found that Thiel had donated $1 million to NumbersUSA, an anti-immigration group that has consistently been labelled racist and a firm fan of active population control.

...

> He then invested in the SeaSteading Institute which wanted to turn Thiel’s dream into a reality. The reason? He felt the government wasn’t doing enough to keep Silicon Valley stocked with foreign talent. [0]

Some mixed messaging here...

[0] http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/05/10/shouldnt-surprised-...

(Disclaimer: I will vote for some candidate this election, but I would write in a name before voting for Trump.)

I see this conflation in almost all the election news I hear - people assume that Trump supporters are against any immigration. In fact, the white, blue collar workers making Trump's base are okay with most immigrants. They (quite understandably) dislike illegal South American immigrants, who compete with them for a shrinking pool of manufacturing and menial labor jobs. While immigration may benefit the country as a whole, illegal immigration from South America does not benefit them; instead, it contributes to ever-worsening employment prospects. To convince Trump supporters of the benefits of immigration, one must present a solution which simultaneously addresses the lack of jobs for workers at the low end. Until then, the tradeoff is clear - blue collar workers would rather ship illegal immigrants home than have increased local competition for employment, which I find understandable. Trump is also in favor of tariffs, etc. to keep American manufacturing jobs, and has spoken against NAFTA. For a blue collar worker, he may be the best candidate left in the race - and his protectionist position combined with a strong stance against illegal immigration may mean that he has been the best candidate in the race for a long time. (Again, seen from the perspective of a white, blue collar worker).

For Thiel, I can see a few reasons why a protectionist, anti-illegal immigration stance makes sense. He may believe we really do have an overpopulation problem, and wishes to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into America on those grounds. A protectionist stance makes more sense - America's prosperity in the 70's and 80's and South Korea and China's relative prosperity today make the case for keeping a manufacturing base at home, coupled with a reasonably strong creative and technical sector.

Again, this is just speculation on the beliefs of others; my own beliefs are different. But I think it's important to consider that Trump supporters may have reasonably nuanced views on immigration too, even if they don't align with our own stance.

(disclaimer: also not a Trump supporter)

I don't think Trump's opponents assume that his supporters are against all immigration at all. I think his opponents deliberately misinterpret Trumps' message to paint his supporters as ignorant racists. That's not to say that there aren't Trump supporters who are actually racist, but I see little actual evidence that it's the norm.

Throwing the racist card has been a pretty effective tactic for the left over the past 8 years, so I can't blame them for drawing from that well until it's dry, but I do get tired of the rhetoric. It's not helping the divisiveness in the United States.

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on..."

How does one misinterpret this message to be racist when it is so blatantly racist in and of itself?

"Throwing the racist card has been a pretty effective tactic for the left over the past 8 years..."

With all of the dark skinned people getting killed by police lately it seems more likely that the US has a huge problem with racism. In that context the notion of a "racist card" makes no sense at all in a logical argument.

Since there isn't even a Muslim race, all these claims of racism just seem to me like desperate heavings from people who hate dictionaries and love manipulating emotions.

Also, your last sentence effectively means "since racism is a thing, all accusations of racism are valid" which is almost offensively wrong.

You are being pedantic. Most Muslim's are non-white. It is implicitly racist to suggest we ban all Muslim's from the US.

My last sentence suggests we have a major problem with race relations in the US. You can twist my words however you want but it doesn't change that fact. The entire concept of a "race card" was manufactured to belittle legitimate claims of racism. Creating a term to discredit legitimate questions of racism is offensively wrong.

The racist label is interesting, I don't understand why that's the one that people reflexively reach for, especially when you could more accurately say that he is a bigot.

Bigot is more fun to say, plus it doesn't turn into an -ism when used in the adjective form. Because we have enough -isms.

This is a very weak argument that I see too frequently. Simply replace the word "racist" with the word "bigoted". It's no better to be a bigot than to be a racist so the complaint still stands.

>How does one misinterpret this message to be racist when it is so blatantly racist in and of itself?

While I do agree that banning Muslims from entering the country is a horrible idea, Muslim is a religion (and a choice), not a race. For what it's worth, Mexican is also not a race.

>With all of the dark skinned people getting killed by police lately it seems more likely that the US has a huge problem with racism.

I think it seems this way due to increased media coverage and the impact of social media. Undoubtedly there are some racist officers, but I am skeptical that the problem is as large as some would lead us to believe. As of the last count of which I am aware, 130 black people have been killed by police so far this year. It seems likely that the vast majority of these were justified (according to police procedure, which may be flawed but not inherently racist). Don't get me wrong, it's a huge tragedy whenever any innocent person is killed, but being a skeptic, I need some hard evidence to convince me that the US has a "huge" problem with racism. By hard evidence, I mean stats or studies that have NO other plausible explanation other than racism.

If this is the way you think about these problems you're ignoring thousands of years of historical evidence. The very nature of institutionalized racism is that it's largely invisible to those not directly affected.

Don't hold the victims to a higher standard of evidence then the perpetrators, when the perpetrators hold all the cards.

I am fully aware of the definition of race. The vast majority of Muslim's are non-white. To ban all Muslim's is to ban hundreds of millions of non-white's from the US. Banning hundreds of millions of non-whites from entering the US sounds pretty racist to me.

In regards to your comments on policing. I guess the black man who was shot today, unarmed, with his hands in the air and fully complying with police orders was just another outlier? How many black people need to be killed by police officers before you would consider race to be an issue? 130? 140? The prevalence of cell phone video has exposed an issue that has been present for a long time in the US.

Whether are not you think there is a "huge" problem with racism in the US, at least there is no doubt that there is a problem. Argue over the size of that problem if you'd like, but realize that openly racist groups have uniformly endorsed Trump for a reason.

edit: deleted reference to "white" officers because I don't think it is relevant.

Isn't it also possible that the fact that most Muslims aren't white circumstantial? If not, then why not? Isn't it possible that another explanation is that these people are scared of Muslim terrorists, and they are having a knee-jerk reaction (as humans are prone to do)? Why have so many immediately jumped to race as the only probable explanation with such shaky evidence?

As far as police debate goes, yes, that single person could also be an outlier, considering that there are somewhere around 13 million black Americans. If the police were truly "hunting black people", as the media and BLM would have us believe, I would think the number of black Americans killed by police would be far, far higher. As it stands, the odds of a black person being shot by police is extremely remote.

I would argue that the scope of the problem is very much important, given that racism will probably never truly disappear. Humans are inherently tribalistic. We find ways to divide ourselves by color, social status, political views, and which sports teams we support (sidenote: my dad was nearly killed by a Steelers fan for being a Bengals fan). It seems that it would take a major evolutionary shift for this to change.

As to the final comment, I would argue that Trump isn't fully responsible for the groups that choose to support him. For example, Hillary Clinton has received donations (via the Clinton foundation) from countries such as Algeria, where homosexual acts are punished by large fines and imprisonment. That does not mean Hillary Clinton is anti-gay.

I'll level with you. I think a Trump presidency would be a total disaster. I also think the police are far too quick to resort to violence and lack the training to properly defuse a situation or handle firearms. But I don't think the accusations of racism are entirely fair, and I believe in being fair, even to an enemy.

"In February 2009, NumbersUSA was called a nativist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center's report 'The Nativist Lobby', though the SPLC also stated that there is no evidence of racism on behalf of Roy Beck or his organization."[1]

There are plenty of people in the press who consider all discussion of immigration reduction or control racist. That doesn't make it so.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NumbersUSA

I've noticed a phenomenon for political words to lose meaning over time, and become fully general insults. The right uses "socialist" excessively for example. The left uses words like "racist" in a similar way. Most people called socialist would say they don't support socialism or socialist policies. Most people called racist would say they don't think their race is superior or that we should discriminate based on race.

Most people called socialist do indeed support socialist policies - they support government programs like medicare, public schools, and other social welfare programs.

Those calling them socialists are probably a bit socialist too, though.

This only fuels your argument that political words lose meaning over time.

It isn't you are just changing the mix of who is coming. One could argue that decrease low skilled immigration and upping higher skilled immigration would boost those at the bottom. Raising wages at the bottom while reducing the price of some more complex services.

I guess it's under the whole idea the immigration drives down wages. It's likely true that it does drive down wages for certain individuals but the net impact is at worse break even. Wages are an expense after-all, and if you cut the expense and prices go down, everyone benefits by at least the amount that the price had dropped. Some lose out by losing their job so their losses would be offset by the gains of others by having lower prices. This ignores the fact that more people are buying the product at the lower price. And this also assumes that markets are competitive and that the company can't just continue to charge the same price and pocket the difference, which I don't think is unreasonable in a competitive market economy.

So the many get lower prices, and pay taxes that compensate the concentrated few that are affected by the job losses or lower wages.

Companies benefit a ton from cheaper labor. But the existing laborers lose out because of competition driving down wages.

There might be a neg positive effect on the economy, but the benefits go to the rich and the immigrants, at the expense of the local poor and middle class. Prices are not going to fall that much because of immigrant labor, and certainly not enough to make up for the decreased wages.

Illegal immigration is not mass immigration. This is dog-whistle politics, that conveniently conflates opposition to something illegal, with something very appealing to xenophobes.

The net immigration rate to the US is 0.38%. That's hardly 'mass immigration.' I take it that means he's happy with the status quo?

And, if not, when is he going back to Germany?

Yes, most people don't realize that the U.S. actually has a super low 0.38% immigrate rate.

It's truly extreme xenophobia and racism that these liars who falsely claim "mass immigration" can't tolerate the tiny 0.38% that comes to the U.S. every year. They see a few immigrants in their neighborhoods, and their blood immediately starts to boil, and they get filled up with loathing and hatred.

They are total hypocrites, who ignore that most of their ancestors came here in the last 200 years[2], and a disgrace to this country and its immigrant heritage. I hypothesize that there would no complaining if 100% of the immigrants who came here were white Europeans. At the root, it's not about immigration -- it's just plain racism.

[1] As Sam Altman of Y Combinator aptly put it: "most Americans saying no immigration are here because their families immigrated in the last 200 years", c.f. https://twitter.com/sama/status/550110475199848448

1 in 8 residents being immigrants is not super low. The rate of immigrants per year is irrelevant, as it adds up a lot over time.

I guarantee that people would complain if the immigrants were European. Because they did in the past! In the past a huge number of immigrants were from Ireland and other countries, and there was lots of hatred and anti immigration movements. It has literally nothing to do with race. People fear immigrants because they take their jobs, and see them as competition. They are also concerned about crime and increased population density, or worried about their culture being replaced, or the immigrants political influence, etc. But mainly it's economic, and I think the concern is genuine.

>"most Americans saying no immigration are here because their families immigrated in the last 200 years"

That's a nice soundbite, but a poor argument. All countries are descended from immigrants. Human beings have migrated and conquered other lands since the beginning of time.

That's totally irrelevant to whether an immigration policy in 2016 would have a positive or negative effect on current US residents. And if they believe it has a negative effect, why would they vote for it? Because their ancestors would? So what?

It had everything to do with race. The thing is, Irish were not considered white!

They were sub-human, ape-like, violent alcoholics. Many English viewed them as such, and brought that viewpoint with them to the US.

... Racism doesn't have to make sense.

And 1 in 8 is super-low for a settler nation. It's also only slightly higher then the average European state.

Perhaps, but my point is that residents of a country will always oppose immigrant groups, regardless of their origin. It's not necessarily racism. I know people who oppose immigrants. They don't believe hispanics are an inferior race or anything like that. They are mainly concerned about American jobs being taken by the immigrants.

You can't use "racism" as a fully general insult against anyone that disagrees with you.

Europe may or may not have higher rates of immigration. It's irrelevant to US policy. And it certainly seems like they are starting to have their own problems with immigrants the last few years.

> residents of a country will always oppose immigrant groups

This is pile of nonsense. The elected representatives from the Democratic Party don't show hate towards immigrants and have generally fought their betterment, and the Democratic Party won the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012. That's five out the last six elections.

There was a huge amount of European immigration in the 1800s , and the early 1900s. Just as there was anti-Irish sentiment, I'm sure there were people back then who believed deeply in the Lump of Labor Fallacy[1], but their will was never put into effect as law.

If people freaking out about jobs had put the same limits we have on immigration today back in 1800, the U.S. population would likely be the same as Canada's, and our total GDP less than one-tenth of what it is today. We probably also wouldn't have had the economic might to win World War I and World War II, or the Cold War (e.g. Marshall Plan[2]).

Instead it was white-on-white racism, and the Nordic/Aryan supremacy[3] theories of Madison Grant[4] that actually led to the first major immigration restriction legislation in the U.S., the Emergency Quota Act[5] and the Immigration Act of 1924[6], which limited immigration to people from North-Western Europe, as a majority of the Congressmen back then believed that Southern and Eastern Europeans were a lower, less worthy breed of people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passing_of_the_Great_Race

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Grant

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924

>This is pile of nonsense. The elected representatives from the Democratic Party don't show hate towards immigrants and have generally fought their betterment, and the Democratic Party won the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012. That's five out the last six elections.

Because the democrats 1) benefit from immigrants since they tend to vote democrat and 2) represent Northerners and the upper middle class, who aren't threatened by immigrants economically.

>There was a huge amount of European immigration in the 1800s , and the early 1900s. Just as there was anti-Irish sentiment, I'm sure there were people back then who believed deeply in the Lump of Labor Fallacy[1], but their will was never put into effect as law.

The economy was totally different then. It was much more agricultural based, which isn't as threatened by immigrant labor. Unemployment was nowhere near as high as today. There was a general trend of economic progress that could support the immigrants, and even benefited from their labor.

>If people freaking out about jobs had put the same limits we have on immigration today back in 1800, the U.S. population would likely be the same as Canada's, and our total GDP less than one-tenth of what it is today. We probably also wouldn't have had the economic might to win World War I and World War II, or the Cold War (e.g. Marshall Plan[2]).

Possibly. The US population growth was pretty high until recent times. Much higher than in Europe. And population size alone is not the only factor in GDP. Especially today in the age of automation.

Historically the stereotype of the Irish as being less educated, violent (esp. domestic violence) and alcoholic is accurate.

I say that as an Irish person. We've made considerable progress since in the late 20th century to the present, and now we are better in most metrics than the British (and perhaps they have also fallen), but don't imagine we were all sweetness and light in the past. Present day Irish have undergone a terrific cultural shift, evidence of which would be a supposed Catholic majority country voting in gay marriage.

We're still Irish, but we're mostly better than we were. Now if we could only resuscitate the courage of our grandparents we'd be in better shape yet.

There's a black academic, Thomas Sowell, who argues the same thing applies to US black culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rednecks_and_White_Liber...

Yes I've heard his position before.

It is probably correct but very difficult to solve for, it can take centuries, which is not what most people want to hear. Cultural shifts are faster than biological evolution but are not always as fast as many people suppose.

Personally I believe in the use of eugenics for both blacks and whites in order to create an improved type of human. We know high IQ has, among others, the side affect of sharply declining propensity for violent crime. We know people with good health are able to think longer term than the sickly.

This goes way beyond the usual discussions but I think it is on the table whether people like it or not. I realize that the majority of people think this issue was laid to rest mid-twentieth century, but it is obvious those questions were always going to come back and it is only a matter of time. We've already been doing moderated forms of eugenics for decades except we've given it a hundred other names.

Eugenics is silly in an age where parents can edit the DNA of their babies. We have the technology to do this now, it just isn't widely available yet.

>They are total hypocrites

Maybe they are angry because people are coming illegally.

You're right - a descendant of French immigrants has quite the leg to stand on.

After all, his great-grandparents legally entered the country... At the time when undesirables, like Chinese, Indians, and the Polish were barred from entry.

But at least the Frenchmen came legally! Sure, entry was granted under an extremely racist immigration law, but the legality is what gives him the moral high ground to stand on.

Under your rational then you should be pro building a wall as currently illegal immigration is a default "racist" policy that encourages those from central America while discriminating against Indians and Chinese.

Build the wall and regulate immigration so more Indians and Chinese come relative to their world population.

Current immigration policy is racist, yes. It's dehumanizing to the people here illegally, and it's not fair by any means. My point is that legality is a fig leaf. When your definition for "legally" is "My ancestors got on a boat, and were white," it holds no weight.

"Hurr, durr, build a wall to keep them out", and "Keep America Christian" does nothing to resolve it. If you actually give a shit about either, then backing Trump (Or the other big names from the 2016 Republican line) is backing the wrong horse.

Even more ironically, two of the other candidates (Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio) are the descendants of Cuban refugees... And any Cuban entering the US can immediately apply for permanent residency. No questions asked.

Strangely, they oppose the same privilege to people fleeing repression/drug cartels/terrible poverty in the rest of Central America.

You are being dishonest if you think it's about legality. It's not about that. It's about the race of the immigrants.

If all our illegal immigrants were from Germany and Ireland, I am certain that there would be far less complaining.

In fact most of the angry people today would not be fighting to keep them out -- they'd be fighting for visas for them.

>If all our illegal immigrants were from Germany and Ireland, I am certain that there would be far less complaining

Very curious, on what do you base this certainty? Is it just a feeling based on personal experience?

You think pro illegal immigration congressman Luis Gutierrez and the Catholic churches harboring those here illegally would be doing so if most people here coming illegally were from India and Hindu or Sikh?

Yes, I do. There are plenty of non-Hispanic white congressmen who take the same stance as Luis Gutierrez.

The truth is that the people behind most of this anti-immigrant rhetoric can't see the humanity of someone who is not of their same skin color. When they call a human being "an illegal" -- it's dehumanizing, and it plainly reveals they don't see their common shared humanity. I've noticed it in the language they use, and they way they talk about other people -- and not just immigrants, but black Americans as well. They simply do not see other races as people like themselves.

I absolutely do not think that Luis Gutierrez is someone that is just looking out for "his own people", as you seem to be implying.

> When they call a human being "an illegal" -- it's dehumanizing …

No, it's an accurate, dry, legal characterisation of someone present in the country illegally, much like referring to someone who has murdered someone else as 'a murderer,' or to someone who has shoplifted as 'a shoplifter.'

I'm actually philosophically inclined towards completely open borders (although I have some deep concerns about what that does to community & culture), but an alien who is present illegally is truly an illegal alien. Words mean things, and that's what those words mean.

> Words mean things, and that's what those words mean

I want to put this on the biggest billboard I can find, or put it in Nazca lines across the surface of the moon, so maybe we'll remember. Language lawyering is profoundly useless, and I've no patience with it.

I completely and utterly disagree with you; language and word choice matters a lot: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/wol...

There is a lot of implied sub-communication that comes with word choice in human languages. Only an idiot or a robot would take everything by its literal meaning.

We'll agree to disagree. The linked article is a pretty load of horse-hockey, in my opinion.

If everyone is free to redefine words to mean whatever they damn well please, then it is impossible to have clear, effective discussions, because you get wound up wrangling about definitions - as we do habitually here, talking past each other.

I know you don't agree, but to make my point further, this great article just came out today: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/why-demo...

1 out of 8 people in the US are immigrants. That's the highest it's ever been in recent history. And more than enough to have a big effect on the economy.

  10% of the California workforce is undocumented
  5% of the national workforce is undocumented

... 5% of the working age population, accumulated over the span of decades isn't massive. The fabric of civil society isn't about to unravel.

One could say he knows he 's an opportunist and willingly projects this image. People of all persuasions can project on him a hope of 'disruption', knowing that what he says now has little chance to be followed by actions. His (unlikely) win would create an open playing field for all kinds of unconventional choices (given that he doesn't really owe a debt to his own party).

In contrast his opponent is way more predictable but also very largely unlikeable.

Some portion of libertarians have become so blinded by their hate of leftists that they have dropped the whole "freedom" thing, and cheer for anything they see as anti-left - even if it is blatantly authoritarian.

fear mongering much? "blatant authoritarian"

While I don't agree with everything Thiel believes, it's really, really refreshing to get a different take from the upper echelons of the tech industry. If you follow a lot of VCs and CEOs on Twitter you'll find that they have a nearly homogenous political groupthink.

This industry needs more diversity of thought and Thiel stands alone in his strength to go against the grain and stand by his philosophy. Love his ideas or hate them, that's an admirable trait.

There's nothing admirable about "going against the grain" in itself. Probably most people in the upper echelons of tech wealth don't think it's a great idea to deport Muslims, and don't support Trump. I see no reason to admire someone for having a different opinion on that matter just because it's different.

There are lots of ways to "go against the grain" in the way you point out. You could be an unthinking dogmatist. Nothing would change the way you feel, not even the censure of your peers. (Is Thiel being censured? Sure, by Pinboard on twitter. By his peers? Not that I can see. His richy-rich pals all still love him, AFAICT.) Is there something admirable about having your head in the ground? Not really---and I don't think that, on the broader social level, we tend to applaud people who still think gay sex is shameful and should be illegal, even though, you know, they really go against the grain.

You could be, say, a modern Cato. But Cato is admirable not just because he fell on his sword but because he fell on his sword out of devotion to an admirable ideal.

I see no reason, incidentally, to believe your claim that "Thiel stands alone in his strength to go against the grain". If other people aren't going against the grain, it might be that they think the grain is largely going in the right direction already, and not that they lack the strength to go against it. And, on the other hand, you have to pay a little attention to threads about diversity of race or gender to find a lot of people with the strength to go against the grain. Guess what: the grain they go against, Thiel goes with.

Beautifully explained. There certainly is a lot of Groupthink in Silicon Valley, but that doesn't extend to everything.

In Thiel's case, it unfortunately seems like he's turned into one of those rich people who is so far away from how most people live that he does not understand the consequences of some of his ideas. A common problem with the elite: although self-made elites usually have their past to reflect on and make better informed decisions (unlike e.g. the Koch brothers)

Why do you think he doesn't understand the consequences of his ideas?

Because a pursuit to the extreme of any ideology is a symptom of mind obsessed with perfection and fanatic belief. In the case of Thiel, its his libertarian beliefs.

Now, I don't want to hijack this thread into what is wrong with extreme libertarian thinking (or extreme adherence to any philosophy). You're question was why I thought he doesn't understand the consequences of his ideas: this is why I think that.

Wanting to halt immigration from countries with radical Islamic ties != deporting Muslims

ssh logic not welcome here... move along

I would assume ssh and its underlying logic are welcome here. What I assume is unwelcome is advocating religious tests in a secular state.

what if instead of saying "Muslims coming from location X", it were "people coming from location X"?

the issue is the same, we don't know how to properly vet these people, nor do we know if they want to assimilate (big problem if they don't)... personally I think given the world we live in, that is logical. I also don't think it should be permanent and we should encourage those that want to join America and all it has to offer so long as we can do our best to ensure their sincerity...

> The eccentric investor is not like anyone else in tech. By Kara Swisher @karaswisher

> ... And many of those who like him personally and call him a "dear friend" are even perplexed, going as far as not talking to him of late because of his Trump support. "I’ve tried," sighed one such friend, who described a number of colleagues trying to pull him off the Trump train, including PayPal Mafia family member Reid Hoffman.

http://www.recode.net/2016/7/21/12241648/peter-thiel-trump-s...

> There's nothing admirable about "going against the grain" in itself.

There is if you think the grain is a corrupt and unfair system that needs dismantling. The enemy of my enemy is my friend thing.

I would consider myself to have overlapping social thoughts with most liberals but it's really terrifying to me to have an absolute aggregation of media and executive power (in our industry) along one line of thinking (even if I agree with most of it!). Power needs to be distributed, not consolidated.

> There is if you think the grain is a corrupt and unfair system that needs dismantling. The enemy of my enemy is my friend thing.

No, there still isn't, because you seem to have missed the "in itself" part. Even in the case you identify, what is admirable is going against a corrupt grain (and presumably, we'd want to actually make it "going against a corrupt grain in a way likely to improve matters"; corruption is multiple and going against corruption in one respect isn't necessarily to go in a less-corrupt-overall direction), not "going against the grain" in itself.

I mention it in another comment but the consolidation of power is a problem. It doesn't matter if I agree with those consolidating or not. I don't think Trump has a lot of support from the upper classes in the US. If he were to be elected he would be a weaker form of power than say Clinton being elected. That is a desirable outcome even if his policies are bad since he wouldn't be effective in rolling them out whereas Clinton would be more effective rolling out her possibly slightly less objectionable policies. There would be a greater loss to society in the latter situation.

Under what rubric is the more effective rollout of less objectionable policies a greater loss to society than the less effective rollout of more objectionable policies?

This dogma holds consolidation of power to be bad /in and of itself/, rather than because of a consequence, such as "consolidated power leads to suffering." If that's your opinion, fine, but it's no different than any other religion.

> Under what rubric is the more effective rollout of less objectionable policies a greater loss to society than the less effective rollout of more objectionable policies?

A small slice of a giant pie is bigger than a large slice of a tiny pie?

Ok, I understand. You literally mean that both of them will only introduce objectionable policies, not that "less objectionable" might mean, in some cases, "good."

I still don't see the outcome you predict.

TLDR; power consolidation is a risk factor that leads to actual bad policy, not something with actual, palpable negative value in and of itself. E.g. the power of the federal government to end slavery is a win in my book.

* * * *

Let's map "objectionability" onto a number line.

A neutral policy is zero. An objectionable one is on the negative side, a non-objectionable one is on the positive side. The magnitude of the objectionability or virtue yields the magnitude of the number.

I'll go with your presumption that both Clinton and Trump's policies are only found on the negative side of that line. And we'll deal with their policies in aggregate. We'll also assume that current policy is perfectly neutral, at zero:

<---------T-------------C-----0

T = Trump APV (avg policy value)

C = Clinton APV

0 = CPV (current policy value)

Let's map effectiveness to a float between 0 and 1. Simple. If Trump's policies are twice as bad as Clinton's, he has to be half as effective as she for them to equal out. Here's a little table:

APV, Effect, Total value, Who, Worse

-20, .05, -1, Trump, O

-2, .95, -1.9, Clinton, X

-20, .1, -2, Trump, X

-2, .9, -1.8, Clinton, O

-10, .05, -0.5, Trump, O

-2, .95, -1.9, Clinton, X

-10, .2, -2, Trump, X

-2, .8, -1.6, Clinton, O

The problem with that simplification is the assumption that CPV is at neutral, zero. And mapping effectiveness to a scalar factor of APV is also incorrect -- instead, it has to be understood as a normalization factor, attempting to return CPV to APV. The greater the effectiveness, the more quickly CPV achieves APV.

Should any factor bring CPV further negative than Clinton's APV, her effectiveness would become a force that lifts CPV. Meanwhile, Trump's is always attempting to pull CPV further negative towards his abysmal APV.

> There is if you think the grain is a corrupt and unfair system that needs dismantling. The enemy of my enemy is my friend thing.

"The system sucks, so let's put ISIS in charge" is an example of "going against the grain" and a truly shitty idea. Some of Thiel's ideas are in this "against the grain and shitty" category.

incidentally this is a good paper: https://www.princeton.edu/~tkelly/ftawil.pdf

Link for Trump statement saying he wants to deport Muslims?

None forthcoming!!

I don't understand how somebody who claims to be fact-driven and rational like Thiel can end up supporting Trump. If anything, he should be disgusted with the whole system and try to change it.

This is only my opinion, and could very well be off-base, but politics is all about compromise. You'll never find the perfect candidate to represent your beliefs.

I'm guessing Thiel is thinking Trump is the best candidate to support the kind of changes he's looking for. Of course, you're free to disagree with that sentiment.

Exactly. As a counterpoint, I know many people who are against Hillary's voting records, flip-floppy history, and aggressive foreign policy doctrine, yet are going to vote for her because well... they'd rather have her than Trump.

I think Thiel is fine with crony capitalism under the guise of libertarianism. That's where things will probably go with Trump. There is a lot of money to be made.

> Thiel can end up supporting Trump

I can't speak for him, but a lot of people see the break up of a homogenous status quo as a goal in and of itself. I don't support Trump because I don't like his policies but that's a hard position for me to take because I _do_ appreciate the utter slap in the face he's giving to traditional politicians who I view as perpetuating an extremely corrupt and damaging system.

If you think the US is extremely corrupt.... you should really take a look at India, Russia etc. Corruption is never elliminated by revolutions btw. It takes time and patience to reform the current system. It is not an overnight fix and thinking that Trump can have an overall positive influence on the US system is a huge error.

Isn't that... the entirety of Trump's platform?

I can't see what those things have to do with one another.

Thiel can take perfectly rational, fact-driven decisions based on Trump's behavior, regardless of what it is. Indeed, it's completely possible that to achieve his goals, he must leverage Trump's misuse of "facts" and, erm, "creativity" with respect to truth.

Can you clarify on what system you're talking about? And what are the problems with that system? And what should Thiel do to change it? And important, what does Thiel wants? And how does changing the system align with what he wants?

You have to remember that Theil doesn't want the same thing you want. Just because you want something doesn't mean Theil want the same thing, or has the same goal.

Theil knows exactly what he wants, that is why he supports Trump. It seems to be you who does not understand what Theil wants. Because if he wants the same thing you wants, he would have supported what you supported.

What positions has Trump taken that you feel are against facts and adequate rational?

Have you paid attention at all? Anti-climate change, anti-vaccines, the entire illegal immigration schtick (immigration across the border is net neutral right now), his whole "crime is rising" schtick (it isn't),and the vast majority of [what he says are outright lies](http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/). There is no better way to describe the Trump campaign than to say it is inherently against facts- the only coherent strain in his platform is a denial of reality. The mere idea that a billionaire proposing tax cuts for the super wealthy is "fighting the system" is a delusional, inherently contradictory image.

>the entire illegal immigration schtick (immigration across >the border is net neutral right now),

Not it is not. Pro illegal immigration advocates try to mislead by saying immigration from Mexican citizens is down to mean illegal immigration isn't happening.

It is now other groups but still coming VIA Mexico.

No, that's just not true. The best estimates of all illegal immigration are that it is close to net zero. (http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2012/aug/28/jeb...).

>...a billionaire proposing tax cuts for the super wealthy is "fighting the system" is a delusional....

You act as if Trump is only helping the rich. Trump is helping everyone. Although he cut taxes for the rich, he also cut taxes for the poor.

Under Trump's tax plan, poor people don't even pay tax.

If you're single and you make less than $25,000 per year, you don't pay tax.

If you have a wife and you make less than $50,000 per year, you don't pay tax.

If you have a wife and a kid and you make less than $75,000 per year, you don't pay tax.

And there will be gigantic deficits that somehow will be compensated by some future economic growth.

>And there will be gigantic deficits that somehow will be compensated by some future economic growth.

It will be compensated by making the country rich and wealthy again. A rich and wealthy country will be able to pay off the deficits and national debt.

How will Trump make the country rich and wealthy again?

By making it more profitable for companies to do businesses in the United States, so companies will start doing businesses in the United States again. Which means jobs. Which means more people have money. And with more people with more money to tax, the government will get more money even though the tax is lower. Because there are more people to tax. Also, with more companies doing business in the United States, although the tax is lower, the government get more money.

When people have more money to spent, they buy more stuff, which means businesses make more money, which means more profits, more jobs, and higher pay. Which means more money for workers. It is an upward cycle. The economy goes up.

And also, make the country rich again, by doing better trade deals where America doesn't actually lose money. Where the United States actually make money, in those deals.

Also, by taxing or stopping remittance money sent to Mexico by illegals in the United States. Every year, illegals (who don't pay federal taxes) send back $28 billion dollar to Mexico. In other word, money is flowing out of the United States into Mexico. Trump wants to tax it to pay for the wall (hence, the saying Mexico will pay for the wall). This again, will create jobs.

Trump will do this and many other things to make America wealthy and rich again. All this information are on his website. It's all part of his plan to Make America Great Again.

He makes up a lot of facts on the fly and then claims that he has been misinterpreted. The whole wall to Mexico thing and have Mexico pay for it is ridiculous. Now he questions the NATO treaties.

I haven't heard anything from him that indicates deep thinking about an issue.

I'll be honest I haven't been following a lot of his positions on things other than what spills over into the tech/security folks I follow on twitter and various other sites. I didn't know about the NATO comments but here's what I learned about him just today [0]:

(edit: talking about whether Trump would defend Turkey if Russia invaded unprovoked): Trump said he would have to think about whether those countries “have fulfilled their obligations to us.” Trump clarified, “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”

It seems pretty rational to me; he's saying that if a country like Turkey wants to acquire the benefits of a military alliance they need to pay their fair share. On the surface that seems reasonable to me and honestly, from reading here if Erdrogan got attacked by Russia I doubt most of Trump's enemies would shed any tears about his stance on NATO anyway.

[0] http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/21/trump-doesnt-care-about-er...

This is not some business deal where you can change terms later on and let the courts decide. Turkey needs to know if NATO will be there for them or not. He can call for larger contributions of course and tell them upfront that NATO won't help them until conditions are met. But he can't decide at the time Russia invades. Then he may as well leave NATO.

Trump was also a "birther". That alone shows to me that he doesn't take politics seriously.

> Turkey needs to know if NATO will be there for them or not. He can call for larger contributions of course and tell them upfront that NATO won't help them until conditions are met.

Question, have you heard or read Trump's foreign policy speech?

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/donald-j.-trump-...

He lays out many criticism of our current foreign policy, including that we don't negotiate our deals properly, and this results in us not being reliable among our friends, and respected among our enemies. I recommend reading it.

Maybe this will help https://i.sli.mg/TIAoq1.png

Enforcing the obligation means NATO doesn't exist. Only the US and Estonia would be left. Advocating for them to meet the pledge is one thing, but refusing to defend them under the treaty because of it would be catastrophic.

http://www.businessinsider.com/only-us-and-estonia-meeting-n...

But people hate it when the United States police the world. Why should the United States holds its end of the deal and defends those if they don't hold their end of the deal? People want the United States to stop policing the world. Well, under Trump, the United States will stop policing the world. Isn't that what people want?

People hate it when the US doesn't, too. I don't think a world without NATO is likely to make many in the West all that happy.

Are they really that homogenous? I'm not from the USA, but it seems that there are both republicans (Andreessen and Horowitz, for example) and democrats (Eric Schmidt and Jack Dorsey, for example) among VCs and CEOs. Younger generation might have Sanders-style social democrat tendencies, but there are a lot of libertarians like Thiel in startup circles, though most of them don't mix conservative religious stances like Thiel does.

I agree.

Quoting Christopher Hitchens (who is quoting John Stuart Mill):

> "Indeed as John Stuart Mill said, if all in society were agreed on the truth and beauty and value of one proposition, all except one person, it would be most important–in fact, it would become even more important–that that one heretic be heard, because we would still benefit from his perhaps outrageous or appalling view"

@maxxxxx I'm not an american, and don't follow closely american politics, but isn't supporting Trump "going against the system"?

> This industry needs more diversity of thought

Sure, I agree. But there are some kinds of diversity that no industry needs. You wouldn't, for example, ever say, "Hey, Silicon Valley is full of non-racists. Let's get some more racists in here!" You'd instead be glad that Silicon Valley had a non-racist groupthink. The same is true of things like climate change, where "diversity" just means someone is dangerously wrong and living in the past.

I don't intimately know Thiel's political views (above were just examples), but it seems that many people are worried that Thiel falls into that category of "diversity we don't need".

I think it's more subtle than that. The racist thing is a perfect example. I absolutely 100% think that Trump's opinions are racist. _However_ I also find the "progressives" who attack whites and objectify every other race to be equally racist. But because the latter controls the narrative in our industry and the framing of the message, many can't see the racism there or won't even acknowledge that it may exist.

I don't understand how, in the case of tech CEOs, this so called "groupthink" is such a problem. The fact is, as you rely more and more on a system of reason and evidence to make your decisions, your opinions will tend to seem more and more consistent with other people who subscribe to that system. This consistency is just a side-effect of having a good system.

I would have to agree with this.

Why is everyone surprised that Peter Thiel said this or said that? Is that because we expect Peter Thiel to be a genius, when he is just a person with probably a boatload of baggage, some brilliance and plenty of idiocy - similar to anybody else ?

for example, if it's indeed true that Peter Thiel is skeptical of women's suffrage, then I think it is reasonable to conclude that he is probably at least to some extent an idiot and we should view his actions at least partially through that prism

I would love to hear WHY he's skeptical. I'm sure he's heard all the traditional arguments like we have, which means he has additional information that I don't.

Don't you think it's more intellectually honest to question and hear what others have to say rather than just paint them as idiots because they don't believe what you believe.

Shall we extend the same curtesy to those who oppose other forms of universal suffrage?

> I'm sure he's heard all the traditional arguments like we have, which means he has additional information that I don't.

It means nothing of the kind. Occam's razor suggests, rather, that he reasons differently than you (or at least me).

> Don't you think it's more intellectually honest to question and hear what others have to say

In theory, if we had infinite "compute time" in our lives to hear and evaluate all the arguments of those advocating regressive politics, then yes, sure. But we don't. Instead, we rely on a cluster of markers to heuristically determine if it is likely that someone has anything to say that doesn't just reduce trivially to the same BS you've already heard.

In this case, we have an arrogant economic royalist lamenting the consequences of women having a political voice. It is quite obvious that he has a ton of raw intellectual horsepower in that brain, but equally clear that he has no novel, reasonable justification for disenfranchising women.

>we have an arrogant economic royalist lamenting the consequences of women having a political voice ... but equally clear that he has no novel, reasonable justification for disenfranchising women.

Hilarious! This is exactly what I'm talking about! You have no idea how he got to his position, but you've already made up your mind as to how he got there. And to top it off, you go on this big rant that places you above him in terms of virtue because obviously he's "an arrogant economic royalist" and you're not therefore you're better.

It's fine with me if you want to behave that way. All I'm suggesting is that if you want to be intellectually honest, then you need to explore the 'why' of a person's viewpoint, rather than commit the fundamental attribution error and simply make up the 'why'.

Your description of "intellectually honest" is actually intellectually dishonest.

In the United States, we generally understand the right to political autonomy, and the right to vote in particular, to come from a citizen's existence as a citizen (which itself is derived from Enlightenment principles of inalienable human rights). There are nearly no philosophical exceptions to this and only a few pragmatic ones (e.g. age of majority).

The question of women's suffrage is by itself a reasonable litmus test of whether someone is politically sensible and, by this measure, Mr. Thiel can be judged insensible.

To judge Mr. Thiel as politically insensible on the basis of his opposition to women's suffrage is by definition intellectual honesty. Given the long history of philosophical, political, and jurisprudential consensus that produced the 19th Amendment, it is in fact intellectually dishonest to entertain the possibility that Mr. Thiel has a novel set of arguments that could justify the disenfranchisement of women as a class.

People are justified in being skeptical of Thiel based on his radical assertion that women's suffrage is a mistake and they are behaving sensibly when they express wariness about other claims he might make based on his established predilection for asserting dangerous claims against the political autonomy of others.

EDIT: grammar, readability.

Shall we discuss hard epistemology? Fine.

> You have no idea how he got to his position

False. I cannot prove how. The objection is pure sophistry. Were I to ask him, "how did you arrive at this position", his answer could be a lie. Would you commit the fundamental attribution error and assume that he would tell the truth? Perhaps he secretly doesn't even believe what he claimed to believe!

I doubt very much that you live your life doubting all things beyond your own thoughts. Trotting out a single fallacy mode and applying it in a scope carefully limited to bolster your argument is a rhetorical method for scoring debate points, not sound logic.

You are attempting to use "intellectual honesty" as a cudgel. Who wouldn't want to be intellectually honest?! Of course, you'll be the judge of when someone has met the criteria for honesty, and that will depend on whether they agree with you or not.

I am under no misunderstanding as to what I can and cannot know. I am completely comfortable with using mental shorthand to navigate the world. I do not need to stop and listen to every individual born-again christian to discover if they are the one that holds the key to my finally knowing the truth.

I do, in fact, have a very good idea as to how Thiel arrived at his position. I have a very good idea about why Strom Thurmond opposed the civil rights act of 1964. I have a very good idea that the sun will rise tomorrow.

> you go on this big rant that places you above him in terms of virtue

Yes, precisely. We all hold values. I find his to be in conflict with mine.

^ And this is why the intellectually honest always lose. Sometimes a troll is just a troll. Sometimes a genius is just self-interested.

I am not painting anyone as anything. It is mathematically and logically correct to assume that there is substantial likelihood that when you hear someone say something idiotic, then that person saying that idiotic thing is in fact an idiot. If I hear additional information, I am happy to revise my opinion if necessary. But innocent until proven guilty is not necessary, this is not a criminal court

>mathematically and logically correct

There is nothing mathematical or logical about value judgements. Those are two fields that pride themselves in that. You are deciding that the opinion is idiotic because it's not your own opinion.

>If I hear additional information, I am happy to revise my opinion if necessary.

But for the time being you're willing to paint someone as an idiot without knowing why they've developed certain opinions. It's a classic case of the fundamental attribution error.

You don't need to know why someone thinks that 2 times 2 is 6 to assume that person is at least somewhat an idiot. Women's right to vote is pretty much equivalent to that. Also notice my phrasing: substantial likelihood

Women's suffrage (and suffrage in general) may be a good idea. When you say that the case for it being a good idea is as strong as that for a mathematical proof, you're discrediting yourself, since you're smart enough to know that political ideas can never achieve the rigor of proof.

you are clearly missing the point of this conversation. The point of this conversation is not to claim that 2 times 2 is equal to women's suffrage, but to simply state the obvious: when somebody says something that sounds pretty obviously idiotic, the likelihood that this person actually is an idiot goes up dramatically.

Why would you assume that someone who mentions Thiel's statements about women's suffrage hasn't heard his arguments? Don't you think it's more intellectually honest to question and hear what others have to say rather than just paint them as idiots because they don't believe what you believe? Also, do you think that it is even theoretically possible for someone to make a meaningful argument that women's suffrage is somehow a bad thing? I certainly don't.

> I would love to hear WHY he's skeptical. I'm sure he's heard all the traditional arguments like we have, which means he has additional information that I don't.

It is to do with social programs and taxes.

Libertarians are overwhelmingly white and male. Why this would be the case is interesting, it might be biology at work but let's stay on point.

Women are overwhelmingly not libertarian.

Therefore if 50% of the voters are in favour of social building programs then that is what government policy will enforce, forever, in a democracy. Whether this is morally/fiscally right or wrong is beside the point.

Bluntly that women can vote means libertarian policies are impossible unless large numbers of women decide to become libertarians. You can be the judge of whether this is fair or not.

It's also a tiny bit scary that he also owns Palantir, but that might just be the Jason Bourne hat I'm wearing for this weekend

he doesn't own Palantir. He owns a stake in Palantir.

How is "1. e4" an aggressive chess tactic? That's the most classical opening line of all.

It's the f4 afterwards that made it aggressive for Fischer et al. It looks like the reporter didn't understand enough about chess to communicate that. But he did get the first move right!

Fischer did not play the King's Gambit.

http://www.academicchess.org/images/pdf/chessgames/fischerbu...

I'm by no means a chess expert, but from commentary I've read on games between grandmasters, e4 is considered aggressive and d4 is considered conservative. Or rather, e4 leads to more tactical and exciting games (e.g. Sicilian) and d4 leads to slower, more strategic games.

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

Although calling 1.e4 aggressive is kind of inaccurate there is some truth behind it. You could at least consider it to be active or ambitious :)

1.e4 introduces a quick development of the white kingside and also the center usually is opened very early in the game.

Still the article proves to be somehow unqualified in terms of chess with the following sentence: 'It’s an aggressive tactic, putting the bishop and queen into play.. '.

Usually it is not a good idea to develop the queen early on and certainly not the idea behind 1.e4.

I think "2. e5" would be atomic bomb then... ;-)

It's also not contrarian. Now, The Grob (1.g4) would be more fitting. :)

Video of his RNC speech on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVHoGiSCfmU (6 mins)

My favorite quote from this article (and slightly off topic): "On July 14 a group of 140 or so tech industry figures including Slack’s Stewart Butterfield, EBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and, for some reason, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, released an open letter decrying Trump’s candidacy."

Does anyone know why Jesse Jackson was included in that open letter?

To hide the fact that they're nothing more than a bunch of privileged straight white males?

Pierre is Persian

I can't quite resist: https://www.google.com/?ion=1&espv=2#q=aryan

(this is of course irrelevant to 21st century usage)

Unlikely? Lol.

There is no evidence that Thiel is a genius.

There's a large amount of evidence that he is not. And yet people still think that because one of his hundreds of investments made a lot of money that he must be a genius.

He's just not who people want him to be. He's not another Musk.

Most Silicon Valley magnates are not geniuses. They're average to above-average smart, with other traits (grit, luck, the right connections, etc) that put them in their situation.

Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) because you start getting access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to.

But nerd culture values intelligence so much that we tell ourselves that of course Zuckerberg, Thiel, and others must be geniuses because a) how would they have gotten to where they are otherwise? and b) nerds like to think of themselves as geniuses as well, and therefore just one successful startup away from watching Game of Thrones with Zuck on a Sunday night.

The problem with this is that we then don't recognize when those industry leaders are acting as ignorant/stupid as any other average educated person, and instead come up with convoluted explanation about how they're contrarians and they always play the most offensive move in chess and surely that must correlate to their political choices.

> Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) because you start getting access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to.

This. This is really important to understand because it's the fundamental cause of the divide between the super-rich and everyone else. Not only do you get access, but you also can start to buy influence with the government to tilt the playing field in your favor. These two things cause a positive feedback effect that lets people above a certain threshold of wealth continue to grow that wealth at the expense of everyone else.

The real problem is that everyone seems to want to believe that they too can reach this level of wealth by "working hard and playing by the rules". As a corollary, they believe that if you're not rich it must be because you didn't work hard enough or didn't play by the rules. Of course, this is false, but there's no way to fix the underlying problem as long as a majority accepts this false narrative.

> access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to.

What kind of investments are you and the original comment referring to?

It's actually less about the kind of investment and more about the terms you can negotiate. If you can buy in for half of what anyone else can buy in at then your return will be twice what everyone else's return will be, and you losses will be half of what everyone else's will be, regardless of anything else that happens.

Aaand that's popped the balloon and back to reality. Nevermind billion dollar ideas, let's just focus on a lifestyle business where you can't go wrong, headache and conscience-wise

> Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees)

Or unless you're Trump! rimshot

http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/

http://www.moneytalksnews.com/why-youre-probably-better-inve...

Can you please elaborate on the large amount of evidence that he is not a genius? If you are going to cite some of his investment failures, then you also have to consider his successes, and the fact that he has, overall, been very, very successful.

He did not just have one good investment. He has had many, in addition to founding PayPal and Palantir.

He has not had many successes. He's had a very few out of a great many. Like literally anyone with his connections and money could expect to have. The Facebook deal was dropped in his lap by Reid Hoffman due to a conflict of interest he had.

Probably the most damning evidence of his lack of genius is when he pushed Zuckerberg very hard to sell Facebook at like $1 billion.

He also sold PayPal early in a similar situation and has pushed other founders to sell early, though I forget the specific examples.

This is very clearly not genius levels of vision. Thiel wouldn't be a famous billionaire today if Zuckerberg had listened to his advice.

There's also the fact that Elon Musk showed us exactly what a real genius could do with his incredibly privileged position in the world.

So what is the point you're trying to make. That Thiel's opinion about Trump is wrong because he is not a genuis? Dude, really, it's just his opinion, man.

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