Sam Altman: “YC not going to fire someone over support of a candidate”

Clearly everyone would find it incredibly wrong if someone would withdraw support for someone just because they supported Hillary Clinton, and while most people here think Trump is much worse, he is the head of one of the 2 major parties. You might not like it, but his actions and views do represent a significant portion of the mainstream (which is why this isn't the same as supporting someone from the KKK, which does thankfully lie outside the mainstream).

Note: I am in no way endorsing or defending Trump, or Thiel.

For me personally - I actually have relatively few people in my life that are Trump supporters. But this is mostly an accident of demographics - I went to an elite liberal arts college in what is literally the most liberal region of the country, I worked at Google, I live in the Bay Area, my mom's from NYC, and my dad's an immigrant. I have friends who have family that are hard-core Trump supporter, as well as family myself.

It would never occur to me to stop associating with them because of their political views, or the political views of their associates. They have their beliefs, I have mine, and we just don't discuss the subjects where we are diametrically opposed. We interact on the common ground that we do have.

According to my principles, the calls for YC to disavow Thiel or stop associating with him are obnoxious for the same reason I believe Trump is unfit to be president. They divide the world into "people like us" and "people against us", and then seek to build a wall between the two groups. If you believe that it should be "us and us" rather than "us vs them", then that includes reaching out to people with whom you disagree and finding the parts that you do agree on.

Allegedly, in the same way that HRC is allegedly a rapist apologist and allegedly threatened a rape victim of her husband. I don't understand why Clinton supporters try to ignore this but harp on Trump constantly. The supporters on both sides use tremendously dishonest hyperbole and it makes everyone look like ignorant, brainless assholes.

How about sticking to talking points that are of real substance? Apparently we're too busy screaming at each other about how Trump wants to fuck all non-whites to death and Hillary is actually Lord Voldemort.

I think there's a contradiction in PG's (and Sam Altman's) public attitude towards Trump and their attitude regarding Thiel.

I mean either Trump is beyond the pale, in which case they should not associate themselves with any of his supporters, or he is not, in which case they should cut the goddamn hyperbole.

If one of your employees advocates for genocide, go ahead and fire them. If one of your employees supports a candidate who advocates for genocide -- well, it might call into question their judgment, but maybe they like the rest of the platform and think that the call for genocide is mere hyperbole.

So it's sheer coincidence that it has led to starvation, slavery, and mass murder every time it's been implemented?

100 million dead bodies is enough to convince me that it's a bad idea.

I'm afraid that the burden of proof is on you at this point.

At a union shop, a worker has no choice but to financially support the political agenda of the union, even if that agenda runs counter to the worker's best interest and/or ideals.

Exactly. The. Same.

Public sector unions take this further by creating a system in which management and labor are both operating under the union banner in a complete conflict of interest.

The whole situation is fucked and there is zero moral high ground in picking a side, much like our Presidential candidates.

For whatever reason, YC has chosen to stay silent while one of its partners pours resources into a candidacy outside the bounds of normal political discourse in the US. This silence is very weird, especially considering the individual partners' alarmist comments about Trump.

I don't think YC became poisoned with Thiel's views the moment he expressed them. They were poisoned by his views when they chose not to react in any way, and maintain their silence. I wonder what women, Muslims, veterans, etc. in this thread feel about the matter.

To the point that Thiel doesn't completely endorse his candidate, I believe that argument is substantially weakened by his 1.25M donation coming after multiple accusations of sexual assault. Clearly Thiel is comfy enough in his support to disregard this, and the parade of horrors that preceded it.

I accept that I may be starting to sound a bit nasty. I consider what is happening a display of spinelessness, and the arguments being marshaled in its defense disingenuous. It makes me angry.

This is answering the wrong question. The point as I took it of idlewords' warning is rather, if you are a woman, or a Muslim, do you really want to work with a company where you might be expected to deal with Thiel as a consultant?

You say so yourself, as did sama and paulg: Thiel's role in YC is to advise startups who enter into the program.

Were I a woman, I would be uncomfortable taking money from YC on the contingency that I would have to do business with someone who believes that my gender being given the right to vote undermines the entirety of democracy.

Were I a Muslim or a Mexican, I would be uncomfortable taking money from an organization that might expect me to share business information with a man who has spent millions of his own money supporting a candidate who believes that people of my religion or race should be registered with the government and deported en masse.

Indeed, why should I, or anyone, want to do business with someone who hates them? Who sees them as subhuman? Or, since I'm sure you're about to rush to equivocate on this, at least actively campaigns for, delegates for, and finances, a political machine that does so?

idlewords' advice was, frankly, exactly right. If you are a Muslim, or a Mexican, or a woman, you should think very carefully about applying for YC, knowing that Peter Thiel is the kind of advisor you may be expected to cooperate with as a contingency of your funding.

So, much like how he interacts with the Trump campaign, he provides capital in exchange for...?

It also doesn't follow that a defense then could ever be "we won't fire..." He's not an employee nor a YC vote-carrier nor an equity holder that you seemingly can fire.

[EDIT: To be more specific:

Here (https://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups) you mention:

"My hope is that YC has enough leverage at this point to make it clear that [inappropriate behavior towards female founders] is unacceptable and we will not continue to work with investors who do it."

The whole post is great and speaks to the role you (meaning YC in general) feel it is important to play in supporting women, minority and more generally, 'outsider' founders. The quote illustrates you've not ruled out severing business ties to investors who make 'outsider' founders uncomfortable.

Here (http://blog.samaltman.com/trump), you are talking about Trump:

"Demagogic hate-mongers lead down terrible paths. It would be particularly embarrassing for us to fall for this[.]"

In the same piece about Trump, you reference Trump's policy regarding 'outsiders' in particular, and the famous quote, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." You also state "This would be a good time for us all—even Republicans, especially Republican politicians who previously endorsed Trump—to start speaking up."

The primary confusion is that, despite the fact "[you]’ve supported some Republicans in the past", you _aren't_ speaking up and clarifying the impact of a major Trump surrogate with a potentially misleading(?) title within YC itself.

So while some others are indicating you're engaged in pedantry, I am actually very interested in the exact role of various YC partner or partner-esque people. I think this is a case where details might matter, but so far YC has been oddly silent.

To the extent such a confusion can be averted, I'd be interested in your thoughts, but appreciate this can be quite a needle to thread.]

Are "part-time partners" employees?

Yes, along with the majority of the country.

Ideally, yes, we'd distinguish between the more object-level norms and the meta-level norms required to defend them. And then we would do exactly as you say. It would be very nice to be able to do that.

You're absolutely right that I've conflated these above. There is a reason I did that, and I should have been explicit about that, but it is certainly not correct in general to do so like I did above.

The reason I didn't distinguish these above is because the defense system only works if it clearly is just a temporary defense system, if people in general are clear on the distinction. We ought to be able to say, "Nope, sorry, you're fundamentally illiberal, so we're not required to play nice with you," turn the cannon on them, and have it generally understood what we're doing. It would be a big relief.

The actual political situation is that the water has been muddied substantially. A large portion of what was the liberal faction has been captured by the illiberal left. A large amount of the population was never liberal anyway and won't get the distinction. Lots of people have been going around saying that the thing that makes Trump fundamentally different is... any number of things that are not the key reason Trump needs to be stopped.

In such a case, where most people likely won't see this crucial distinction, attempting to invoke this defense system is likely to appear no different than just abandoning liberalism. And if we allow it to look like we are, well, everyone else will then take that as an excuse.

I would really like to fire that cannon. We ought to be able to fire that cannon. This is, as you say, the exact sort of situation it was meant for! But it looks to me like nobody ever bothered to tie it down properly.

(If Trump stood more of a chance of victory, it might even be worth it. As it is, I'm not seeing it.)

You express your political beliefs--and your religious beliefs, and your philosophical beliefs--not just by your vote, but by your actions. Every day. It never stops. You can never, ever, ever opt out. These beliefs are your character, and your character is who you are in the dark. Either you do them, or you don't believe them. There's no middle ground. You can't have beliefs and then not practice them (to the best of your ability, with natural accommodations for factors that prevent you from practicing them--like, this is why I emphatically don't cast Oculus employees in a poor light for being unfortunately attached to that company, because most people can't up and quit a job at a moment's notice).

If the idea that "the practice of your beliefs is the having of them" is extreme, then we should all off ourselves and let the cockroaches have their shot. But it's not extreme. It's just uncomfortable to have it pointed out that you might not be practicing what you preach.

.

Moving on--I do think Facebook shoved Luckey in the basement for his political activity. They should. He makes the company look dirty. He makes people who work at Facebook feel less safe because he is making war on them (in the "politics is war by other means" sense of the word) for their ethnicity or their gender. I don't think that it's either incorrect nor pejorative to say that, if not for legal obligations, he probably would have been shitcanned immediately and it would have been for his political activity. And that's OK. When your politics are effectively existential threats towards people, "fuck you" is a pretty okay response. And that goes both ways. Bringing it back to a personal level: I destroy jobs because I'm a computer programmer and that's not a good thing for a lot of people. They can tell me to go fuck myself, they can choose not to interact with me. It's unlikely to have an impact, but they can. So it is up the chain, too.

"Free speech" comes with consequences. So it is, and so it must be, or "free speech" is one-way. (Which is really what most--not necessarily you, I'm not a mind reader, but most--people who advocate for tolerance towards conservative and, frankly, reactionary politics are really angling for: the freedom to do unto others.)

Trump is a difference of kind, not degree. He is an overt white supremacist and anti-Semite (and not in the "don't agree with Israel, AIPAC says you're an anti-Semite" fashion but the actual, "happy to imply that Jews secretly run the world" anti-Semite position). He has admitted to sexual assault on tape and tries to discredit those with claims against him by implying that the women in question are too ugly to assault. He is actively attempting to undermine trust in American elections by claiming that all of the polls are lying and that the only way he can lose is that the election is rigged. He is the venal id of the reactionary right and he is different from anything that came before. These are not things that have been done even by Republicans. They are not merely things that can be waved away with muddy gray-fallacy middle-ground thinking; that Trump's candidacy is credible in the face of the literal daily drop of another crime or another attempt to undermine the electoral system in which he is participating is an incipient threat to that system.

This is not a game of Internet gotcha-fallacy where victory goes to the first person who can quote a bit of Latin they don't understand, but it's not an "ad hominem attack" in the first place. It is a moral argument to character. People aren't saying that arguments made by to Trump or Trump's supporters are invalid because they're blisteringly incurious, profoundly ignorant, sexist, white-supremacist assholes, they're saying that Trump and Trump's supporters are abjectly terrifying and blisteringly unqualified to be anywhere near the levers of power to a degree heretofore unseen because they are blisteringly incurious, profoundly ignorant, sexist, white-supremacist assholes. What they are is why the argument is made.

ps: I'm Canadian, I couldn't care less. In most provinces, both candidates would be considered center-right and hawkish war-mongers. edit: I do care, in terms of avoiding populism and war, but I'm not a strong Clinton advocate either. Just a concerned neighbour.

Agree wrt the rest.