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cconroy

It would be interesting to get a list of thoughtful people supporting Trump. So far I have:

- Peter Thiel

- Scott Adams

- Nassim Taleb??

Who else?

Most thoughtful people I follow pick against Trump and more or less believe he is a threat to the Republic. I tend to agree with them mainly because of his attitude toward the press (even though I agree they are biased against him) and his proclivity to violent rhetoric.

Edited: formatting

Edit: I also want to clarify the biasedness of media was based on Wikileaks coverage and the [0]social media blackout after the Comey's letter to congress. I acknowledge their coverage of him probably helped him.

Edit: It is possible Taleb does not support DT, there is no direct evidence of this. I added '??' to him. See this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12838352

[0] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-29/social-media-blacko...

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I'm just a nobody but let me share my story:

I thought Trump was a racist who is inciting hate. At some point I read somewhere saying Trump hadn't said what media was reporting. I thought it to be BS and went to see myself. Lo and behold after searching more and more pretty much all the media reporting are false.

They are mostly positioned to counter what Trump is saying about Clinton or see what sticks. Trump calling out Bill's rape victims or remember before Clinton campaign was bombarding Trump that he wouldn't get along with Russia.

As a side note: It's quite scary to see paulg comparing Trump to Hitler and accusing FBI dir for doing his job.

-Read the Podesta emails. Clinton campaign is in bed with mainstream media.

-Media coverage is absolutely joke. FBI has been investigating Clinton Foundation for weeks and there is no coverage of that. Should be headline news.

-The only campaign inciting hate and violence is the Clinton campaign[0]

-Twitter constantly takes down trending hashtags that are created by Trump supporters and are against Clinton. Reddit blocks all pro Trump from /all, check out r/politics not a single negative Clinton story etc.

Trump looks like to be the next President and I would recommend doing your own search to see why.

[0] Video I: Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump: Rallies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY

+1 MAGA

The [0] video is kind of suspect: http://www.salon.com/2016/10/21/donald-trump-foundation-paid...

> -The only campaign inciting hate and violence is the Clinton campaign

Not really.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-punch-pro...

Not to mention the attacks on Muslims, Mexicans and a generally terrible attitude towards women.

Scott Adams thinks he is a wizard whose voice has hypnotic mind-control powers, and that the Clinton Foundation personally bankrolls an army of trolls to harass him on Twitter. In other words, he's delusional. He is not in any sense of the term a "thoughtful person"

>Scott Adams thinks he is a wizard whose voice has hypnotic mind-control powers

He thinks Trump is a good persuader. And he is. Trump's use of confirmation bias is very skillful and effective.

That's probably true! But the "he" in my sentence refers to Scott Adams, not Trump. Scott thinks of himself as a brilliant persuader, a theory that is ill-supported by the evidence.

FWIW I've used Scott's arguments to get at least 2 more votes for Trump. Including one from a 20-something girl that was a diehard Bernie supporter. I know, anecdotal.

What I find effective is asking people to really state exactly, specifically, what actions Trump himself is going to do that'll lead to the downfall of civilization or whatever they think's going to happen.

Clinton's dirty play with Bernie also helps quite a bit. And honestly, the US accepting that kind of thing, openly (as in, act like this, have it exposed, still become president) would be much more damaging to society.

It would seem to me that relying on confirmation bias means he's not much of a persuader at all.

"thinks.. Clinton Foundation personally bankrolls an army of trolls to harass him on Twitter. In other words, he's delusional"

If you were presented evidence that shows this to be true, would you be opened minded enough to update your beliefs?

it's called CTR

I read Scott's stuff and he also complained about the trolls putting bad reviews on amazon. I had a look and there were exactly two bad reviews giving 1* and saying don't buy because he's promoting Trump. I suspect the Twitter thing is similar in that a handful of readers criticize him and he figures that's an army of trolls.

He also said he doesn't want to live in a society were all of its citizens are not covered for healthcare and praised ACA for including more people (~20 mil).

And his analysis of Trump seems better than most who claim he is dumb and/or Hitler. I don't agree with Adams nevertheless he is thoughtful.

Yeah bullshit. It's been 100% proven the Clinton campaign paid thousands of online bullies to astroturf everywhere from Twitter to 4chan.

[citation needed]

https://correctrecord.org/

Where precisely is the evidence of that "100% proves" the existence of "thousands of online bullies" that were "paid"?

They use the term "correcting the record" instead of trolling and bullying. But it's undeniable that they're spending millions to pay people to post on social media in favor of a candidate (usually without any type of disclosure).

He is not in any sense of the term a "thoughtful person"

The problem is, there's no inherent contradiction between being "delusional" and being "thoughtful". In fact, throughout history many of the very people generally regarded as having unleashed the greatest amounts of havoc in the world got into positions where they were able to do that precisely because they were able to reconcile these seemingly contradictory traits.

Most thoughtful people I follow pick against Trump and more or less believe he is a threat to the Republic.

Thiel clearly also believes this, but he's also quite pro-threat-to-the-Republic.

Those three people are consistent contrarians. Contrarians are of course more likely to support Trump. It's important to remember that being a contrarian is easy, but it's extremely hard to be a contrarian about the right things.

This isn't terribly useful, but I'll just add that I personally know a number of name-brand academics, investors, and tech people who support him privately.

I agree it isn't useful and you could argue dangerous but I am very curious!

Define "biased"

Its like saying the US media was biased against Hitler. He espouses hateful, racist, sexist, and violent ideas. Its not a case of bias but rather rational distaste and fear.

I believe the point is media not digging into Wikileaks' papers. You can compare it when Wikileaks showed Bush's faults -- the media was after it right away.

It doesn't take a lot to understand Hillary is corrupted. Watching CNN from over the ocean here it's almost a joke. They only talk about Trump's sex allegations that are not even at the court yet. At the same time you can read from Wikileaks about shady things Hillary is doing, but the breaking news is a pornstar accuses Trump, Trump said that, Trump did a funny face.

you must watch different media to me. Today is wall-to-wall Clinton E-mail stuff and little about Trump apart from him talking about Clinton's e-mail.

The media go with what they think will get the most views/clicks/sales, that tends to be the most outrageous thing they can find.

Trump says many outrageous things, ergo he gets more coverage.

Today yes since it's breaking everywhere. During the Wikileaks -- no. Despite it would be a hit to write whatever you find from the documents.

"I believe the point is media not digging into Wikileaks' papers. You can compare it when Wikileaks showed Bush's faults -- the media was after it right away."

If nothing else, a Trump presidency would mean the return of investigative journalism on the national level.

The "Fourth Estate" has become terribly out of shape in that regard.

There's no social media blackout. If you look at trending topics in politics on Facebook, you have Anthony Wiener, Harry Reid, Eric Holder, and Loretta Lynch -- all related to the letter.

Twitter Moments is full of related news, especially if you click through to Election 2016.

Trending Buzzfeed news is very rarely political.

Sorry, but why hold any of these people out as purveyors of truth?

I could rip a apart Thiel, Adams or Taleb on ___(their own dumb kryptonite). For example, listen to Taleb on religion. He's a buffoon. On power laws...very insightful.

I see no reason to glorify individuals outside of their domains.

Regarding Trump, he's just a Republican, as Hillary is just a Democrat. They are the faces of the machine. This is how most Trump-backers get comfort with Trump.

If Trump TRULY TRULY was anti-establishment, he would sound more like Lawrence Lessig and less like Archie Bunker.

I think the core of Trumps message and support base is that the people in power seems to have forgotten about, and left all the Archie Bunkers behind. This seems like a valid argument, and one that I agree with wholeheartedly.

As a gay man, I also worry that those of us who fought hard for equality may be trying to close the doors behind us, and prevent some other group from getting there.

I can't vote for Trump, largely because I consider him to be a buffoon - but that doesn't mean he's all wrong either. Even idiots sometimes have a good point to make.

I don't know if you've been following it but even lifelong Republicans who are gay have decried the new GOP party platform as being the most actively anti-LGBT in the party's history.

And Trump has declared that his Supreme Court picks will be based on opposition to marriage equality, so shutting the door to other groups is perhaps the least of your worries.

I'm aware - but other than for some extreme party loyalists - no one cares. I think the platform is bullshit.

wait - Taleb supports trump ?

Yeah, who'd have thought? But according to Tyler Durden (at ZeroHedge), we have the following tweet from his account:

"I far prefer Bernie Sanders to Trump but absolutely no Hillary."

Followed with:

"No SHillary"

Which in Tyler's words, "seems to sum it all up perfectly."

Ok, I could not find that tweet anymore. Perhaps that is a sign of him not supporting DT. I put a question mark next to him. In fact the lack of thoughtful people supporting him is damning in itself.

> attitude toward the press

Just because Trump hates the media doesn't mean the media isn't completely obsolete and irrelevant. I thought we were all in agreement that the U.S. media is long overdue to be replaced with reddit/Twitter/HN.

From a consumption standpoint I could see that. But from a content creation standpoint HN and Reddit lack the expertise, discretion and attention span to provide in-depth reporting and investigation that is critical to uncovering and discouraging corruption.

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