Peter Thiel Trump Speech | Hacker News Reader

Peter Thiel Trump Speech

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Well, I can't stand Trump, but I liked Thiel's speech. Trump's status as a political outsider (and political disruptor) seems pretty valuable to him. I haven't met anyone here in the valley who supports Trump. It's too bad that means there isn't much discussion about the broken state of national politics.

The issue as I understand it is that having a discussion with a Trump supporter gives their views a platform and potentially exposes other people to them.

Arguments that wide-scale non-white immigration is detrimental to white societies, that the black-white IQ gap includes a non-zero genetic component, that biological differences exist between men and women, etc. cannot be refuted through rationalism, so we have to resort to other methods to prevent their spread.

"biological differences exist between men and women"

I think this is fairly settled science, last time I checked men do not normally have a uterus.

I also the socialization (and probably biological) factors also result in vastly different communications styles between men and women.

>Arguments that wide-scale non-white immigration is detrimental to white societies, that the black-white IQ gap includes a non-zero genetic component, that biological differences exist between men and women, etc. cannot be refuted through rationalism, so we have to resort to other methods to prevent their spread.

The misconception that Trump and his supporters are racist, sexist, bigoted is why people will never understand why Trump supporters support Trump.

And this is the primary reason why no one has been able to stop Trump yet.

You can not stop Trump if you don't understand why people support Trump.

I wouldn't be surprised if you had but they wanted to keep their jobs.

This is a speech that was immediately followed by an interview; the longer video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob-LJqPQEJ4 includes the conversation that followed.

Don't understand why this was flagged. HN had no problems piling on Thiel when he announced his support for Trump, and we're not allowed to post something where the man is defending his viewpoint.

This smacks of intellectual dishonesty and flagging this post just goes to further show that Thiel is right regarding diversity in SV. All of this is relevant discussion because of his affiliation with HN and tech as a whole.

> This smacks of intellectual dishonesty

Not surprising given the nature of both HN and the valley. It's weird watching this site justify ostracizing/harassing people with different politics than them. Conformity of thought is highly valued within the tech community in the bay.

I agree 100% with Thiel, but Trump is not remotely the right messenger for this message and Thiel is making a huge mistake supporting him as such. If ever there was an appropriate time for "shoot the messenger" this is it, lest Trump taint the entire message.

Additionally it's not even clear Trump fully understands the problem Thiel cares about, but may just be exploiting a political opportunity with just enough rhetoric picked up from alt-right forums and publications to get the job done, rather than any substantial understanding of or personal commitment to it.

It's a great shame that two of the most eloquent and legitimate people trying in recent times to publicly address these fundamental problems - Thiel and Andy Grove [1] - are foreign born, hence not eligible to run for President. But they should be archetype candidate and messenger for this message.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Grove#Preference_for_a_...

Dose of humility? Questioning American exceptionalism? I wonder why there was $3.2 million spent on hats saying the except opposite? [0] And how do you make a country normal again by electing someone that broke all the rules for normal political behaviour?

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/25/do...

Is it just me or does his voice sound exactly like a text-to-speech reading?

People should be careful voting for Trump. In 20 years, the PC ideologues then in charge may dig out that data and the Trump voters may suffer consequences, like during the Stalinist purges. Thiel is brave.

You have a point in that it's hard to predict the future. On the other hand, I think freedom of the press and freedom of speech are pretty central American values. (Which doesn't mean they can't be eroded.)

I see two solutions to that problem. 1) Don't vote for Trump. 2) Have a considerably more or entirely anonymous voting. I don't know the specifics of how UK does it, but it's simpler, less tracking without fraud.

Evil knows evil.

It's all hot air around maximising shareholder value but he can't come out and say it because then he'd be labelled evil.

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