Comment by AJ007 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AJ007 | Hacker News Reader

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Here is what I said 25 days ago:

> I think Thiel is hedging for both himself and as a proxy for Facebook. If Trump wins, Facebook gets the most favored corporation status currently awarded to Google. If Trump loses, Thiel perhaps assumes everyone will forget soon enough and Zuckerberg can diss-avow any Facebook connection.

In retrospect, the one thing I think I was wrong about were the odds. I thought it was a long shot.

Facebook has sentiment analysis and definitely had a better guess on how the election would turn out than perhaps anyone else in the world. While pollsters were trying to extrapolate on what the entire population would be doing based on small samples and proprietary methods, Facebook just had the data. Not only can Facebook say you are a Trump supporter, but they can know by how much and as time series!

Make no mistake, "Most favored tech company" status just swapped Google with Facebook.

I don't support Trump, I believe very, very little of what he has said he supports or will do. However, I am fairly upset about the public support Hillary received. From foreign policy to domestic issues, her track record is appalling and with the exception of pro-war moderates, everyone who supported her should at least be embarrassed about it.

I am no fan of the Clintons. Personally, during my lifetime, Obama is the only president I halfway respected, with his stance on state surveillance being a notable exception. I think there is a small amount of corruption with Hillary, as I believe is true of most politicians. However, given a choice between Hillary and Trump, for me it's no contest.

Don't get me wrong, I think Trump has the potential to do some good. I am still unsure how much of his campaign he actually believes or intends to do. Term limits, I think, are probably a good thing, though also probably a long shot. If he keeps his word on not being able to be bought, that will be good. More non-professional politicians in government is probably a good thing in general.

That said, because of Trump you can almost certainly kiss goodbye: climate/renewable energy science, net neutrality, Roe v. Wade, higher minimum wage, etc. You can bet that soon the official language/religion of the US will be English and Christianity respectively. Nuclear weapons will almost certainly go back into production and military spending in general will skyrocket, while education funding continues to shrink.

It would take a hell of a lot of corruption from Hillary to get me to vote for any of that.

Trump is about as far from a Christian as you can get in a person. I very highly doubt that he cares about religion except as a useful electioneering tool. He is unlikely to stick with that label during his presidency since it would be inconvenient, so I don't think you have to worry about Christianity being the official religion.

Vastly understates the influence of Mike Pence as the fundamentalists that put him in office.

I agree that he probably isn't much of a believer in the cause himself. But more Republicans than not support it, and plenty of Democrats are at least publicly beholden to Christians as well.

While not unthinkable, getting Christianity into the Constitution as the official religion is likely not going to happen. But that doesn't mean that plenty of things won't end up on Trump's desk which make Christianity effectively the official religion (if you already think that's the case, you ain't seen nothing yet). We have to trust Trump to be able to stand up to those who put him in power and veto this stuff? While he may surprise me, as they say, I trust him about as far as I could throw him.

One major issue I see is that people believe there is a difference between Hillary and the GOP.

As P.J. O'Rourke said, though I think he was quoting someone else: America has one political party, and like everything in Anerica it was two of them.

> You can bet that soon the official language/religion of the US will be English and Christianity respectively.

Not a goddamn chance. There's absolutely no way this could possibly change. This is one of those sacred American things, written into the framework of the entire country. Even if a small minority of people are for it, it would NEVER pass.

Yeah, you could say "Well, people were saying the same thing about a Trump presidency a few weeks ago, and here we are." I get that strange things are happening, but Trump was elected via the American process, so it's not like all the rules are falling apart.

> Not only can Facebook say you are a Trump supporter, but they can know by how much and as time series!

That's a fascinating insight. They also have the geographic data and could slice/dice to get a sense of electoral college. After the systematic polling error that caught everyone off-guard, we will probably see some innovations in the next 4 years that will get incorporated into the ensemble models (e.g. 538). Perhaps Facebook will release some sort of sentiment data. Although that may get a little creepy.

What polling error? Nothing I saw said "Clinton 100%".

I've seen enough horse races to know the favourite doesn't always win.

So Facebook (& Thiel) is to Trump what Pollyhop is to Conway on House of Cards.

Yep. That's the best explanation of what happened. I totally believe Thiel knew exactly that Trump had a great shot at the presidency before supporting him publicly.

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