Is billionaire VC Peter Thiel trying to break up Google?
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I'm not saying this because I disagree with him politically, I just think he's not a great example of what kind of leaders we want moving forward, and given his behavior in the past, I wouldn't put this past him.
I'd go as far and say that you can get more diversity with an all-white/all-black (or any other color of skin) workforce that come from very different backgrounds and went to a wide set of universities than having a perfectly mixed (as in skin color) set of employees that all grew up in the Bay Area and went to Stanford.
And it says a hell of a lot about Thiel—there’s basically no evidence he isn’t a complete psychopath.
You're concentrating too much on the skin color. We should push smart people, we should create the culture of smart, so people want to become smart.
Concrete example, the number of times Americans assume I have a SSN. Or, on a trip to Kenya, my host assumed I’d know how to say grace before a meal. Or how I came to Berlin and assumed that finding a flat would be as easy as it was in the UK.
Edit: Just realised one obvious group I blindly forgot — poor people have very different experiences than rich people. $2/day absolute poverty, $10/day “you’re doing well by Kenyan standards”, $100/day Harlem average (chosen because it’s what non-Americans think of as a poor bit of America). All different from each other, all different lives from us, even if we don’t call ourselves rich.
A group of people with one gender and color of skin from the same country (to be less US centric) will often have little diversity in their ideas. But just by making sure to have x% of non-white employees you won't necessarily reach that either.
E.g. my ex works in HR for a bank that has a diversity board tasked with improving diversity. Problem: The bank prefers to hire from a certain set of universities that is dominated by students from private education backgrounds, which are predominantly upper middle class and above, which means they're predominantly white.
The numbers are such that with the universities in question they can not match the overall ethnic mix of the UK while recruiting staff with the degrees they want from those universities.
Yet suggesting that one hires by merit rather than by which university they're educated at is totally taboo to even suggest, though it'd almost certainly instantly improve their diversity and raise overall skill levels.
Companies where diversity is actually seen as important will quickly realize that they need to revise hiring policies. And one of the ways to revise it in most areas is to actually hire by merit, rather than by university "brand".
Diversity of ideas can be a good thing, but it can also mean diluting good ideas with ones that are valueless or actively harmful.
This is all smoke-and-mirrors though. In 2017 when people argue for or against idea diversity, they're almost always just fighting a trojan war for or against redistribution of resources from 'privileged' to 'oppressed' (or if you're right-wing: from 'deserving' to 'undeserving'.)
Sound reasoning.
Unlike humans, ideas are not created equal - some must be bitterly fought against. The "Diversity of ideas" meme is the "embrace, extend, extinguish" of political ideas, you can basically use it to promote any idea that's unpopular.
Is it?
It's a priori possible that certain cultures tend to hold certain values that contribute to their success in initially-diverse societies, and as such will be over-represented down the road.
I don't know if this is actually the case; the point is rather to show that your position -- which is common in those who explicitly support mulitculturalist policy -- begs the question. In practice, it amounts to a proclamation of faith.
We share different views - I am happy to disagree with you because I think Peter Thiel is to be commended for conducting business in line with his own philosophical & political views: this is perhaps the entire goal of business.
From my perspective, he clearly sees the need for change in this world and works diligently to see that his vision can come about via the best possible tool that one has to do that: business.
Just so happens he has the means to move a lot of capital around so his vision can more easily come about - here's rooting for him and his libertarian visions to come true.
What a disingenuous load of nonsense.
If you film people having sex with their permission, then you are a pornographer and subject to certain restrictions as to how you may publish your works.
If you film people having sex WITHOUT their permission or knowledge and post the videos online then you are a criminal and, in a just world, a benefactor would come to the aid of your victims and finance whatever legal proceedings necessary to drive your operation out of business.
Crying "freedom of the press" to defend sex criminals is absolutely reprehensible, as was Gawker's behavior both in this case and its repeated outing of homosexuals.
What's not okay is using one's own immense wealth to fund litigation against a media outlet you do not like over issues unrelated to the reason you dislike them. There's no question this tips the balance of power.
Mr. Thiel may have acted due to an alignment of selfish motivations, but he provided a public service, nonetheless. Both sides were adequately funded and the victim won on the merits of the case. Surely you're not suggesting it preferable that Gawker's sex crime go largely unpunished due to their victims being unable to afford a legal team of equal calibre?
Not at all, the cost of obtaining justice is the central issue here. If obtaining justice lies only with those with immense wealth, they can selectively choose to apply or not apply it, which is inherently unjust.
Agreed.
Logical smooth sailing: you say “this is the worst” and I say “can’t be the worst because here is something worse.”
Not even close.
It's easy to make a convincing sounding assessment about something but it's another to really know the truth unless you were directly there in person or are intimately familiar with every available detail about the particular situation.
How is what Thiel did any different from what a nonprofit like the EFF or ACLU does every day? They identify legal cases they feel are important, and offer material assistance to the side they agree with.
(Not attempting to defend either Thiel or Gawker, just honestly curious.)
Also, you meant alluding, not eluding. :)
Just looked up both definitions... wow, I've been using the word 'eluding' incorrectly for years haha! Duly noted :)
I'm pretty sure that Facebook's monopoly is at least as dangerous as Google's, if not more dangerous.
> He's also funded lots of politicians that work quite
> hard to restrict rights at every level of government,
> including, frankly, that are rather adamantly against
> equal rights for gay people.
If you assume that his primary motivation is the acquisition of wealth and power, and that that gives him much more freedom than any gay rights bill could, it makes more sense. Of course it also makes him a prick.
And hence, that some sort of external motivation may be needed to make it weigh up against that at present, which would eventually lead to it simply being a competitive advantage.
> But two months after the verdict, it was revealed that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel was responsible for financing Hogan's case against Gawker. It was also revealed that the major motivation for Thiel to do that was less because he was sympathetic to what Hogan was going through and more that he wanted Denton and Gawker to feel his wrath after the site ran a story in 2007 outing him as being gay.
I don't know if "dangers" is your word or his, but it's been shown (a priori and a posteriori) that multiculturalism and ethnic diversity erodes trust and causes social strive.
This is opposed to cultural pluralism, where a dominant culture exists and tolerates additional values that don't erode or threaten the dominant culture.
The reason I comment is because I sense once again an attempt to shame Thiel for his views rather than parse them for merit. During last year's election we had a similar form of hysteria in these threads because Thiel dared to exercise his right to donate to a cause he supports.
Really wish this 'shame as an argument' tactic would cease.
Edit to provide evidence of the 'downside of diversity': http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
> Fearon and Laitin looked at 127 civil wars from 1945 to 1999, most often in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. They found that regardless of how ethnically mixed a country is, the likelihood of a civil war decreases as countries get richer. The richest states are almost impervious to civil strife, no matter how multiethnic they might be — think for instance of Belgium, where Flemings and Walloons show almost no inclination to fight it out. And while the poorest countries have the most civil wars, Fearon and Laitin discovered that, oddly enough, it is actually the more homogeneous ones among them that are most likely to descend into violence.
Even the following paragraph, where another researcher challenges the Fearon and Laitin study and claims mixed groups are more prone to conflict, says that effect diminishes when the single largest group is less than 45% of the population.
(I’ve been looking at the risks of civil war recently because Brexit, on that risk to the UK I have no firm conclusions).
My friend, my entire point was to illustrate that it is not "clear-cut". Far from it. We're in agreement ;)
So it seems to me that people using arguing strategies like you just seem to have done are eroding "trust" in a rational discussion more then anything else. Tactics like these are well below what I personally would classify as honorable discussion.
> Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
"The extent of the effect is shocking," says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.
http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/robert-putnam-says...
One study isn't enough in isolation. Reproduction, vetting, counter-studies, discussion and scientific engagement is what matters on the long run.
> In the short term, he writes, there are clearly challenges, but over the long haul, he argues that diversity has a range of benefits for a society, and that the fragmentation and distrust can be overcome. It’s not an easy process, but in the end it’s “well worth the effort.”
“well worth the effort”. That's pretty subjective. I'm sure many would like to avoid "fragmentation and distrust" in the first place.
> One study isn't enough by itself.
There are many similar studies:
"A higher degree of ethnic diversity is associated with a higher incidence of civil conflict" - https://www.cgdev.org/doc/events/02.09.07/Matuszeski-JMP.pdf
I mean, this stuff is intuitive for anybody with a sense of history.
To be clear I'm not arguing against diversity per se. I raise these points to encourage us (as a society) to discuss - and not emote - these issues honestly.
Intuitive has nothing to do with fact, plenty of factors might heavily influence what one considers "intuitive". For a lot of people the necessity of the death penalty is "intuitive", yet for many societies, it's an absolute no-brainer that such practices are medieval.
So again, unless there is a corpus of studies, all pointing in the same direction, with all the environmental factors completely eliminated using double-blind or other proper scientific methods, we cannot really conclude anything.
Great! So when will we stop parading this nonsensical "diversity is our strength" mantra, or at least stop stigmatizing those that point out - as you have - that we cannot really conclude anything?
It has as much merit - and perhaps less, given the studies - as saying "diversity is not our strength".
You see the issue now?
It's hard. Especially when it feels like people are going out of their way to misinterpret or frame you. But it's worth it.
Studies in soft sciences have even less to do with fact too -- it's mostly the fads of the day presented as fact.
Sure it's intuitive - that so long as "diverse" populations in a society have no power, the majority in power can happily sit and ignore the societal problems said people are facing. Once said populations actually get into a position where they have some degree of power, the majority will do anything they can to keep them down in an attempt to keep their artificially inflated standing in society.
The solution to that is, in my opinion, pretty obviously not to take the view that giving people the power to do something about the structural problems that they face in society is a bad thing.
Discussion also implies trust. People don't have to bring evidence for everything they say, especially when other people can very easily look up relevant information online.
Sounds like you're preaching censorship, both of speech and of research. Is this really the position you want to take?
[1] http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-010-x/99-01...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Multiculturalism_Act
You say that like there is some sort of hidden agenda. Personally I think there is nothing even remotely wrong with shaming Thiel for his deeply intolerant views. In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance [0].
It's interesting too in that I think everybody can see that violence inherently breeds violence, yet many remain blind to the fact that intolerance too breeds intolerance. We have two ends of political extremism today. The many things they have in common include the fact that they both are completely intolerant of the other side as they consider the other side completely intolerant. And as the mutual extremism grows, so too does the self righteous intolerance. That's going to end well...
On the contrary, we created an official group tasked with dealing out violence (the police) because it's generally accepted (whether it's true or not) that some violence must be met with violence.
And that blurring supports the point. As police face more regular violence, they themselves tend to become more violent, leading to even more violence against them, and vice versa. In countries where the police face no violence, they often are not even armed. Take for instance Iceland which may have an even greater percent of their population armed than the US (our per capita ownership rate is so high because many gun owners own many guns) - yet their police are unarmed. 2013 was a sad year for Iceland. It was the first year that their police fired a gun at a civilian, ever [1].
It always leads to sort of 'which came first the chicken or the egg' type question, but the point is absolutely clear that intolerance breeds intolerance in much the same way that violence breeds violence. And it's quite sad watching people fall into this. People don't seem to understand that nearly all the evil in this world is and has been done by people who felt they were the 'good guys.' "No no, it's different this time. We really are the good guys! History will prove us right!" Said everybody, ever.
[1] - https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/1203/Lots-of-gun...
Considerations about the aggressiveness of the US police force specifically are certainly an important topic, but wholly irrelevant here. I'm not from the US, nor was their brand of policing on my mind when commented.
We could discuss the ethics of imprisonment, and I expect we'd agree. But you certainly can't claim that police's task is to deal out violence - particularly preemptive.
I weep for critical thinking.
Free speech --> Sue a magazine
Capitalism rules --> Sue because a company is too powerful
For a self proclaimed libertarian, his actions are about as libertarian as a baked potato.
Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from being held to account for your speech.
Free speech is only an unalienable right, in the US, from the government. Not facebook, not google, and certainly not individuals suing a private entity.
Everything else stems from the public and historical landmark court cases related to free speech- and the benches of the supreme court have staunchly defended freedom of speech from the government.
You’re confusing the concept of Free Speech and the law codified in the First Amendment rights. Free Speech as a concept is (by necessity) much broader (both as defined in the declaration of human rights, and as envisaged by the thinkers who originally proposed it). It doesn’t mean “there’s no accountability whatsoever” but it does mean that there’s an active duty to uphold individuals’ rights to articulate themselves. Unfortunately this confusion is extremely common — even the Wikipedia article restricts it to government intervention in the opening paragraph (but then broadens it).
And that debate is ongoing; for example, you can be held accountable by the government in certain cases (see "Seven dirty words").
Free speech isn't absolute, you somewhere have to draw a line determining where free speech ends and the protection of an individual's rights begin.
That's not good, no matter if you happen to agree politically with said guy with too much money at this particular point in time.
What is frightening about Thiel’s involvement case is the playbook: destroy media companies that have been critical or embarrassed you, by secretly funding any and all lawsuits against them, even if frivolous.
Maybe. Thiel funded the destruction of Gawker for their crime against Hogan. He probably wouldn't've funded it if he hadn't had a personal grudge against Gawker, sure, but Hogan's lawsuit was entirely legitimate. If there hadn't been a legitimate lawsuit against Gawker, only illegitimate ones, would Thiel have funded those? We really can't say.
Did he actually do this? (all and any, even if frivolous)
Essentially, the bigger issue here is that Gawker could hide behind a bunch of lawyers even when they knew they were doing something despicable. Take that away, and things get fairer pretty quickly.
This is not the current standard. You can yell fire in a crowded theater all you want (probably). We no longer use the "clear and present danger" standard, instead Brandenburg v. Ohio changed it to be "imminent lawless action"[1].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio#the-decisi...
I hate that this example is always used. Yelling fire in a theator for a laugh isn't "expressing ideas". It's a kind of social fraud: in some sense we depend on each other to make society work and someone shouting that our lives are in danger when they are not is violating this trust. Not by expressing some philosophical ideal but by exclaiming something they know to be false.
There's nothing about the constitutional idea of free speech that says it has to be of philosophical value or true.
Just googled this. Thanks for bringing it up, I hadn't heard about this case before.
In particular, a lot of people who align themselves with libertarianism quite commonly have their views simplified to an absurd extent. If a person advocates for "free speech", do you necessarily think that they advocate for everyone being able to publish anything at all, without any repercussions whatsoever? If a person says "capitalism rules", do you honestly think that he believes that no company should be regulated in any way?
I think that at the point where you simplify a person's political views to two-word formulas, you may have already lost most of the knowledge of what they actually believe in.
Furthermore, it was a civil suit, not a criminal suit. You're talking tort law, not criminal law, which has a lower standard of proof.
Lets put the shoe on the other foot. Say some guy stole nudes from your sister / mother / daughter and posted it on the internet for profit, do you think he should be free from liability of his actions? I would think not.
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/y-combinator/current...
While Thiel was endorsing/investing who would ultimately win - YC's President did the opposite.
While Theil's endorsement/investment in Trump was based on principal - I don't know if the same can be said for YC's endorsement of Hillary. At the time, it came as a surprise ie- a prominent tech company claiming to invest in 'hackers' endorsing a candidate who had just been exposed as technically incompetent (and/or corrupt) via thousands of leaked emails.
It also came across as contrived. Because those same emails revealed Eric Schmidt's role as technical/marketing/search consultant for Hillary's campaign and so it was not a stretch to assume Eric was leveraging his prominence & connections in tech to solicit endorsements from SV 'leaders'.
Her opponent is wildly incompetent with technology. I'm not sure why you latch onto this idea that Clinton was uniquely bad at IT. Googling comes up with exactly two photos of Trump ever using a computer. He doesn't even have a web browser on his phone [according to this NYT article](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/john-kelly-tr...).
If not technically incompetent, then sure - how about woefully ignorant, deceitful & corrupt and in no position to take lead role of the world's most powerful country. And that is not even taking into account the beef in the leaked emails, for example there are a lot of very curious tidbits in there not limited to the omnimous "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker"[0] statement by her campaign manager John Podesta.
I don't know how any 'hacker' could honestly endorse this person, let alone the president of YC. No personal offense to Sam. I dont' judge people based on political opinion (especially cause an opinion is malleable; it can change and as such people shouldn't be judged based on them) but do like to point out anomalies & contradictions.
Everyone has anomalies and contradictions. Chucking substance and just looking for red herrings is the exact opposite of the type of critical analysis people need to do.
I don't know how any 'hacker' could argue right now that Trump is a better president than Hillary could have been.
But perhaps someone has a link to a statement or article from YC on the matter where their position is clarified; I'm sure many of us would love to know.
Which thing made him a libertarian: the idea of using a government agency to break up a company, or the stump speech he did for the alt right nationalist?
[1]: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
Ah yes, that core libertarian tenant they all believe in. Can't truly be a libertarian without refusing to accept your own mortality.
As such you'll often find right-libertarians holding weird views when harming liberty protects their own property rights.
But I'm not sure I'm too mad about someone trying to take down Google a notch. My only worry is not that people are starting to believe Silicon Valley companies can do no wrong anymore, but that the government will exploit the situation to force backdoors, censorship, and other stuff like that on them. And we're already seeing that. Feinstein and others are now trying to take advantage of the "hate on tech companies" to push for encryption backdoors by also arguing about how "out of control" tech companies are, which is starting to ring a bell in people's heads.
I probably mentioned this a few times in the past few years, but Google and Facebook and others should not be taking advantage of the good will of people to constantly maximize their profits. Eventually that good will is going to run-up, and then they'll be in Uber's situation, where few people defend them anymore. And then they're in trouble, because if the people don't defend them anymore, then the government will have free reign against them.
But they've always ignored this, because they've always seen such warnings as only coming from a "vocal minority" so they didn't care. I remember even comments from here post-Snowden, about how Google doesn't care about end-to-end encryption just to gain the trust of a few HNers. But they've forgotten that Chrome built a reputation and a fanbase "on the backs" of people like that. Without people like that preaching how much better Chrome is than Firefox and IE, Chrome may have been relegated to Opera status.
Perhaps instead of seeing tech enthusiasts as a "vocal minority", Google should see them as an "army of unpaid PR agents", working every day either to raise them up or bring them down if they start doing nasty stuff. That might change their perspective a bit on how to approach the criticism coming from enthusiasts.
Conglomerates are usually split up when they're under pressure. Tech companies haven't seen any crisis in the past decade, when the first one comes investors will probably push harder.
Interestingly, Facebook so far remains quite focused. The companies they bought (Whatsapp, Instagram) are very similar to their core product. That means they remain extremely reliant on the success of Facebook itself but also means there's not natural way of splitting up the company.