Peter Thiel’s Money Talks, in Contentious Ways. But What Does He Say?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Yes. People will discover that you have nuanced views, then start to talk to basically warn you ominously, or send you home in a cab. People with power will leave you hanging, wondering if your life will be destroyed.
There seem to be plenty of people with very out of the mainstream and quirky opinions who have thrived in the valley for years and plenty of obnoxious people who try to emulate them by having dissenting opinions for the sake of having a dissenting opinion.
The problem isn't the obnoxious people. Obnoxious people thrive on their conflicts with each other. The problem is what happens to reasonable people. The problem is the intolerance of asking questions and of loyal opposition. The problem is that there's so much hostility towards honest inquiry. You're either with them or against them. I remember when the left was horrified at hearing a phrase like that from the Right. Now the Bay Area Left say it.
It's people who try to gain acceptance of violence in US politics who should be condemned. It's people who try and strip away freedom of speech and assembly from others who should be condemned.
Like Donald Trump's harsh criticism of protesting NFL players or his near constant denigration of the free press?
What about the people that helped elect this obviously unfit leader? There are plenty of ways to peacefully participate in democracy that I have no problem declaring "wrong."
The whole point of free speech is to be able to express. The current president has always erred on the side of expressing too much, and I'd say that we'd be better off without most of his tweets, or him in office. However, none of that is opposing free speech.
or his near constant denigration of the free press?
The mainstream news media in its death throes is objectively bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qmiPWgCYb4
https://www.theknifemedia.com/
There are plenty of ways to peacefully participate in democracy that I have no problem declaring "wrong."
That sounds pretty authoritarian. The whole point of freedom is that we are able to be right or wrong. It's our choice. That's "the consent of the governed." Do I wish the election had gone differently? Yes. But simpleminded vilifying of almost 1/2 of the country isn't a constructive approach.
So I wouldn't want to promote that thinking lest I end up on the wrong end of it due to not being stronger than the other party. That's basically the political law of the jungle. That's not exactly what civilization should strive for, is it?
If I own an apartment building, I have every right to kick out all the tentants and sell the building. The law shouldn’t stop me from doing that. But I can’t complain if people try to stop me, bring bad publicity against me, etc. They’re entitled to do that in a way they wouldn’t be if I simply expressed pro-landlord views.
One coder with no unique personal success outside being hireable by Google painting the majority of the species as lesser, with cherry picked stats that ignore human history and social trends?
Edit: I don’t care about what numbers he put in his memo. It’s the idea of peddling such a thing in the first place by someone who has no authority
Saying math says we should behave a certain way is enabling authoritarian rule, IMO
Demore forgets that he’s one of billions. He can think what he wants using his numbers, but it’s not iron clad and means nothing given that the data is generated in a highly curated social structure
It’s less “his math is off” and more “why do I care who this Demore fellow is? Because he has math? Meh lots of people do. It’s not very interesting math and theory.”
That’s not likely to connect with this crowd.
Pretty self-aggrandizing and full of shit, IMO. Not something a “place of business” as Google has painted itself in these situations, should support
I’m indifferent to concerns about rigor in my comments. Also I’m on a phone and half interested, passing the time on a bus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siRG42yMpyc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grNAjsb4yX8
Look up the citations, then decide for yourself who is pushing an ideological agenda.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKmyO3hbOz8
Here is a reasonable and cogent critique of the Damore memo. Liana K makes a very good argument that James Damore is wrong. However, note how many general falsehoods about the memo she calls out.
He did that? Where?
I’m not linking it because it’s not like this is an esoteric notion that requires extreme vetting
It’s one a-hole who in the big picture isn’t important to anyone but himself. Something I think this forum and society as a whole have lost sight of
I have my own take on it. Add some variables he excluded and his whole thesis goes to shit. But it still says nothing but math is like English; it can be made to produce a result that tells whatever story we want
Some folks seem to think every formula peddles some inherent truth of reality, which is nonsense
By that reasoning, there seems to be evidence that women are contextually better than men at medicine and healthcare.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3044934/why-are-these-3-stem-fie...
Look at the comments in here on any article about something that's vaguely political or a social issue in a flyover state, rural are or "less developed" country. There's this weird implication of slight superiority.
A lot of them often read with a sort of pro colonialism white mans's burden sort of tone. It's like everyone else isn't capable of figuring out their own problems and needs the smart people to rule them. There's also a sort of Christian missionary kind of undertone where everyone who doesn't believe like we do faces eternal damnation so it's our responsibility to get them to shun their existing beliefs and convert. It's not a malevolent intolerance, it's a saving you for your own good kind of intolerance.
I can't quite put my finger on it (so I'm drawing parallels instead) but I don't like it.
Okay, so you don't have to have a bit-accurate copy.
but because they're not capable of coexistent in a "we know our beliefs are right and therefore anything incompatible with our beliefs is wrong" sort of way.
The above is pretty much a definition of intolerance.
Science relies on bad experiments. But of course folks like Thiel and Demore act like they got it right and can just keep on doing, cause of a sense of privilege.
Thiel isn’t doing the work himself. That’s impossible. But rules should be avoided. Relies on society to collectively provide, but says society isn’t allowed to expect anything back.
IMO, those sorts seem to be especially easy to manipulate emotionallly. Patted on the back all their lives, but if you should try to stop them they get salty. Forgetting that they’re still one of many.
Look at all the “anarchist” gamers and hacker types with no identity otherwise. Lots of dismissive rhetoric towards women and minorities, based solely on emotional opinion
They grew up with that “on in the background” and just kept tinkering and building on their things, otherwise, while the world (mom) made sure they had food and clean laundry.
So the rest of the world should be like mom to these emotional babies.
They may not go to church, and may now be anti-God, but what patterns were embedded in their youth that are not recallable verbatim, but see the world through same as usual expectations.
There is so much we don’t know still about the human brain and consciousness.
Also, what group claims individualism as their value? Liberals or conservatives? I suspect many people would say they are pro individual freedom and rights when framed as individualism vs collectivism. Also, do conservatives champion individualism or community?
You're not the first to reframe the issue to Thiel being simply a person who challenges conventional wisdom. As though all contrarians are alike and automatically beyond criticism.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron"
Cato later updated the essay and Thiel clarified that he does not want to disenfranchise women:
"While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised, I have little hope that voting will make things better."
IMO this belief about democracy should be way more controversial than essentially stating woman don't vote libertarian.
Society needs to be a bit better at differentiating exploratory intellectual conversations from statements of belief. It shouldn't be so difficult to have reasoned discussions about controversial topics.
To your second point, he never retracted his original statement because he never said woman shouldn't vote. What statement would you like him to retract? For your sake he still clarified his beliefs "I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised".
Your last sentence may be a truism as well. It's a belief about the way things are, not the way things should be.
Sorry, but the interpretation that Mr. Thiel just has no faith in democracy improving things further seems much more reasonable. Given the entire corpus, do you think Peter Thiel would assert that life would improve if large swathes of the populace were disenfranchised? Please provide some quotes.
Yes! He literally says so:
Thiel: I no longer believe that freedom [meaning capitalism] and democracy are compatible.
Thiel wants to save capitalism, and therefore rejects democracy because in his view you can't have both. That means he wants to disenfranchise everybody except the monied.
I think his view is a bit more nuanced than that. I think that he'd say that the monied are the only ones really enfranchised now, and that public opinion is currently manipulated by those actors through their influence over the media. In such conditions, we'd expect any democracy to be dysfunctional.
communities doesn't mean access to improperly entering people. Try not to conflate the issue.
Half of Facebook's users are (probably) conservative, that is half the user base.
Still sound like you want your echo chamber.
To indulge you: what specific policy proposal did Hillary make and Trump oppose that would be harmful to Facebook employees or users, or contrary to Facebook's goals?
Fwiw, I voted third party.
Trump specifically campaigned on withdrawing from Afghanistan as an "un-winnable" war. Since winning the election he has unfortunately doubled-down on the violence of his predecessors.
There was a somewhat popular interview where Bill O'Reilly asked Trump about Syria, stating if Putin helps Assad fight off ISIS, then Russia/Putin will own Syria. Trump basically said America had its own problems, if we go in we'll own it, why would we want it? Of course he reversed this after election too.
When one finds oneself doubling down on an ideology with more acrimony and fervor, it's a clear sign that one is on the wrong side of history. When one is bullying others into agreement instead of convincing others, it's a clear sign that one is on the wrong side of history. When one must convince oneself that another's human rights are to be sacrificed for the greater good, one is on the wrong side of history.
Good ideas stand on their own. Good ideas can convince.
Assuming rational, non emotional, actors, which is hardly ever the case. People like Alex Jones have an audience, but bring a good argument to their feet, that say Sandy Hook wasn't a false flag, and you're unlikely to get a change in belief.
That's the human condition. So many of us are fools.
That right there is an attempt to convince. However, if people then took it on themselves to punch, harass, or get the advocates of those ideas fired, then that would be an attempt to suppress.
That's called reporting. The chief difference between Gawker and the New York Times is that Gawker took far greater risks for its size than the Grey Lady.
Thiel isn't even particularly unique – other billionaires (e.g. Sir James Goldsmith) have tried to kneecap publications they viewed as too disrespectful.
"Borderline" criminal isn't criminal and Gawker didn't operate from the United Kingdom or a jurisdiction where this isn't allowed, it operated in the United States, where the courts have been very clear on this.
Also, Gawker was actually taken down for defying the court's orders. Even if they knew they were right, that was a dumb move. You sort that out on appeal, rather than defying the courts. That is absolutely illegal, regardless of whatever defenses they might have had for invasion of privacy.
Gawker then compounded that by saying that they would have also posted stolen child pornography of anyone not under 4 in their deposition, as you can see on video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0p4V1-va00
So you're not going to get much sympathy from normal people for a pedo-friendly, non-consensual porn publisher going down the toilet.
That's the thing, though, more than one person can be wrong here. He said a hurtful word in the heat of the moment which is morally wrong, but not illegal. Gawker made a deliberate decision to put themselves above the law and defy a court order. It's not a big surprise which of these would lose in a court of law.
I agree it was sufficiently murky to warrant some sort of monetary award. But hundreds of millions? You can't have it both ways – he's either a public figure, in which case some invasion of privacy is defendable, or he's a private individual, in which case that amount of money is in no way justified.
> Gawker then compounded that by saying that they would have also posted stolen child pornography
A Gawker writer made a stupid joke during a long deposition. Nothing in Gawker's history indicates they would have done so.
I don't see anyone laughing or smiling in the clip around 1:25 in the video I linked and a court deposition is not a place one would normally tell jokes. I certainly never joked back when I gave a deposition, I read tons of depositions on Groklaw and I can't remember any jokes in them, and I don't really think stolen, non-consensual sex tapes are particularly funny, either.
In short, I really can't find any evidence in favor of them joking and their bad conduct, like defying the court, points to poor judgement and weighs against any credit I might want to give them.
We're in full agreement about it being stupid, though.
> Nothing in Gawker's history indicates they would have done so.
Gawker's choice to defy court orders and publish stolen, non-consensual sex tapes means that I cannot give them the credit I would give to a normal person here in much the same way I would not be inclined to trust a drink handed to me by Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski, or Harvey Weinstein, as compared to one from a normal person.
You're arguing a number of points I haven't actually made. I can explain why the court did what they did, but if you think the law should be otherwise, you would have to write your representatives to tell them how you want to better protect media companies from contempt of court charges, punitive awards, and publishing non-consensual sex tapes or what have you.
As for the point on the monetary award, that was because of contempt. As I said, the merits of invasion of privacy stopped mattering at that point because they shot themselves in the foot with a bazooka.
But I have to say, I don't understand your point about why a private person shouldn't be entitled to a large award for having their sex life exposed to internet voyeurs. Awards like this are made for the purpose of discouraging others and are expressly punitive. The court wanted to put their head on a stake so that nobody would be dumb enough to try that in the future.
That's you. I've given testimony in a grand jury about a serious crime, and I might have made a couple of off-hand jokes. People deal with the stress of such situations in different ways.
> As I said, the merits of invasion of privacy stopped mattering at that point because they shot themselves in the foot with a bazooka.
Not quite. The merits of invasion of privacy stopped mattering because the litigant was being secretly funded by a billionaire with essentially limitless resources, and a desire to crush Gawker.
Without Thiel, Hogan would have gotten a few million dollars, the editor would have been fired, and this would remain a cautionary tale about how it's not cool to publish sex tapes of fading stars.
Personal anecdotes are meaningless, but if you want to compare them, I've been a witness in a first degree murder trial, where I gave an interview to the police, a deposition, and then was examined and cross-examined on the stand. I was a teenager at the time.
But I knew even then that cracking jokes in any of these was a bad idea. So, maybe you're like him enough to understand him, I don't know. I'd never joke about child pornography in court and I'm very probably incapable of understanding anyone who would.
I see a straight face with no evidence of joking and anyone can watch the video to make up their own mind, I don't expect to change opinions here. I haven't heard what you see on his face or in his voice that leads you to think 'joke' and I certainly didn't hear anyone laugh, not even AJ himself.
> Not quite. The merits of invasion of privacy stopped mattering because the litigant was being secretly funded by a billionaire with essentially limitless resources, and a desire to crush Gawker.
No amount of funding by Thiel could cause Gawker to disobey a court order.
Without contempt of court, and the terrible, terrible idea to "joke" with a straight face that they'd post sex tapes of anyone over 4, they might have survived. Gawker had competent legal representation and they had their day in court. Nobody but them chose to defy the court.
> Without Thiel, Hogan would have gotten a few million dollars, the editor would have been fired, and this would remain a cautionary tale about how it's not cool to publish sex tapes of fading stars.
This is an assumption for which you provide neither a rationale nor any evidence. Not even anecdata this time. It seems far more credible to me that not choosing to piss off the judge would've helped them avoid punitive damages.
Also, they went to crowdfunding to try to revive the site, but failed miserably. So they had their day both in court and again in the court of public opinion. Both times, they were judged to be losers. They wanted to be above the law and they found out that they were not.
I don't know you, but I suspect you weren't a regular reader of Gawker and its writers' general brand of humour.
> This is an assumption for which you provide neither a rationale nor any evidence
Settlements are the norm in the US legal system. That's not anecdata. Furthermore, Gawker Media (and other similar outlets) have a history of paying out sums of money to avoid court battles. They were expecting that this would be no different, especially as Hulk Hogan didn't have the money to wage a lengthy legal fight. It's extraordinarily unlikely he would have gone to court had Thiel not promised to pay any and all legal bills.
So you're right, I did give AJ too much credit here. You're right to point out that his straight-faced joke was meant to show contempt both for the justice system and anyone too poor to access it. A contempt he paid quite dearly for in the judgement.
It was about how just because something is legal doesn't mean it's right.
Just because something is legal also doesn't mean that they are taking "journalistic risks".
The world is better without Gawker.
[0] https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2017/s2725/amendm...
This is where I stopped reading. This article is poorly disguised political hackery. It takes very little evidence to suggest the silliest notion about your political enemies these days.
When they do that, you should treat the people with the byline on the article as having said it themselves and then evaluate what evidence (if any) they can give for that and whether they have an ulterior motive (e.g. being a partisan hack).
>If a journalist cites an anonymous source that is more substantial than a random rumor that somebody just made up. Usually it is corroborated and the sources’ credibility is taken into account. >Just because you don’t like what the anonymous sources have to say doesn’t mean that it’s worthless.
This is a great way to let your bias do your thinking for you and I'll have no part of that. Why do I say it's your bias? Because you have literally nothing but your subjective judgement to base your opinion on in this case. After all, if you have something else, why are you trying to judge the reliability of a random, anonymous rumor in the first place?
Just because you are not in a position to independently verify every fact that gets reported doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. It’s ok to be skeptical, but you seem to be taking it to an extreme.
So you've misunderstood what I'm saying quite badly.
I base my views on those things that can be verified, not on all the stuff that cannot be. That said, I do not suffer from Gell-Mann amnesia. I'm under no delusion that most reporters are doing anything more high-minded than trying to be the first to summarize the next big story. Nor do I normally suppose that they are experts on most subjects, particularly those like law, technology or medicine, though they have hopefully summarized an actual expert to the best of their understanding. And yes, the precious few who actually are experts of some kind (e.g. Volokh) are given due credit in the realm of their expertise and generally the sort I favor reading.
I therefore tend to seek out actual, primary sources (the relevant scientific paper, actual legal scholars, the text of the actual law, etc.) and use those, rather than some reporter's rushed summary thereof, to inform myself on any matters of actual importance. So the reporters I find more credible are the ones who actually bother to link to these primary sources when they're available online.
That usually means reading more from people like, say, Volokh, Popehat or the SCOTUSblog and less of CNN. Yes, I know Chris Cuomo is an attorney, but he gets special demerits for getting the law wrong (and having gotten called on it by many lawyers with more experience).
There are legitimate reasons to keep sources anonymous, especially as it pertains to criminal investigations. Journalists have legal protections that allow them to keep the identities of their sources private. I understand that it's suboptimal to appeal to authority and say that you should just trust Woodward and Bernstein on the matter, but that authority was hard-earned over a long period of time. It should not be discounted.
You're confusing what might be true with what's provable. The fact that they're anonymous rumors means they're unprovable for the public (but, importantly, not necessarily for the journalist who should be using them to dig up verifiable facts).
You're also ignoring that they uncovered many facts which could be verified, which one should pay attention to, while ignoring the unverifiable bits.
If you're going to bring up Watergate, don't forget the words "Trust, but verify." We're not able to do that last part. Therefore we ignore the rumors--that is, we neither believe them nor assume to be false.
Anything else is simply irrational. This sort of "reasoning" simply makes one gullible. You'll have nothing to fall back on but your own assumptions when the question of how you know which rumors can be trusted comes up.
The only assumptions I had made is that you rarely argue with women and that you don't assault them (or people in general, which let's pretend is true for the sake of the argument), everything is factual. See why this kind of framing is dishonest?
Just because you don’t like what the anonymous sources have to say doesn’t mean that it’s worthless.
>Just because you don’t like what the anonymous sources have to say doesn’t mean that it’s worthless.
I tend to be suspicious of anonymous sources a lot of times even when they say what I like. That statement was just a baseless assumption about me on your part.
This guy lives in such privilege, I think he forgets that his actions have real life consequences. Like helping Trump into power has made life difficult for thousands of Dreamers, refugees, etc... and a ton of other obstacles I don't really have room to record here.
To him it's just a thought experiment. If it doesn't work out, he moves on, neglecting all the lives he made worse.
Highly hypocritical of him to say he "warned" against bad things when he helped create it.
Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against privileged/smart people, but this dude just has some really whack ideas on how to improve society.
What does Peter Thiel love? Want? I'll never know. He's just another rich guy jet setting between NY and LA now. My guess is he spends some time advocating for impractically expensive cross continent transit and fades into the noise of wealthy-but-not-wealthiest elite. Maybe he'll become interested in those green grids he spends so much time flying over and does something in a midsized American city - probably healthcare related given the demographics.
That is totally unfair. He's also interested in going to New Zealand in case his choice in presidents happens to irradiate North America.
Border laws don't stop being laws because of emotions, and every decision to ignore the law has major consequences. Being naive or not thinking of consequences doesn't work in chess or in life.
We need thiel to help balance the insane part of the echo chamber. let's hope they bring him more on board.