What's the HN web link? I get snagged on this all the time and just search through google to bypass but now I feel like I'm doing something the hard way
What about asking him about all the "truth-less" stuff his propagandist in chief Bannon out of Breitbart (future Chief of Staff) has pushed for years? The Birther BS? How the extreme supremacist elements backing the campaign will be kept at bay; how basic rights will be maintained.
I guess he figures Palantir can make a bunch of money tracking down people who fit into non-billionaire-white-male (gay or not) categories for [...insert some action....] to "make America great".
For everyone suggesting Thiel, a gay man with outspoken libertarian views, donated $1.25m as part of some pay-to-play scheme, let's do a little math...
He is worth $2.7b last I checked.
1250000/2700000000 = 0.00046296296
Suppose someone with a net worth of $1m donated $500... That would be a greater fraction of net worth donated. I know a lot of people who donated above that ratio.
I propose an alternative theory: Thiel is a true believer, much like many of you.
I'm far more on your side when it comes to surveillance, but I don't accept "government contracts" as a motivator. I think you're being reductionist and neglecting the fact that technology has a place in stopping terror and crime in general... We just don't know where to draw the line yet.
It's like you live in this world where greed for money and power don't exist. What good has Thiel done to be able to bypass all resonable criticism of people in power?
It's like you live in this world where the only beliefs that matter are your own and nobody else can believe something contrary and be genuine.
FYI 9/10 top defense manufacturers in the world donated to HRC. What the fuck do you think they expected in return? Peter donated as an individual and defended his stance publicly.
I apologize for the tone of my previous comment. It was unnecessarily harsh and confrontational. I have serious doubts about Trump's and Thiel's underlying motives but I shouldn't have insulted you like that. Sorry.
The value of a donation isn't in the giver's percentage of net worth. He knew exactly how valuable a $1M cheque is, especially when everyone else is supporting the other side.
This is a clear case of pay-to-play. It just happened to be cheap because of the candidate.
After reading his book, I think Thiel did what everyone else did not. He supported the underdog, thus he could pay almost nothing for a ticket that had %40 odds of winning. His win is a x1000 return. He now gets to rub elbows with more clients: nsa,fbi,cia,epa,etc and force feed palantir more contracts.
I don't think Thiel loves Trump, he is just a psychopath that can play chess at a higher level.
I'm perplexed as to why Thiel backed Trump when Thiel is gay, and Trump/Pence seem to want to roll back a lot of hard fought rights won by the homosexual community.
I won't claim to know why, but when we discriminate in this country, you probably put race at the top. But we discriminate in this order:
1. Wealth (that is, lack of)
2. Education
3. Race
4. Gender
5. Other stuff (appearance, sexual identity, etc)
I doubt a successful homosexual like Thiel feels terribly discriminated against. I'm guessing this because I work with a bunch of black physicians; they say they're all doing just fine.
The URM often say that they are doing to those outside the community. You don't complain, unless you wnat to be branded a problem, a complainer, a whiner.
Well they "seem" to be doing fine as well, so we're getting into some pretty dark territory (is that racist imagery?) to now imagine that they're suffering immensely inside and just putting on a painful show. One of them just won a "most eligible bachelor" competition in our predominantly-white city last year. Oh and I'm a hispanic physician (yes, we exist!), and I'm also doing great. No, I didn't vote for Trump.
I have to disagree with the list. How we discriminate can't be put in a list because it is different for different issues. For one example, consider that the legal system discriminate far more on gender than race. In some areas your list is close to accurate (I would definitely put mental health much higher), but in general a list is a poor data structure to represent how discrimination occurs. It also ignores interactions between groups.
That's a fair point, and your remark about mental health is true (it might even be number one on this oversimplified list). I wasn't trying to be authoritative on the subject or list, but to present a general idea about who, practically-speaking, feels disenfranchised. Thiel, even if he was a fat, ugly, uneducated, transgendered black person, would still be one of the most advantaged people in the world.
A lot of the problems that an ordinary person would suffer cease to be an issue when you're worth $2.7B. I suspect that for Thiel, the loss of hard fought rights will not impact him very much personally. Marriage for example is not just symbolic, it also confers rights to a partner's pension contributions, their assets if they happen to die intestate etc. Thiel may be able to fill many of these gaps with expensive legal arrangements that others can't afford.
"Trump/Pence seem to want to roll back a lot of hard fought rights won by the homosexual community"
I don't think there is much evidence for that. President Obama publicly stated his opposition to same sex marriage when he was running for president in 2008. The only reason it ended up being legalized nationwide was because of a supreme court case brought by a bunch of LGBT Republicans.
On that issue Trump has said, "The Supreme Court has issued an opinion on this. Same-sex marriage is an issue that should have been decided by the states." In other words he probably thinks same sex marriage is fine but didn't want to say so because he knows it's a polarizing issue. That's a more progressive position than _Obama_ took in 08.
True, Pence isn't a same-sex marriage supporter but he is also the Vice President. A position often described as having little to no power or authority.
> Kasich told CNN's Jake Tapper that he didn't receive a call himself. But he said one of his aides confirmed to him a New York Times report last month saying Donald Trump Jr. tried to entice Kasich with a position as the most powerful vice president in history -- putting him in charge of all domestic and foreign policy -- was accurate.
Even assuming he does appoint such a judge. The open seat right now was held by Antonin Scalia who was on the dissenting side of the Obergefell v. Hodges case. So it wouldn't changed the out come for that issue on the court.
Even if he got the opportunity to appoint a judge to replace one of the democratic appointments it would be very unlikely that the same sex marriage decision would ever be over turned. Roe v. Wade wasn't over turned despite the supreme court having a majority of Republican appointees for a long period between the original decision and present day.
Is Trump indifferent to LGBT issues? probably. But I just don't see much factual basis for the hysteria surrounding his election. If you believe the news, people are acting like he is going to round them up and put them in concentration camps or something. It just isn't reality.
People vote on more than one issue. No candidate is perfect, and it just so happens we ended up with two this time that were both pretty bad. An NPR podcast noted that some polls have found that ~40% of registered democrats polled voted for Trump. For those people at least, renegotiating NAFTA or blocking the TPP was more important than Trumps vulgarities or letting states decide on other social issues.
At this point, I would rather to not see anything else about Trump on HN until something actually happens. But here I am, sucked in to comment...
Why are you picking on Muslims? Is there any religious group who support or at least are not against LGBTs? I also know a lot of gay Muslims (and Christians. and Jews.)
I personally don't like/understand religion, but spreading FUD is something totally different. Most of the religious wars seem to have happened because of people spreading fear, don't you think?
trump didn't exactly campaign on rolling back gay rights, most americans are pretty solidly in favor of it at this point. as for why -- too early to say, probably.
Just like Trump, he's too rich to care for or being able to understand any average person's concerns and worries about life, and this includes issues that have to do with sexual orientation like anything else.
It doesn't even have to be lack of empathy, it's just an complete lack of the experiences that people have in life who have to worry about paychecks, monthly bills, mortgage, insurance and education for the family, healthcare expenditures, etc. And no, no theoretical knowledge or education can replace actual experience, knowing the physics of how bikes work is not the same as knowing how to ride a bike.
People like Trump and Thiel are ignorants not in the pejorative but in the literal sense of the word.
Try listening to what he said at the convention. He has weighted America's future far more heavily than which bathroom people can use. At the same time, he was the first openly gay person to speak at the RNC. He's helping to roll the Republican party forward socially.
Good read, he appears quite sane. In a nutshell, he has hope we do only know Trump on steroids, and he might not be a likable person, but in the end Trump has the necessary discomfort with the status quo to move the economy ahead - not the perfect candidate, but rather the better alternative at this moment in time.
People voted for Trump for 2 reasons, they were tired of business-as-usual from the out of touch elites and they saw the other candidate(Clinton) as having no redeeming value.
They were white people, particularly white men, frustrated with having to treat other religions, nonwhite people, LGBTs, and women with any respect. They were and are bigots, radicalized by the alt-right in places like Reddit. I heartily wish every one of them cancer.
You've been using HN exclusively to post on political controversies, and doing it a lot. That's not what this site is for. We rate limit accounts that do this and eventually ban them if they ignore our requests to use the site as intended. Please use the site as intended:
The reason I've posted lately is to show the Trump supporter side. Is it really a controversy to point stuff out that is obvious but not in the echo chamber? The dirt we get for the sole reason dnc/media has created a certain narrative for Trump. Wishing cancer, calling people racist, sexist or what have you should not be acceptable.
For example: This whole thread was about how Trump is against LGBT’s while in reality he’s been advocate for them from the 80’s and its been a big part of his campaign.
I’m sure over time people understand what this election really was about. In the meantime is it really necessary to silence the other side of the voice?
Everybody always feels that their side is the underprivileged one while the other is the echo chamber. Everybody feels that their side is the one being silenced and that the mods are against them and supporting the other side. So statements like that don't add any information, just rhetorical energy, which we could use less of.
HN is not a place for political battle. People who use it primarily that way are violating the spirit of the site. We don't say politics are off topic completely, but pure politics goes against what the site stands for, which is intellectual curiosity. Ideological battle and intellectual curiosity have next to nothing in common, or maybe just flat-out nothing.
When I said you've been violating the spirit of this site, it's because of the second paragraph above.
The spirit of intellectual curiosity creates a light and appealing space that attracts high-quality participants. It's not surprising that political battlers would see that space as optimal territory and try to move in [1]. But the clear result of doing this is trashing the space, just as any invading army will trash the space it invades. It's our duty to prevent that from happening, regardless of which army.
1. Of course some of these political battlers and high-quality participants are the same people, in different contexts. That's why we don't ban people for posting occasional political comments, but do ban them if they only use the site this way.
Let me ask you this: Why were people so shocked here that Trump won? Could echo chamber sentiment play a part? Trump win was clear for lot of people who did some research instead of outsourcing thinking to FOX/CNN/MSNBC/NYTIMES.
Considering common sentiment here is exact DNC/media has created ’Trump supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic’. 'Trump is x' when in reality he is the opposite its clear some voices aren’t heard.
One would think it would be more fruitful for sites like HN to know the other side of things.
Nearly every general claim about HN is based on the kind of sample bias I described above (edit: oops, I meant at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932296). People with strong beliefs convince themselves that "HN" is against their view, but this is an imaginary HN that they're projecting onto the real one. The truth is that on most questions where society is divided, HN is also divided, with plenty of users and comments on both sides. Even on the rare issue where HN skews strongly one way, e.g. Snowden, plenty of people still argue the other side.
This dynamic has some counterintuitive consequences. One is that the more neutral we are in moderating HN, the more biased we appear, to people who feel strongly about an issue. Another is that the more diverse HN is in terms of conflicting opinions, the less diverse people (again, people who feel strongly) actually think it is. I wrote about this in a bunch of comments in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12000847.
(All this is beside the more important point I've been trying to make to you about violating the spirit of this site. I'll assume you've grokked that by now.)
> Nearly every general claim about HN is based on the kind of sample bias I described above
By reading multiple threads from start to bottom it's quite clear people don't 'get' why he won. And I don't blame them if they been only informed by MSM.
> It's more exciting to feel oneself to be the underdog, surrounded by enemies, than to spend a lot of time looking at data
Wikileaks: Clinton campaign colluding with all major news orgs. Polls were a sham questions ranging from stuff like would you rather vote for ‘Trump or Obama’ to heavy weighting issues. Debate questions given beforehand to Clinton. GOP going against Trump, all nasty hoax stories ranging to raping 13 year girl. You can even find the exact ‘Trump is crazy racist playbook narrative’.
Look it doesn’t matter if people are against or support Trump, but it’s quite concerning to see people labeled as ‘racist, sexist etc’ without any merit just because supporting Trump. Or accusing Trump something like his hatred against gays in hn when the truth is exact opposite.
After Trump has been elected people have been reporting false sexual assault stories (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/10/us/ap-us-student-...). Influential people in social media with millions of followers saying that now gays are going to be killed because of Trump. Have a look at social media people against Trump are acting extremely vile. Hopefully that doesn't lead to violence.
Media and DNC has created this narrative and they should be the ones to undue it. Instead Trump supporters have to do their dirty work and silencing us is not going to make it better.
You can't comment like this here. Regardless of how right you are or how strongly you feel, commenters to HN have a duty not to destroy the site they're posting to.
"You may fight ISIS, but if that’s the only thing we do, defeating ISIS seems like a manageable goal."
Oh man. This is the Middle East. You can never just do one thing and imagine it won't affect everything else. "We'll just topple Saddam and that's the only thing we do."
"Manageable goal" will have the same ring as "Mission accomplished" in a couple of years.
It's strange how Thiel is so worried about the bubble economy, yet Trump is the quintessential face of the bubble since early 1980s. Manhattan real estate, casinos, reality TV -- these are all "boom or bust" businesses.
Political polarization has been a topic among moral psychologists like Dr. Jonathan Haidt. I recommend watching this talk to understand the political discourse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAE-gxKs6gM
75 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadHe donated $300k to the "Yes on 64" campaign in California.
I guess he figures Palantir can make a bunch of money tracking down people who fit into non-billionaire-white-male (gay or not) categories for [...insert some action....] to "make America great".
He is worth $2.7b last I checked.
1250000/2700000000 = 0.00046296296
Suppose someone with a net worth of $1m donated $500... That would be a greater fraction of net worth donated. I know a lot of people who donated above that ratio.
I propose an alternative theory: Thiel is a true believer, much like many of you.
FYI 9/10 top defense manufacturers in the world donated to HRC. What the fuck do you think they expected in return? Peter donated as an individual and defended his stance publicly.
This is a clear case of pay-to-play. It just happened to be cheap because of the candidate.
best 1.2 mil ever spent Hell, the 60m trump invested was cheap. he cut out the middle man.
I don't think Thiel loves Trump, he is just a psychopath that can play chess at a higher level.
What they say and what they feel may not be the same thing.
I don't think there is much evidence for that. President Obama publicly stated his opposition to same sex marriage when he was running for president in 2008. The only reason it ended up being legalized nationwide was because of a supreme court case brought by a bunch of LGBT Republicans.
On that issue Trump has said, "The Supreme Court has issued an opinion on this. Same-sex marriage is an issue that should have been decided by the states." In other words he probably thinks same sex marriage is fine but didn't want to say so because he knows it's a polarizing issue. That's a more progressive position than _Obama_ took in 08.
There's plenty of evidence Pence will be an issue, though.
http://time.com/4406337/mike-pence-gay-rights-lgbt-religious...
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/mike-pence-record-reproductiv...
Edit: People downvoting you do know muslims do not accept lgbt and are quite hostile against them?
> Kasich told CNN's Jake Tapper that he didn't receive a call himself. But he said one of his aides confirmed to him a New York Times report last month saying Donald Trump Jr. tried to entice Kasich with a position as the most powerful vice president in history -- putting him in charge of all domestic and foreign policy -- was accurate.
Not to mention he (Pence) has stated Dick Chaney was his role model for being a Vice President.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/donald-trump-same-sex-...
Even if he got the opportunity to appoint a judge to replace one of the democratic appointments it would be very unlikely that the same sex marriage decision would ever be over turned. Roe v. Wade wasn't over turned despite the supreme court having a majority of Republican appointees for a long period between the original decision and present day.
Is Trump indifferent to LGBT issues? probably. But I just don't see much factual basis for the hysteria surrounding his election. If you believe the news, people are acting like he is going to round them up and put them in concentration camps or something. It just isn't reality.
At this point, I would rather to not see anything else about Trump on HN until something actually happens. But here I am, sucked in to comment...
No it didn't, and they didn't.
Of Brigade's verified voters, 40 percent of registered Democrats pledged to vote for Trump.
I guess we can argue about wording or say the data is wrong, but this is what NPR said this morning.
Brigade is a billionaire's vanity project. It's userbase isn't representative of anything, and it's not a 'poll'.
Trump has been advocate for gays from the 80's and has brought even GOP to support lgbt in this term.
Edit: People downvoting you do know muslims do not accept lgbt and are quite hostile against them?
Why do you think Trump's particularly anti-gay? Here he is waiving around a rainbow flag (in a positive sense) at a rally just a couple of weeks ago: http://www.advocate.com/2016/10/31/donald-trump-waves-lgbt-r...
Trump has been advocate for gays from the 80's and supporting lgbt has been big part of his campaign.
I personally don't like/understand religion, but spreading FUD is something totally different. Most of the religious wars seem to have happened because of people spreading fear, don't you think?
It doesn't even have to be lack of empathy, it's just an complete lack of the experiences that people have in life who have to worry about paychecks, monthly bills, mortgage, insurance and education for the family, healthcare expenditures, etc. And no, no theoretical knowledge or education can replace actual experience, knowing the physics of how bikes work is not the same as knowing how to ride a bike.
People like Trump and Thiel are ignorants not in the pejorative but in the literal sense of the word.
Try listening to what he said at the convention. He has weighted America's future far more heavily than which bathroom people can use. At the same time, he was the first openly gay person to speak at the RNC. He's helping to roll the Republican party forward socially.
You do understand you are the bigoted one.
All people of walks of life supported Trump lgbt being one group of them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
For example: This whole thread was about how Trump is against LGBT’s while in reality he’s been advocate for them from the 80’s and its been a big part of his campaign.
I’m sure over time people understand what this election really was about. In the meantime is it really necessary to silence the other side of the voice?
HN is not a place for political battle. People who use it primarily that way are violating the spirit of the site. We don't say politics are off topic completely, but pure politics goes against what the site stands for, which is intellectual curiosity. Ideological battle and intellectual curiosity have next to nothing in common, or maybe just flat-out nothing.
When I said you've been violating the spirit of this site, it's because of the second paragraph above.
The spirit of intellectual curiosity creates a light and appealing space that attracts high-quality participants. It's not surprising that political battlers would see that space as optimal territory and try to move in [1]. But the clear result of doing this is trashing the space, just as any invading army will trash the space it invades. It's our duty to prevent that from happening, regardless of which army.
1. Of course some of these political battlers and high-quality participants are the same people, in different contexts. That's why we don't ban people for posting occasional political comments, but do ban them if they only use the site this way.
Considering common sentiment here is exact DNC/media has created ’Trump supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic’. 'Trump is x' when in reality he is the opposite its clear some voices aren’t heard.
One would think it would be more fruitful for sites like HN to know the other side of things.
> Why were people so shocked here
Nearly every general claim about HN is based on the kind of sample bias I described above (edit: oops, I meant at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12932296). People with strong beliefs convince themselves that "HN" is against their view, but this is an imaginary HN that they're projecting onto the real one. The truth is that on most questions where society is divided, HN is also divided, with plenty of users and comments on both sides. Even on the rare issue where HN skews strongly one way, e.g. Snowden, plenty of people still argue the other side.
This dynamic has some counterintuitive consequences. One is that the more neutral we are in moderating HN, the more biased we appear, to people who feel strongly about an issue. Another is that the more diverse HN is in terms of conflicting opinions, the less diverse people (again, people who feel strongly) actually think it is. I wrote about this in a bunch of comments in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12000847.
(All this is beside the more important point I've been trying to make to you about violating the spirit of this site. I'll assume you've grokked that by now.)
By reading multiple threads from start to bottom it's quite clear people don't 'get' why he won. And I don't blame them if they been only informed by MSM.
> It's more exciting to feel oneself to be the underdog, surrounded by enemies, than to spend a lot of time looking at data
Wikileaks: Clinton campaign colluding with all major news orgs. Polls were a sham questions ranging from stuff like would you rather vote for ‘Trump or Obama’ to heavy weighting issues. Debate questions given beforehand to Clinton. GOP going against Trump, all nasty hoax stories ranging to raping 13 year girl. You can even find the exact ‘Trump is crazy racist playbook narrative’.
Look it doesn’t matter if people are against or support Trump, but it’s quite concerning to see people labeled as ‘racist, sexist etc’ without any merit just because supporting Trump. Or accusing Trump something like his hatred against gays in hn when the truth is exact opposite.
After Trump has been elected people have been reporting false sexual assault stories (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/10/us/ap-us-student-...). Influential people in social media with millions of followers saying that now gays are going to be killed because of Trump. Have a look at social media people against Trump are acting extremely vile. Hopefully that doesn't lead to violence.
Media and DNC has created this narrative and they should be the ones to undue it. Instead Trump supporters have to do their dirty work and silencing us is not going to make it better.
You can't comment like this here. Regardless of how right you are or how strongly you feel, commenters to HN have a duty not to destroy the site they're posting to.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930346 and marked it off-topic.
Oh man. This is the Middle East. You can never just do one thing and imagine it won't affect everything else. "We'll just topple Saddam and that's the only thing we do."
"Manageable goal" will have the same ring as "Mission accomplished" in a couple of years.
It's strange how Thiel is so worried about the bubble economy, yet Trump is the quintessential face of the bubble since early 1980s. Manhattan real estate, casinos, reality TV -- these are all "boom or bust" businesses.