
Political Showdown: Peter Thiel vs. Google’s Eric Schmidt - mysticlabs
https://medium.com/@trentlapinski/political-showdown-peter-thiel-vs-googles-eric-schmidt-1d1484636aa4#
======
flukus
> There’s been a lot of talk in Silicon Valley about Peter Thiel’s public
> contributions, and support for Donald Trump, yet no one seems to be talking
> about Eric Schmidt’s private contributions to the Clinton campaign that were
> just exposed via Wikileaks.

Because he picked the "right" side, you only got bullied if you support the
"wrong" one.

~~~
bko
Well think about it this way, if a corporate executive like Thiel were caught
saying much of Trump's campaign rhetoric, he would likely face consequences.

Just a few that come to mind

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not
sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of
problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs.
They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
[0]

"26,000 unreported sexual assults in the military-only 238 convictions. What
did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?" [1]

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out
what is going on" [2]

Considering that this last one would be considered hate speech and banned on
Facebook if it were not made by a major US politician [3], I think openly
supporting the candidate and going out of your way to help his campaign is
fair game for criticism

[0] [http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/donald-trump-speech-
debat...](http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/donald-trump-speech-debates-and-
campaign-quotes-1.11206532)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/33190738377114828...](https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/331907383771148288)

[2] [http://www.amny.com/news/elections/donald-trump-s-
memorable-...](http://www.amny.com/news/elections/donald-trump-s-memorable-
controversial-quotes-1.11177219)

[3] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-employees-pushed-to-
rem...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-employees-pushed-to-remove-trump-
posts-as-hate-speech-1477075392)

~~~
farright
The fact that people would face "consequeces" for making these political
statements is exactly why Trump has been so popular.

People are afraid to say even innocent or true things because those will
result them being branded as "racist". For example even good liberals who
believe that black communities are caught in a cycle of crime, have to self-
censor because the only acceptable position is that black crime is _entirely_
caused by a biased criminal justice system.

I don't think Trump phased it very well but I do think that illegal
immigration is a net negative for the US, and it wouldn't' surprise me if
illegal immigrants were disproportionately criminal. What's undeniable is that
illegal immigration is connected with new patterns of organized crime, even if
the overall crime rate is similar.

~~~
drewrv
Free speech does not mean consequence free speech. It's not some gross
injustice that saying racist things or supporting racist candidates makes
people think you're racist.

~~~
flukus
Creating consequences for speech just pushes the speech underground where it
can't be challenged. Then when someone like Trump pops up people wonder where
all the support is coming from.

------
oever
> How is it acceptable that the Chairman of one of the largest corporations in
> American can fund a secret startup that works directly for the [candidate's]
> campaign? Meanwhile, potentially contributing hundreds of thousands of
> dollars personally to the [candidate's] foundation?

Not only that, but the company's main revenue is from its ability to influence
people's actions, e.g. voting, via advertising.

------
jessriedel
I wonder why these guys don't just agree to jointly donate their money to
charity.

[https://sideways-view.com/2016/10/31/repledge/](https://sideways-
view.com/2016/10/31/repledge/)

------
internaut
Thiel and Schmidt have two very different worldviews, they had a debate on
capital 'P' progress a few years ago.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsXFwy6gG_4)

Many people find Thiel's argument hard to believe, especially if they are
aspirational middle class types. This is because normal people have a
chronocentric bias. Of all our biases, this one is probably the strongest of
all.

If you find Thiel's position hard to believe, it is worth examining what our
grandparents thought about the future.

"The Home of the Future in 1999" (from the 1960s)

[https://youtu.be/0RRxqg4G-G4](https://youtu.be/0RRxqg4G-G4)

I am at the point where I consider the optimistic narrative (ex-computation)
utterly without supporting evidence. It is all PR and marketing.

Here is one example. Consider the discovery of DNA. Important scientifically.
And all the resultant research into genetics since.

But tell me what relevance any of it has had to the average person? Have we
new drugs? More effective treatments? Cheaper medicine?

This is a minor heresy among the 'educated' but to me the answer is clearly
no.

Think about that for a minute or two. Either I am mad, or in half a century
there has been no measurable effects. If the second is true then why do we
believe CRISPR is going to revolutionize everything outside? The discovery of
DNA itself, the Human Genome Project. The cheaper shotgun sequencing. These
should have had enormous material effects on society. It does nothing!

Food prices should be much lower. They are static or increasing. Timber should
be of higher quality. It is actually much lower than before. Any non-niche new
building materials out of biotech. I am unable to identify any. New breeds of
animals for livestock, pets, where are they? The farmers I know use a process
mostly identical to their ancestors from several thousand years ago, only a
little more streamlined thanks to more specific egg/sperm selection.

Yes you can give me niche applications and cool stuff in a lab somewhere, but
I'm asking about people's offices, homes, on the streets.

The fact is that we've been talking about vat-grown meat and lab-grown
replacement organs for 50 years, and they aren't here yet. Do we have to wait
for another 50?

~~~
maxerickson
There are therapies coming from genetics though. For instance:

[https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development-
Pipeline/](https://www.cff.org/Our-Research/Drug-Development-Pipeline/)

And lots of cancer treatments. Genetically engineered microorganisms produce
many drugs (and chemical feedstocks for others).

We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's a
pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin
products that are fast acting and sustaining.

It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their
ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion bulls
to use for breeding.

[http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa-
churn...](http://www.ticotimes.net/2014/06/29/us-company-in-iowa-churns-
out-100-cloned-cows-a-year)

~~~
internaut
Honestly this is not impressive. I don't say that to be abrasive, it just
isn't. I'd expect to get _something_ for spending billions of dollars and
having legions of intelligent people working away, if only by freak accident.

To put it another way, we had serious medical breakthroughs before cheap
genetic examination and alteration was possible. Our benchmark should not be
_nothing_ , it should be the past periods of change in the field surely.

How does the 'modern' genetic engineering stack up against antibiotics,
peptide synthesis? How many lives saved, how much higher a quality of life do
we have as a result?

Eroom's Law is still in force despite xray crystallography and dna sequencing
being orders of magnitudes cheaper. Suppose drug discovery isn't the the
bottleneck and we blame the FDA, then where are the breakthroughs in Russia
and China?

> We wouldn't have recombinant insulin without genetic engineering, so there's
> a pretty good high footprint drug for you, the modern combination insulin
> products that are fast acting and sustaining.

That is notable, yes. Partly because it is a good high footprint drug as you
say, but also because of the reason for its demand... It is interesting
because if you watch the Ford Foundation video from the 1960s I linked to,
there is a household personalized preventative healthcare system. I believe we
_could_ build such a device in theory, but I don't see that we're breaking
much ground. The last thing I saw that impressed me was the Toto intelligence
II toilet but it didn't take off. I'd like to buy one, esp. if it was linked
to my fridge and food cupboard to perform input/output analysis. I don't think
there's a company even pretending to offer such a system today but it was
readily imagined half a century ago.

> It's also the case that breeders are using identical methods to their
> ancestors, except for the part where they do things like clone champion
> bulls to use for breeding.

Breeders were doing pretty okay before artificial cloning.

I have some relatives in farming, I think they send off sperm cells to be
hazed by freezing or some other hazing process that eliminates the weaker
candidates.

I also know some old school breeders from a cattle mart who are basically
wizards. They carefully examine their subjects to determine characteristics,
like Darwin's pigeon fanciers in Origin. They are extremely gifted at
selecting, like the Met's super recognizers.

"He said that of the millions of cows produced every year, the number that are
cloned is “overall pretty insignificant.”

“But the bottom line is you do not want large numbers of these animals for a
number of reasons, number one being that cloned animals are generally
unhealthy.”"

That in a nutshell is my general outsider know-nothing view of biotech. It has
no serious visible impact and I begin to suspect we don't actually know what
we're doing. DNA is less the library of Alexandria and more like Borge's
Library of Babel. Where are the cows with adverts emblazoned on their fur for
passing cars to see? Weird exotic GM pets? We should see stupid things like
that if we had any power. Freeman Dyson's vision of GM, laudable though it is,
seems very far away.

I was looking for bioluminescent outdoor lighting/cool science project a while
back. Found nothing useful. That's a low bar! That kind of thing should be
_standard_ by now and I believe we should all in shock that it isn't cheap and
readily available.

~~~
maxerickson
How about ZMapp? An artificial antibody produced in a plant that is the first
meaningful advancement in treating Ebola?

You could also go through the 160 other monoclonal antibodies that are in
clinical trials to see if any of them are exciting.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody)

Making them and understanding how to prevent adverse reactions to them both
involve genetics.

~~~
internaut
No, not enough. I credit you that serious work is being done, but I think it
is pretty clear that unless the Phase 1, 2 and most of 3 trials can be
automated somehow then the idea of personalized medicine is a fiction. The
approval of 16 new drugs per year isn't going to cut it. The FDA has only
approved around 1500 drugs in its entire lifetime.

At that rate cures for diseases would have to be complete panaceas in order to
have a measurable effect on lifespan or healthspan.

