
What Silicon Valley Insiders Think of Peter Thiel’s Speech at RNC - abhi3
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/21/what-silicon-valley-insiders-think-of-peter-thiel-speaking-at-trumps-convention/
======
Nate75Sanders
A related article that does a good job of explaining why Thiel supports Trump:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/21/peter-
thi...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/21/peter-thiel-
republican-convention-speech)

EDIT: (to explain why)

No other analysis I've seen anywhere of Thiel at the RNC takes into account
this very, very important attempt at explaining Thiel's reasons:

""" Now, in 2016, Thiel has finally found a politician capable of seizing that
opportunity: a disruptor-in-chief who will destroy a dying system and build a
better one in its place. Trump isn’t just a flamethrower for torching a rotten
establishment, however – he’s the fulfillment of Thiel’s desire to build a
successful political movement for less democracy. """

Thiel doesn't want less government, but he does want less democracy, because
he can achieve his aims more easily if this is the case (or so he believes).

Lest anyone read the above and somehow believe I'm a Trump or Thiel
supporter/advocate/etc, I'm solidly NOT.

~~~
sievebrain
I found it a relatively poor article actually. It's longer than the speech
itself yet says less:

[http://time.com/4417679/republican-convention-peter-thiel-
tr...](http://time.com/4417679/republican-convention-peter-thiel-transcript/)

From the man's own words, it seems to be a combination of:

• A shared feeling that America was once great, and it can be again, but
currently is in decline. No other politician except Trump says this.

• Dislike of foreign wars, a feeling that only Trump says "end foreign wars"
and really believes it.

And that's it. I'm not sure it really needs more analysis than that: Thiel
feels America doesn't work as well as it used to, and like many libertarian
types, is against foreign military intervention. If these two things are much
more important to you than other things, it makes logical sense to support
Trump.

~~~
TimJRobinson
I understand trump over Clinton, but I don't understand why trump over Gary
Johnson. He is a self proclaimed libertarian and the libertarian party is
polling the highest in their history. Other than being anti war trump is the
furthest from being a libertarian in Republican presidential history.

~~~
nunyabuizness
Because he can't win and people don't like throwing away their votes on
ideology. First-past-the-post voting systems all but guarantee that when you
vote for a third-party candidate, you're only really helping the first-party
candidate most unlike the one you voted for (which is how we got Bush over
Gore in 2000).

------
thormathison
As an attorney and someone in tech, I used to strongly admire Thiel. He left
biglaw and took a gamble, and it paid off. But between his support for Trump
and the Gawker nonsense, I no longer have any respect for the man. Anyone on
record supporting trump is on the wrong side of history.

~~~
rayiner
On some issues maybe, on others probably not. I think he's on the right side
of one key issue:
[http://www.salon.com/2016/06/22/donald_trump_is_no_lgbt_ally...](http://www.salon.com/2016/06/22/donald_trump_is_no_lgbt_ally_he_shouldnt_be_the_only_voice_criticizing_islamic_intolerance).
As a Bangladeshi with a beard I don't say that lightly, but we're at a weird
point in history where only a guy not afraid of being called racist,[1] can
take a stand (however opportunistic) on what is becoming a worldwide assault
on cherished liberal social values.

[1] As an aside, calling facially race-neutral comments about particular
immigration statuses or religious beliefs "racist" is kind of offensive to
people of that race who don't share that immigration status or those religious
beliefs. I'm sure there are a lot of Hispanics in the US who came here legally
who don't appreciate liberals saying that Trump wants to deport their
families, as if all Hispanics are here illegally.

~~~
elgabogringo
Replying to your aside... You are absolutely correct. Thank you.

I'd add that implementing security "at the border" is the lightest touch
option available and doesn't infringe on the rights of any citizens. But our
leaders won't do it.

Instead they create the TSA to eliminate free travel and get access to our
emails & phone calls to eliminate privacy.

Also, while I see both sides of the gun argument, it worries me that the
government uses an obvious Islamic terrorist attack as an excuse to push gun
control.

In fact, it's almost like our government doesn't mind terrorist attacks,
because with every attack they have an excuse to infringe on more of our
rights and expand their power.

~~~
lmmlzxx
The US government commits terrorist attacks on a regular basis. I may not
convince all of you about the air strike in Syria the other day, or the
hospital that was intentionally hit a few months back, but can any of you deny
that the Shock and Awe bombing campaign at the outset of the Iraq war was
terrorism? Shock and Awe was the "use of overwhelming power and spectacular
displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and
destroy its will to fight". The stated purpose was to terrify the civilian
population. The Oxford Research Group estimated that there were 6,616 civilian
deaths.

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

~~~
elgabogringo
that's not the common understanding of Terrorism. That's just war.

I'm sympathetic to anti-Iraq war views.

Less sympathetic to those actually against the war. Most seemed like they
didn't want any response to terrorism at all, which is unacceptable.

There's an ideology out there that wants to come to my country and kill me and
my family. I'm perfectly fine killing those people first - or at least making
sure they can't come here and commit the ultimate hate crime.

~~~
oxide
You can't respond to terrorism with overwhelming force, its a concept. A
tactic. It just goes underground when stamped out or gets taken up by other
idealogues who act alone.

We went to fight extremists who happen to use terrorism. We also spent most of
our time and money with our dicks in our hand instead of 'killing them before
they killed us.'

They don't want you dead, anyway. they want you terrified.

------
mter
> 14 said they would not personally do business with him as a result.

One of the most interesting things about current politics.

I've always found it odd that republicans haven't picked up on this and tried
to seize on the opportunity to create an incubator for republican
leaning/apolitical companies.

Seems like there would be a tremendous amount of opportunity there given the
success of fox news, particularly for an apolitical twitter given recent
censorship issues.

~~~
pythia__
The idea just might be in the air, but there are several ways an attempt at
implementing it can go, some of which are less likely than others to succeed
through differentiation. Those details should not be neglected.

For one, "libertarian" (but explicitly not left-libertarian) would probably be
a better first-order approximation of how to position such an incubator (or
conference, or...). A Republican incubator could plausibly reject Curtis
Yarvin on ideological grounds, which doesn't seem like the goal.

------
neom
This article fails to address the growing divide between east coast and west
coast technologist and entrepreneurs. Many of us in New York are ashamed and
embarrassed by the valley, and are looking to change it via negation.

~~~
stephancoral
Absolutely. I'm in NYC for HOPE this weekend. Coming from Silicon Valley where
1% of the workers are black, I was so happy to see such a huge diverse crowd
at the conference, all there for the shared love of exploring technology and
hacker culture. SV has some incredibly smart people but, in my experience, all
they care about is making money. Feels like the hacker spirit has absolutely
vanished

~~~
yummyfajitas
As a NY (and India) guy who occasionally visits the west coast, seriously? NY
loves tech but the valley only wants to make money?

Consider the blockchain. Out west they try and rebuild the world with it -
consider the (thiel funded) urbit. Back east we just replace banking
clearinghouses with bank built blockchain.

What makes you feel differently? Also curious what the ancestry of the people
doing tech has to do with anything.

~~~
stephancoral
Urbit, to me, is an elitist joke filled with needlessly obscurantist
terminology. If it takes off I will eat my foot but I doubt it. To me it's
just another example of the Valley bubble where they want "to change the
world" but have no connection to the world they so desperately (for mostly
egotistical reasons) seek to alter.

The NYC scene I've witnessed at HOPE is not nearly as pretentious as SV
people. Whenever I hear "changing" or "rebuilding" the world my bullshit meter
explodes. To me the NYC scene doesn't want to change the world in grand
capitalistic gestures, they want to help out people and have information be
free. I'm a big fan of 2600 and that whole ethos. Not to say SV is devoid of
that, it's just so much more focused on the glitz and bullshit.

The ancestry / ethnicity of people in tech has to do with everything.
Algorithms can be racist - whether it's insensitive snapchat filter (the Bob
Marley one comes to mind) or facial detection algos that can't detect black
people because the devs only tested it on lighter-skinned people. Diversity is
a beautiful thing, especially in these polarizing times, and so its meaningful
to me for there to be a large amount of different folk involved in our
profession and interests. Only 1% of people working in Sv are black. That's
just wrong.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Urbit may or may not take off - I'm skeptical myself. But unlike most of the
NY tech scene it is an _attempt_ at replacing democracy with cryptographically
secure monarchy (which I may be misrepresenting as "blockchain"). I can't
imagine anyone in NY even attempting something like that - can you?

Algorithms failing to detect black people is not "racist." It's simply a
reflection of the fact that contrast matters. Any algorithm out there will
detect `5f(x) + noise` more accurately than `0.5 f(x) + noise`. Black people
reflect fewer photons than white people, that's just how physics works. Why do
you believe Black Americans can change this? And why can't dark skinned Tamils
(probably the stereotypical data scientist) do the same thing?

I have absolutely no idea why you consider some specific demographic breakdown
"just wrong". What's your underlying moral principle? The most I can come up
with is some kind 1930's Italian style corporatism with certain specific
ethnic groups as the corporates, but that seems uncharitable.

~~~
shanacarp
>Algorithms failing to detect black people is not "racist." It's simply a
reflection of the fact that contrast matters. Any algorithm out there will
detect `5f(x) + noise` more accurately than `0.5 f(x) + noise`. Black people
reflect fewer photons than white people, that's just how physics works. Why do
you believe Black Americans can change this? And why can't dark skinned Tamils
(probably the stereotypical data scientist) do the same thing?

Actually, it is passively racist, since many of these algorithms have nothing
to do with contrast and everything to do with improper tagging and
insufficient and incorrect training data. It is how black people got labelled
gorillas by google, and how I can name some names of how to get through a
prominent AI/ML driven filter with Japanese woodblock shunga prints from the
late Tokugawa period (go look it up yourself for examples)

Dark Skin Tamils can and should be part of developing tagging. I also tend to
think that for things as complicated as porn or race, you may want to even do
different training data in different places for different cultures. I don't
honestly know how a Tamil would take an american's view on the imagery at the
temple at Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh. To many Americans, the sculptures on
the temple may be outside the pale for work, but for a Hindu Tamil, it may be
a place of great religious significance and may not bother them in the
slightest.

> But unlike most of the NY tech scene it is an attempt at replacing democracy
> with cryptographically secure monarchy (which I may be misrepresenting as
> "blockchain"). I can't imagine anyone in NY even attempting something like
> that - can you?

The better question is why? Even Hobbes hated monarchies, he just thought they
were the best of bad options under the conditions of you magically get a
benevolent ruler, and only because he lived through too many radical
revolutions in england. Almost everyone else disagrees with him.

What happens when you are on the outs with your monarch/dictator. What is your
counterweight in the state to have real rights? (bitcoins and the blockchain
are not them, especially for a mass group)

How do you plan on dealing with that?

------
elgabogringo
Silicon valley is increasingly adopting way too much of the PC groupthink as
of late. There's absolutely nothing and nobody that is truly disrupting
anything. Even the word "disrupting" has become a cliche adlibs fill in the
blank for pitching "new ideas".

Gone are the middle-class rebels (jobs/clark) that don't care what anybody
thinks, in are the ivy-league-ish conformers that want wall street funding and
friendly government regulation (basically everybody.

And hey, if wall street and friendly government regulators is what you want
and if you have a few hundred grand (maybe a few million) to throw at her
foundation or her friends, then Hillary is your gal.

~~~
lisper
> There's absolutely nothing and nobody that is truly disrupting anything

It's not for want of trying.

[http://urbit.org](http://urbit.org)

And my own humble efforts in this regard:

[https://sc4.us](https://sc4.us)

~~~
elgabogringo
Thank you for your efforts. I will read more of this when I get a chance. You
are right that the new tech barons are waaaaay too cozy with the government.
They travel by private jet with armed bodyguards and share our info with the
government and tell us to "relax" and "get along" while we are getting felt up
by TSA and having our emails read.

------
DominikR
> Speaking privately, Thiel’s allies could only conjecture reasons for his
> unexpected partnership with Trump; many expressed frustration with how
> anyone could support a candidate so unpredictable.

I could come up with a few pretty obvious reasons why a gay libertarian like
Thiel would support trump.

1) Democrats support the resettling of millions of Muslims to the West that
have been indoctrinated in an ideology that calls for killing gays. Currently
in 11 Muslim countries acting out homosexuality is punishable by death. In
most others they imprisons gays and extra judicial killings of gays by mobs
are not persecuted.

It is not unreasonable for a gay man to fear Muslims and Muslim culture.

2) Democrats engage in political correctness and in vilification of their
political opponents (You don't agree with me? You are like Hitler!) to a
degree that people who say the wrong things or support the wrong candidate
must fear for their financial and in some cases even physical security.

Even a billionaire like Thiel will face repercussions for this as was
mentioned in the article:

> In my anonymous poll of 42 randomly selected start-up founders from the
> database CrunchBase, only nine people supported Trump. Fifteen of them
> opposed Thiel’s speech for Trump, and 14 said they would not personally do
> business with him as a result.

In many areas it is basically open season on anyone that openly supports
Trump, people will attack you, people will key your car and strangers will
insult you.

It says a lot when people like Dilbert creator Scott Adams endorse Clinton
because they fear for their personal safety:
[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-
for...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for-
president-of-the-united-states)

This vilification pushed by the Democrats is the exact opposite of freedom and
democracy. I totally get why a libertarian would support Trump even if he
doesn't like him to at least restore the most basic personal freedoms.

3) Trump is very much anti big government. He wants to reduce its size and
remove regulations that inhibit the growth of the private sector. Few
libertarians would have a problem with that.

Also it isn't sustainable to permanently have a large portion of society
completely dependant on government as we can obviously witness by the insane
growth of government debt everywhere in the West.

This system almost guarantees that poor people will always stay poor and that
their children will be poor too as all they know is dependance and submission
to the social system.

Social systems do not help the poor, they never did. Over the last decades it
has gotten bigger and bigger and yet poverty never went down, instead the
opposite happened.

The same is true for public education which was basically run by liberals
since the 80ties. It has gotten so bad that today it can't even guarantee that
a child going through this system will not end up as a functional illiterates.

~~~
specialist
_" Democrats support the resettling of millions of Muslims to the West that
have been indoctrinated in an ideology that calls for killing gays."_

Full stop. What? I stopped reading right there.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never even heard such a stupid
idea before.

Oh. "The West", not the USA's West Coast. You're channeling David Rubin.

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11553708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11553708)

The "regressive left" and endorsing terrorism and other fever dreams. He's
just making shit up.

~~~
DominikR
Sorry I don't understand, I don't even know David Rubin.

I'm living in the EU which is run by liberals/lefts and I can clearly see that
they are pushing hard against the peoples will to allow millions of Muslims to
resettle here. (And Obama/Hillary never fail to support this policy)

I did not say that these liberals endorse terrorism, I just say that they are
doing it against the will of the people and that there are a lot of legitimate
concerns that we have (terrorism, violence, sexual harassment) which are being
ignored or often shut down by creating an atmosphere where everyone who
disagrees has to fear being labeled a racist or Nazi.

These people don't even know what Nazis were. Nazis themselves were
Socialists! Their party name was "Nationalsozialistische Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei" \- in English: "Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party"

~~~
specialist
_" Nazis themselves were Socialists!"_

Calling my grandmother a trolley car doesn't make her one.

------
youngButEager
The Left has not helped Silicon Valley much.

1) ageism -- once you hit 40-45yo, you're done. Take a survey of the ages of
the people at your company for evidence. Most engineers in their 20s; some in
their 30s; almost none in their 40s and beyond

2) sexism -- females are about 50% of the population. But in Silicon Valley?
Hiring favors males. Again, look at the companies you have worked at in
Silicon Valley over your career. Mostly all male.

3) racial stereotyping -- take a look again at the companies you have worked
for over your career. How many blacks there? How many Hispanics? VERY FEW.

So the idea that the Left is playing an effective role in the Valley is BOGUS
in several dimensions:

\- AGEISM

\- SEXISM

\- BLACK AND LATINO HIRING

~~~
pjscott
The candidates applying to those jobs are overwhelmingly male, with few blacks
and hispanics. Imagine an unbiased hiring process: how would its results look
different from what you see now?

~~~
brighteyes
That's a reasonable argument, but some of the facts don't fit it. 7% of tech
roles in Apple are black [1], while at Google that figure is just 1%.

A 7 times difference is very large. But let's be generous and say that the 1%
is 1.5% that was rounded down. The percentage of black tech workers is still
almost 5 times higher at Apple than at Google.

These are massive companies, not small startups where a single hire skews the
figures. So it's fair to say something is going on here - one of those
companies might have a biased hiring process.

And it looks like it is Google that is biased against black people, since 9%
of CS graduates are black [3], far closer to Apple's 7% than Google's 1%.

[1] [http://www.apple.com/diversity/](http://www.apple.com/diversity/)

[2] [https://www.google.com/diversity/](https://www.google.com/diversity/)

[3] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-
valley...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/10/12/silicon-valley-
diversity-tech-hiring-computer-science-graduates-african-american-
hispanic/14684211/)

~~~
DominikR
I don't buy it that Google is biased against black people, it's just that
Google has more jobs that require a higher education in STEM fields whereas
Apple has many people employed in stores and factories.

I believe that there are just fewer black graduates in STEM fields from top
universities and that's why Google can't hire more of them.

~~~
brighteyes
I agree most Google employees are probably not racist against black people.

But they do have a bias similar to the one you just mentioned - they tend to
only hire from "top schools". It's true that the top schools tend to produce
good people, but it's elitist to think that only they do. Perhaps Apple
recruiters look at a broader range of universities, including historically
black ones, for example.

Regarding what you said about stores and factories at Apple, those figures
were for tech roles, not retail, so that isn't why Apple has 7x more.
Although, what "tech" precisely is is not defined by either company, so it's
possible there is a significant difference there that we can't see.

~~~
omonra
Those figures are not for tech roles but company-wide. Apple does not provide
figures for % of engineers who are black.

If you want to prove that companies discriminate, look up percent of
engineering PhDs (like CS) who are black that graduate per year. If that
number is above what companies hire - you will have a reasonable claim.

Otherwise it's nothing.

