
Peter Thiel’s Money Talks, in Contentious Ways. But What Does He Say? - uptown
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/technology/peter-thiel-trump-facebook.html
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yosho
I, for one, applaud FB's decision to keep him on the board. A lot has been
said about this already, but it's true that Silicon Valley is an echo chamber
that tends to push out dissenting opinions. It's valuable to have someone on
the other side that can challenge your views, as painful as it might be and as
much as you might disagree.

~~~
radicaldreamer
Does Silicon Valley really push out dissenting opinions? 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.

~~~
yosho
The James Damore Google manifesto and the Youtube creator demonetization
censorship comes to mind right now. Granted that's only one company, Google,
but I think there's a general feeling that if you're not on the left leaning
political spectrum, you're going to have your opinions shuttered.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
I don't think it's a direct intolerance of other opinions because they're not
the same 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.

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.

~~~
stcredzero
_I don 't think it's a direct intolerance of other opinions because they're
not the same_

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.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Yes, intolerance is intolerance. Being able to abstract away the intolerance
and treat it as though it's just the result of being confronted by
incompatible beliefs makes it easier to rationalize doing it because it makes
it partly the result of other people having the "wrong" beliefs and therefore
not wholly your fault.

~~~
stcredzero
It's funny how one's own intolerance is always "right" because the other
people are always "wrong."

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muglug
> “The ability to speak and not have every word you say get distorted, to have
> wrong ideas and then be able to correct them — these notions were powerfully
> undercut by Gawker.”

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.

~~~
lr4444lr
Gawker - without permission - publicly aired a tape of an intimate moment from
Hulk Hogan. That's borderline if not actually criminal in some jurisdictions.
Gawker didn't just "take journalistic risks" \- they glorified the pursuit of
ratings over truth and accuracy, which cuts the very heart of what's making
journalism sick.

~~~
radicaldreamer
Well, Gawker is based in the United States, where there's plenty of federal
case law saying it is not illegal for a public figure.

"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.

~~~
Natsu
It's not that simple. There's not much of a public interest angle in Hogan's
sex life, so he still had a claim for invasion of privacy, same as anyone else
who had non-consensual porn of them stolen and knowingly published.

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](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.

~~~
wavefunction
The reason Hulk Hogan didn't want the tape disseminated was because he was
heard to be using racial epithets: n-gger.

~~~
Natsu
I won't defend that, it was wrong. I would note that he apologized for that
afterwards. Any normal person would not want non-consensual sex videos of them
posted on the internet, even without that, however.

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.

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Covzire
"there were unsourced media reports that said Mr. Trump wanted to put him on
the Supreme Court. But now even photo ops are rare."

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.

~~~
cycrutchfield
What is not factual about that statement?

~~~
Natsu
The better question is 'what's factual' as that's a random, unsourced rumor.
Literally anyone can make those up and the vast majority are forgotten when
they are eventually proven wrong. Yes, every so often one happens to be a real
leak, but you're misinforming yourself if you treat them as credible in
general.

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).

~~~
notMick
Well said. Media which have been selling bullshit might be making some sort
term profits - however are destroying their credibility and brand.

~~~
cycrutchfield
Anonymous sources have been a thing in journalism since, like, forever.

~~~
Natsu
That's not actually a defense of the practice. To make it a defense, you would
have to actually argue why a long history of yellow journalism means the
public should believe anonymous rumors and to deal with arguments that even
supposedly trustworthy papers have betrayed that trust, for example with the
Jayson Blair scandal:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair)

~~~
cycrutchfield
What fraction of reporting would you say is faulty in this manner? If you
think it’s a large number then you do not live in a fact-based world.

~~~
Natsu
Why do you believe that facts are decided on the basis of anonymous rumors,
rather than actual evidence? Trying to appeal to a bandwagon fallacy is not a
great way to claim the high ground of rationality.

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vinhboy
> “It’s been a crazier two years than I would have thought,” Mr. Thiel said in
> his new Midtown Manhattan apartment, which is so far up in the clouds that
> it literally looks down on Trump Tower.

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.

~~~
beguiledfoil
The contrarian right has no answers, only cynical observations. If they were
more transparent about this they would be dismissed as sadists but they keep
their cards close to their chest and allow for the occasional sympathetic
portrait to drip out.

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.

~~~
tclancy
>He's just another rich guy jet setting between NY and LA now

That is totally unfair. He's also interested in going to New Zealand in case
his choice in presidents happens to irradiate North America.

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moomin
AFAICT mostly his money says “shut up” to people with less money than him.

