
Silicon Valley Investor Peter Thiel Wins Bet on Trump - digital55
http://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-investor-peter-thiel-wins-bet-on-trump-1478708226
======
chubot
I think this sums it up, and whether you agree with it or not, is a valid
distinction to make:

 _Describing the presidential campaign, Mr. Thiel said it was "between one
candidate who says everything is more or less fine, or it’s as good as it can
be. And then another one who says we’re on the Titanic, it’s about to sink.
And so I prefer the second one."_

Now, it's perfectly reasonable to question if Trump has an actionable plan to
make things better. I question that too.

I also find it hard to ignore his remarks about ethnicity and women, but it
seems clear to me that the media inadvertently helped Trump by screaming
bigot, racist, sexist, etc. as loud as possible. When you call everything
racist, it dulls the meaning of the word, and ends up hiding real racism.

Another thing I appreciate from this election is that people don't like being
told who to vote for. I didn't appreciate the shrill tone of every single news
outlet and media source I turned to (and I barely watch news and didn't follow
the election until very late.)

I thought 538 would have "objective" coverage, but I didn't like that Nate
Silver couldn't resist inserting petty personal insults about Trump in his
articles. Even guys like Louis CK, Howard Stern, and Stephen Colbert turned
out to have surprisingly little sense of humor about it.

~~~
fiveoak
Yep, and by calling Trump a bigot, racist, sexist, etc, they're inadvertently
calling his supporters the same thing as well, causing a lot of them to just
become more entrenched in their support for Trump.

~~~
feelix
The thing that bothers me both about Brexit and Trump is that the mainstream
narrative is that it's about closed borders, racism, misogyny, etc.

There is no evidence to suggest that the largest proportion of the voters for
these things were motivated by that. One side loses, then they scream
racist/bigot at the other side and then because it's the mainstream media
those labels stick around. That does not help anyone and does indeed only
widen the divide.

~~~
somebehemoth
Trump openly advocates closing the US border. He advocates racism against
mexicans and muslims at least. He is misogynistic to the extreme. It is not a
logical leap to assume people who voted for him hold the same ideals. In fact,
by voting for such a candidate a voter provides all necessary evidence of
their support.

Can you support your "no evidence" claim given the candidate Trump has openly
said these things multiple times?

~~~
Brendinooo
It's anecdotal, but most people I know who voted for Mr. Trump did so because
they disagreed with Sec. Clinton on matters of policy (SCOTUS was a big one)
and/or character.

I voted third party, and those who disagreed with me doing so told me that
voting for a candidate doesn't mean you align with all of the candidate's
policies. I think most people in this camp knew of Trump's character issues,
but thought that Clinton's character issues (corruption, e-mails) were more
directly tangential to the office the two candidates were running for.

I don't doubt that racist folks voted for Trump because they identified with
some of his rhetoric. But to label every Trump voter is unfair in the short
term and may make them more likely to identify with the label in the long
term.

~~~
JBlue42
Character matters though. I have close family members, in a battleground
state, that abstained despite voting Republican their entire lives.

And, personally, I consider voting for a person, a person who's entire
election has been based on personality and rhetoric, is endorsing their
character.

Which is also the problem with the lack of enthusiasm you could hear in a lot
of Hillary voters as well but people would still vote for her because it'd be
an incremental step forward (on some things) instead of a big step back (on a
lot).

~~~
Brendinooo
I don't disagree with you in terms of endorsing character. That's certainly a
valid way to look at voting.

Remember when some people didn't vote for Bill Clinton because of the
character issues in his personal life? Other people said that the stuff in
private didn't matter if he was good at the job.

My perception was that in the case of Trump, those two arguments were the same
but many of the people who said them flipped. I thought that was really
interesting to watch.

------
danso
Via the Washington Post's media columnist:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-media-
did...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-media-didnt-want-
to-believe-trump-could-win-so-they-looked-the-other-
way/2016/11/09/d2ea1436-a623-11e6-8042-f4d111c862d1_story.html)

> I’m no fan of Peter Thiel, the billionaire who put Gawker out of business by
> bankrolling a lawsuit by Hulk Hogan, the professional wrestler. In fact, I
> find him appalling.

> But when he spoke recently at the National Press Club, he said something
> that struck me as quite perceptive about Donald Trump.

> “The media is always taking Trump literally. It never takes him seriously,
> but it always takes him literally,” Thiel said. Journalists wanted to know
> exactly how he would deport that many undocumented immigrants, or exactly
> how Trump would rid the world of the Islamic State. We wanted details.

> But a lot of voters think the opposite way: They take Trump seriously but
> not literally.

> They realize, Thiel said, that Trump doesn’t really plan to build a wall.
> “What they hear is, ‘We’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration
> policy.’ ”

> Trump, quite apparently, captured the anger that Americans were feeling
> about issues such as trade and immigration.

Thiel was completely correct on this. It's a sad(der) version of the
stereotype of journalism just being uncritical transcribers of the powerful,
except journalists were doing it (ostensibly) to hurt Trump.

It's a great example of the damage of unconscious bias. If someone I love
tells me they'll climb the highest mountain and swim the widest ocean to make
me happy, I'll love them even though I know that's a literal lie. If someone I
hate tells me the sky is blue, I still look for a way to pedantically correct
them.

I know it's popular for journalists to be opinionated and fight for the truth
and all, but I can't help but think that if journalists even tried to just
believe in that impossible ideal of idealism, more of them would have come to
empathize with Trump's supporters -- not the wacky crazy ones that make for
good TV -- and see Trump's promises as a signal of priorities, not a literal
fulfillment that Americans want.

~~~
yongjik
Maybe Trump won't build a wall, but voting for a candidate promising X while
thinking "There's no way he will actually do X" is a risky decision.

Back in 2007, South Korean candidate Lee Myung-Bak won presidency while
prominently selling the concept of "Grand Korean Peninsular Canal", a
construction project involving building a canal diagonally through the Korean
peninsula, crossing mountain ranges ~1km high. It made zero economical sense
(just take a look at the map), and was widely derided by opponents.

Many of his supporters still voted for him thinking "Come on, there's no way
he would actually do that!"

Well, he almost did it in the names of "Four River Restoration Project", an
Orwellian-named $20B project that kept the major part of the canal plan,
plastering Korea's rivers with pointless dams, which inundated riverbanks,
increased flood damage, decimated freshwater ecosystem, and polluted so much
riverwater that you can't use it even for farming.

Trump is now free to realize any of his promises as he sees fit, and no one
will be able to say "American's didn't approve this", because he did promise
them and then won based on those promises. It will be a fun ride for him.

~~~
danso
> _Maybe Trump won 't build a wall, but voting for a candidate promising X
> while thinking "There's no way he will actually do X" is a risky decision._

I think Thiel might Trump a little too much credit in the planning, just
because I feel that Trump seems erratic, like when he lied about the NFL
commissioner sending him a letter about the debate schedule. Not so much that
he lied but -- why would you lie about such an obviously disprovable thing
that is of little consequence anyway? [0] So for all we know, maybe he doesn't
even hate immigration that much.

On the other hand, Trump is always talking about how good he is at making
deals. One of the most well-known parts of psychology when bartering is
demanding a too-high/low price to set the others' expectations, and Trump
could just have been doing that. But either way, he was making a clear call
that he prioritized limited immigration and free trade in a way that Clinton
only talked about in politically pleasing ways. I always thought it was
annoying how he bragged about his deals, but if this was his mindset, then I'm
impressed.

But my _Trump will be Trump_ complacency is a little mitigated by the fact
that we now also have a Republican-controlled congress, and very soon, a
Republican-controlled SCOTUS. So the scenario of Trump actually doing the
crazy things he promised is no longer just a far hypothetical.

[0] [http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-denies-writing-
letter-...](http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-denies-writing-letter-to-
donald-trump-about-conflict-with-debates/)

------
anguswithgusto
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin on Thiel: “He bets contrarian not when he knows
he’ll win, but when he knows that his odds of winning are much better than
most people think.”

Makes you wonder with all of Palantir's massive data-mining if Thiel knew
something the public didn't.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>> when he knows that his odds of winning are much better than most people
think.

This is the classic gambler's approach to betting. Attempt to reduce the odds
to a reasonable level where you can minimize losses and maximize your profits.

If you were paying attention to more objective polls, you would've known the
mainstream media polls they were using were off. So much so, that Clinton
started campaigning in red states and there were reports she wanted to make
this a "historic" win. As in, it's not good enough to just win, she wanted to
rub it in the faces of the Republicans (you know, because that's always good
for bringing the country together - right?) when she did win.

\- So he knew the polls were off.

\- Then he probably knew there was a feeling of unrest considering the numbers
Trump was getting. Not just in the primaries where he set several records for
turnout and delegates.

\- Then he probably heard about the Allan Lichtman's prediction that Trump
would win based on the enthusiasm he saw in the primaries. It was greater for
Trump then it was for Clinton. Add in the margin of victory in the primaries
was greater for Trump then Clinton and he said because of that, the real voter
enthusiasm is with Trump, not Clinton.

So here you have three things most people on the Left didn't want to hear. He
also could probably see the media had gone 110% to shill for Clinton. Tamping
down her email scandals, promoting the polls that say she's way ahead. If you
listen to say Rush Limbaugh, or Hannity or Beck, you'd know it wasn't all
rainbows and unicorns.

So he hedged his bet and put his money on Trump given the above information.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>So he knew the polls were off.

This is my thinking as well. Towards the end Nate Silver kept upping Trump's
chances and other pollsters were baffled by Nate's changes. Nate kept arguing
that due to curring polling methods, current models, the lack of young
turnout, and a lot of disenfranchised voters coming out that Trump was doing
better than he seemed. There was no "liberal media conspiracy" but the model
changes you needed to make in what was an extremely oddball election year.
Note, the pollsters that got Trump wrong got the last few elections right or
wrong but within a respectable margin of error, so from a question of bias,
the conspiracy theories just don't hold. Same with the Brexit, the pollsters
just didn't see that silent majority voting yes.

Nate obviously didn't change his model enough but he certainly saw the winds
of change here and clearly other people like Thiel did too. Also, being a
libertarian there's really no reason for him to support a Democrat anyway, so
if he's going to play this game he's going to pick the GOP candidate.

>He also could probably see the media had gone 110% to shill for Clinton.

I didn't see this. Instead, I certainly saw the media play both sides as being
less terrible than they truly were. I think there's a narrative of "oh they're
just like each other so it'll be tight" and promoting a moral equivalence of
"questionable email server use is just as bad as saying celebrity lets you
grab women by their crotches with impunity" that sells ad impressions.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Nate wasn't changing his model, the polls changed. His model just accounted
for the high number of undecideds and the correlation of errors between
states, and the possibility of systemic polling errors which accounts for his
divergence from other predictions.

------
Yhippa
> When Mr. Trump speaks of building a wall on the Mexican border, Mr. Thiel
> said, “what [voters] hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible
> immigration policy.”

I have no idea what to make of what Mr. Trump said. Am I to take him
literally? Was this just posturing and he doesn't plan to do something like
this? I have no idea.

~~~
up_and_up
It is literal:

See "End Illegal Immigration Act" outlined here:
[https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102...](https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU-102316-Contractv02.pdf)

~~~
kzisme
For the lazy:

>Fully-funds the construction of a wall on our southern border with the full
understanding that the country of Mexico will be reimbursing the United States
for the full cost of such wall; establishes a two-year mandatory minimum
federal prison sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a previous
deportation, and a five-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence for
illegally re-entering for those with felony convictions, multiple misdemeanor
convictions or two or more prior deportations; also reforms visa rules to
enhance penalties for overstaying and to ensure open jobs are offered to
American workers first.

~~~
zeveb
Sounds like a sop to the prison guards' unions.

------
internaut
Repost.

Having watched and listened to Thiel for several years now, I came up with a
pet hypothesis I call 'The Wolfian World' that I feel describes what's going
on more accurately than the newspapers.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413)

