9 ms·

Why shouldn't he be a source for it? His comments on Trump were insightful and very far from an endorsement. Vilifying everyone tangentially associated with Tru

Why shouldn't he be a source for it? His comments on Trump were insightful and very far from an endorsement. Vilifying everyone tangentially associated with Trump failed spectacularly during the election. At this point it's just beating a dead horse without any particular goal in sight. Sama realizes full well that he's speaking for all of YC, as a YC founder I'm glad he is. I agree with him here.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> His comments on Trump were insightful and very far from an endorsement. They were shallow and normalizing, rather than insightful and far from an endorsement.
- tptacek 10y ago
  They were more than normalizing. They were suggesting that the single most frightening thing about the Trump administration --- which is not that they're Republicans, but that they're crazy --- is, to the extent it's true, actually an asset. I worry about digging too far into this because it's just going to generate a political debate. I just want to be clear about why I think this article and Sam's decision about how to participate in it is so alarming. I am less disturbed by Trump's Republican supporters, at least the level-headed ones. At least they believe what they're saying. I am far more disturbed by someone who claims to be in the opposition but rather than publicly opposing continues to give every sign of being in fact a quiet supporter of the administration. Why should I have to worry that that's true? What was the upside for YC here?
  - lobotryas 10y ago
    Pretty sure you already crossed that line. What is interesting about Trunp's canpaign is that he was able to win while spending significantly less than his opponent[1]. Given this, I would say that sama's on point with his quote. BTW, calling the Trump administration "crazy" is kind of a lazy ad hominem, don't you think? [1] - http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/donald-trump-campaign-spending/ http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/donald-trump-campaign-spending...
    - tptacek 10y ago
      "Ad hominem" doesn't mean "argument that hurts someone's feelings".
      - lobotryas 10y ago
        You're right. It means: "Rather than [criticizing] a person’s premises or reasoning, one asserts something about the person’s character, ... mental health, likes or dislikes." I'm just surprised the first rhetorical tools you decided to use are emotional appeals and being dismissive of anyone who appears like they're remotely not toeing the party line.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      You're misusing ad hominem. Attacking, hypothetically, a president on account of his skin colour is an ad hom. It has no bearing on his governing capability. Noting that a president is not in full possession of his mental capacities is a statement of fact. It bears directly on his governing ability. http://www.skepdic.com/adhominem.html http://www.skepdic.com/adhominem.html
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Attacking the subject of an argument on account of their skin color is not an ad hominem argument. It's a dumb argument to be sure, but it's not ad hominem. An ad hominem argument is one in which you attempt to dismiss someone else's argument (or their standing to rebut your own argument) based not on any attribute of the argument itself, but on an attribute of the person making the argument. If we're arguing about whether Donald Trump is crazy, and you say he's not, and I say, "you wouldn't know whether he's crazy or not because you're crazy", that's an ad hominem.
        dredmorbius 10y ago
        Attacking the argument on the basis of skin colour, or any other irrellevant basis: gender, religion, sexuality, are classic ad homs. And, if I do happen to be crazy and that's a legitimate basis for my not being able to assess another's insanity, that's a valid impeachment of my credibility. If I'm not crazy, it's an untruthful assertion on your part.
  - Gargoyle 10y ago
    >I am far more disturbed by someone who claims to be in the opposition but rather than publicly opposing continues to give every sign of being in fact a quiet supporter of the administration. Why should I have to worry that that's true? You're stating you believe Sam is a Trump administration supporter?
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      The evidence would suggest he's more a supporter of the style of populist authoritarianism embodied by Trump, but a dissenter from the policy goals which Trump is using that to advance.
      - nostrademons 10y ago
        Sam's quote: "He’s an outsider. He took on a system he thought was broken and then disregarded the rules, he got to know his users well and tested his product early and iterated rapidly." An outsider who disregards the rules is the polar opposite of an authoritarian. Rather, I think he's admiring Trump's bias toward action and disregard for conventional wisdom, as well as for people who have a vested interest in the conventional wisdom.
        tptacek 10y ago
        What? No they aren't. Kim Il-Sung was an outsider who disregarded the rules. So was Pol Pot. You've made a category error. It might be the case that history's most effective authoritarians are disproportionately likely to be rule-breaking outsiders.
        nostrademons 10y ago
        They're hardly outsiders once they've become the leader of the country. Trump is in a similar position now: he was an outsider during the campaign, but now that he's won, he's the consummate insider. The same phenomena applies to successful Silicon Valley startups: Google, Facebook, and Uber were all scrappy little startups until they became huge, at which point they became giant multinationals which need to be feared and resisted. This I think illustrates the paradox in Sam's quote: in my read, Altman is referring to candidate Trump, while your outrage is devoted towards President Trump. As Obama said in one of his farewell addresses, "campaigning is very different from governing". Tactics that can be very effective (even necessary) on the campaign trail can become dangerous threats to democracy within the government.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    I think we are in rather violent agreement substantively here, and quibbling over details, but: > I am far more disturbed by someone who claims to be in the opposition but rather than publicly opposing continues to give every sign of being in fact a quiet supporter of the administration. Taking the quote at face value, Altman seems to endorsing Trump's approach to governing but not the ideological goals it is directed at; this isn't supporting Trump but in some ways it might be seen as worse—the usual anti-Trump message that unites liberal, moderate, and the notable conservative voices skeptical of the regime is that normal political ideological questions aside, Trump's approach is a danger to the viability of American democracy (obviously, as you move roughly toward the left, that process critique is leavened with increasing opposition to policy goals of the Trump Administration.)
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    Silicon Valley has for a long time lauded "crazy" ones. Andy Grove's book is titled "Only the paranoid survive." Steve Jobs's first Think Different commercial was "Here's to the crazy ones". YCombinator has stated on several occasions that they're looking for "extreme" personalities who "see the world differently", a16z says explicitly to "hire for strength rather than lack of weakness", and Chris Sacca loves to parade out Travis Kalanick's Wii tennis story and talk about how he's not a normal person. The reason for this is because "crazy" is usually an appellation that the rest of society sticks on you for being "not normal". Silicon Valley is looking for the crazy person whose "normal" will become the normal for the rest of the world. You can't change the world if you think the world is already pretty good as-is. My concern about Trump (and his few Silicon Valley supporters) is that they're applying ideas outside of the domain where they're sound. Most crazy people are, in fact, crazy, and not great visionaries who will bring the world to a higher level of being. A crazy startup founder will at most hurt himself and his investors if he's completely detached from reality; he requires the consent of his customers to do anything significant. A crazy POTUS could literally destroy humanity, so the stakes are a little bit higher.
- jdoliner 10y ago
  This idea of not "normalizing" Trump is ridiculous. When 63 million people vote for you you're normalized. Sama talking to a reporter about him doesn't do anything those 63 million voters didn't. The only way to see it as abnormal is to believe that those 63 million voter's opinions shouldn't count in terms of what's normal and what's not.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I wonder if that's what people thought about Nixon during Watergate.
    - yellowapple 10y ago
      Americans didn't vote for Nixon in the specific hope that Watergate would happen (last I checked at least; I wasn't around back then). Americans did vote for Trump in the specific hope that Trump's craziness and antics would happen. That's probably the key difference here.
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      Yes, it is. A large part of the country supported Nixon throughout the scandal and the aftermath.
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      This is now a complete tangent, but I find it fascinating that Nixon could've won the largest popular vote margin in history [1] both before [2] and after [3] committing treason against the American people. Similarly, other terrible presidents [4][5][6] have been widely popular during their term, with people only turning against them several years later, once it becomes clear what went on. It should be comforting, though, that so far they have always turned eventually - as the evidence for Watergate became overwhelming, the public made it clear there were some lines that could not be crossed. I suspect we will see something similar with Trump once it becomes clear that things are not going to get materially better for the people who voted for him, but it may take several years and possibly a second term. In the meantime, those of us see just how shitty & insane the Trump administration is will have to be content to be Cassandra. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vie... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  As others have said, the idea that "normalizing" has any meaning whatsoever for a man who ran as a presidential candidate for a major party and won the office is absurd. Supporting Donald Trump and his policies is normal. You may not agree with the man or his policies and that's perfectly fine - and also normal - but to hold the position that they are not "normal" makes no logical sense.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> His comments on Trump were insightful and very far from an endorsement. They were shallow and normalizing, rather than insightful and far from an endorsement.

tptacek 10y ago
They were more than normalizing. They were suggesting that the single most frightening thing about the Trump administration --- which is not that they're Republicans, but that they're crazy --- is, to the extent it's true, actually an asset. I worry about digging too far into this because it's just going to generate a political debate. I just want to be clear about why I think this article and Sam's decision about how to participate in it is so alarming. I am less disturbed by Trump's Republican supporters, at least the level-headed ones. At least they believe what they're saying. I am far more disturbed by someone who claims to be in the opposition but rather than publicly opposing continues to give every sign of being in fact a quiet supporter of the administration. Why should I have to worry that that's true? What was the upside for YC here?
- lobotryas 10y ago
  Pretty sure you already crossed that line. What is interesting about Trunp's canpaign is that he was able to win while spending significantly less than his opponent[1]. Given this, I would say that sama's on point with his quote. BTW, calling the Trump administration "crazy" is kind of a lazy ad hominem, don't you think? [1] - http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/donald-trump-campaign-spending/ http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/donald-trump-campaign-spending...
  - tptacek 10y ago
    "Ad hominem" doesn't mean "argument that hurts someone's feelings".
    - lobotryas 10y ago
      You're right. It means: "Rather than [criticizing] a person’s premises or reasoning, one asserts something about the person’s character, ... mental health, likes or dislikes." I'm just surprised the first rhetorical tools you decided to use are emotional appeals and being dismissive of anyone who appears like they're remotely not toeing the party line.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    You're misusing ad hominem. Attacking, hypothetically, a president on account of his skin colour is an ad hom. It has no bearing on his governing capability. Noting that a president is not in full possession of his mental capacities is a statement of fact. It bears directly on his governing ability. http://www.skepdic.com/adhominem.html http://www.skepdic.com/adhominem.html
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Attacking the subject of an argument on account of their skin color is not an ad hominem argument. It's a dumb argument to be sure, but it's not ad hominem. An ad hominem argument is one in which you attempt to dismiss someone else's argument (or their standing to rebut your own argument) based not on any attribute of the argument itself, but on an attribute of the person making the argument. If we're arguing about whether Donald Trump is crazy, and you say he's not, and I say, "you wouldn't know whether he's crazy or not because you're crazy", that's an ad hominem.
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        Attacking the argument on the basis of skin colour, or any other irrellevant basis: gender, religion, sexuality, are classic ad homs. And, if I do happen to be crazy and that's a legitimate basis for my not being able to assess another's insanity, that's a valid impeachment of my credibility. If I'm not crazy, it's an untruthful assertion on your part.
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  >I am far more disturbed by someone who claims to be in the opposition but rather than publicly opposing continues to give every sign of being in fact a quiet supporter of the administration. Why should I have to worry that that's true? You're stating you believe Sam is a Trump administration supporter?
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    The evidence would suggest he's more a supporter of the style of populist authoritarianism embodied by Trump, but a dissenter from the policy goals which Trump is using that to advance.
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      Sam's quote: "He’s an outsider. He took on a system he thought was broken and then disregarded the rules, he got to know his users well and tested his product early and iterated rapidly." An outsider who disregards the rules is the polar opposite of an authoritarian. Rather, I think he's admiring Trump's bias toward action and disregard for conventional wisdom, as well as for people who have a vested interest in the conventional wisdom.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        What? No they aren't. Kim Il-Sung was an outsider who disregarded the rules. So was Pol Pot. You've made a category error. It might be the case that history's most effective authoritarians are disproportionately likely to be rule-breaking outsiders.
        nostrademons 10y ago
        They're hardly outsiders once they've become the leader of the country. Trump is in a similar position now: he was an outsider during the campaign, but now that he's won, he's the consummate insider. The same phenomena applies to successful Silicon Valley startups: Google, Facebook, and Uber were all scrappy little startups until they became huge, at which point they became giant multinationals which need to be feared and resisted. This I think illustrates the paradox in Sam's quote: in my read, Altman is referring to candidate Trump, while your outrage is devoted towards President Trump. As Obama said in one of his farewell addresses, "campaigning is very different from governing". Tactics that can be very effective (even necessary) on the campaign trail can become dangerous threats to democracy within the government.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  I think we are in rather violent agreement substantively here, and quibbling over details, but: > I am far more disturbed by someone who claims to be in the opposition but rather than publicly opposing continues to give every sign of being in fact a quiet supporter of the administration. Taking the quote at face value, Altman seems to endorsing Trump's approach to governing but not the ideological goals it is directed at; this isn't supporting Trump but in some ways it might be seen as worse—the usual anti-Trump message that unites liberal, moderate, and the notable conservative voices skeptical of the regime is that normal political ideological questions aside, Trump's approach is a danger to the viability of American democracy (obviously, as you move roughly toward the left, that process critique is leavened with increasing opposition to policy goals of the Trump Administration.)
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Silicon Valley has for a long time lauded "crazy" ones. Andy Grove's book is titled "Only the paranoid survive." Steve Jobs's first Think Different commercial was "Here's to the crazy ones". YCombinator has stated on several occasions that they're looking for "extreme" personalities who "see the world differently", a16z says explicitly to "hire for strength rather than lack of weakness", and Chris Sacca loves to parade out Travis Kalanick's Wii tennis story and talk about how he's not a normal person. The reason for this is because "crazy" is usually an appellation that the rest of society sticks on you for being "not normal". Silicon Valley is looking for the crazy person whose "normal" will become the normal for the rest of the world. You can't change the world if you think the world is already pretty good as-is. My concern about Trump (and his few Silicon Valley supporters) is that they're applying ideas outside of the domain where they're sound. Most crazy people are, in fact, crazy, and not great visionaries who will bring the world to a higher level of being. A crazy startup founder will at most hurt himself and his investors if he's completely detached from reality; he requires the consent of his customers to do anything significant. A crazy POTUS could literally destroy humanity, so the stakes are a little bit higher.
jdoliner 10y ago
This idea of not "normalizing" Trump is ridiculous. When 63 million people vote for you you're normalized. Sama talking to a reporter about him doesn't do anything those 63 million voters didn't. The only way to see it as abnormal is to believe that those 63 million voter's opinions shouldn't count in terms of what's normal and what's not.
- tptacek 10y ago
  I wonder if that's what people thought about Nixon during Watergate.
  - yellowapple 10y ago
    Americans didn't vote for Nixon in the specific hope that Watergate would happen (last I checked at least; I wasn't around back then). Americans did vote for Trump in the specific hope that Trump's craziness and antics would happen. That's probably the key difference here.
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    Yes, it is. A large part of the country supported Nixon throughout the scandal and the aftermath.
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    This is now a complete tangent, but I find it fascinating that Nixon could've won the largest popular vote margin in history [1] both before [2] and after [3] committing treason against the American people. Similarly, other terrible presidents [4][5][6] have been widely popular during their term, with people only turning against them several years later, once it becomes clear what went on. It should be comforting, though, that so far they have always turned eventually - as the evidence for Watergate became overwhelming, the public made it clear there were some lines that could not be crossed. I suspect we will see something similar with Trump once it becomes clear that things are not going to get materially better for the people who voted for him, but it may take several years and possibly a second term. In the meantime, those of us see just how shitty & insane the Trump administration is will have to be content to be Cassandra. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1972 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vie... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Pierce
LyndsySimon 10y ago
As others have said, the idea that "normalizing" has any meaning whatsoever for a man who ran as a presidential candidate for a major party and won the office is absurd. Supporting Donald Trump and his policies is normal. You may not agree with the man or his policies and that's perfectly fine - and also normal - but to hold the position that they are not "normal" makes no logical sense.