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I wonder how confident Thiel was of a Trump presidency back in May 2016, when he started being open about his support for Trump. Perhaps he was operating with m

I wonder how confident Thiel was of a Trump presidency back in May 2016, when he started being open about his support for Trump. Perhaps he was operating with more knowledge than available to the general public and national pollsters? I wonder how involved he was with CA for the purpose of the election. His $1.25 million donation in October 2016 seems even more interesting in light of all this. I took out a bet on Trump when Thiel became open with his support. It was driven by my belief that he was operating with deeper knowledge about the state of the nation precisely due to his association with Palantir (mostly) and Facebook. I feel dirty about winning that one.

harryf 9y ago
> I wonder how confident Thiel was of a Trump presidency back in May 2016 Well how many other companies are there with the capabilities of Palantir? If the answer was "none" then he knew for sure the Clinton campaign couldn't match Trump on social media manipulation. Which means he must have been pretty confident
- loceng 9y ago
  If all it takes is being a "better" psychopath along with an organization lead by psychopaths that only care about popularity and not truth, then with initial testing for calculations - they likely had a very good idea what would happen once they added fuel to the fire.
- sjg007 9y ago
  Eric Schmidt was a big Clinton supporter and I believe helped with her tech campaign. If the chain of events from Nix->Sophie Schmidt->Eric Schmidt->Thiel/Palantir is true then I don't know how the concern wouldn't have been raised to Clinton. I think the real question is what did FB know and when did they know it. Thiel being on the FB board and all. It's also weird that the What's App guy is on the board and just called for everyone to #deletefacebook.
  - galieos_ghost 9y ago
    He literally made a company for the sole purpose of getting her elected. https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...
dmode 9y ago
Given the margin of Trump's victory was so small, and he lost the overall popular vote, I would be surprised that anyone can be confident of a victory looking at any data set.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- corpMaverick 9y ago
  If every one was betting on Clinton 10 to 1. But you know it closer to 2 to 1. That is a good bet.
  - wpasc 9y ago
    Odds like that are meaningless (imo) for singular events. It's a good bet in repeatable scenarios, far less so in elections.
    - eloff 9y ago
      When you take a bet, you play the odds. You evaluate your expected return should you take many such bets, and if it's positive and you can afford to lose, the smart money is in taking the bet. In fact this is true of most anything you do in life - when you drove to work this morning you played the odds and the wager was your life against your salary. I'm sure you didn't think about it that way, but you took the bet
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      Both insurance companies and bookmakers are comfortable aggregating over many unique events.
  - creaghpatr 9y ago
    On election night, the odds were roughly 5 to 1 on PredictIt
    - Tempest1981 9y ago
pradn 9y ago
We should be careful assigning skill to a decision that was borne out by luck.
orangehour 9y ago
What were the odds when you made the bet?
- zerostar07 9y ago
  i had one such bet, it was 6:1 IIRC
gesman 9y ago
IMHO this is gross overstimation of Palantir future prediction capabilities.
- dmayle 9y ago
  It is much easier to change the future than it is to predict it.
  - gesman 9y ago
    How do you know you've changed the future if you don't know what would be the future?
duncan_bayne 9y ago
Is it possible you have the causality reversed here? What if Thiel's confidence was born of a conviction, backed by research, that he could help swing the election for Trump? Not "our data suggest he may win" but "our data suggest we can help him win".
dogruck 9y ago
I think Thiel supported Trump because Thiel thought Trump was a better candidate, and Thiel wanted Trump to beat Clinton.
- dogruck 9y ago
  At least one person got triggered by “Trump was a better candidate.” (That’s an observable fact, since he won)
zerostar07 9y ago
If true i cant think of better PR for Palantir.
downandout 9y ago
It's possible that Thiel knew something deeper about the state of the nation through Palantir. However, I seriously doubt that Palantir secretly worked on the data that Kogan sold to CA years after he collected it, as this Wylie guy alleges. He has presented no evidence, and Palantir flatly denies it. I think he has seen the media run with his previous claims, and thinks that nobody will call BS on him now. I have started wondering what could be driving this guy to make what at first seemed like believable allegations, that now seem more and more wild. I have been unable to find any current employer for him. My suspicion is that he is out of work and thought the attention from this would get him hired somewhere, not realizing that nobody - even the most liberal of firms - will hire him because he has proven, in the most public of ways, that he can't be trusted to not disclose confidential information. According to [1], he is a dyslexic high school dropout with ADHD who sued his elementary school because he was bullied and "...he describes himself as the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating "Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindf--k tool." That is certainly a grandiose claim, but there seems to be no evidence that this tool even worked, and in fact there is some evidence to the contrary [2]. It appears that campaigns hired CA not because its data analysis techniques were helpful, but because doing so was a prerequisite for obtaining campaign contributions from the Mercer family [3]. So, we have an out of work programmer with social issues who has no degree and can't be trusted, whose most famous work apparently didn't work at all (according to its customers), and whose biggest asset is that the media will take everything he says as fact. My guess is that Wylie's claims will get even more bizarre as he and his stories quickly disappear from the headlines with no work forthcoming. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christopher-wylie-background-1.4583054 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christopher-w... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-facebook-scandal-trump-cruz-operatives-2018-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-facebook-... [3] https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/975756418128187393 https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/975756418128187393
- wjnqx 9y ago
  I suggest you watch his testimony before UK lawmakers this morning. He appears to know what he's talking about and bases his claims on evidence supplied to the Parliamentary committee. https://www.pscp.tv/w/1mnxeXjraDNJX https://www.pscp.tv/w/1mnxeXjraDNJX
gdubs 9y ago
I've always thought of it in terms of asymmetric risk – something Thiel seems to have a preternatural intuition for. In other words, what he stood to gain with a Trump win far outweighed what he stood to lose with a Trump loss. Most business leaders were throwing in with Clinton. If Thiel had done the same, and Clinton won, he'd be one voice in a crowded field. By being one of the few to publicly back Trump, he all but guaranteed a prime seat at the table. This is exactly what played out post-election, with Thiel ushering in tech leaders in the lobby of Trump Tower. Had Trump lost, Thiel would have probably diminished his standing with the Clinton administration significantly. But, due to the crowded field, it would have been a small standing to begin with. And here's the crux: Thiel has held controversial opinions for a while. He probably figured his association with Trump wouldn't really move the dial on his likability much, and he seems to enjoy being contrarian anyway. So, anyway, there's my theory. Risk asymmetry. A lot to gain in the event of a Trump win, little to lose in the event of a Trump loss.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  An analogy to this is why "bad boys" tend to do well at the dating game.... A Biker/Gang Member may not be attractive to most people, but to the portion of the population that prefer someone like that, they have much fewer anti-social males to choose from, and those individuals can do well at the bar.
  - machinelearning 9y ago
    Or in Thiel's own(?) words: "Competition is for losers"
- walrus01 9y ago
  I don't think thiel and palantir would have lost that much if Clinton won. If the bulk of palantir revenue comes from DoD and intelligence community (IC) contracts, he cares about whoever will increase the DoD budget in general. No matter whether it is Bush or Trump or Reagan, a republican president almost always increases defense and IC spending and green lights new toys for them to play with. Defense contractors who don't care about Democrat or republican ideology simply care about their bottom line.
gowld 9y ago
Thiel went with Trump for standard VC reasons: because it was a low-cost, low-odds, high-reward play on an unpopular undervalued asset. Also because Trump fits his "maverick" style of operating independently outside of the big establishment machines. If Trump lost Thiel would move along to doing the best he could with the winners, who wouldn't have a reason to shun him for irrelevant past actions. Trump had ~50% odds of winning but general betting odds were <30%
- smiddereens 9y ago
  Thiel's a goblin and you dorks love him for it.
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  But what did Thiel get by betting on the winner though?
  - azemetre 9y ago
    Lucrative military/government contracts.
- paulcole 9y ago
  > high-reward What was the reward?
  - Haydos585x2 9y ago
    Parent comment probably means access to the administration and administration supporters for Thiel and related companies. Much easier to be a voice in a room of 10 people than a voice in a room of 1000. Trump and his picks were more likely to support large defence projects and big business operations that Palantir could profit from.
    - sanderjd 9y ago
      I just want to point out that what you're talking about here is corruption. To restate: For someone in Thiel's position, the upside to supporting a particular political candidate is the expectation that he will benefit from corruption while that candidate is in office. Everyone knows this but I believe it is worth being explicit about it from time to time. (I don't mean this as a dig against the party or even the person currently occupying the Presidency; this cuts both ways.)
noobermin 9y ago
Argh, enough. Cambridge Analytica and friends didn't have secret knowledge. People need to stop lifting up these big data woo casters and weigh their impact on the election beyond their actual ability. Machine learning/machine vision just killed a person on a well lit street. You people need to calm down on the thinking that Silicon Valley data scientists have figured out everything others haven't other than how to boost ad dollars (and even that is in dispute as recent articles on Hacker News have pointed out.)
- monochromatic 9y ago
  Too many acronyms, couldn’t follow your train of thought.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    No need to downvote him! I cleaned up my acronyms after I saw his reply.
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
You made a bet on outcome, based on an proven assertion. This is a bet on top of a bet, and not a long term winning strategy. You should not feel bad. You earned your money.

harryf 9y ago

> I wonder how confident Thiel was of a Trump presidency back in May 2016 Well how many other companies are there with the capabilities of Palantir? If the answer was "none" then he knew for sure the Clinton campaign couldn't match Trump on social media manipulation. Which means he must have been pretty confident

loceng 9y ago
If all it takes is being a "better" psychopath along with an organization lead by psychopaths that only care about popularity and not truth, then with initial testing for calculations - they likely had a very good idea what would happen once they added fuel to the fire.
sjg007 9y ago
Eric Schmidt was a big Clinton supporter and I believe helped with her tech campaign. If the chain of events from Nix->Sophie Schmidt->Eric Schmidt->Thiel/Palantir is true then I don't know how the concern wouldn't have been raised to Clinton. I think the real question is what did FB know and when did they know it. Thiel being on the FB board and all. It's also weird that the What's App guy is on the board and just called for everyone to #deletefacebook.
- galieos_ghost 9y ago
  He literally made a company for the sole purpose of getting her elected. https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...

dmode 9y ago

Given the margin of Trump's victory was so small, and he lost the overall popular vote, I would be surprised that anyone can be confident of a victory looking at any data set.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
corpMaverick 9y ago
If every one was betting on Clinton 10 to 1. But you know it closer to 2 to 1. That is a good bet.
- wpasc 9y ago
  Odds like that are meaningless (imo) for singular events. It's a good bet in repeatable scenarios, far less so in elections.
  - eloff 9y ago
    When you take a bet, you play the odds. You evaluate your expected return should you take many such bets, and if it's positive and you can afford to lose, the smart money is in taking the bet. In fact this is true of most anything you do in life - when you drove to work this morning you played the odds and the wager was your life against your salary. I'm sure you didn't think about it that way, but you took the bet
  - saalweachter 9y ago
    Both insurance companies and bookmakers are comfortable aggregating over many unique events.
- creaghpatr 9y ago
  On election night, the odds were roughly 5 to 1 on PredictIt
  - Tempest1981 9y ago

pradn 9y ago

We should be careful assigning skill to a decision that was borne out by luck.

orangehour 9y ago

What were the odds when you made the bet?

zerostar07 9y ago
i had one such bet, it was 6:1 IIRC

gesman 9y ago

IMHO this is gross overstimation of Palantir future prediction capabilities.

dmayle 9y ago
It is much easier to change the future than it is to predict it.
- gesman 9y ago
  How do you know you've changed the future if you don't know what would be the future?

duncan_bayne 9y ago

Is it possible you have the causality reversed here? What if Thiel's confidence was born of a conviction, backed by research, that he could help swing the election for Trump? Not "our data suggest he may win" but "our data suggest we can help him win".

dogruck 9y ago

I think Thiel supported Trump because Thiel thought Trump was a better candidate, and Thiel wanted Trump to beat Clinton.

dogruck 9y ago
At least one person got triggered by “Trump was a better candidate.” (That’s an observable fact, since he won)

zerostar07 9y ago

If true i cant think of better PR for Palantir.

downandout 9y ago

It's possible that Thiel knew something deeper about the state of the nation through Palantir. However, I seriously doubt that Palantir secretly worked on the data that Kogan sold to CA years after he collected it, as this Wylie guy alleges. He has presented no evidence, and Palantir flatly denies it. I think he has seen the media run with his previous claims, and thinks that nobody will call BS on him now. I have started wondering what could be driving this guy to make what at first seemed like believable allegations, that now seem more and more wild. I have been unable to find any current employer for him. My suspicion is that he is out of work and thought the attention from this would get him hired somewhere, not realizing that nobody - even the most liberal of firms - will hire him because he has proven, in the most public of ways, that he can't be trusted to not disclose confidential information. According to [1], he is a dyslexic high school dropout with ADHD who sued his elementary school because he was bullied and "...he describes himself as the gay Canadian vegan who somehow ended up creating "Steve Bannon's psychological warfare mindf--k tool." That is certainly a grandiose claim, but there seems to be no evidence that this tool even worked, and in fact there is some evidence to the contrary [2]. It appears that campaigns hired CA not because its data analysis techniques were helpful, but because doing so was a prerequisite for obtaining campaign contributions from the Mercer family [3]. So, we have an out of work programmer with social issues who has no degree and can't be trusted, whose most famous work apparently didn't work at all (according to its customers), and whose biggest asset is that the media will take everything he says as fact. My guess is that Wylie's claims will get even more bizarre as he and his stories quickly disappear from the headlines with no work forthcoming. [1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christopher-wylie-background-1.4583054 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christopher-w... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-facebook-scandal-trump-cruz-operatives-2018-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-facebook-... [3] https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/975756418128187393 https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/975756418128187393

wjnqx 9y ago
I suggest you watch his testimony before UK lawmakers this morning. He appears to know what he's talking about and bases his claims on evidence supplied to the Parliamentary committee. https://www.pscp.tv/w/1mnxeXjraDNJX https://www.pscp.tv/w/1mnxeXjraDNJX

gdubs 9y ago

I've always thought of it in terms of asymmetric risk – something Thiel seems to have a preternatural intuition for. In other words, what he stood to gain with a Trump win far outweighed what he stood to lose with a Trump loss. Most business leaders were throwing in with Clinton. If Thiel had done the same, and Clinton won, he'd be one voice in a crowded field. By being one of the few to publicly back Trump, he all but guaranteed a prime seat at the table. This is exactly what played out post-election, with Thiel ushering in tech leaders in the lobby of Trump Tower. Had Trump lost, Thiel would have probably diminished his standing with the Clinton administration significantly. But, due to the crowded field, it would have been a small standing to begin with. And here's the crux: Thiel has held controversial opinions for a while. He probably figured his association with Trump wouldn't really move the dial on his likability much, and he seems to enjoy being contrarian anyway. So, anyway, there's my theory. Risk asymmetry. A lot to gain in the event of a Trump win, little to lose in the event of a Trump loss.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
An analogy to this is why "bad boys" tend to do well at the dating game.... A Biker/Gang Member may not be attractive to most people, but to the portion of the population that prefer someone like that, they have much fewer anti-social males to choose from, and those individuals can do well at the bar.
- machinelearning 9y ago
  Or in Thiel's own(?) words: "Competition is for losers"
walrus01 9y ago
I don't think thiel and palantir would have lost that much if Clinton won. If the bulk of palantir revenue comes from DoD and intelligence community (IC) contracts, he cares about whoever will increase the DoD budget in general. No matter whether it is Bush or Trump or Reagan, a republican president almost always increases defense and IC spending and green lights new toys for them to play with. Defense contractors who don't care about Democrat or republican ideology simply care about their bottom line.

gowld 9y ago

Thiel went with Trump for standard VC reasons: because it was a low-cost, low-odds, high-reward play on an unpopular undervalued asset. Also because Trump fits his "maverick" style of operating independently outside of the big establishment machines. If Trump lost Thiel would move along to doing the best he could with the winners, who wouldn't have a reason to shun him for irrelevant past actions. Trump had ~50% odds of winning but general betting odds were <30%

smiddereens 9y ago
Thiel's a goblin and you dorks love him for it.
jonny_eh 9y ago
But what did Thiel get by betting on the winner though?
- azemetre 9y ago
  Lucrative military/government contracts.
paulcole 9y ago
> high-reward What was the reward?
- Haydos585x2 9y ago
  Parent comment probably means access to the administration and administration supporters for Thiel and related companies. Much easier to be a voice in a room of 10 people than a voice in a room of 1000. Trump and his picks were more likely to support large defence projects and big business operations that Palantir could profit from.
  - sanderjd 9y ago
    I just want to point out that what you're talking about here is corruption. To restate: For someone in Thiel's position, the upside to supporting a particular political candidate is the expectation that he will benefit from corruption while that candidate is in office. Everyone knows this but I believe it is worth being explicit about it from time to time. (I don't mean this as a dig against the party or even the person currently occupying the Presidency; this cuts both ways.)

noobermin 9y ago

Argh, enough. Cambridge Analytica and friends didn't have secret knowledge. People need to stop lifting up these big data woo casters and weigh their impact on the election beyond their actual ability. Machine learning/machine vision just killed a person on a well lit street. You people need to calm down on the thinking that Silicon Valley data scientists have figured out everything others haven't other than how to boost ad dollars (and even that is in dispute as recent articles on Hacker News have pointed out.)

monochromatic 9y ago
Too many acronyms, couldn’t follow your train of thought.
- noobermin 9y ago
  No need to downvote him! I cleaned up my acronyms after I saw his reply.

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago

You made a bet on outcome, based on an proven assertion. This is a bet on top of a bet, and not a long term winning strategy. You should not feel bad. You earned your money.