from Hacker News

Peter Thiel To Join Trump Transition Team

by codybrown on 11/11/16, 1:45 AM with 1292 comments

  • by BurningFrog on 11/11/16, 2:06 PM

    Relevant column:

    "I don't see a moral obligation for anyone to serve in a Trump administration. But people who opposed Donald Trump, on both the left and right, should commit right now to one thing: We will not tar good people for joining the Trump administration. Their motives will not be questioned, and if things do turn out as some of his critics fear, the people in his foreign and domestic policy apparatus will not suffer guilt by association. It is just too important that Trump have good advisers.

    Trump will be the least policy-savvy president in history. He has built no ideological framework for future policies, much less a set of detailed proposals. He has few advisers, in part because so many of the usual contenders have come out against him."

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-09/there-s-n...

  • by masondixon on 11/11/16, 9:34 AM

    A huge issue today is the lack of calm, reasoned debate.

    As a Trump supporter I have never been able to properly explain the rationale to a liberal. I believe there is a worthy debate beneath all the political smear, but it is never reached. I believe the reason for this is the liberal media and the incredibly effective Democratic party election machine.

    The argument stays at the high level of "how could you vote for someone who said that", "he is a monster", etc. It is "I don't want to listen".

    All you have to do to realise what is wrong with this is to ask yourself: "What happens if the situation is reversed and someone said they don't want to listen to me?". What if someone else started to restrict what I could say?

    Thankfully, freedom of speech is such an integral part of the US, that there is not one side trying to control what the other can say, and the other doing the same back.

    This is what makes the country work. The fact that both sides are not in the business of restricting free speech. This doesn't hold true in many other countries.

  • by darawk on 11/11/16, 2:19 AM

    This is good news, I think? Thiel has some extremish views, but I generally regard him as intelligent and thoughtful. And he's in close contact with other smart, influential people (e.g. Musk, Sam Altman, etc.), which gives them some indirect influence.

    Not that this makes things substantially better. But maybe a little bit? Hopefully?

  • by raldi on 11/11/16, 4:27 AM

    Now go back and read all the HN comments from 26 days ago about how Thiel was flushing money down the toilet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12716514

  • by pjdemers on 11/11/16, 4:01 AM

    Disagreeing with each other's views on the economy, international relations, even the environment is good for the country. We need different points of view on important issues.

    But using race baiting to gain political power crosses a line that should never be crossed. He should not be helping to legitimize this.

  • by betolink on 11/11/16, 3:44 AM

    People here giving Thiel a free pass on his views and support for bigotry is just disgusting.

  • by DLA on 11/11/16, 4:12 PM

    This thread is sad. We are ALL Americans. President-elect Trump is OUR president. You know how we can make this next four years a success for all of us, realize the Constitution sets out a process for how we elect our leaders. Go read it. No really, now many of the people burning flags, talking about "end of days" BS, and other nonsense have ever read the Constitution? Let alone swore an oath to defend it? Yeah. As I suspected.

    Stop the hate online. Stop the hate in the streets. Stop talking about states leaving the union (not going to happen). Stop judging people for their choice--voting freedom is sacred. Many have died defending it. Regardless of how you voted get behind the President of the United States of America. America is still the greatest nation the world has ever known. If we all work together and stop this hate, America will be become even better.

  • by ilovecomputers on 11/11/16, 3:49 AM

    Don't expect him to protect net neutrality just because he is an exec from Silicon Valley: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2g4g95/peter_thiel_te...

  • by cmsmith on 11/11/16, 3:22 AM

    Given the choice between Thiel (favors reconstitution of our political establishment and believes in science and technology) and the rest of the Trump hangers-on (are ambivalent towards reconstitution of the establishment and are anti-science), this is a decent outcome.

  • by mrslave on 11/11/16, 10:31 AM

    I come to HN because of the high level of intelligent conversation.

    This article, and ever more sadly so the comments herein, are a huge disappointment.

    Trump is the non-establishment candidate the left asks for from Republicans every presidential election. Hillary is, at the very least, the establishment candidate the left profess to despise.

    The propaganda is strong in this one.

    Grow up everybody.

  • by danm07 on 11/11/16, 5:02 AM

    I don't know why but I've got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  • by eis on 11/11/16, 8:18 AM

    Interesting that the moderators found it important to remove the "YC partner" part from the submission. It also seems the submission is getting less exposure than other submissions even though it's newer and has more upvotes.

    For example this submission has 349 points and was submitted 6 hours ago and has rank 17 while "Halite: An AI Programming Challenge" has 158 points and was submitted 12 hours ago and is rank 16. The Leonard Cohen post has just a bit more upvotes and was submitted also 6 hours ago and is rank 2. "Island generator was also submitted at the same time and with just barely over 100 upvotes is rank 7.

    Can some mod please give some insight into this? I'm gonna give HN the benefit of the doubt, probably some invisible factors playing into it but the ranking plus the editing could look a bit like the story is getting burried.

  • by ForrestN on 11/11/16, 2:54 AM

    Is there a kind of "political correctness" that refuses the acknowledgment of facts and likelihoods that sound similar to irrational dismissal? Does that kind prevent people from hearing the following things which I think most people would agree to be true?

    -Donald Trump says he wants to completely deregulate the banking industry, which will most likely, in the long term, lead to a crisis on par with or greater than the last banking crisis in 2008. That will probably harm most YC companies in just about every sector, and will negatively influence the value of YC's holdings.

    -Donald Trump and Paul Ryan plan to strip approximately 20 million people of health insurance, and millions more of food stamps, decimating our already weak safety net for the poor. He will do more harm to the poor and disadvantaged in his first six months than YC's non-profit efforts have ever achieved and maybe will ever achieve, probably by orders of magnitude.

    -Donald Trump is part of a movement to dismantle pluralism in the United States, including the marginalization of immigrants and their descendants. He has stated, and his followers are now performing, an antipathy toward people from other countries, and views their economic success as directly opposed to the success of white Americans. YC is a network that includes many diverse people of all backgrounds, including many immigrants. These people will be persecuted by Trumps followers and oppressed by his government.

    -Donald Trump has appointed a "climate skeptic," which means, "dangersous liar," to head the Environmental Protection Agency Transition. He has already sent out many other signals that he intends to cease any US efforts to combat Global Warming, which will have the effect of destabilizing the various international agreements that might have ameliorated its effects. It currently seems likely that Trump will single-handedly prevent the world from achieving a viable response to this threat for another four years. This gravely threatens the entire world, and will cause rippling suffering around the world. Every person who interacts with Y Combinator and their descendants will be unambiguously worse off because of this.

    YC should not reject Thiel because "he holds opposing political beliefs." YC should reject Thiel, cut off all relationship with him, publicly condemn him, because he has joined an organization, the Donald Trump Administration, which has stated its intentions to do massive harm to YC and the people of the world. If YC continues its relationship with Thiel, if it fails to acknowledge its association with him as a black mark on its standing among people of conscience, and if it does not muster all of its leverage, economic and otherwise, in the fight to curtail the power of Thiel's organization (The Trump Administration), than they are part of a problem that should terrify anyone who prefers economic growth, the reduction of human suffering, political freedom and the viability of earth as a home for humanity.

    Now is a test for many people and institutions in American life. YC doesn't have many days left before it has failed.

  • by novalis78 on 11/11/16, 3:45 AM

    This would be fantastic...the closest of getting Elon Musk into the driver's seat. Mike Pence being a huge space advocate and Thiel wanting nothing more than technological progress to pick up speed, this is a very positive development.

  • by slowandlow on 11/11/16, 2:27 AM

    I feel like there's a conflict of interest here...

  • by frisco on 11/11/16, 6:31 AM

    Whatever Trump might do policy-wise with regards to freedom of speech and our democracy, realize that Thiel literally sued a popular media company out of existence over things they wrote about him. I don't think this gets better soon.

  • by all_blue_chucks on 11/11/16, 2:17 AM

    As Bezos said, contrarians are rarely right.

    But rare does not mean always.

  • by codecamper on 11/11/16, 10:53 AM

    Just googled Peter's feelings on clean energy.

    Well I'm hopeful. He has made investments into clean tech. He is both smart & a business guy. So Trump will listen to him & that's good.

    He is also a connection back to Tesla & energy storage.

    Hmm. Maybe this Trump thing isn't so bad after all (for the planet).

    Trump may want more oil -- but the reality of that is that oil is controlled by the market.

  • by kriro on 11/11/16, 7:46 AM

    Maybe there can be some seasteading experiment after all? I'd be really curious to see how it would play out. Seems like a crazy idea worth trying despite all the counterarguments I can think of simply to collect data/experience as it might be valuable for future "crazy" endeavors like populating a different planet.

  • by woofyman on 11/11/16, 2:54 AM

    I don't understand how a gay man can support a political party who's platform wants to reverse marriage equality.

  • by seesomesense on 11/11/16, 2:46 AM

    I am far to the left but I believe that demonising someone for political viewpoints different from mine is wrong.

  • by woofyman on 11/11/16, 6:26 PM

    Trump gets to work helping LGBT Americans by tapping anti-gay Ken Blackwell to his transition team.

    “I think homosexuality is a lifestyle, it’s a choice, and that lifestyle can be changed,” Blackwell told the Columbus Dispatch at the time. “I think it is a transgression against God’s law, God’s will.”

    http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/11/10/1596184/-Trump-ge...

  • by machbio on 11/11/16, 2:46 PM

    It was a brilliant play by Peter Thiel - it was gamble of 50:50 (I believe he started supporting him only at the Republican Convention).. There would be backlash by technology community, and when you have lot of money and networking available to you; there is no one in the technology community that will stop doing business with you.. Kudos to the HN crowd about the Freedom of Speech, sometimes - I guess you need to be extremist in either being Left Wing or Right Wing..

  • by cromwellian on 11/11/16, 5:01 AM

    So the man whose company was funded by the CIA to conduct mass big data surveillance is now going to be helping to decide the structure of the executive branch, with "Law and Order" Giuliani probably as Attorney General.

    What could go wrong?

    IMHO, YC had their chance to divorce themselves from Thiel. They can still do it, but this is their last chance. Silicon Valley is not going to forget this conflict of interest.

  • by ktamura on 11/11/16, 3:33 AM

    I still stand by my earlier comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12915345

    TL;DR; It's probably a good thing for Silicon Valley, considering the alternative outcome (all other things equal): Trump still winning the election without a single Silicon Valley influencer.

  • by bleamishboy on 11/11/16, 7:49 AM

    Is this (post, thread) on-topic for HN? Seems to fall pretty definitively into the politics / TV news category.

    (Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.)

  • by williamch11 on 11/12/16, 12:06 AM

    I respect Thiel's loyalty to Trump. As people are hiding from Trump after the bus incident, he comes out writing a check and giving a speech about why trump is the right choice again knowing he will get crucify in the Valley. Hope he does well now considering his influence in the Valley.

  • by kafkaesq on 11/11/16, 3:01 AM

    What Paul may have failed to consider in taking his "tolerant, neutral" stance towards Thiel's activities is that, in politics, one absolutely is 100% guilty by association with the forces of darkness that one allows one's self to come into (sufficiently close) contact with. Or as that most prescient saying, variously attributed, goes: Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent ("He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas").

    On the other hand, if he's finding "heat" that he'll inevitably be taking, by ever-rising degrees, for his association with Thiel (and hence, Trump and everything he stands for) to be not to his liking -- it's still not too late to get out of the kitchen.

  • by FullMtlAlcoholc on 11/13/16, 12:48 PM

    Besides the whole Gawker incident, does Thiel have an obsessive need to settle scores like Trump?

    Mark my words, if Trump starts to raise the national debt by a large amount, pull out of markets and put into bitcoin.

  • by theCodeStig on 11/11/16, 4:17 AM

    Ironically, Palantir has an engineering office in Singapore.

  • by vivekd on 11/11/16, 5:07 AM

    If there is anyone I want at the helm of America, it's Peter Theil. If I was going to bet on anyone to solve the nation's problems it would be him. But then, I would be surprised if he accepts the role. He seems like a very private individual and someone who is interested in capital than in politics. It would be a great personal sacrifice for him to turn his back on his business ventures to look into stuff like this that will give him very little return and take up an enormous amount of his time and resources.

  • by tn13 on 11/11/16, 6:05 AM

    Good to see a conservative government put up a Libertarian gay tech person as CTO of USA.

  • by ehosca on 11/11/16, 3:19 PM

    i guess soon we'll see if conversion therapy really works...

  • by return0 on 11/11/16, 8:21 AM

    Ahead of schedule, and under budget.

  • by robomartin on 11/11/16, 6:29 AM

    The hatred spewing out from the Left defies description. Instead of supporting Thiel he is now the enemy. How sad.

  • by plandis on 11/11/16, 6:59 AM

    It turns out you can buy access to the president elect.

  • by t1m on 11/11/16, 4:40 AM

    Peter Thiel's "Mein Kampf" excludes women and minorities, who he feels have "damaged" democracy: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

  • by meritt on 11/11/16, 2:31 AM

    This was obvious from the RNC speech and further reinforced when Thiel donated $1M to Trump. A contrarian bet, sure, but $1M is a pretty small price to pay to have a 50/50 shot at CTO of the USA. I'm sure he'll see a very significant ROI on his $1M once the government starts awarding contracts very conveniently to companies of which he owns a portion.

    I had very negative feelings about Thiel, and those were magnified 10x after his endorsement of Trump, but I'll at least concede he's a very shrewd individual.

  • by magic5227 on 11/11/16, 2:56 AM

  • by _pius on 11/11/16, 2:14 AM

    Meanwhile, Trump's already got an RFS in waiting:

    http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-says-he-...

    https://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

    The longer YC waits to do the right thing on this, the worse it will get.

  • by techxit on 11/11/16, 2:59 PM

    Peter Thiel is a neocon nightmare who thinks the 19th Amendment was a mistake.

    Can we have a black bar for America, please?

  • by ilostmykeys on 11/11/16, 3:21 AM

    Palantir, one of Thiel's companies, will now be able to embed itself even deeper in the surveillance state. It's what Trump needs to "get even" with people who make fun of him or oppose him.

  • by 234dd57d2c8db on 11/11/16, 2:20 AM

    Excellent. I look forward to seeing Peter's expertise help Trump continue the wonderful progress we have made in improving tech in government under the Obama administration.

  • by pervycreeper on 11/11/16, 2:43 AM

    A chance to once again demonstrate the truth of the great man theory of history. May they be favored by fortune.

  • by davexunit on 11/11/16, 3:46 AM

    Not surprising that this website doesn't see the problem with Thiel's bigotry.

  • by zeluve on 11/11/16, 2:28 AM

    I hope this will lead to the so called "revolution" by Thiel in the beginning. He had vision in the past and hopefully that will not become extreme and lead to something bad. I don't think there is no one can control Trump..

  • by t1m on 11/11/16, 6:55 AM

    I am a Canadian, so I neither have a say, or really can comment on American politics.

    This Saturday, my two daughters (ages 11 and 8) are driving a 1,700km journey to North Dakota to show our support for the #NoDAPL movement. I am doing it because my eldest is really into Aboriginal rights right now. These people are just trying to preserve their land.

    I hope we don't get shot by Peter Thiel.

  • by the_decider on 11/11/16, 2:30 AM

    Perhaps California's exit from the union will hep YC re-establish its moral integrty. Sam Altman, you wanted to radically change the word (in a positive way)? Well now is your chance!