For example, it's entirely possible that Peter Thiel is part of a losing faction of the board that values more privacy, and has actually been a force for the better with regard to privacy at Facebook? Is that likely? I have no idea, but it's supported by just as much evidence as you put forth.
Keep in mind, by the logic you've used so far, if we ignore the voting history of congress, then every congressperson must obviously have been in favor of invading Iraq, since that's what the US did.
Note: If you take this as a defense of Peter Thiel you've entirely missed the point. I have no evidence as to how Peter Thiel truly feels about privacy in general, and more importantly that's irrelevant to the point I'm making.
Thiel founded Palantir.
The sex tape would be considered private.
Presumably he draws his line somewhere between those two extremes.
Has he done anything inconsistent with the position "The paparazzi should not write scandalous articles about famous people"? For example, has he invested in companies similar to Gawker? If not, I don't see any real conflict in his position.
Sure, it's possible that Thiel has been a silently pushing for pivoting to eg a subscription model or static banner ads. It's just not likely.
If you're on the losing faction on a corporate board that decides that the best option is to poison the city water supply, and your mournfully cash the checks, you are just as guilty as the winning faction.
You should choose an example that wouldn't lead the executives being personally attacked by prosecutors:
* An oil spill killing ocean wildlife and damaging the look of a beautiful beach.
* A soda company deciding whether to put 10% more sugar in their sodas to increase sales, even though they know its likely to kill statistical thousands of people.
* A manufacturing company moving to China, pressuring local workers into working long hours in poor working conditions and polluting their country.
I believe none of these is a crime, and I wouldn't argue that someone who voted against these should resign from the board rather than help execute on a decision they oppose.
Do you have a better example?
Is it? What do you think does more to further the cause and draw awareness, a no vote that doesn't matter and gets no attention or news articles Peter Thiel resigns Facebook board seat over moral objections to FB Privacy Policy?
There's a place for grand gestures. Giving away real, tangible power, even if unable to be expressed most of the time, in lieu of increasing awareness about an issue that everyone already knows about is not what I consider a smart move. To have any gain, it would at least need to increase awareness of the issue. I'm not sure that's even relevant in this case, given the widespread public acknowledgement and numerous media outlets addressing the issue already.
How so? I think I'm being very clear. If you make assertions, you should support them. I do not take at face value that being on the board of Facebook precludes you from caring about privacy. If there is specific evidence as to his actions apart from that, it should be presented. None was.
> The moral calculus of renouncing your massive profit-making association with a company that you serve on the board of if it chooses to do things that you find morally unacceptable is trivial
It is only trivial in the renouncement is morally unambiguous, it is not trivially acceptable that the opposite is true. I submit that it's entirely possible to remain in a position of some power of an organization that is working counter to what you believe is right. In the simplest case, to change that organization. To reject that would be reject the core tenets of democracy, which requires you to participate in a system you may find has resulted in morally reprehensible actions to bring about change and prevent future occurrences of those actions. A board of directors is fundamentally a very democratic form of governance (in that like the United States, the representatives are often elected so it is democratic in its republicness).
> If you're on the losing faction on a corporate board that decides that the best option is to poison the city water supply, and your mournfully cash the checks, you are just as guilty as the winning faction.
But that's not what's going on here. The equivalent here would be if there was a long standing plan to legally dump poison into the water. Feel free to renounce your board membership. The people that are poisoned in the future will feel so much better that you took an ineffectual moral stand rather than alternate action that might have yielded real change.
There is no difference in this than legislative powers. Money and power are interchangeable, to a degree. Should our legislators resign over voted directions of government they do not agree with? They are, be nature of their positions, benefiting from the increase in power and influence the decision may grant them if it increases the standing of the US (but at the cost of the world as a whole).
So, the be absolutely clear, I believe there exists the possibility to have non-controlling power in an organization that you feel is taking morally reprehensible actions, and believe that the most beneficial action to address this is to continue with your position and work to change the organization. To assert Peter Thiel is exhibiting "sheer cynical audacity" and hope that people aren't "dumb enough to fall for this" purely by his association with the board of Facebook without addressing this is not worthy of taking seriously.
Taking your legislation example, a privacy-minded person investing in Facebook would not just like be a legislator disagreeing with a decision, it'd be like a self-proclaimed anarchist pushing for a more powerful government.
"One start would be to tear down, or at least modify the “Chinese wall” between content and the business side. No other non-monopoly industry lets product creators off the hook on how the business works."
"As a libertarian, I don't think we should have had the response [to 9/11] we did to those buildings blowing up. But all the mass movements, all the consciousness-raising in the world did not stop us from getting the Patriot Act. The ACLU is always good at talking about civil rights, but [despite that] once something happens, protections go out the window right way. I think there's something to be said for trying to figure out some ways to stop another attack which will be used to curtail civil liberties even more. A company like Paypal could not get started in the post-PatriotAct world, because we would be accused of money laundering [based on how we operated] in '98-'99..." (from a discussion with David Graeber hosted by The Baffler, Fall 2014)
Crime can never be totally prevented. Building a tool that attempts to do so will not stop politicians clamoring for even more totalitarianism when the inevitable does happen.
Gawker dug his own grave but Thiel is a disgusting hypocrite. I hope the history will remember this man that way. And no, not because of Trump.
Again, assuming FB and Gawker have the same privacy issues, what you point doesn't really matter.
FB's decisions might be influenced by more than just Thiel, but if Thiel feels strongly about privacy (and his views aren't heard on FB) he always has the option of selling his stock and leaving FB...
They're not comparable. You give information willingly to Facebook and accept their terms of service. I know plenty of very social and successful people who don't use Facebook. Maybe you feel that there should still be additional regulations on Facebook; fine, that's a debate for another day. But it's very clearly different than a "journalist" prying into your private life against your will to produce a sensationalist and embarrassing article that does nothing to serve the public interest.
Frankly, I think that's just naivety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Beacon
Sure -- I agree that they're not comparable (that said, I don't necessarily agree that FB is better than Gawker privacy wise just because it's a different model. In fact I believe the opposite -- and don't particularly care for the "volunteer" part. People volunteer to all kinds of societal harmful stuff).
But my argument above checks to see the validity of the parent's comment after "assuming that they're comparable".
An ad-hominen would be: "what he says is wrong because he is stupid/bribed/corrupt/a hypocrite" etc.
Saying: "What he says is hypocritical" is not an ad-hominem - it's not an argument on the content or the man, but the relation between the two (what he says and what he does).
And nobody said otherwise -- for the core argument.
But in real life we don't usually know whether the thing (let's call it A) itself that an argument tries to prove is true.
We only know that the argument in favor of A is formulated correctly (follows its premises correctly, etc).
Regarding A though, there might be other premises we haven't checked (and weren't mentioned in the argument), other facts that invalidate it, etc.
Thus it is enlightening to know if an argument for A is being made hypocritically, to evaluate the possibility of A being true in a wider context.
E.g. if I say "A is good for everybody, for X,Y,Z reasons" and I do the opposite of A, then the possibility of A really being good for everybody is somewhat lessened by the prior that "the person proposing A does not follow A".
This is because:
a) nothing guarantees that X,Y,Z (the things mentioned in the argument) are enough to prove that A is good for everybody.
b) the fact that someone proposes A but does the opposite, adds credence to the possibility that there are benefits from NOT following A.
Heck, even if the argument is that "A is good for you for X,Y,Z" and it's correct, someone that knows X,Y,Z (since he put forth the argument) but does not follow A, might know something like A+ or B that's even better, and tries to sell me short.
I would say it's a fallacy to harp on logical fallacies; it's not as if everyone has infinite time to convert all arguments to syllogisms. The common list of logical fallacies entered Western culture from the ancient Greeks but shouldn't be taken with religious fervor.
I'm just convinced coldtea is wrong. The fallacious use of logical fallacies has taken over far too much of public debate.
The common list of logical fallacies entered Western culture from the ancient Greeks but shouldn't be taken with religious fervor.
Sure. Let's apply them with logic.
That sounds like logic, but it makes much less sense than it sounds. So you're saying it's good to examine the hypocrisy of someone's argument, because of the possibility that there's contradictory facts or implications that the arguer is holding back on us? Not only is that also ad-hominem it's a fuzzy half-logical ad-hominem.
Yes.
>Not only is that also ad-hominem it's a fuzzy half-logical ad-hominem.
It's also correct, and a pragmatic way to find hidden motives in real life.
You're contradicting yourself right here, in a way that seems to indicate that you don't understand the important difference between these two circumstances.
Something that's pragmatic is merely mostly correct or most of the time correct. One could say the same thing about racial stereotypes in the US -- which is to say that heuristics shouldn't be treated as an argument. It's only at best a starting point. Quitting at that point is the worst kind of mental laziness.
"It's good for you to not smoke. Now excuse me while I take my smoke break."
That what I said doesn't always hold?
Of course it doesn't.
That's why I wrote about possibilities, and only said that the prior that the person preaching X doesn't follow X "somewhat lessens" the possibility that X is true.
I never said that someone "preaching X and doing the opposite" proves that X is not true.
If I had said that, your example would be a valid refutation. But I haven't, and it's only attacking a straw man.
Besides, the only reason that your example case seems obviously wrong to you is because you're taking as a given what you are supposed: you already know that smoking is bad.
If you didn't, and someone said to you "smoking is bad for you", while he himself was smoking, you would be justifiably suspicious to consider whether it's not actually bad, and the other person is lying or hiding something from you (e.g. to keep all the cigarettes for himself).
The correct answer is to independently validate the claims, or evaluate the merits of an argument on their own ground. That's tedious and often not worth the effort, and that's OK. We use heuristics all the time -- you don't ask your friend for his proof, because you use the heuristic of trust instead. But at least acknowledge that it's a heuristic and stop trying to claim it as a solution.
Simply playing the "ad hominem" card is not a free pass for the opinions of crackpots to be given equal weight.
Strictly, the fallacy involved is tu quoque -- if it is used to rebut the argument which is inconsistent with the persons behavior -- not ad hominem. They are related, but distinct.
Although I suppose if one took the route of:
1. A says X,
2. But A acts in accord with not-X,
3. Therefore, A is a hypocrite.
4. And, because A is a hypocrite, one should disregard A's arguments
In real life the content of an argument isn't the only think that matters. The motives of the arguer are also important -- what they're trying to achieve/sell by using it etc.
That's because people don't only offer their arguments to have other people discuss them and assess their merits, but also to use them to influence people towards other stuff, often unrelated to the argument.
E.g. "listen how right and eloquently I speak in favor of privacy -- and thus forgive my enormous contribution to privacy violations, or the fact that I killed an online outlet out of spite".
>The fact that I state 10 wrong facts about bananas does not mean that the next fact I state is wrong
No, but it means that pragmatic persons with limited time spans should do better than spend time listening you on bananas -- and thus are more right than wrong to dismiss anything else you have to offer beforehand.
Sure, they might commit to a false negative this way, but it's statistically more likely that they wont (and being quick and mostly right to access stuff is more important than being 100% right but slow, again for people with limited life spans).
Besides a hypocrisy charge is not the same as a "he is wrong" charge.
This is why ad hominem is a fallacy. It provides zero evidence for or against an argument. It's completely orthogonal.
I'm not suggesting you "answer back" anything -- I'm suggesting that you should check if the person praising something has hidden motives.
In fact, I'm saying something even more obvious: if a person praises something, and they don't seem particularly fond of having it or practicing it, then be suspicious.
As for selling something, it is already a great motive to make people lie and present the facts in a distorted way, withhold precious information, etc about a product. It happens EVERY single day in millions of stores, showrooms, ads, etc.
If you are only trying to evaluate the product based on what the seller tells you, you'll be duped. Even if it's 100% true in itself.
>It provides zero evidence for or against an argument. It's completely orthogonal.
Arguments in real life do not live in some platonic ideal sphere, isolated from everything else.
They intermingle with all kinds of "completely orthogonal" things.
Sometimes, judging the person making the argument, and their motives, is even more important (and insightful) than judging the argument.
I never advised that, but nice strawman. I advised to evaluate the arguments on their own ground. This AC is efficient and will save you money -- that is something you can independently verify, if it's important to you to do so. And if you're buying an AC and you care about efficiency, that seems like the type of thing you should care to do.
That doesn't mean that you should automatically distrust a salesman. It also doesn't mean you should trust them, though apparently that's a dichotomy that exists for you. It's a null input -- there's zero actionable information if what you care about is buying an efficient AC.
> Sometimes, judging the person making the argument, and their motives, is even more important (and insightful) than judging the argument.
That's fine... If your goal is to gain insight into a person and their motives. If your goal is to judge their argument, then it's absolute and complete fallacy.
Another AC might be just as efficient. Or maybe I just don't even need an AC and while the numbers are all true, they're overselling the benefits. Merely finding out whether a particular model they're trying to sell me is as efficient as they say doesn't help me evaluate their suggestion in the broader context.
>That doesn't mean that you should automatically distrust a salesman. It also doesn't mean you should trust them, though apparently that's a dichotomy that exists for you. It's a null input -- there's zero actionable information if what you care about is buying an efficient AC.
I'm not sure how we got to the salesmen example.
The example I initially gave was about distrusting people that say "X is good for you", but do not follow X themselves -- and about distrusting X for that.
Whereas distrusting doesn't mean "X is thus bad, period", means "you should better investigate X, something seems fishy".
No, it doesn't. OTOH, a logical fallacy isn't something that means that the conclusion that flows from it is wrong, or even that the fallacy doesn't provide a useful pragmatic filter given limited resources to devote to fully evaluating arguments.
"As an internet entrepreneur myself, I feel partly responsible for a world in which private information can be instantly broadcast to the whole planet."
This article is as much an apology as it is a call to turn things around fix things
Theils crusade against gawker killed what I think was a shitty trade rag focused on gossip, at a very steep price. Too much in my opinion.
I had trouble taking his speech at the RNC seriously.
I deeply respected him, probably naively, and I still do; just in a much more narrow context. His intellect and knowledge of technology and macrotrends is amazing, however I find his philosophy in contrast with some of his actions
--
I'm going to steal this line. Great post.
(“Wenn ich Kultur höre...entsichere ich meinen Browning!”)
Hanns Johst (1890-1978)
German playwright and Nazi SS officer
Far worse, then, that he founded surveillance industry contractor Palantir.
Thiel "acknowledges" this, though. That puts in him in the same boat as Soros, who is also good at "acknowledging" the paradoxes of his position even as he instructs governments, in private, exactly which people they should send out to handle a particular situation.
Intercept is billionaire-funded, too - and Greenwald has written at length about "what's wrong with the media" - most of which I agree with, by the way. We won't get away from the billionaires and their meddling. The best we can hope for is that they're stronger when they're right than when they're wrong.
That posting people's private sex tapes is not OK, is one of the ways Thiel is right.
It's bad in many ways he doesn't elucidate. For instance, in a world where your last shreds of privacy can be obliterated by Gawker or Buzzfeed the moment you catch public attention, there will be some winners, and some losers.
Women, on the whole, will lose, because it seems fewer women are willing to sacrifice privacy for power. Gays will lose slightly, because they have more to lose from catching public attention (not so true in the US anymore, fortunately, but still very true in many countries).
Who are the winners?
First, those who can pay an army of publicity experts, and have had it for years to keep an iron grip on their public perception, so that all embarrassments and scandals (real and manufactured) can be managed most efficiently. And, who have very few ambitions or opinions not conductive to seeking power. In short career politicians.
The second type is people who just have no sense of shame, whose egos are so big they can just shrug it all off. Reality TV stars, or something.
My Google-fu is failing me on the exact link (can someone help?), but Marc Andreessen once penned some breathless, excited editorial about "the future of media", and at one point he talked about the editorial/advertising firewall as a relic that needed to be abandoned. It was so slickly inserted that you could almost forget what he was really saying: that news desks need to be prevented from reporting things that companies rather they didn't.
Every time a VC tries to tell me "what's wrong with the media", I reach for my gun. Everyone: they're not your friends. They're not trying to help you. Their overriding concern is nurturing the value of their investments, and that sometimes means silencing people who report inconvenient truths.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/technology/facebook-agrees...
(reposted from other submission)