The tech industry has largely rushed to defend its business relationships with Peter Thiel by citing its commitment to “diversity”. This simplistic defense both conceals and exacerbates the very problems that the diversity rationale purports to solve.

Thiel recently donated a large sum to the Trump campaign, a donation that adds to his support at the RNC. Some immediately sought companies like Y Combinator and Facebook to condemn Thiel’s support and remove him as partner and board member, respectively. Both Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg let Thiel remain. Both condemned Trump to some extent, and both cited “diversity” as the reason why firing would be inappropriate. Since Sam’s post is more specific and compelling than Mark’s, I’ll work off that going forward.

If you’ve read my last two blog posts, you probably know where I’m going with this. Sam’s post boils down to:

1. Trump poses a serious threat to this country (and particularly women and minorities)
2. But Thiel’s support of Trump does not justify his removal because of diversity

Or in a more general form, akin to the discourse around the riots in Baltimore or free speech at Yale:

1. Agree that there is a problem A
2. But disagree that A justifies B, where B violates some Important Principle

The twist: the narrative is delivered by an actor who is arguably complicit in violating the same Important Principle.

Bright lines

Sam presents two lines of argument defending Thiel’s position as YC partner:

As repugnant as Trump is to many of us, we are not going to fire someone over his or her support of a political candidate. As far as we know, that would be unprecedented for supporting a major party nominee, and a dangerous path to start down…the polarization of the country into two parallel political realities is not good for any of us.

I don’t understand how 43% of the country supports Trump. But I’d like to find out, because we have to include everyone in our path forward. If our best ideas are to stop talking to or fire anyone who disagrees with us, we’ll be facing this whole situation again in 2020. That kind of diversity is painful and unpopular, but it is critical to health of a democratic and pluralistic society. We shouldn’t start purging people for supporting the wrong political candidate. That’s not how things are done in this country.

The first argument suggests that firing would result in a slippery-slope effect, possibly with societal consequences, whereas the second argument suggests that diversity of ideas is important. Sam draws an additional line: if Thiel were to say some of the things Trump has said, “he would no longer be part of Y Combinator.” These arguments, as presented, are woefully incomplete.

If I were to consider the set of possible reasons why I might keep Thiel around, they would break down into roughly three categories:

Personal. If I were friends with Peter Thiel, maybe I would also know his true political views, which may not include Trump’s discriminatory positions. I might therefore believe that his support of Trump is not intended to support those untenable positions, and maybe even believe that Thiel’s involvement with the campaign, in light of this private position, will have some salutary effect - maybe he could influence Trump to be less discriminatory. This defense requires an understanding of Thiel’s private stance and a belief that his support of the Trump campaign is not disqualifying. That is, the act of donating money to a candidate who supports discrimination does not outweigh the “benefit” of Thiel’s involvement or cross some line. Were Sam to hold any of these positions, it would not be possible for him to publicly use this rationale: it wouldn’t be his place to publicize Thiel’s private beliefs, and doing so may even sabotage any possible positive influence.

All of the above is pure conjecture, but it would be a plausible defense. I don’t think it’s particularly strong though; while it is almost guaranteed that a supporter will not hold every one of the same positions as the candidate, donating money to a candidate probably does little to change the candidate’s positions and merely amplifies his current set of positions. In Trump’s case, it seems highly unlikely that Thiel would be able to actually change Trump’s thinking about minorities or women.

This also gets at the bright line that Sam drew. Apparently Thiel would be fired if he said the things Trump has said, but donating money to a candidate who has said the things he has said does not trigger this. In order for this line to hold, one would have to believe that personally speaking is materially different than paying money to amplify that speech. Arguably amplifying discriminatory speech actually causes more of the damage that Sam concedes a Trump presidency would cause, so it’s unclear to me why personal speech is the line.

Professional. Perhaps Thiel meaningfully contributes to YC, whether through his work as a part-time partner or merely being associated with it. It would be reasonable to believe that cutting ties would hurt YC in the standing of the tech community, which largely respects Thiel and his brand of contrarian thought. This too would inevitably be a private defense - there would be no way that this would ever be conveyed publicly. It’s a legitimate reason, but it feels pretty trivial compared to some of the real issues of this election , which Sam describes with great concern in his post.

Structural. This is ultimately what Sam chooses to argue, but his argument isn’t well-specified. Sam basically leaves it as: firing Peter would be unprecedented and lead to X, where X is bad. “Unprecedented” doesn’t really add any value to this argument, so we can ignore that part. There are probably a couple plausible values for X: firing Thiel could further radicalize both him and Trump supporters, emboldening them to support even more discrimination, or alternatively, firing Thiel could embolden other actors to start “purging” people from their private organizations, which would degrade the liberal fabric of our society and lead to further fragmentation. These impacts seem highly problematic, but even assuming we evaluate this through a consequentialist framework, there exist a competing set of impacts that I haven’t seen well-articulated by those who use this defense. Here’s my best attempt at articulating them.

Sam argues that Trump poses an severe threat to the country, and certainly to women and minorities. Trump’s rhetoric and actions could lead to policy changes, or at the very least, develop a culture where women and minorities are no longer able freely exercise their basic liberties. One can draw a straight line between the threat that Trump poses to women and minorities, support of a candidate who threatens these groups, and failure to fully censure this support as complicity.¹ If Sam were evaluating through the lens of a consequentialist framework, then the fact that he understands the Trump threat (at least well enough to condemn it in the blog post) suggests that he must believe the aforementioned illiberalism impacts to either be of greater magnitude or higher probability.² I actually don’t think this was how he evaluated his decision - his diversity rationale suggests otherwise.

You come at the king, you best not miss

Sam argues that supporting diversity is “critical to the health of a democratic and pluralistic society” and removing Thiel is “not how things are done in this country.” This advocates for an alternative decision framework: assuming one supports liberalism, it is imperative to tolerate views that differ from your own. No cost-benefit weighing, this is the right thing to do full stop. It sounds great on paper (and probably also when you say it aloud), but this argument isn’t nuanced at all.

Sam already concedes that there is actually a line where he would fire Thiel: if Thiel said the things Trump has said, he would be fired. So maybe Sam doesn’t actually believe that tolerance is imperative, it’s just imperative when an individual doesn’t cross a certain line that is arbitrarily defined? This kind of under-specified argument irks me, because no matter the author’s position or intentions, it so utterly simplifies the discussion that you forget what exactly you’re even discussing. Trafficking in Important Principles like tolerance and diversity without any nuance is a terrific way to paint the complainants as destroyers of liberal society, because the discussion shifts from the specifics of the Thiel situation to whether we should uphold Important Principle (which inevitably is yes).³

The most notable aspect of this situation, compared to the discussions on Baltimore rioting or Yale speech, is that the Important Principle of diversity is exactly what the best argument for Thiel’s removal relies on. With the riots, we saw condemnation of rioters and a call for non-violence. With the Yale free speech issue, we saw condemnation of guidance on Halloween costumes and a call for free speech. One couldn’t really argue that the act of rioting is non-violent, or the act of reminding students not to wear racist costumes is in support of free speech. But here, calls for full censure of Thiel’s support of Trump, who threatens the basic liberties of women and minorities - that is fundamentally an argument of tolerance and diversity. Supporting a candidate who intends to use political power to restrict the rights of portions of society is support of intolerance. This is why a simplistic invocation of diversity and tolerance destroys any possibility of coherent discussion: both arguments for and against removal of Thiel use it.

Perhaps what makes the diversity rationale seem so jarring in this discussion isn’t really because of the issues raised above, but rather the understanding that the tech industry is notoriously bad at supporting diversity as an Important Principle. Just like government calls for non-violence or institutional calls for free speech reek of hypocrisy, one can understand how maddening it must be that a tech leader like Sam only writes about diversity when individuals that align with a politician who threatens diversity are being questioned. In this specific situation, invocation of the Important Principle without nuance isn’t just a distraction, it’s almost like trolling those who are actually working to make Silicon Valley a more diverse place.

It seems like any sufficiently complex discussion degrades into simplistic arguments about Important Principles.⁴ Though this aspect of discourse almost certainly has been around forever, I suspect the kind of fragmentation that the Internet allows has only worsened this phenomenon. In an era where you can easily (and unknowingly) surround yourself with only ideas that you agree with, understanding alternate viewpoints, and more importantly, engaging in productive discussion on the basis of that understanding, is only becoming more challenging. Sam is completely right that discourse matters, but if we’re incapable of engaging one another with restraint, precise language, and humility, I wouldn’t expect too much.