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Wow, that's pretty far out of context. Far enough to imply the opposite of the statement's sentiment. For reference, the full quote by Altman is,

> “Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate in every way except that the ideology is flipped,” said Sam Altman, a prominent technology leader, chief executive of Y Combinator and a major Hillary Clinton donor. “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. That’s the start-up playbook. That’s exactly what we tell our start-ups to do.”

Cherry-picking the words in the quote to paint the picture that Altman supports Trump somehow is quite deceitful.



He's not saying Altman supports Trump. He's saying the idea that he's doing things like a startup would is in error.

https://twitter.com/tqbf

I mean, most startups don't have the opportunity to "break things" like this:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/travel-ban-iranian-ba...


> "He's not saying Altman supports Trump"

"continues to give every sign of being in fact a quiet supporter of the administration"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13824917


I can't believe I have to say this given everything I've written on the subject (here is the first thing: http://blog.samaltman.com/trump) , but I don't support Trump in any way.

My point in the parent-linked article is just that Trump beat us using our own playbook, and shame on us if we don't notice that and adjust for next time.


What do you want people who have a problem with what you're doing to say? That we feel bad for you, because you don't mean to be communicating the things you're communicating? Do I believe you want to support Trump? No, I do not.

I don't want to recap the whole sad thread from last night on this thread too. I took the time to reply to you there, and to explain more fully what my issue is. Just like I'm sure you don't want to be doing things to help the Trump administration, I'm also sure you don't mean to beg me to repeat a whole bunch of stuff I already wrote about this.

None of this conversation belongs on this thread. Rather than feed it, we should just ask the moderators to detach and bury it.


Perhaps Thomas he was a bit harsh with his language and aspersions, but he's absolutely right about the communication discipline that hands "Silicon Valley President" to people, who will in turn take that out of context to promote Trump.


It's really hard to speak about a subject like this openly and not leave paragraphs that used out of context can show an inverted opinion. Sad.


Looking it another way: giving a quote like that which needs to be examined in full to make sure he does not support Trump, and which can so easily be interpreted to support Trump, is quite naive. When you're giving quotes you have to be extremely careful that it is not easy to take them out of context, because that "out of context" is exactly what most people reading the article will understand at first reading.




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