Presumably you mean that his moral judgement is suspect and therefore you won't follow his principles. That's fine, and I can respect that.
What I cannot agree with is that you can't learn anything from someone you disagree with. I think that's a terrible principle to have.
If you can't learn things from people you don't agree with then you are at risk of groupthink[1] at the very least.
As a specific example, William Churchill's leadership of the British Admiralty during the Gallipoli Campaign[2] in World War 2 was - in my view - completely immoral (as well as terrible ineffective). Indeed, his attitude towards the troops he sent to fight created one of the core national myths[3] of my country.
However to reject learning anything from Churchill because of that would deprive me of a lot.
One can learn a lot from Henry Ford about transforming industries. Does the fact that he had his newspapers publish anti-Semitic writings[4] mean we should ignore him completely?
Does Bill Gate's many ethical failings while building Microsoft into a monopoly mean we can't learn from how he structured his development teams during the browser wars (I didn't realize how ironic this example was until after I wrote it. Maybe Marc Andreessen could have learnt from him too..)
In business there are plenty of people with moral failing in one area or another.
In my view you are better sucking the marrow out of their teaching, and then viewing what they say through the lens of your own ethics.
[3] http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1398405363/61#61 (Sorry for the random forum link, but finding a better short summary of the "the English officers sent the Aussie Diggers to die while they stayed behind" thing is too hard right now.
Yes, true. One can certainly learn from what they have done, but I think what I mean with invalidated is that they immediately lose all of their credibility with a statement like this.
Because of this, people won't be inspired by them anymore and their opinion doesn't have weight anymore, because now everybody knows they are not looking to make a difference in the world, they are only looking out for themselves and their own benefit.
Still have hopes for Ben, I've always admired a16z, but this really sucks
I think you still have to qualify that as 'moral or ethical credibility', and even then limit it to topics relating to government power and accountability.
By all accounts, their treatment of founders is very ethical indeed (by Founders' standards), for example, and I wouldn't expect this to impact their credibility as knowledgable VCs at all.
In short, people are complicated, and applying well-earned admiration in one area to transitively enhance someone's reputation in another is clearly an all too common error (hence celebrity endorsements, etc.)
No, there are simply sentences that fall into this category such as not supporting gay marriage, proclaiming Snowden as a traitor, being anti-abortion, which invalidate everything that the person has ever said or done, because they reveal untenable views like homophobia, ignorance and religious misogonysm.
There are some more views, that reveal racism, but lets leave it at that.
In this particular case, this ignorance reveals the view that mass surveillance is okay, whereas the author seems to miss that every nation that supports mass-surveillance is going towards a Nazi-Germany-like regime. Ever wondered why Germany is so adamant about privacy? Because they remember what happened when a certain entity gained too much control. The thing is, it's not a question if such mass control will be abused at some point. It's just a question of when, maybe in 5 years, maybe in 15, but it will inevitably be abused at some point. Americans don't get that, because they haven't been there.
Firstly, someone being wrong about one thing doesn't mean they're wrong about something else.
Secondly, there are some issues about which people have valid disagreements. This is one of them. Come to think of it, much as I wish it wasn't, gay marriage is also such an issue in most places (though clearly not in Silicon Valley or in Hacker News).
Third, I don't understand how you made the leap from him thinking that Snowden is a traitor, to him thinking that mass surveillance is okay. Maybe he said other things I'm not aware of (seriously - correct me if I'm missing something). But thinking that Snowden is a traitor has nothing to do with views on mass surveillance.
Finally, you are taking an extremely absurd position where the world is entirely black and white - someone says one thing that you disagree with, clearly he thinks terrible things, clearly this invalidates anything he has to say, including on a subject on which he is very knowledgeable, and clearly he's not worth listening to.
That is not a good way to be part of a diverse society, and definitely not a good way to expand your horizons.
Your zeal has lead you to an absurd conclusion. "Invalidate everything they have ever said or done"? That's not how it works... People can be completely wrong about one thing and have good insight into something else.
Presumably you mean that his moral judgement is suspect and therefore you won't follow his principles. That's fine, and I can respect that.
What I cannot agree with is that you can't learn anything from someone you disagree with. I think that's a terrible principle to have.
If you can't learn things from people you don't agree with then you are at risk of groupthink[1] at the very least.
As a specific example, William Churchill's leadership of the British Admiralty during the Gallipoli Campaign[2] in World War 2 was - in my view - completely immoral (as well as terrible ineffective). Indeed, his attitude towards the troops he sent to fight created one of the core national myths[3] of my country.
However to reject learning anything from Churchill because of that would deprive me of a lot.
One can learn a lot from Henry Ford about transforming industries. Does the fact that he had his newspapers publish anti-Semitic writings[4] mean we should ignore him completely?
Does Bill Gate's many ethical failings while building Microsoft into a monopoly mean we can't learn from how he structured his development teams during the browser wars (I didn't realize how ironic this example was until after I wrote it. Maybe Marc Andreessen could have learnt from him too..)
In business there are plenty of people with moral failing in one area or another.
In my view you are better sucking the marrow out of their teaching, and then viewing what they say through the lens of your own ethics.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign
[3] http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1398405363/61#61 (Sorry for the random forum link, but finding a better short summary of the "the English officers sent the Aussie Diggers to die while they stayed behind" thing is too hard right now.
[4] http://listverse.com/2010/02/12/10-terrible-bigots-in-modern...