Peter Thiel on Progress and Stagnation(docs.google.com)
docs.google.com
Peter Thiel on Progress and Stagnation
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zao_AyBhNb8TPWrQqgXn5NzNAgfEqzTIaFYos7wdqGI/edit?usp=drivesdk
184 comments
It's interesting that many of his date coincide with the WTF happened in 1971 website: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Wait, despite the perfect timing for a real cause that page is really trying to attribute it to monetary policy?
That is their take, but you gotta admit, something happened in the early 1970s.
They use the exact year of the oil crisis on their title. There was nothing financial about that one, it's entirely on the real part of the economy.
Yes, something happened on the early 70's. But that article is a biased gathering of disconnected evidence surrounded by a story that was set independently of any of that evidence and doesn't even make sense. It is still useful to point people to the problem, but it would be incredibly more useful if there were an actually good source we could use.
Yes, something happened on the early 70's. But that article is a biased gathering of disconnected evidence surrounded by a story that was set independently of any of that evidence and doesn't even make sense. It is still useful to point people to the problem, but it would be incredibly more useful if there were an actually good source we could use.
All the work done by wage earners when the US dollar was backed by gold alone was more valuable than the gold itself.
Even after the federal gold confiscation of the 1930's, maybe more so eventually because of increased productivity.
The vast majority of that wealth not only remained in the US, but was leveraged toward greater production in the US.
This led to increasing prosperity, and back when the system was half a century closer to being of the people, by the people, and for the people, prosperity was truly felt by the vast majority of people more than what you get today.
Half the charts on the site were fully predictable the day they turned the dollar into fiat currency.
As the value of the dollar declined, the work done by the wage earners became worth less than the gold their dollars were worth, and far less than when still backed just a few years earlier. Even though they were doing the same jobs for the same pay in US dollars so it didn't seem so bad at the time.
This was a serious reversal.
US consumers were manipulated from participants in a producer economy, into targets of an extractive economy.
At the maximum rate the _market_ could bear.
Even after the federal gold confiscation of the 1930's, maybe more so eventually because of increased productivity.
The vast majority of that wealth not only remained in the US, but was leveraged toward greater production in the US.
This led to increasing prosperity, and back when the system was half a century closer to being of the people, by the people, and for the people, prosperity was truly felt by the vast majority of people more than what you get today.
Half the charts on the site were fully predictable the day they turned the dollar into fiat currency.
As the value of the dollar declined, the work done by the wage earners became worth less than the gold their dollars were worth, and far less than when still backed just a few years earlier. Even though they were doing the same jobs for the same pay in US dollars so it didn't seem so bad at the time.
This was a serious reversal.
US consumers were manipulated from participants in a producer economy, into targets of an extractive economy.
At the maximum rate the _market_ could bear.
From first paragraph: this is a 56,000 word summary of Peter Thiel’s view on progress and stagnation in his own words, sourced from a number of his interviews and articles. This document consists only of direct quotes from Thiel, lightly edited for clarity (except for headings and where marked otherwise). Key quotes are in the summary. Compiled by Richard Ngo (@richardmcngo) and Jeremy Nixon (@jvnixon).
I can recommend listening to Thiels episode on Eric Weinsteins The Portal podcast if this sounds interesting to you.
I recommend that people listen to that episode even if it's not interesting to you. Very good food for thought.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s Audio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-peter-thiel/id146999...
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s Audio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-peter-thiel/id146999...
Thiel is interesting to me because he is so different than others in the SV bubble. Whether you agree with him or think he is the devil, at least he has independent views. I find a lot of people don’t think for themselves anymore.
People can achieve mainstream views through independent thought though.
If all your views line up with the mainstream you’re most definitely not thinking for yourself though. Thiel in fact suggests a question framed in way to force people to think for themselves:
> What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
> What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
> If all your views line up with the mainstream you’re most definitely not thinking for yourself though.
This doesn't make sense. You don't have to hold atypical views to think for yourself. Someone who thinks critically and for themselves and arrives at mainstream views is not wrong.
In fact, you'd expect that the majority of people who did so would arrive at mainstream views, unless you presuppose that mainstream views are wrong because they are mainstream. But that's a circular argument.
> What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
This doesn't force someone tho think for themselves. It forces someone to make a statement that they believe to be controversial. Nothing more. Thinking for yourself does not imply making controversial statements. Making controversial statements does not imply thinking for yourself.
This doesn't make sense. You don't have to hold atypical views to think for yourself. Someone who thinks critically and for themselves and arrives at mainstream views is not wrong.
In fact, you'd expect that the majority of people who did so would arrive at mainstream views, unless you presuppose that mainstream views are wrong because they are mainstream. But that's a circular argument.
> What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
This doesn't force someone tho think for themselves. It forces someone to make a statement that they believe to be controversial. Nothing more. Thinking for yourself does not imply making controversial statements. Making controversial statements does not imply thinking for yourself.
You can almost surely assert that the set of mainstream opinions contains at least one "wrong" opinion given the precedence of history. That is, of course, dependent on you believing that there are "wrong" opinions, which for some now has not been mainstream in some circles.
> You don't have to hold atypical views to think for yourself.
The causality goes the other way around. Most people really interested on not being different and will hold mainstream views without questioning. It's expected that not all those views are correct, and you won't make the same mistakes in an independent process.
The causality goes the other way around. Most people really interested on not being different and will hold mainstream views without questioning. It's expected that not all those views are correct, and you won't make the same mistakes in an independent process.
Thinking for your self does not imply a greater than average "holding" of atypical views. The people who came up with typical views thought for themselves, and people who synthesize their opinions based on similar information often reach similar conclusions.
> Most people really interested on not being different and will hold mainstream views without questioning.
Perhaps, but this doesn't imply the contrapositive, which was implied above (that holding mainstream views implies one does not think for themselves).
> Most people really interested on not being different and will hold mainstream views without questioning.
Perhaps, but this doesn't imply the contrapositive, which was implied above (that holding mainstream views implies one does not think for themselves).
> Thinking for your self does not imply a greater than average "holding" of atypical views.
Compared to making an effort to hold the typical views? How can it not imply that?
Compared to making an effort to hold the typical views? How can it not imply that?
> Compared to making an effort to hold the typical views? How can it not imply that?
I'm not sure what you mean. Can someone who thinks for themself arrive at "typical views"? If yes, then thinking for yourself does not imply anything about the views one holds.
To look at the other side: do you believe that a q-anon conspiracy theorist "thinks for themselves", or do they just buy into a non-mainstream, but still completely dogmatic, set of views?
I'm not sure what you mean. Can someone who thinks for themself arrive at "typical views"? If yes, then thinking for yourself does not imply anything about the views one holds.
To look at the other side: do you believe that a q-anon conspiracy theorist "thinks for themselves", or do they just buy into a non-mainstream, but still completely dogmatic, set of views?
> Can someone who thinks for themself arrive at "typical views"? If yes, then thinking for yourself does not imply anything about the views one holds.
Can someone flipping a non-biased coin 50 times have heads come up every flip? Yes. While theoretically possible, in reality it’s almost certainly a weighted coin.
Can someone flipping a non-biased coin 50 times have heads come up every flip? Yes. While theoretically possible, in reality it’s almost certainly a weighted coin.
Of course it's a weighted coin! Mainstream ideas are usually (not always, but usually) more correct than a randomly chosen alternative.
Mainstream ideas are often weighted by such things as "scientific consensus", "observation", and "evidence". That doesn't make someone who holds many of them suspicious.
Again, not always, but usually, the mainstream ideas got to be mainstream by being better than all the ideas that came before. It's certainly somewhat conservative to hold only mainstream ideas, but on the whole I'd expect someone who only held mainstream ideas to be more correct than someone who only held non-mainstream ideas.
Like, are you going to sit here and tell me that most of your views aren't mainstream?
Mainstream ideas are often weighted by such things as "scientific consensus", "observation", and "evidence". That doesn't make someone who holds many of them suspicious.
Again, not always, but usually, the mainstream ideas got to be mainstream by being better than all the ideas that came before. It's certainly somewhat conservative to hold only mainstream ideas, but on the whole I'd expect someone who only held mainstream ideas to be more correct than someone who only held non-mainstream ideas.
Like, are you going to sit here and tell me that most of your views aren't mainstream?
If all of your beliefs line up into neat little bundles, you should be suspicious because they’re prepackaged and put together.
The vast majority of society have prescribed views, that is their views are derived from their group identity.
Why is this an issue? Groups search for consensus, individuals search for truth.
The question isn’t to tease out a controversial answer, rather to assert an individual is not a mindless ideologue.
The vast majority of society have prescribed views, that is their views are derived from their group identity.
Why is this an issue? Groups search for consensus, individuals search for truth.
The question isn’t to tease out a controversial answer, rather to assert an individual is not a mindless ideologue.
Groups search for consensus, individuals search for truth.
It can get tiring to talk to yet another person that will explain to you how the theory of relativity is wrong when there's open house at the physics department, though...
It can get tiring to talk to yet another person that will explain to you how the theory of relativity is wrong when there's open house at the physics department, though...
It's an entropic argument. Mainstream views are the result of many loose assumptions and lots of loose reasoning. Differences compound exponentially, so if you agree with mainstream thinking almost everywhere then either your inputs and thinking must extraordinarily well-defined in precise agreement with everyone else or, more likely, you are human and therefore susceptible to the same groupthink mechanisms as the rest of us.
I'm not fond of this argument because it's easy to formulate poorly and difficult to formulate well.
Instead, I favor a simpler appeal to history: from our point of view, any random person picked from history would be likely to have at at least one closely held belief that would be considered highly problematic by modern standards. What reason do we have to believe that we are somehow above this trend?
I'm not fond of this argument because it's easy to formulate poorly and difficult to formulate well.
Instead, I favor a simpler appeal to history: from our point of view, any random person picked from history would be likely to have at at least one closely held belief that would be considered highly problematic by modern standards. What reason do we have to believe that we are somehow above this trend?
I think it is his heavy introvert side, which focuses on reflection and strategy. (In the pseudo-personality type world, "INTJ"). Entrepreneurs are typically ENTP, or ESTP and are extroverted, jump out and figure it out types. They reflect a whole lot less - strategize less - and power through things more.
I don't think he's that different beyond partisanship. Especially in the YC ecosystem with peers like Balaji Srinivasan. A lot of SV people want to "disrupt" basic foundations of our government like the education system.
I wonder how many people realize that disrupt literally means to break something.
That's really not what people are talking about when they talk about disruption. Granted, most people don't really know the theories well, but the disruption thesis is an actual set of theories put forward by an actual business academic, which are concrete and measurable, to explain certain business processes.
What strikes you as different about him? I can’t really articulate why exactly, but to me he’s right up there on the list of archetypical SV personalities.
honestly I think that's an artifact of how often he is imitated. having read more than my share of seed fund about pages in the past few months, there is particular flavor you encounter over and over again that can only be described like "ah yes, I see you also have read zero to one." heavy emphasis on the transformative over the incremental, hard tech, disinterest in pedigree and traction given a shamanistic insistance that they are uniquely capable of identifying the visionaries of tomorrow, constant reminders they go against the grain and buck consensus, punchy copy talking about bold iconoclasts making the future of tomorrow yadda yadda
the three big aesthetic/intellectual strains of sv thought as I see them are truetype protagonist gleaming tech optimism a la early pmarca blog, folksy practicality a la pg, and dark horse contrarianism a la thiel. leonardo, donatello, raphael (turtles, not painters). but he did originate the kernel of it and can't really be faulted for the imitators
what actually makes him interesting tho is he's a disciple of rene girard, who argued among other things that the basis of socialization and social conflict is mimesis, which goes a long way to explaining his fixation on avoidance of imitation (and makes the raft of imitators that much funnier imo)
the three big aesthetic/intellectual strains of sv thought as I see them are truetype protagonist gleaming tech optimism a la early pmarca blog, folksy practicality a la pg, and dark horse contrarianism a la thiel. leonardo, donatello, raphael (turtles, not painters). but he did originate the kernel of it and can't really be faulted for the imitators
what actually makes him interesting tho is he's a disciple of rene girard, who argued among other things that the basis of socialization and social conflict is mimesis, which goes a long way to explaining his fixation on avoidance of imitation (and makes the raft of imitators that much funnier imo)
Well, the blood thing comes to mind.
This is old. What's the date?
"...sourced from a number of his interviews and articles"
Looks like it might vary
Looks like it might vary
The doc itself was only put together recently, but it's composed of quotes and interviews from over the last decade.
Seems like he's stagnated.
as an obsessive observer of his over the past decade, I've been concerned... It could be a product of his increased concern over public media coverage in general (he keeps his really interesting views just to himself, as Nick Cammarata mentions on Twitter), and this trend may have only intensified recently, as he has been strangely quiet
The IPO has likely been taking up a lot of time. Also, there is a blackout period before most IPOs where those in the company are not allowed to talk about the company or 'sell' it. The SEC guidelines are pretty strict and jeopardizing XYZ% of the IPO can result in millions on the gambling table.
> Google also has $50 billion in cash. It has no idea how to invest that money in technology effectively ... if we're living in an accelerating technological world, and you have zero percent interest rates, you should be able to invest all of your money in things that will return it many times over. The fact is you're out of ideas.
Idea possibly bad: Free market progress is a force in balance with consolidation of power and interests. So some lack of progress can be explained by reaching a tipping point in the monopoly power where concentrated interests just kill anything disruptive. Michael Seibel has written about this.
Idea possibly bad: Free market progress is a force in balance with consolidation of power and interests. So some lack of progress can be explained by reaching a tipping point in the monopoly power where concentrated interests just kill anything disruptive. Michael Seibel has written about this.
In balance with? The free market is the mechanism for power consolidation, not its opponent. Companies merge and grow until they build a moat big enough to fend off their competitors and then the market enters nash equilibrium.
Growth (or anything chaotic, really) shakes up the stable condition, changes the rules, and lets new entrants compete with Goliath. That's why we covet it so much.
Growth (or anything chaotic, really) shakes up the stable condition, changes the rules, and lets new entrants compete with Goliath. That's why we covet it so much.
I think Eric Weinstein would agree with you on this point. You should really listen to his podcast with Peter Thiel where they talk about similar interests disrupting advancement (The Portal - Episode 1).
I don't buy the argument that the whole system is therefore useless and corrupt, but that it very much needs intervention to keep this sort of regulatory capture from occurring.
I don't buy the argument that the whole system is therefore useless and corrupt, but that it very much needs intervention to keep this sort of regulatory capture from occurring.
FAAMG is like 20% of the GDP of the USA, the state can't intervene with itself
Do what we did in the past with monopolies: break them up. Trust busting to increase diversity and competition, just like the railroads of past. I would consider the advent of social media to be on the level of the advent of the railroad or the car. Same with search (Google) and even Amazon (mega online store with fast delivery). At the very least subsidize Walmart or some other competitor to build out a competitive advantage and eliminate Amazons head start.
Very disappointed we don't have a Windows phone as an alternative also. I think 3 is the bare minimum for a technology to have good competition. So why not.
My overall point though is the same, regulatory capture is bad and we should fight it regardless of monopolies or not.
Very disappointed we don't have a Windows phone as an alternative also. I think 3 is the bare minimum for a technology to have good competition. So why not.
My overall point though is the same, regulatory capture is bad and we should fight it regardless of monopolies or not.
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Where did you get that idea? FAANG companies are valued at ~5 trillion USD (rough estimate). The US's GDP is 20 trillion USD. But the GDP is measured annually! The US has a GDP that's 4 times the value of the FAANG companies every year.
Thanks, I just found this better stat: "The “FAAMG” basket accounts for 18% of the total S&P 500 value"
It would be nice if there was an .epub format version of this.
I think the fundamental problem is that we have grown so used to the idea of advanced progress within our own lifetime that we now refuse to do anything where we cannot see the payoff within our own lifetimes, this means we will likely not have any more major multi-generational project timelines, which are necessary for things like mass human space travel, or even solving global warming.
Don't worry - I think it's pretty clear we're at the point now where if we don't solve global warming within a single generation, it's too late.
We’re the wrong generation to solve this problem, it’s already too late.
Some of the links are from 10 years ago, and it shows. His views on solar being too expensive for practical use seem anachronistic now, and I'm sure his opinion has changed with the market.
Some interesting insights. I never thought of "stagnation" of non computer tech as something due to overregulation. However, I'm a bit hesitant to allow unregulated biotech/medical research.
I am super ok with "stagnation" of technologies that have the potential to cause the extinction of our species.
The libertarian faith in deregulation offers an easy solution for all problems on only one condition: you must be too unimaginative to understand how it will go wrong. That's an easy condition for most people to meet. Deregulation also offers great opportunity in the form of resurrecting old hustles.
Regulatory capture is real, but so is the lobby that knows exactly why Chesterton's fence was put in place and can't wait to trick us into removing it.
Regulatory capture is real, but so is the lobby that knows exactly why Chesterton's fence was put in place and can't wait to trick us into removing it.
>“Clean tech” has become a euphemism for “energy too expensive to afford,”
. . . oh the non-clean is cheap for you. Expensive for the rest of us.
. . . oh the non-clean is cheap for you. Expensive for the rest of us.
Some of these quotes are 8-10 years old, referencing events older than that. Back then solar wasn't that good of an idea financially and you had scandals like Solyndra. Now it's finally beating the cheapest dirty energy sources.
Why should I think this man has special insight into the state of the world? He is quite rich, that is true. But if anything, by definition that means he is deeply out of touch with the needs, desires, and problems of the vast majority of the people on this planet.
Taking your comment at absolute face value, this essay is about technological progress, not the needs desires or problems of anybody.
It isn't an essay. It is a collection of quotes grouped by topic.
"progress" has a few definitions. It can mean simply "forward motion", in which case you are right. Or it can mean what I usually take it to mean: "gradual betterment" - unless you're a shark, what's the point of moving forward if not to improve. How can you improve if you don't understand what "better" is?
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To play devil's advocate: for capitalists to remain capitalists, they must successfully allocate capital, which requires a knowledge of the "needs, desired, and problems" of the consumer class. And the stock market is a mechanism for transferring capital from inefficient allocators to efficient ones.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice many capitalists accumulate capital in ways that are unfair and uncompetitive.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice many capitalists accumulate capital in ways that are unfair and uncompetitive.
> which requires a knowledge of the "needs, desired, and problems" of the consumer class
> In practice many capitalists accumulate capital in ways that are unfair and uncompetitive.
I don't think this is the right binary. It's not a choice between "better allocation" or "unfair". In my lifetime I've seen capitalism reward exploitation, cruelty, and abuse, without having some unfair/noncompetitive advantage. Walmart pays domestic employees a non-living wage, and exploits weak labor and environmental laws and "free trade" to produce goods at lower prices, and uses weaknesses in the political system ($$$) to avoid paying taxes. That's pure capitalism working as intended, not dirty trickery.
> In practice many capitalists accumulate capital in ways that are unfair and uncompetitive.
I don't think this is the right binary. It's not a choice between "better allocation" or "unfair". In my lifetime I've seen capitalism reward exploitation, cruelty, and abuse, without having some unfair/noncompetitive advantage. Walmart pays domestic employees a non-living wage, and exploits weak labor and environmental laws and "free trade" to produce goods at lower prices, and uses weaknesses in the political system ($$$) to avoid paying taxes. That's pure capitalism working as intended, not dirty trickery.
Because he’s self made. He got rich precisely by being in touch with the needs, desires, and problems of people. And also by being successful at investing, which also requires ability to read trends etc.
Would you also argue Warren Buffet (literally nicknamed oracle of Omaha) has no special insight because he’s rich?
Would you also argue Warren Buffet (literally nicknamed oracle of Omaha) has no special insight because he’s rich?
Being a good gambler does not make you a good person.
Warren Buffet has insight on what it's like to be rich, and insights on how to win at capitalism. That does not qualify him to speak about progress in general. Peter Thiel may be good at reading what trends will make him money, but I don't believe that makes him qualified to say what would make the world better (i.e. progress).
Warren Buffet has insight on what it's like to be rich, and insights on how to win at capitalism. That does not qualify him to speak about progress in general. Peter Thiel may be good at reading what trends will make him money, but I don't believe that makes him qualified to say what would make the world better (i.e. progress).
If you agree with the premise that people will spend money for what will make them better off instead of worse (following their own judgements criteria, which can't be dismissed, as flawed as they may be, this is the principle behind democracy), then getting rich by winning at capitalism means this person aggregated the population preferences better than other persons.
This means they became rich as a consequence of everyone being made better off. So I would personally value their insights.
For example, I may not believe that having pizzas or french fries delivered still fresh and hot to my home by having them cooked inside a car means "progress", but if enough people are ready to pay for that, it is progress. We are all better off based on the majority opinion.
Reality is the ultimate judge. What makes people better off will earn money, freely given away by these people ("Shut up and take my money!")
This means they became rich as a consequence of everyone being made better off. So I would personally value their insights.
For example, I may not believe that having pizzas or french fries delivered still fresh and hot to my home by having them cooked inside a car means "progress", but if enough people are ready to pay for that, it is progress. We are all better off based on the majority opinion.
Reality is the ultimate judge. What makes people better off will earn money, freely given away by these people ("Shut up and take my money!")
So explain:
1. The cutting of research into a vaccine for the original sars coronavirus. I think a lot of us would be happier if we had that basic research done right now. Clear failure of market-based solutions / forward thinking. Same vein: lack of real change on global warming.
2. Social media companies optimizing their algorithms to make people unhappy, so they spend more time on the site.
Basically, no I do not accept your original premise.
1. The cutting of research into a vaccine for the original sars coronavirus. I think a lot of us would be happier if we had that basic research done right now. Clear failure of market-based solutions / forward thinking. Same vein: lack of real change on global warming.
2. Social media companies optimizing their algorithms to make people unhappy, so they spend more time on the site.
Basically, no I do not accept your original premise.
For 1: most people do not care about diseases that do not matter. Most people consider the common cold normal and acceptable. I was very sad such research never went very far, for I believe viruses are way more deadly that we think: as we know now that the EBV can cause many bad things long term, there is no reason to think other viruses can do the same. The fact that these 2 separate diseases are called the "kissing disease" (EBV) and the "common cold" (coronaviruses) gives a fake sense of safety. SARS was the perfect scare to get research started!
HOWEVER, most people do not care about viruses, and problems in general besides imminent danger. If you too care, realize we are in the minority. Before covid19, most people though the wearing of masks when one has a cold in asia was overkill. Even now, in the midst of a pandemic, the wearing of masks is a hard sell. I fully expect all basic precaution like transparent plastic sheets in front of the checkout to be gone as soon as the pandemic is over, because we are in the minority.
For most people, the experience of directly seeing the person doing their checkout is preferable to the alternatives. It makes them happier. It is not hard to expand that to other issues: even for a virus like Ebola, research doesn't get much money. Clearly, it means that at the population level, we just don't care.
2. Have you noticed how people play various games like Zynga, which accomplishes nothing? Just like videogames in general: unless you are being paid for playing (professional player), you are getting nothing out of it, except maybe better reflexes - but you could achieve the same result in much less time. Social networks are the same. What am I accomplishing here? Nothing. You could even say, as I often talk to people who reject my premises, HN makes me unhappy. Yet I post here?
So you must consider that what we consider make people, you or me unhappy is an oversimplification. We must gain something else out of this - maybe a dopamine hit?
Social networks are all in competition with eachother. You will prefer the one that gives you the best overall experience, the largest dopamine hit with the lowest unhappiness.
This social network increase overall happiness. There may be more than one: facebook for regular people, HN for hackers, Twitch for gamers, etc.
It's hard to overcome the fallacy of composition (the tendancy to extrapolate from our own experience to the population level): what makes us happy make make 50% of the people miserable, and vice-versa.
HOWEVER, most people do not care about viruses, and problems in general besides imminent danger. If you too care, realize we are in the minority. Before covid19, most people though the wearing of masks when one has a cold in asia was overkill. Even now, in the midst of a pandemic, the wearing of masks is a hard sell. I fully expect all basic precaution like transparent plastic sheets in front of the checkout to be gone as soon as the pandemic is over, because we are in the minority.
For most people, the experience of directly seeing the person doing their checkout is preferable to the alternatives. It makes them happier. It is not hard to expand that to other issues: even for a virus like Ebola, research doesn't get much money. Clearly, it means that at the population level, we just don't care.
2. Have you noticed how people play various games like Zynga, which accomplishes nothing? Just like videogames in general: unless you are being paid for playing (professional player), you are getting nothing out of it, except maybe better reflexes - but you could achieve the same result in much less time. Social networks are the same. What am I accomplishing here? Nothing. You could even say, as I often talk to people who reject my premises, HN makes me unhappy. Yet I post here?
So you must consider that what we consider make people, you or me unhappy is an oversimplification. We must gain something else out of this - maybe a dopamine hit?
Social networks are all in competition with eachother. You will prefer the one that gives you the best overall experience, the largest dopamine hit with the lowest unhappiness.
This social network increase overall happiness. There may be more than one: facebook for regular people, HN for hackers, Twitch for gamers, etc.
It's hard to overcome the fallacy of composition (the tendancy to extrapolate from our own experience to the population level): what makes us happy make make 50% of the people miserable, and vice-versa.
> Clearly, it means that at the population level, we just don't care.
You are right in both of these descriptions. What we want (are willing to spend money on) and what is going to make us happiest, are different things. And capitalism rewards finding things that we will spend money on. Not things that will make us happier.
But can you imagine a world where we didn’t make billionaires out of people for making us unhappy? For destroying the environment through resource extraction? Imagine we took all that money and funded and rewarded the scientists who had the forethought to develop a coronavirus vaccine. We’d maybe all be able to see the checkout person‘s whole face, and hug our family and friends right now.
Since capitalism rewards the opposite of that, the only way we get to that world or closer to it is by abandoning capitalism as the gold standard for social organization. One small step towards that is to stop idolizing billionaires like Thiel
You are right in both of these descriptions. What we want (are willing to spend money on) and what is going to make us happiest, are different things. And capitalism rewards finding things that we will spend money on. Not things that will make us happier.
But can you imagine a world where we didn’t make billionaires out of people for making us unhappy? For destroying the environment through resource extraction? Imagine we took all that money and funded and rewarded the scientists who had the forethought to develop a coronavirus vaccine. We’d maybe all be able to see the checkout person‘s whole face, and hug our family and friends right now.
Since capitalism rewards the opposite of that, the only way we get to that world or closer to it is by abandoning capitalism as the gold standard for social organization. One small step towards that is to stop idolizing billionaires like Thiel
> We’d maybe all be able to see the checkout person‘s whole face, and hug our family and friends right now.
Or maybe not, just like how the FDA fumbled the test development while forbidding private alternatives to avoid losing face.
I can imagine such a word, were graft and power decides what project gets the money, instead of the population aggregated preferences through the free market.
I seriously believe we would all be worse off. It is not about justifying our own preferences, but thinking about all of mankind. If the vast majority of the world population believes "destroying the environment through resource extraction" is needed to elevate their standard our living to ours, we have to gracefully accept they are our equals, and to collectively deal the problem later on.
I think you should consider that what we want and what is going to make us happier is generally the same. There are rare exceptions, and we take offense that capitalism rewards them too, but they remain exceptions.
Or maybe not, just like how the FDA fumbled the test development while forbidding private alternatives to avoid losing face.
I can imagine such a word, were graft and power decides what project gets the money, instead of the population aggregated preferences through the free market.
I seriously believe we would all be worse off. It is not about justifying our own preferences, but thinking about all of mankind. If the vast majority of the world population believes "destroying the environment through resource extraction" is needed to elevate their standard our living to ours, we have to gracefully accept they are our equals, and to collectively deal the problem later on.
I think you should consider that what we want and what is going to make us happier is generally the same. There are rare exceptions, and we take offense that capitalism rewards them too, but they remain exceptions.
But Peter Thiel specifically did none of these things. He initially got rich via PayPal, which simplified safe online payments, which is clearly something people wanted at that time and not particularly immoral. You might say it was progress.
A decent portion of his wealth came from his early investment in facebook. Literally the second example I gave of capitalism rewarding harm.
Is Facebook purely harmful though, or is there also progress made in connecting people together?
And in any case Thiel doesn’t need to have a 100% perfectly “focused-on-your-definition-of-progress-only” track record to be worth listening to. Just apply that standard consistently and see how many people can fulfill it.
OTOH, building something like PayPal alone will make a lot of other people interested in what you’ve got to say. You cannot deny that someone who achieves such a feat when no one else does (besides Elon Musk) has some special insight. But the fact that you do deny that seems like it’s rooted in some form of subjective dislike.
Edit: just read your reply to sibling comment, confirmed my suspicion here.
And in any case Thiel doesn’t need to have a 100% perfectly “focused-on-your-definition-of-progress-only” track record to be worth listening to. Just apply that standard consistently and see how many people can fulfill it.
OTOH, building something like PayPal alone will make a lot of other people interested in what you’ve got to say. You cannot deny that someone who achieves such a feat when no one else does (besides Elon Musk) has some special insight. But the fact that you do deny that seems like it’s rooted in some form of subjective dislike.
Edit: just read your reply to sibling comment, confirmed my suspicion here.
> Why should I think this man has special insight into the state of the world?
You shouldn't, you should read it for yourself and make up your own mind. If a lot of people say something is interesting or good, it's probably worth at least having a look.
My conclusion from skimming it is that it's fairly interesting, although I disagree with most of his conclusions.
You shouldn't, you should read it for yourself and make up your own mind. If a lot of people say something is interesting or good, it's probably worth at least having a look.
My conclusion from skimming it is that it's fairly interesting, although I disagree with most of his conclusions.
Which conclusions do you disagree with?
I've listened to some of these interviews and agree completely with the basic premise. However, I don't think it's correct that China's success is entirely explained from simply copying America. Of course copying is responsible for part of their success, but there are clear examples of the reverse. For example, integration of payments into WeChat, which has been duplicated by Facebook and others (but not as successfully as in China). They certainly disruptively innovate by making extremely cheap electric cars that poor Chinese can afford.
The language barrier is really making it difficult to see progress in China even for people interested in a particular space.
For example, in just the VR space, if I follow the most popular VR related subreddits and podcasts I often miss important Chinese VR hardware and software. And sometimes the hardware is better than anything available in the US.
I only found out about these cutting edge haptic gloves called Dexmo because I happened upon a review of an American product on an expert blog and the review compared them to a Chinese version.
https://skarredghost.com/2020/04/07/senseglove-vr-haptics-gl...
For example, in just the VR space, if I follow the most popular VR related subreddits and podcasts I often miss important Chinese VR hardware and software. And sometimes the hardware is better than anything available in the US.
I only found out about these cutting edge haptic gloves called Dexmo because I happened upon a review of an American product on an expert blog and the review compared them to a Chinese version.
https://skarredghost.com/2020/04/07/senseglove-vr-haptics-gl...
China did what Germany did in the 19th century and Japan did after World War II but differently. Germany and Japan copied and made own things until they were experts and made better things than the original. China did that differently, they invited western companies through cheap labour and made officially those things, copied it then and became experts and eventually made their own products, which at least as good or better than the originals.
It is also helpful, that the Chinese government can just do things w/o any meaningful interference. In the 1960s and 70s, German cities wanted to build huge motorway like road through the city centres, which would have destroyed the cities, many of those project could be prevented from happening. Thiel would have critised those protests as a barrier for progress. Like he does, when he is mentioning zoning laws prevented a high-speed railway in San Francisco.
It is also helpful, that the Chinese government can just do things w/o any meaningful interference. In the 1960s and 70s, German cities wanted to build huge motorway like road through the city centres, which would have destroyed the cities, many of those project could be prevented from happening. Thiel would have critised those protests as a barrier for progress. Like he does, when he is mentioning zoning laws prevented a high-speed railway in San Francisco.
The future is coming. In China.
Energy:
- Million-volt DC power transmission over thousands of kilometers is routine.
- Solar panels get cheaper every year.
- 46 nuclear reactors in operation, 11 under construction.
Transportation:
- 35,000km of high speed rail.
- Several major cities, including Shenzhen (16 million people), use all electric taxis and buses now.
- 600km/hr maglev train in test.
Medicine:
- First coronavirus vaccine approved and being given to PLA soldiers.
- Epidemic under control, most of country back at work.
Electronics:
- In-country manufacture of everything except largest CPUs.
Finance:
- Country runs financial system; financial system does not run country.
Government:
- Government is mildly oppressive but not incompetent.
Energy:
- Million-volt DC power transmission over thousands of kilometers is routine.
- Solar panels get cheaper every year.
- 46 nuclear reactors in operation, 11 under construction.
Transportation:
- 35,000km of high speed rail.
- Several major cities, including Shenzhen (16 million people), use all electric taxis and buses now.
- 600km/hr maglev train in test.
Medicine:
- First coronavirus vaccine approved and being given to PLA soldiers.
- Epidemic under control, most of country back at work.
Electronics:
- In-country manufacture of everything except largest CPUs.
Finance:
- Country runs financial system; financial system does not run country.
Government:
- Government is mildly oppressive but not incompetent.
Ten years ago I'd agree, but I don't think outright genocide qualifies as "mildly oppressive".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide_of_Uyghurs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide_of_Uyghurs
That's not genocide, it's forced assimilation. China is trying to break the stranglehold of Islam. That's tough, as two decades of wars in the Middle East have taught the US.
'mildly oppressive', while literally millions of Uyghurs are being led into nazi style concentration camp trains and hong kong is not free anymore.
Or a few decades ago, they captured mothers, 'tied them up like pigs' and physically forced abortions and sterilizations on them.
Or a few decades ago, they captured mothers, 'tied them up like pigs' and physically forced abortions and sterilizations on them.
Nitpicking, but this is not a few decades ago, its a few years ago. Enforced the one child policy by force in autonomous province, basically removing the enforcement power of the governor and city mayors.
[edit] To be clear, i'm not saying this is right, i'm saying that right now, the power is way too concentrated in Xi Xinping's hands.
[edit] To be clear, i'm not saying this is right, i'm saying that right now, the power is way too concentrated in Xi Xinping's hands.
When you say "Nazi-style concentration camps" do you think millions are soon to be killed?
"mildly oppressive" - are you kidding?
China is as "mildly oppressive" just as much as a bullet to the head is "mildly inconvenient".
The author posted his Twitter announcement on HN a few hours ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899990
Couldn’t edit the document so I added a few corrections there
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899990
Couldn’t edit the document so I added a few corrections there
On Page 92, under Biotech,
>The problem that I remain the most passionate about is for us to make some real and continued progress in the fight against aging and death.
But how does one help? Really. I've been in academia for more than 10 years. I've had done some really promising stuff and know people with pretty cool projects that are 1,000% worth pursuing. Yet I have found virtually zero support as I don't play well with the "the politics of science".
The problem is that the "politics of science" are typically against "actually doing science" as there is no surplus of time, energy and willpower that allows one to pursue both ends.
I would like people to consider that this is one of the biggest obstacles hindering human development (in science at least). This thing really needs to change, for the benefit of everybody involved.
>The problem that I remain the most passionate about is for us to make some real and continued progress in the fight against aging and death.
But how does one help? Really. I've been in academia for more than 10 years. I've had done some really promising stuff and know people with pretty cool projects that are 1,000% worth pursuing. Yet I have found virtually zero support as I don't play well with the "the politics of science".
The problem is that the "politics of science" are typically against "actually doing science" as there is no surplus of time, energy and willpower that allows one to pursue both ends.
I would like people to consider that this is one of the biggest obstacles hindering human development (in science at least). This thing really needs to change, for the benefit of everybody involved.
Would you please explain a bit further what you mean by politics of science and how it's agains't actually doing science?
Not GP, but science is becoming increasingly hierarchical in it's funding mechanisms, placing bigger bets on bigger projects that reflect the perspective of older scientists and the status quo. This pulls funding away from up and coming scientists with new ideas they'd like to try out. Classic increase of risk aversion.
And note, too, that the rule change made decades ago in the US, banning universities from imposing a mandatory retirement age on faculty members has had a devastating impact on the development of younger scholars and the funding of new ideas, including my own field. This is in stark contrast to places like South Korea, where mandatory retirement at 65 years for faculty at state universities has kept the pipeline of scholarship open and flowing.
> open and flowing
Open and flowing, but to the US. A high quality researcher, nobel price winner (etc.) does not have its intrinsic value turn to 0 once the clock reaches 65y.
As we innovate more than SK, I welcome their generous gift of talented researchers.
Open and flowing, but to the US. A high quality researcher, nobel price winner (etc.) does not have its intrinsic value turn to 0 once the clock reaches 65y.
As we innovate more than SK, I welcome their generous gift of talented researchers.
> As we innovate more than SK
Not in my field, where superannuated faculty members in the late 70s rehash ideas from their postdoc days. Nobel laureates are few, but every tenured faculty member can hang on forever. The pace in SK and the research authority given younger scholars is invigorating to those few outsiders who sample it.
Not in my field, where superannuated faculty members in the late 70s rehash ideas from their postdoc days. Nobel laureates are few, but every tenured faculty member can hang on forever. The pace in SK and the research authority given younger scholars is invigorating to those few outsiders who sample it.
A significant part of the problem lies in the issues presented by you and the parent comment.
"Science advances one funeral at a time". Make this premise obsolete and we will have a massive roi in science, probably keeping expenditure within the same order of magnitude. I am not speculating, I am truly convinced of it.
"Science advances one funeral at a time". Make this premise obsolete and we will have a massive roi in science, probably keeping expenditure within the same order of magnitude. I am not speculating, I am truly convinced of it.
Thanks for explaining. alicemaz above gave further details.
There are several funds and dozens of companies trying to solve this problem (appeared in the last 5 years or so). I would consider searching there.
I'm not even remotely related to biotech stuff, but I'm considering moving there in a couple of years just because it's the most important problem I could possibly be working on.
EDIT: "There" is the ecosystem around Aubrey de Grey (whatever you think of him personally).
I'm not even remotely related to biotech stuff, but I'm considering moving there in a couple of years just because it's the most important problem I could possibly be working on.
EDIT: "There" is the ecosystem around Aubrey de Grey (whatever you think of him personally).
the way my and my partners look at this is an infrastructure problem. our hope anyway is we can build tools and methods (better mathematical modeling, better bioinformatics software, faster/more accurate sequencing, eventually standardized gear for continuous process chemistry) that can serve startups of a bioengineering bent while also making it more practical for independent researchers to work outside academia. the biologist of our team is particularly interested in longevity research herself so partly we're trying to make the things that she'd need to do her own research 5-10 years down the line
I'm pessimistic about institutions but optimistic about people. I think the academy is an impediment to a lot of interesting and necessary projects, not just here but in general. risk-averse, prestige-obsessed, heavily bureaucratized. most of the institutions in our society are like this, hollowed out. there's a lot of basic research that needs to be done, so I think the highest leverage thing we can do is knock down barriers to more people being able to do it. route around the institutions
I'm pessimistic about institutions but optimistic about people. I think the academy is an impediment to a lot of interesting and necessary projects, not just here but in general. risk-averse, prestige-obsessed, heavily bureaucratized. most of the institutions in our society are like this, hollowed out. there's a lot of basic research that needs to be done, so I think the highest leverage thing we can do is knock down barriers to more people being able to do it. route around the institutions
Hello Alice, off-topic but it's great to see you here.
I keep a binder at my desk with printed articles from the web that I find interesting enough to want to keep forever (and give to my children one day). In there is your take on 'playing to win' on the minecraft economy. Thanks for that.
I keep a binder at my desk with printed articles from the web that I find interesting enough to want to keep forever (and give to my children one day). In there is your take on 'playing to win' on the minecraft economy. Thanks for that.
hi! thanks for the kind words aha, always nice to hear people appreciate what I put out. trying to get a bit better than my current average of one post per year lol
> But how does one help?
People live for about 80 years. The first 20 are spent learning the ropes, the middle 40 are spent doing good work, and the final 20 are (ideally) spent in repose and reflection. Half of life is spent contributing to family/society, and half is spent in dependence on family/society; 1 year of contribution for every 1 year of dependence.
By adding even 20 years of quality life, we would make a tremendous leap forward in terms of human productivity, wealth generation and quality of life; instead of 1 year of contribution for every year of dependence, you'd have 1.5 years. That would do wonders in terms of building wealth and improving lives.
People live for about 80 years. The first 20 are spent learning the ropes, the middle 40 are spent doing good work, and the final 20 are (ideally) spent in repose and reflection. Half of life is spent contributing to family/society, and half is spent in dependence on family/society; 1 year of contribution for every 1 year of dependence.
By adding even 20 years of quality life, we would make a tremendous leap forward in terms of human productivity, wealth generation and quality of life; instead of 1 year of contribution for every year of dependence, you'd have 1.5 years. That would do wonders in terms of building wealth and improving lives.
Totally agreed. Dumped (hopefully temporarily) a decade of bio training due to this. I think the fundamental issue with every attempt at reinventing biology research is that they end up recruiting the same professors from academia who bring the exact same culture with them.
The ideal institution that can break this cycle will have funding (only limited, see Hammings lecture) from a source with no questions or expectations, and be worked on by people with almost no academic influence. But they can't be herectics or crackpots because you can't just hack your way around biology like you did with computers. This is more akin to reinventing the transistor than creating tiktok.
The ideal institution that can break this cycle will have funding (only limited, see Hammings lecture) from a source with no questions or expectations, and be worked on by people with almost no academic influence. But they can't be herectics or crackpots because you can't just hack your way around biology like you did with computers. This is more akin to reinventing the transistor than creating tiktok.
I think Thiel is worth listening to, but sometimes his contrarianism flips into derangement:
> [Peter Robinson: In 2016, how many professors at the top five law schools endorsed Donald Trump?] [2] Zero. And the law school example's interesting because you would think it's one where if you took the, a lot of academic fields are more internal to academia, but law is one that cashes out in a governmental political context, and taking a contrarian position in theory is quite valuable. If you're a tenured law professor at Harvard, and you're the only law professor at a top law school to endorse Trump, I don't know, I think there would be like a 50% chance you would've gotten nominated to the Supreme Court or something like that. So it seems like it's the sort of thing where the contrarian thing would be quite valuable, and then if nobody takes that bet, I mean, wow, there must be some unbelievable enforcement mechanisms, and it's sort of like a gentle version of North Korea.
What's more likely: Harvard law professors don't endorse Trump because he's unfit to lead a parade, or they are subject to (gentle) totalitarian barbarism?
> [Peter Robinson: In 2016, how many professors at the top five law schools endorsed Donald Trump?] [2] Zero. And the law school example's interesting because you would think it's one where if you took the, a lot of academic fields are more internal to academia, but law is one that cashes out in a governmental political context, and taking a contrarian position in theory is quite valuable. If you're a tenured law professor at Harvard, and you're the only law professor at a top law school to endorse Trump, I don't know, I think there would be like a 50% chance you would've gotten nominated to the Supreme Court or something like that. So it seems like it's the sort of thing where the contrarian thing would be quite valuable, and then if nobody takes that bet, I mean, wow, there must be some unbelievable enforcement mechanisms, and it's sort of like a gentle version of North Korea.
What's more likely: Harvard law professors don't endorse Trump because he's unfit to lead a parade, or they are subject to (gentle) totalitarian barbarism?
Yeah, came here to say this too. There are much more convincing ways of making this point.
I would say the second. Trump supporters in tech companies are certainly subject to (gentle) totalitarian barbarism. I know some people who support Trump privately who would never defend Trump in a work setting. It's simply not worth losing your job over.
I would assume it's worse in academia.
I would assume it's worse in academia.
> Harvard law professors don't endorse Trump because he's unfit to lead a parade
Even if you take a more cynical view, and assume that some of them will be selfish, the sort of person who's a tenured law professor at a top university probably values the opinions of their colleagues and peers. And if one of them were to do this, and they got nominated to the supreme court, their peers would see them (correctly) as sellouts, as would, likely, history.
There's nothing sinister here; law professors didn't do it because either (a) they were responsible or (b) they have too much self-respect/self-regard (depending on level of cynicism). Thiel's thesis would only really work if becoming a Supreme Court justice was some sort of all-overriding imperative for lawyers, like Sauron looking for rings.
Even if you take a more cynical view, and assume that some of them will be selfish, the sort of person who's a tenured law professor at a top university probably values the opinions of their colleagues and peers. And if one of them were to do this, and they got nominated to the supreme court, their peers would see them (correctly) as sellouts, as would, likely, history.
There's nothing sinister here; law professors didn't do it because either (a) they were responsible or (b) they have too much self-respect/self-regard (depending on level of cynicism). Thiel's thesis would only really work if becoming a Supreme Court justice was some sort of all-overriding imperative for lawyers, like Sauron looking for rings.
I think his point is that, Trump provided the opportunity for these law professors to get their "dream job" (a seat on the supreme court, your name is in the history books for centuries). And yet, NONE of them took this up.
His point is that the groupthink at Harvard is so strong that people will actively demolish their dreams to stay within the group.
His point is that the groupthink at Harvard is so strong that people will actively demolish their dreams to stay within the group.
Thiel's insistence that Harvard law professors ought to have put [in this instance highly unlikely] personal advancement opportunities ahead of their actual beliefs about the fitness of a presidential candidate for office when deciding whether to make an endorsement says much about Thiel and little about groupthink at Harvard.
>I think there would be like a 50% chance you would've gotten nominated to the Supreme Court or something like that.
Anyone who follows politics knows the only way you're getting nominated to the Supreme Court by a Republican president is if you've been doing the Heritage Foundation, Values Voters circuit. There's no way they're going to pick some Harvard professor over someone who's been hobnobbing donors for decades.
Anyone who follows politics knows the only way you're getting nominated to the Supreme Court by a Republican president is if you've been doing the Heritage Foundation, Values Voters circuit. There's no way they're going to pick some Harvard professor over someone who's been hobnobbing donors for decades.
Just take all the money and build loads of solar and wind power.
> There are people who say that death is natural to which I think the response always has to be that there is nothing more natural for us than to fight death.
I think this is an excellent quote, but it doesn't convince me. Death is one of the only things we humans all have in common. It is the only great equalizer.
Unless every human is able to live forever, I will remain skeptical about a death cure being a good thing for humanity. Sure, you can argue about defeating death by degrees (e.g. extending a lifespan to 150, 200 years) but again, if it isn't available for everyone, I can't see that going well.
I think this is an excellent quote, but it doesn't convince me. Death is one of the only things we humans all have in common. It is the only great equalizer.
Unless every human is able to live forever, I will remain skeptical about a death cure being a good thing for humanity. Sure, you can argue about defeating death by degrees (e.g. extending a lifespan to 150, 200 years) but again, if it isn't available for everyone, I can't see that going well.
The premise of Libertarianism in this doc is flawed. The idea that fewer laws gives rise to freedom is a Conservative distortion. Fewer laws gives freedom to the most powerful few to do what they like to the rest. The freedom we need for social progress and innovation, is the freedom and rights of the productive class, ie workers, to help society through creative destruction. Their freedom and rights can only be provided through robustly defended and well-crafted economic opportunity laws, including a permissive patent & copyright culture. Since certain Conservative interests will always be opposed to certain creative destructions, when they are too powerful it doesn't happen. That's why autocratic empires don't develop at anywhere near their potential rate, except in the narrow channel they point themselves in (war for Nazi Germany, manufacturing for modern China). That's why the printing press languished in the Han Empire, but lead to the Scientific Revolution in less autocratic/fragmented Europe, where people were able to say heretical anti-establishment stuff by hopping between legal jurisdictions.
In jurisdictions where/when those laws have been well crafted, spectacular social progress has followed:
- in Athens, the crafting of the Solonian Constitution created broader property rights which lead to the renaissance that was Ancient Greece; which was later destroyed by the absolute rule of Alexander's heirs
- in Rome, the crafting of the Law of Twelve Tables lead to the Roman Empire; it was destroyed by Marcus Aurelius when he eliminated the last voting rights, handing hereditary power to his son
- in England, the crafting of Parliament led to the Industrial Revolution because it undid domestic Royal Monopolies; it has been continually eroded by Conservative interests over the centuries, today the UK is not epicenter of economic opportunity
- in the USA, the crafting of the Constitution designed a classless, more equal opportunity society, far from perfect, it nevertheless resulted in unprecedented economic growth resulting in the USA's dominance during the 20th Century; it almost died at the end of the 1800's as the robber barons sought to create monopolies that would define a new Conservative class system based on the wealthy people of that day; today it is under attack again by large companies who are eating/disappearing upstart competitors; Republican policies, and activist Republican judges are eroding antitrust. Libertarians want to disassemble what made America great, whether they know it or not.
In jurisdictions where/when those laws have been well crafted, spectacular social progress has followed:
- in Athens, the crafting of the Solonian Constitution created broader property rights which lead to the renaissance that was Ancient Greece; which was later destroyed by the absolute rule of Alexander's heirs
- in Rome, the crafting of the Law of Twelve Tables lead to the Roman Empire; it was destroyed by Marcus Aurelius when he eliminated the last voting rights, handing hereditary power to his son
- in England, the crafting of Parliament led to the Industrial Revolution because it undid domestic Royal Monopolies; it has been continually eroded by Conservative interests over the centuries, today the UK is not epicenter of economic opportunity
- in the USA, the crafting of the Constitution designed a classless, more equal opportunity society, far from perfect, it nevertheless resulted in unprecedented economic growth resulting in the USA's dominance during the 20th Century; it almost died at the end of the 1800's as the robber barons sought to create monopolies that would define a new Conservative class system based on the wealthy people of that day; today it is under attack again by large companies who are eating/disappearing upstart competitors; Republican policies, and activist Republican judges are eroding antitrust. Libertarians want to disassemble what made America great, whether they know it or not.
> If meaningful scientific and technological progress occurs, then we reasonably would expect greater economic prosperity (though this may be offset by other factors). And also in reverse: If economic gains, as measured by certain key indicators, have been limited or nonexistent, then perhaps so has scientific and technological progress.
My eye-opening realization of American stagnation came in history class during high school. The teacher told us the narrative of progress through the 1800s, how industrialization brought more wealth and electricity improved quality of life. He spoke of an increase in wages that came with it: each decade, Americans were wealthier than before.
People assume the lives of their children would be better than their own. But in the 1960s, an American man could support a family of five: himself, his wife, and three kids was the norm. Sure, part of that can be explained by sexism and gender issues of the time, but the point was that women didn't have to work because a single income was sufficient to support a family. Today, most families are dual-income[0] as a matter of necessity, not necessarily desire. It's no longer obvious that progress will continue, and certainly not obvious that the progress we are making is a good thing for most people.
My grandparents, separately, once remarked that they had seen "perhaps the last real changes in quality of life any generation would have." Running water in homes, indoor toilets, microwaves, refrigerators, and the development of computer networks all happened in the 20th century. They predicted continued stagnation in human innovation, that most of the universe's great ideas had already been discovered.
Where are the big, boundary-pushing changes to life that the relentless pursuit of technology had promised? Where do we go from here? My father once speculated it would come from far-field wireless power transmission. That would kick off the next space race, pushing humanity farther into space than we could ever imagine by fuel. And certainly it would push a new generation of innovation forward, enabling ideas that would not have been possible before. What are the next transformative technologies waiting just around the corner, capable of changing and improving life for everyone on the planet?
[0]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm
My eye-opening realization of American stagnation came in history class during high school. The teacher told us the narrative of progress through the 1800s, how industrialization brought more wealth and electricity improved quality of life. He spoke of an increase in wages that came with it: each decade, Americans were wealthier than before.
People assume the lives of their children would be better than their own. But in the 1960s, an American man could support a family of five: himself, his wife, and three kids was the norm. Sure, part of that can be explained by sexism and gender issues of the time, but the point was that women didn't have to work because a single income was sufficient to support a family. Today, most families are dual-income[0] as a matter of necessity, not necessarily desire. It's no longer obvious that progress will continue, and certainly not obvious that the progress we are making is a good thing for most people.
My grandparents, separately, once remarked that they had seen "perhaps the last real changes in quality of life any generation would have." Running water in homes, indoor toilets, microwaves, refrigerators, and the development of computer networks all happened in the 20th century. They predicted continued stagnation in human innovation, that most of the universe's great ideas had already been discovered.
Where are the big, boundary-pushing changes to life that the relentless pursuit of technology had promised? Where do we go from here? My father once speculated it would come from far-field wireless power transmission. That would kick off the next space race, pushing humanity farther into space than we could ever imagine by fuel. And certainly it would push a new generation of innovation forward, enabling ideas that would not have been possible before. What are the next transformative technologies waiting just around the corner, capable of changing and improving life for everyone on the planet?
[0]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm
I agree that the hard problems are not being worked on, that's what happens when VCs descend on the market and are looking to 100X their investments.
It's incredibly hard to work hard on difficult problems when you have to grow for growth's sake and pump out numbers that satisfy the market/VCs every quarter.
Most people are not wired to be explorers or risk takers. That's where the whole rent-seeking mentality comes from, which is a form of risk aversion, and the incumbent laws and whatnot have put a hard stop on "what could have been".
Only a part of the mission, but there should be ambitious action taken to dramatically improve education and provide truly equal opportunity for all in the US. Pay teachers properly, give a proper education in all schools especially impoverished neighborhoods. The US should be ranking higher than it is in Math/Reading/Science scores compared to other countries. Other special programs to remedy the huge racial wealth gap from the slavery/Jim Crow/other institutional racism legacy. The US can and should do a much better job at providing better education and opportunities for all of its citizens.
Robotics and AI have the ability to transform a great deal. We have still not fully explored Crispr and what's possible with biotech. AR & VR I think, once they reach maturity, will also transform society. Finally, I do think cryptocurrency will change as much about society as double entry bookkeeping did in the 14th century. This change may not be as radical for 1st world countries, but I think it will allow many developing countries to catch up much more rapidly.
Why do we have to go? The big question is: What is awareness? That awareness is wherever you are. No need to go to outer space. However, once you can create awareness artificially, you can send it into space, without human time constraints. There is no problem in travelling for millions of years if your awareness doesn't end.
You should at least bring up the story of Max Planck in the late 1800s. He was basically told not to enter physics, because supposedly nearly all of physics has already been discovery. We know what came next in physics.
We don't know the future, and there's no way to say for sure that we've see the last big changes in life. Your grandparents could be proven laughably wrong in next few decades.
That said, it is likely at this point that we've exhausted the current paradigm. That there isn't much left to gain in maximizing existing scientific theories, or pumping billions into mature technologies. These concepts and philosophies have failed to real creating something of note lately, and that might be a sign that they are at their limits.
So the next step would be a step-change function and something completely unexpected.
We don't know the future, and there's no way to say for sure that we've see the last big changes in life. Your grandparents could be proven laughably wrong in next few decades.
That said, it is likely at this point that we've exhausted the current paradigm. That there isn't much left to gain in maximizing existing scientific theories, or pumping billions into mature technologies. These concepts and philosophies have failed to real creating something of note lately, and that might be a sign that they are at their limits.
So the next step would be a step-change function and something completely unexpected.
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It's harder than ever to escape local optimums. Invent a better drug for high blood pressure? It needs to compete with several older, cheaper "OK" drugs for the same condition. Invent a better electricity source? It needs to compete with fully depreciated power plants that were built 25 years ago. Invent a better large scale search algorithm -- an innovation on the order of PageRank? Googlebot is welcome on billions of pages that will aggressively try to prevent you from crawling them. Google's "good enough" search plus stronger position in content acquisition will prevent people from escaping the local optimum.
I disagree with Thiel on almost every page on this document. And I don't know which topic to really critise. Like his view on regulation, which he calls a burden. I don't want to live in a world w/o regulations, I want to know what is in my food, I want to know that the devices I use are safe. We could see what happens, when regulation fails, when two 737MAX crashed due to the fact that Boeing was able to hide MCAS from the FAA and the FAA let Boeing go forward with the plane.
At one point Thiel is quoted with "The public transportation systems don’t work." Which is a bold and false statement, because public transportation can work extremely well. And in the source they don't even talk about public transportation but about Uber, which I think is a failure and pointless and not really innovative at all. Services like Uber existed long before Uber, Uber just put an app on it instead of a phone call. Also Thiel complaints about parking. That he can't think of any other modes of mobility than a car, it rather telling.
His definition of progress and innovation is not technical or defined by quality of life but merely what he as an investor can earn money from it. This is very visible when Thiel dismisses incremental progress with wind turbines and photovoltaic cells.
At one point Thiel is quoted with "The public transportation systems don’t work." Which is a bold and false statement, because public transportation can work extremely well. And in the source they don't even talk about public transportation but about Uber, which I think is a failure and pointless and not really innovative at all. Services like Uber existed long before Uber, Uber just put an app on it instead of a phone call. Also Thiel complaints about parking. That he can't think of any other modes of mobility than a car, it rather telling.
His definition of progress and innovation is not technical or defined by quality of life but merely what he as an investor can earn money from it. This is very visible when Thiel dismisses incremental progress with wind turbines and photovoltaic cells.
I’m saddened that you think it’s okay to make it a federal crime to create a jelly/marmalade with more than 4 fruits (seriously).
What you’re doing now is imposing the current day to the past, like looking at the current Airbnb and pretending that’s how it was when it first started.
What if perhaps today wouldn’t be achieved if there had been so many rules and regulations? So picture the same government from now and place it in say 1870. What would you say the odds are we DONT end up anywhere as advanced as we are today?
What you’re doing now is imposing the current day to the past, like looking at the current Airbnb and pretending that’s how it was when it first started.
What if perhaps today wouldn’t be achieved if there had been so many rules and regulations? So picture the same government from now and place it in say 1870. What would you say the odds are we DONT end up anywhere as advanced as we are today?
That's a really unfair comparison. Suggesting that all regulation is akin to your marmalade example is akin to suggesting that we shouldn't enforce any laws because adultery laws are still on the books.
There are good laws, and there are bad laws. There is good regulation, and there is bad regulation. The solution is to curate from the good set, and weed out from the bad set - not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There are good laws, and there are bad laws. There is good regulation, and there is bad regulation. The solution is to curate from the good set, and weed out from the bad set - not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The problem is that many rules just get compounded like shitty layers that needs more turds to make up for the past turds.
If there was a temporary cleansing or removing of all laws and therefore the good ones would get immediately reinstated then perhaps that’s a better path.
Which coincidentally is exactly what Trumps executive order is attempting to do. Remove 2 for every 1 turd that gets added.
If there was a temporary cleansing or removing of all laws and therefore the good ones would get immediately reinstated then perhaps that’s a better path.
Which coincidentally is exactly what Trumps executive order is attempting to do. Remove 2 for every 1 turd that gets added.
I'd love to see the STEM practitioners who post here developing code in a way where you can only add a line if you remove two others (dependencies included). Otherwise, this just sounds like "do as I say, not as I do".
Why is it not permitted to create a jelly/marmalade with more than 4 fruits?
There's nothing saying you can't. You just can't call it a jam or a marmalade as that has a very specific definition in people's minds. The law itself is detailed here[1].
[1] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFR...
[1] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFR...
I think if you left it up to the market we would have even more misleading food labels than we do now. It’s already hard enough to determine what is and isn’t healthy at the supermarket, regulation ensures that we at least have the most basic calorie, nutrient and ingridient information.
I wouldn’t even disagree that regulation slows down advancement. That is probably the case! But I also know that in the early 1900s you didn’t have the kinds of child labor laws and workplace safety protections in place that we have now. I’d rather a society without child labor even if it runs a little slower and less efficiently.
I wouldn’t even disagree that regulation slows down advancement. That is probably the case! But I also know that in the early 1900s you didn’t have the kinds of child labor laws and workplace safety protections in place that we have now. I’d rather a society without child labor even if it runs a little slower and less efficiently.
I’m saddened that you think it’s okay to make it a federal crime to create a jelly/marmalade with more than 4 fruits (seriously).
Personally, I prefer that to the days of radioactive toothpaste.
Personally, I prefer that to the days of radioactive toothpaste.
I’d like to be given the option to. Why should you prevent me a free adult from doing it?
Feel free to create or commission all the radioactive toothpaste you want for your personal use. If your jaw starts falling off, as long as you pay for all associated medical costs yourself, that's your business.
The game changes if you make it into a product available for and advertised to the general public.
The game changes if you make it into a product available for and advertised to the general public.
I feel like you're not acting in good faith here, but I'll bite. I consider it not worth my time to have to be an expert in all things in order to live my daily life. I consider the few overburdensome regulations that occur within a system designed to both protect my health and preserve my time to be a very worthy tradeoff.
I agree with what you’re saying. But you’re proposing the same argument of “well how do you know the dealer didn’t sprinkle another drug on your weed?”
What makes you think that the toothpaste company wants to use expensive radioactive materials on your plain toothpaste and not charge you for it?
What makes you think that the toothpaste company wants to use expensive radioactive materials on your plain toothpaste and not charge you for it?
> I agree with what you’re saying. But you’re proposing the same argument of “well how do you know the dealer didn’t sprinkle another drug on your weed?”
Uh, that's an excellent argument for legalizing and regulating weed. Or am I missing your point?
> What makes you think that the toothpaste company wants to use expensive radioactive materials on your plain toothpaste and not charge you for it?
I'll sell my radioactive toothpaste at a slight loss, capture the market, and then raise prices? Just off the top of my head. Or sell my radioactive stuff and also invest in companies that treat cancer.
Uh, that's an excellent argument for legalizing and regulating weed. Or am I missing your point?
> What makes you think that the toothpaste company wants to use expensive radioactive materials on your plain toothpaste and not charge you for it?
I'll sell my radioactive toothpaste at a slight loss, capture the market, and then raise prices? Just off the top of my head. Or sell my radioactive stuff and also invest in companies that treat cancer.
Or just simply sell radioactive toothpaste and advertise it as helping your health. People may fall for that. People even drank disinfectant. Without regulation, there will always people buying your fancy stuff, at a premium even.
What choice would you have? If there were no regulations, businesses could lie on packaging. You wouldn’t have the information to make informed choices.
You could just have a general law banning fraud, rather than regulating every product individually. That's how it was done before the early 20th century.
There's a distinction here between law and regulation.
Even hard core libertarians don't think there should be no laws. That's a straw man. They tend to believe governments should vigorously enforce contracts, trademarks, punish fraud and provide other tools that make commerce easy. In other words that they give people the tools to keep each other honest, but don't try to directly mandate every detail of every product.
The word law tends to mean these general, timeless rules that often date back a long way. They don't create ossification or stagnation (Thiel's primary concern) because they don't advantage any particular way of doing things, just enforce fair dealing and honesty.
The word regulation tends to be used to mean rather modern and very sector-specific rules, which frequently ossify existing practice and prevent people trying anything new. Often they are nakedly about doing exactly that - taxi medallions are one such form of regulation.
The people who support such regulations invariably claim they're about safety or preventing some sort of harm. The evidence for this is highly mixed. It often relies on an absurd, cartoon-character view of companies in which they'll happily kill all their customers to make a quick buck with no concern for long term consequences whatsoever, if the noble and morally pure government employee doesn't step in to stop them.
But there are plenty of cases where regulations seem to have created more harm than good, and vastly more where it's ambiguous. Do we really need governments to regulate the taxi industry, for example? Arguably not. It seems Uber is widely judged as being a better taxi regulator than the government, as it can use far faster and more plentiful feedback vs the paper or faxed complaint forms governments typically provide.
Libertarians often make arguments of this form - that the alternative to government regulations is not some anarchist wild west in which people go mad murdering each other with explosive contraptions. The alternative is private sector regulation of various kinds, in which logos and trademarks are used to establish meaning behind a mark and consumers gravitate to products that have those marks, as they're understood to be a sign of quality and safety. The advantage being that if that organisation succumbs to various kinds of dysfunction, like capture, or stagnation, then another can come along and outcompete it. Whereas with government regulators that can't happen - you can get endless decades or even centuries of unfixable dysfunction.
Even hard core libertarians don't think there should be no laws. That's a straw man. They tend to believe governments should vigorously enforce contracts, trademarks, punish fraud and provide other tools that make commerce easy. In other words that they give people the tools to keep each other honest, but don't try to directly mandate every detail of every product.
The word law tends to mean these general, timeless rules that often date back a long way. They don't create ossification or stagnation (Thiel's primary concern) because they don't advantage any particular way of doing things, just enforce fair dealing and honesty.
The word regulation tends to be used to mean rather modern and very sector-specific rules, which frequently ossify existing practice and prevent people trying anything new. Often they are nakedly about doing exactly that - taxi medallions are one such form of regulation.
The people who support such regulations invariably claim they're about safety or preventing some sort of harm. The evidence for this is highly mixed. It often relies on an absurd, cartoon-character view of companies in which they'll happily kill all their customers to make a quick buck with no concern for long term consequences whatsoever, if the noble and morally pure government employee doesn't step in to stop them.
But there are plenty of cases where regulations seem to have created more harm than good, and vastly more where it's ambiguous. Do we really need governments to regulate the taxi industry, for example? Arguably not. It seems Uber is widely judged as being a better taxi regulator than the government, as it can use far faster and more plentiful feedback vs the paper or faxed complaint forms governments typically provide.
Libertarians often make arguments of this form - that the alternative to government regulations is not some anarchist wild west in which people go mad murdering each other with explosive contraptions. The alternative is private sector regulation of various kinds, in which logos and trademarks are used to establish meaning behind a mark and consumers gravitate to products that have those marks, as they're understood to be a sign of quality and safety. The advantage being that if that organisation succumbs to various kinds of dysfunction, like capture, or stagnation, then another can come along and outcompete it. Whereas with government regulators that can't happen - you can get endless decades or even centuries of unfixable dysfunction.
The word regulation tends to be used to mean rather modern and very sector-specific rules
That's not really a modern thing. For example, the reason why Lange Messer (a type of medieval sword, which are nominally "long knives") exist is because sword production was regulated.
That's not really a modern thing. For example, the reason why Lange Messer (a type of medieval sword, which are nominally "long knives") exist is because sword production was regulated.
>> This is very visible when Thiel dismisses incremental progress with wind turbines and photovoltaic cells.
I think you've missed his point which he lays out in the opener. If you've listened to him speak on podcasts about this topic (I recommend episode 1 of The Portal with Eric Weinstein) you will realize that his ENTIRE point is that incremental progress is simply refinement of things we already have since the 60s and for him thats NOT good enough. He isn't looking for incremental refinement at all, he is looking for the equivalent of the emergence of the solar cell or the wind turbine from nothing. Basically the emergence of a totally new way of arranging atoms to bring about big leaps, not small refinements. He isnt looking for the next best rocket, he is looking for the emergence of the warp drive. He always pressed the point that if you take away bites, our tech progress has been largely stagnant since the 60s. I've never heard anyone put it that way and I largely have come to agree. Most of what we have today is just better refinement of tech we had in the 60s. TV's, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Cars, Rockets that land themselves. Even computers.
Also, like it or not, capital investment drives innovation, otherwise there is no real incentive. Now I will say one can argue for better models for more longterm investment moon shots that might take decades to achieve, such as say Fusion reactors. ITER is largely stagnant as a multi-government funded 40 billion dollar project and MIT has some incredible designs for fusion reactor prototypes that would put ITER to shame. Problem is they estimate needing 300 million and 10 years to achieve this. Ultimately you need investors to create a company to make this marketable. If Thiel has the money and wants to invest in these sorts of mega leaps ONLY then more power to him and to us all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
I think you've missed his point which he lays out in the opener. If you've listened to him speak on podcasts about this topic (I recommend episode 1 of The Portal with Eric Weinstein) you will realize that his ENTIRE point is that incremental progress is simply refinement of things we already have since the 60s and for him thats NOT good enough. He isn't looking for incremental refinement at all, he is looking for the equivalent of the emergence of the solar cell or the wind turbine from nothing. Basically the emergence of a totally new way of arranging atoms to bring about big leaps, not small refinements. He isnt looking for the next best rocket, he is looking for the emergence of the warp drive. He always pressed the point that if you take away bites, our tech progress has been largely stagnant since the 60s. I've never heard anyone put it that way and I largely have come to agree. Most of what we have today is just better refinement of tech we had in the 60s. TV's, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Cars, Rockets that land themselves. Even computers.
Also, like it or not, capital investment drives innovation, otherwise there is no real incentive. Now I will say one can argue for better models for more longterm investment moon shots that might take decades to achieve, such as say Fusion reactors. ITER is largely stagnant as a multi-government funded 40 billion dollar project and MIT has some incredible designs for fusion reactor prototypes that would put ITER to shame. Problem is they estimate needing 300 million and 10 years to achieve this. Ultimately you need investors to create a company to make this marketable. If Thiel has the money and wants to invest in these sorts of mega leaps ONLY then more power to him and to us all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
I think it's a mistake to assume that technology advancements will come in great leaps and bounds since the day of the wright brothers are over... we've been out of our atmosphere and to the bottom of the sea and made nukes++ and transistors at nm levels. Humanity has been so experienced in the domain of physics for so long that there is no low-hanging fruit left within the periodic table. The physical world has limits that our higher order thinking has identified and relentlessly struggled against. This is done every day by independent humans in labs and dreams around the world and seems by it's distributed nature to be incremental. I think Thiel's being quite foolish for lamenting/admonishing a trend that I believe will only getting stronger as the sophistication of collective human knowledge increases...
As someone with a physics major I largely agree with that point to an extent. I do not at all think we have reached the bottom of physics rabbit hole personally even though it feels that way, but I dont see us making any major leaps anytime soon without a totally new approach. String theory is stagnant and we need to dump it. QED and the link to gravity is still very much a mystery so we have yet to really unlock the quantum-gravity world IMO. I do however think we have yet to arrange atoms in all the possible ways that benefit humanity, even in ways that I think are achievable in the short term, say 10 years. Biotech stuff aside (because that totally changes the starting point), I think we still have some tricks up our sleeve for "conventional" technology: Space Elevators, Fusion reactors for every major city, AI Humanoid Servants. I still hold out hope for the warp drive one day. Often Thiel points to everyday objects in your home, so I try to think of what I would want in my house today that would benefit me. Household robotics are the only thing that comes to mind, and maybe a vehicle that can traverse multiple mediums: air, space, water. The star trek replicator for unlimited resource access. Basically access to things that only the uber-rich have: Labor, Resources, Ability to reach any point on earth or near space.
Here's one to add to the list: happiness. Psychology and sociology, developed to the point where we understand how to have happy people and good communities. Somehow this sounds even farther off than warp drives...
we have yet to really unlock the quantum-gravity world IMO
Though it is questionable how much a theory of quantum gravity would affect every-day life. Physics hasn't made much progress on that front precisely because it's far removed from the human scale.
I think we still have some tricks up our sleeve for "conventional" technology:
- Space Elevators might never be built
- a warp drive will almost certainly never be built
- Fusion reactors are likely within reach, could potentially even have been achieved already but for ecomomic reasons and policy decisions, though I'm not sure how much of a game changer they would actually be
- AI Humanoid Servants (and related breakthroughs, eg brain simulation: forget warp drives, think about the ability to 'fork' a person, and have that version of yourself embark on a centuries-long journey across the stars aboard conventional space ships), I'm with you
Though it is questionable how much a theory of quantum gravity would affect every-day life. Physics hasn't made much progress on that front precisely because it's far removed from the human scale.
I think we still have some tricks up our sleeve for "conventional" technology:
- Space Elevators might never be built
- a warp drive will almost certainly never be built
- Fusion reactors are likely within reach, could potentially even have been achieved already but for ecomomic reasons and policy decisions, though I'm not sure how much of a game changer they would actually be
- AI Humanoid Servants (and related breakthroughs, eg brain simulation: forget warp drives, think about the ability to 'fork' a person, and have that version of yourself embark on a centuries-long journey across the stars aboard conventional space ships), I'm with you
I am not sure that the "days of the Wright Brothers are over." Above all else they were experimenters who gathered data on aerodynamic properties and performance of different wing and control surfaces. I think there is much undiscovered in biology at many levels--cellular, organ system, and organism. I think may see the equivalent of an industrial revolution (a quantum step in the quality of life) flowing from breakthroughs in biology.
Oh, than his views on innovation are even more wrong than I thought. Most progress, most innovation is the result of incremental progress. Sometimes you can see a leap forward, which usually comes that someone puts several incremental innovations together and combines them in the right way.
Yeah, ITER is not really a fast project. Weirdly enough there is also Wendelstein 7-X in Germany, which is also mostly funded by the German government is way ahead of other fusion project. No idea if this research will lead to a power source or not, but I'm pretty if it does, those power plants will be subsidised by the government.
Yeah, ITER is not really a fast project. Weirdly enough there is also Wendelstein 7-X in Germany, which is also mostly funded by the German government is way ahead of other fusion project. No idea if this research will lead to a power source or not, but I'm pretty if it does, those power plants will be subsidised by the government.
To some extent I agree, and to some extent I do not. I have a physics degree and work as an engineer, so I will say that I do not think we have reached the "end" of physics, and I think we still have things to unlock that we would not today think is achievable. For example:
Warp Drive (or equivalent) - String theory is largely a 30 year dead end and we have no idea what the link between QED and gravity is. Imagine we could unlock the graviton, it would be huge. Currently we have no unified theory and the quantum realm is still considered "spooky" meaning we don't fully understand the hidden substructure. The fact that 2 particles entangled can interact at ANY distance should tell you something. Eric Weinstein talks a lot about this in his podcasts, one of the reason I think he and Thiel are partners.
The Replicator (think star trek) - I know some will say "But what about 3D printers". That is not what I am talking about. That still requires atoms of a material to be fed into what is the incremental advance of the printer, just substitute the ink with X material. I'm talking about a machine that can both synthesize the material from ANY substrate, since its all just proton/neutron/electron arrangements anyways, and then arrange the material in specific placement to create just about anything on a tabletop. I'd even settle for the material part only. That would be mega leap. Equivalent to say the advent of the refrigerator or microwave.
Humanoid Robots - On this point I agree with you somewhat, that both AI and humanoid robots are starting to emerge now from incremental advancement. However Thiel loves to point to household objects likes Refrigerators, TV's, etc, so what would be the next step for the household that would be a large leap: IMO it would be a robot that could do all the trivial tasks that I don't care to such as dishes, laundry, general upkeep, etc. All the dystopian robot takeover stuff aside, that convergence of tech would be a quantum leap for humanity.
A air-ground/water/space ship personal vehicle - I would not agree that this would be an incremental advancement of the car since the car can only do ground (air in 2 dimensions on specific surfaces). You have vehicles that can traverse these mediums in the singular sense, even small 1 person versions, but NONE combine all 3 mediums with full degree of freedom. I'm not talking flying cars, I'm talking flying saucer that can dive into the ocean or take you to orbit.
Another way of thinking of it is, you have access to things now that only the uber rich had long ago, so what do only the uber rich have access to now that you do not: Access to resources (replicator), access to labor (cheap home robots), access to any point on the planet (personal space ships), even access to unlimited energy (fusion reactors, which I would argue are NOT incremental of nuclear). Lets start there. If you want to get outside the box, then you look for the star trek tech: Warp Drive, Tractor Beams (they can do this with sound waves to some extent), transporters, physical-real holographics.
So the counter arguments are "well all tech is incremental". From the point of view the 60's starting version 1 appliances most is, but you haven't got sufficiently outside the box IMO. Combinations of tech maybe (phone+computer=iphone, submarine+airplaine+space-pod=flying saucer, AI+Boston Dynamics Robot=humanoid home servant, 3D printer + ? = replicator), but not always incremental. Something like a warp drive or a star trek transporter would fall outside of that. The best we have is to look to sci-fi and ask what it would take to achieve that kind of breakthrough. Even fusion reactors or space elevators would be a huge leap even if there was only 1 on the planet within the next decade.
The next counter argument is "well we have reached the end of physics so there is nothing left to invent". Please explain the QED-gravity link and submit your unified theory to the journal Nature then, they are waiting. Until then we have not yet unlocked everything.
Warp Drive (or equivalent) - String theory is largely a 30 year dead end and we have no idea what the link between QED and gravity is. Imagine we could unlock the graviton, it would be huge. Currently we have no unified theory and the quantum realm is still considered "spooky" meaning we don't fully understand the hidden substructure. The fact that 2 particles entangled can interact at ANY distance should tell you something. Eric Weinstein talks a lot about this in his podcasts, one of the reason I think he and Thiel are partners.
The Replicator (think star trek) - I know some will say "But what about 3D printers". That is not what I am talking about. That still requires atoms of a material to be fed into what is the incremental advance of the printer, just substitute the ink with X material. I'm talking about a machine that can both synthesize the material from ANY substrate, since its all just proton/neutron/electron arrangements anyways, and then arrange the material in specific placement to create just about anything on a tabletop. I'd even settle for the material part only. That would be mega leap. Equivalent to say the advent of the refrigerator or microwave.
Humanoid Robots - On this point I agree with you somewhat, that both AI and humanoid robots are starting to emerge now from incremental advancement. However Thiel loves to point to household objects likes Refrigerators, TV's, etc, so what would be the next step for the household that would be a large leap: IMO it would be a robot that could do all the trivial tasks that I don't care to such as dishes, laundry, general upkeep, etc. All the dystopian robot takeover stuff aside, that convergence of tech would be a quantum leap for humanity.
A air-ground/water/space ship personal vehicle - I would not agree that this would be an incremental advancement of the car since the car can only do ground (air in 2 dimensions on specific surfaces). You have vehicles that can traverse these mediums in the singular sense, even small 1 person versions, but NONE combine all 3 mediums with full degree of freedom. I'm not talking flying cars, I'm talking flying saucer that can dive into the ocean or take you to orbit.
Another way of thinking of it is, you have access to things now that only the uber rich had long ago, so what do only the uber rich have access to now that you do not: Access to resources (replicator), access to labor (cheap home robots), access to any point on the planet (personal space ships), even access to unlimited energy (fusion reactors, which I would argue are NOT incremental of nuclear). Lets start there. If you want to get outside the box, then you look for the star trek tech: Warp Drive, Tractor Beams (they can do this with sound waves to some extent), transporters, physical-real holographics.
So the counter arguments are "well all tech is incremental". From the point of view the 60's starting version 1 appliances most is, but you haven't got sufficiently outside the box IMO. Combinations of tech maybe (phone+computer=iphone, submarine+airplaine+space-pod=flying saucer, AI+Boston Dynamics Robot=humanoid home servant, 3D printer + ? = replicator), but not always incremental. Something like a warp drive or a star trek transporter would fall outside of that. The best we have is to look to sci-fi and ask what it would take to achieve that kind of breakthrough. Even fusion reactors or space elevators would be a huge leap even if there was only 1 on the planet within the next decade.
The next counter argument is "well we have reached the end of physics so there is nothing left to invent". Please explain the QED-gravity link and submit your unified theory to the journal Nature then, they are waiting. Until then we have not yet unlocked everything.
There are so many points he makes. Which ones do you agree with? I have a hard time understanding your opposition and painting everything he says as some what illogical, unreasonable, impossible or absurd. The examples you've given, I agree with (and even the most far right people would). But the document is massive and I feel like you're painting a broad stroke with a tiny brush. Peter Thiel is a controversial figure, but your comment to me comes across as rather less objective (besides giving strawman examples) and not substantiated enough for the bold claims you lay down.
Happy to listen to you and figure out what points you disagree with, and also understand which ones you agree with.
With respect to the regulations - this is a huge topic. You've picked ones that makes sense. But there are regulations like patent laws, and absurd state laws (can't fill gas in Portland yourself) that need to be abolished. From car dealership lobby to a whole bunch of nasty things in Agriculture, there are protective laws that benefit the small proportionally advantaged people and prevent real innovation. There is a lot of gate-keeping in the regulations lobbied to death by companies with big and deep pockets (Philip Morris for e.g. and even companies like Google who spend millions in lobbying).
This is not fair with all due respect. I am in the same boat as you in some ways, I think Peter Thiel is a weird guy, but there is no denying - he is smart, tactical and he knows how to play the political chess. There are many progressive ideas in there too that align with Bernie sanders (wages section).
Not inclined to you, but I feel like SV folks have tattoed "PROGRESSIVE" in big bold letters and they've stopped thinking for themselves anymore. FYI - I live in SV. Get rid of that label, think from the bottom up - not from left or right.
Happy to listen to you and figure out what points you disagree with, and also understand which ones you agree with.
With respect to the regulations - this is a huge topic. You've picked ones that makes sense. But there are regulations like patent laws, and absurd state laws (can't fill gas in Portland yourself) that need to be abolished. From car dealership lobby to a whole bunch of nasty things in Agriculture, there are protective laws that benefit the small proportionally advantaged people and prevent real innovation. There is a lot of gate-keeping in the regulations lobbied to death by companies with big and deep pockets (Philip Morris for e.g. and even companies like Google who spend millions in lobbying).
This is not fair with all due respect. I am in the same boat as you in some ways, I think Peter Thiel is a weird guy, but there is no denying - he is smart, tactical and he knows how to play the political chess. There are many progressive ideas in there too that align with Bernie sanders (wages section).
Not inclined to you, but I feel like SV folks have tattoed "PROGRESSIVE" in big bold letters and they've stopped thinking for themselves anymore. FYI - I live in SV. Get rid of that label, think from the bottom up - not from left or right.
I focused mostly on the parts I have some or a lot of knowledge about: energy and tranportation/mobility. I simply can't rule out that in the other fields Thiel might have an opinion I would share if I knew more about those topics.
Where I agree with him is the issue of real wages stagnation and even decline in the US and in other countries. Sadly, I don't think we would agree on the cause.
I guess, with SV you mean Silicon Valley? I live nowhere near that place. I also don't work in IT. And I hold a degree in economics.
Where I agree with him is the issue of real wages stagnation and even decline in the US and in other countries. Sadly, I don't think we would agree on the cause.
I guess, with SV you mean Silicon Valley? I live nowhere near that place. I also don't work in IT. And I hold a degree in economics.
As I said, it wasn't inclined towards you but your comment has resonated with most SV folks, voted up to the top - no offense, but for a 90+ page document, you've broadly stroked this off and dismissed it. That dismissal aligns politically (without your intention) with SV folks, the echo chamber loves listening to what they feel about Peter Thiel.
That's why I said, you have benevolent intentions, but the result of your comment's popularity has to do with deep rooted not-thinking-for-yourself culture in SV and the mob mentality that goes with it.
I see this with my own eyes and feel it living here in SV.
That's why I said, you have benevolent intentions, but the result of your comment's popularity has to do with deep rooted not-thinking-for-yourself culture in SV and the mob mentality that goes with it.
I see this with my own eyes and feel it living here in SV.
> At one point Thiel is quoted with "The public transportation systems don’t work." Which is a bold and false statement, because public transportation can work extremely well.
I mean, it doesn’t work for him, since he doesn’t need it..
As someone without a car or even a license, who relies on public transport (albeit in Europe), I think this highlights the issues I have with economic inequality... Interests diverging until they become opposed.
(Just to be clear, I agree that Peter Thiel’s claims with regards to public transport is false in general)
I mean, it doesn’t work for him, since he doesn’t need it..
As someone without a car or even a license, who relies on public transport (albeit in Europe), I think this highlights the issues I have with economic inequality... Interests diverging until they become opposed.
(Just to be clear, I agree that Peter Thiel’s claims with regards to public transport is false in general)
A lot of what Thiel writes is from a US centric viewpoint, which is fine, he's an American living in America. And in the biggest US cities public transport doesn't work all that well.
cannabis_sam(1)
I'm kind of confused.
What is the purpose of this document? Did Peter Thiel put this together? Is the target audience people that like him? Or is the target audience people that are critical of him?
Or just plainly, is there a particular reason why I should care what a tech billionaire thinks about culture?
I'm not a fan of Peter Thiel in the slightest so maybe this isn't for me. I think it is a bit weird that at least one person finds his lofty opinions about stuff to be so important that they painstakingly collected them for... some purpose. Again, did Peter Thiel put this together??
Or just plainly, is there a particular reason why I should care what a tech billionaire thinks about culture?
I'm not a fan of Peter Thiel in the slightest so maybe this isn't for me. I think it is a bit weird that at least one person finds his lofty opinions about stuff to be so important that they painstakingly collected them for... some purpose. Again, did Peter Thiel put this together??
Whether he put it together or not, an argument can be made (I make it as well) that it's worth reading it. Any one can have valid arguments, even (or especially) if you don't agree with the conclusions. The only question you can ask is if they're being logically consistent. If they are then they deserve to be listened to, if you truly want to understand how to join them or fight them.
I despise this guy but will listen to everything he has to say. He correctly predicted and bet like ford bet on Nazis that Trump will win, and is reaping the benefits. Given that we have a nincompoop at the top, I'm scrounging to get whatever meaningful literature I can find from the other side to see how they convince themselves of their deeds. This guy is probably up there as the best bets you have on this regard.
I despise this guy but will listen to everything he has to say. He correctly predicted and bet like ford bet on Nazis that Trump will win, and is reaping the benefits. Given that we have a nincompoop at the top, I'm scrounging to get whatever meaningful literature I can find from the other side to see how they convince themselves of their deeds. This guy is probably up there as the best bets you have on this regard.
I don't think anybody had to be a super genius to predict the outcome of the 2016 election. I'd bet a good chunk of road comedians could've told you that in 2016.
Also, I don't think backing a candidate and using their victory to enrich yourself is a particularly brilliant or unique move, at least not one that warrants "listen[ing] to everything he says."
Beyond that, backing a candidate that's (at least arguably) detrimental to a country simply for profit or to prove a point about how smart you are doesn't really engender a lot of respect from me. Leveraging your existing billions to make even more billions might be somewhat impressive but this brings me back to my original question: Why should I (or anybody) care what Peter Thiel thinks about The Enlightenment or whatever?
This whole thing reads as "here's a grand study of one of our greatest thinkers" despite his main qualification is being rich and litigious.
It's like if I painted a self portrait where I've got angel wings and Dwayne Johnson's physique. It might be fun and pleasing for me, but why would anyone else want to look at it? And why would it end up on the front page of HN?
Sorry I don't mean to be rude but I am still genuinely stuck on What is the purpose of this document? and Why would anyone necessarily care about its content?
Also, I don't think backing a candidate and using their victory to enrich yourself is a particularly brilliant or unique move, at least not one that warrants "listen[ing] to everything he says."
Beyond that, backing a candidate that's (at least arguably) detrimental to a country simply for profit or to prove a point about how smart you are doesn't really engender a lot of respect from me. Leveraging your existing billions to make even more billions might be somewhat impressive but this brings me back to my original question: Why should I (or anybody) care what Peter Thiel thinks about The Enlightenment or whatever?
This whole thing reads as "here's a grand study of one of our greatest thinkers" despite his main qualification is being rich and litigious.
It's like if I painted a self portrait where I've got angel wings and Dwayne Johnson's physique. It might be fun and pleasing for me, but why would anyone else want to look at it? And why would it end up on the front page of HN?
Sorry I don't mean to be rude but I am still genuinely stuck on What is the purpose of this document? and Why would anyone necessarily care about its content?
He's right about process vs substance. There are so many people involved in box-checking in this world, it's amazing. People whose job is substantially to ensure some process is followed, rather than think up better processes. Even when we are talking about ostensibly innovating orgs, there are people there to make sure everything follows a plan that cannot possibly contribute to the discovery of knowledge.
I sound bitter about this, but actually a lot of friends of mine are in that type of position. Heck, I myself have to do process-box-ticking type things in my day-to-day as well.
This ends up being a sort of glue that's poured over all of society. Each checklist on its own seems reasonable, but put together we make change quite hard. We also end up creating a class of people who are incentivized to make sure there are rules and procedures to follow. I don't just mean lawyers, there's a whole slew of pseudo-lawyers handling things such as GDPR policies and IT Security policies, compliance officers, and so on.
All these process people depend on our continued desire to seem reasonable ("Make sure schools check for child molesters before hiring anyone"), but also abdicate responsibility for those decisions to the new policy expert class. GDPR has been around for not very long, but already you'd better hire someone who is an expert in it if you're going to do serious business (this in fact happened at my day-to-day, there's no way to do business without).
I sound bitter about this, but actually a lot of friends of mine are in that type of position. Heck, I myself have to do process-box-ticking type things in my day-to-day as well.
This ends up being a sort of glue that's poured over all of society. Each checklist on its own seems reasonable, but put together we make change quite hard. We also end up creating a class of people who are incentivized to make sure there are rules and procedures to follow. I don't just mean lawyers, there's a whole slew of pseudo-lawyers handling things such as GDPR policies and IT Security policies, compliance officers, and so on.
All these process people depend on our continued desire to seem reasonable ("Make sure schools check for child molesters before hiring anyone"), but also abdicate responsibility for those decisions to the new policy expert class. GDPR has been around for not very long, but already you'd better hire someone who is an expert in it if you're going to do serious business (this in fact happened at my day-to-day, there's no way to do business without).
Almost every time I see an SV libertarian try to discuss social issues from an apparently disinterested, logical standpoint, they always seem trapped inside of libertarian bubble and unable to expand this viewpoint to consider other possible causes.
1) What's the evidence that technological progress has slowed? Is this nostalgia? Thiel is weighting more heavily "big" engineering projects like military hardware or aerospace above "soft" engineering projects. The Moon landing was a $150 billion project by the government BTW. Is LHC and LIGO not huge achievements? All three were science experiments, not consumer technological progress.
2)"only 3.5% unemployment". Quantitative vs Qualitative fallacy. Majority of new jobs created since 2005 are temp or gig economy jobs.
3) Is it regulation, or is it just diminishing returns in a cycle that is a punctuated equilibrium. Thiel expects steady progress, but between big cycles you have iteration and incrementally. Most of the low hanging fruit has been picked and reaching the next local maxima will require time. But SV libertarians always start out with the premise that government is the problem, and then try to tie their thesis at the end back to that.
4) Thiel criticizes Steven Chu for backing Solyndra. Fine, post-facto due diligence shows it was a bad investment. But the DoE's investment portfolio has better success rates than most VC funds, it's not that Thiel himself has never made any dumb investments. Broadening your portfolio over a large number of companies (some of them starting with a dumb idea) is not necessarily a bad strategy and even companies with unworkable ideas can sometimes pivot to companies that are big hits. Solyndra didn't, but there are numerous examples of others who did. Even PayPal is an example of a pivot, I did technical due dilligence on the original idea, Confinity, in 1998, when it was about peer-to-peer payments between Palm Pilots. Switching to Digital Wallets was also a failure. None of the eWallets that were installable apps on the desktop got traction. It was only when it pivoted to email that it worked.
5) Thiel himself built Palantir on the backs of US taxpayer money. Hypocritical for him to criticize the government and government investment. He also got lucky from a serendipitous meeting between him and Zuckerberg, did he really know then when he gave seed money to Zuck Facebook would be so big? Was FB technological progress?
So in summary: 1) we don't have a way to measure technological progress in a way that permits computing the rate. Lots of flawed proxies, e.g # of patents, etc It's subjective, and your wonderment as a child at changes in technology become disillusioned and nonplussed as an adult.
2) wages are stagnated. Unemployment isn't "low", not when your replace a big chunk of stable middle class jobs with benefits with temp/gig work.
3) public transport is successful all over the world, and Thiel ignores the billions spent on other modes (like airports). e.g. California government has spent $60 billion on SFO/LAX/OAK/SJC/ec
4) no evidence regulations are stopping technological progress, there is evidence that risk aversion from conservatives attacking government R&D for decades has, especially in areas of renewable energy or climate (e.g. ARPA-E program)
The only thing I agree with him on is that our Sci-Fi is predominantly dystopian now. The United Federation of Planets (ironically, post-capitalist according to Picard), a multicultural society of tolerance and freedom from want, has been replaced with cyberpunk misery.
But this is largely a reflection is the fact that 40 years of wage stagnation, and continued attacks on collective action in building a better future, gave way to rugged individualism and survivalism. In Sci-Fi, grand utopias usually aren't built by spontaneous order, but by collective action.
1) What's the evidence that technological progress has slowed? Is this nostalgia? Thiel is weighting more heavily "big" engineering projects like military hardware or aerospace above "soft" engineering projects. The Moon landing was a $150 billion project by the government BTW. Is LHC and LIGO not huge achievements? All three were science experiments, not consumer technological progress.
2)"only 3.5% unemployment". Quantitative vs Qualitative fallacy. Majority of new jobs created since 2005 are temp or gig economy jobs.
3) Is it regulation, or is it just diminishing returns in a cycle that is a punctuated equilibrium. Thiel expects steady progress, but between big cycles you have iteration and incrementally. Most of the low hanging fruit has been picked and reaching the next local maxima will require time. But SV libertarians always start out with the premise that government is the problem, and then try to tie their thesis at the end back to that.
4) Thiel criticizes Steven Chu for backing Solyndra. Fine, post-facto due diligence shows it was a bad investment. But the DoE's investment portfolio has better success rates than most VC funds, it's not that Thiel himself has never made any dumb investments. Broadening your portfolio over a large number of companies (some of them starting with a dumb idea) is not necessarily a bad strategy and even companies with unworkable ideas can sometimes pivot to companies that are big hits. Solyndra didn't, but there are numerous examples of others who did. Even PayPal is an example of a pivot, I did technical due dilligence on the original idea, Confinity, in 1998, when it was about peer-to-peer payments between Palm Pilots. Switching to Digital Wallets was also a failure. None of the eWallets that were installable apps on the desktop got traction. It was only when it pivoted to email that it worked.
5) Thiel himself built Palantir on the backs of US taxpayer money. Hypocritical for him to criticize the government and government investment. He also got lucky from a serendipitous meeting between him and Zuckerberg, did he really know then when he gave seed money to Zuck Facebook would be so big? Was FB technological progress?
So in summary: 1) we don't have a way to measure technological progress in a way that permits computing the rate. Lots of flawed proxies, e.g # of patents, etc It's subjective, and your wonderment as a child at changes in technology become disillusioned and nonplussed as an adult.
2) wages are stagnated. Unemployment isn't "low", not when your replace a big chunk of stable middle class jobs with benefits with temp/gig work.
3) public transport is successful all over the world, and Thiel ignores the billions spent on other modes (like airports). e.g. California government has spent $60 billion on SFO/LAX/OAK/SJC/ec
4) no evidence regulations are stopping technological progress, there is evidence that risk aversion from conservatives attacking government R&D for decades has, especially in areas of renewable energy or climate (e.g. ARPA-E program)
The only thing I agree with him on is that our Sci-Fi is predominantly dystopian now. The United Federation of Planets (ironically, post-capitalist according to Picard), a multicultural society of tolerance and freedom from want, has been replaced with cyberpunk misery.
But this is largely a reflection is the fact that 40 years of wage stagnation, and continued attacks on collective action in building a better future, gave way to rugged individualism and survivalism. In Sci-Fi, grand utopias usually aren't built by spontaneous order, but by collective action.
So lets cut to the chase shall we: what would be the non-biotech arrangement of atoms that we can conceive of now that would be mega technological leaps for our species and achievable within 10 years of investment?
I think making things not accessible for a single person financially would be the my main focus. You can do things today that your ancestors had no chance of accessing, so what things would be the next quantum leap for your productivity that currently only the uber-rich have access to?
I will start:
- Robot Servants - Eliminate of all trivial work and leave the creative endeavors for humans. Think about if 1 person could start a factory with the capital he saves from his full-time job.
- Space Elevator or equivalent - Access to space is achievable for even small 1 person operations.
- Fusion Reactors - Unlimited clean energy for said people, robots and factories. Couple that with some infrastructure to beam it into space and you could have some VERY interesting things emerge.
My theme is: Access to labor, access to resources, access to energy.
Anyone have any other ideas?
I think making things not accessible for a single person financially would be the my main focus. You can do things today that your ancestors had no chance of accessing, so what things would be the next quantum leap for your productivity that currently only the uber-rich have access to?
I will start:
- Robot Servants - Eliminate of all trivial work and leave the creative endeavors for humans. Think about if 1 person could start a factory with the capital he saves from his full-time job.
- Space Elevator or equivalent - Access to space is achievable for even small 1 person operations.
- Fusion Reactors - Unlimited clean energy for said people, robots and factories. Couple that with some infrastructure to beam it into space and you could have some VERY interesting things emerge.
My theme is: Access to labor, access to resources, access to energy.
Anyone have any other ideas?
I'm biased because I already expected to disagree with much of his worldview, but I think a lot of Key Quotes Summary are bad takes:
The single most important economic development in recent times has been the broad stagnation of real wages and incomes since 1973, the year when oil prices quadrupled.
Actually the real price of oil was basically the same for the decade before 1973 (ranging $22.21 - $27.37) as 1993-1999 (ranging $18.86 - $33.63): https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices...
It's true that it spiked in 1974-1985, and was elevated from 1986-1992 (ranging $32.48 - $45.65 — far from quadruple), and has been much higher than pre-1973 prices since 2000, but that doesn't really match up with the stagnation of wages. Policy changes in the 80s (Reaganomics) causing rising inequality are a much better explanation:
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
https://www.epi.org/publication/reining-in-ceo-compensation-...
Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started.
He thought that was a problem under Obama and he sought to change that by elevating...Trump?
Tesla was out-competed by Edison, even though Edison had an inferior technology. The Wright brothers came up with the first airplane, but they didn’t get to be rich.
Edison having inferior technology is kind of a myth, or at least a vast oversimplification. DC is superior to AC in many situations; ironically, Tesla the car company is all about innovations in DC technology, as is Musk's SolarCity.
The Wright brothers are arguably the first to privately achieve powered controlled flight, and it's obviously impressive that they were "just" bicycle mechanics before, but it's an American myth that they "invented" the airplane. French-Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont actually publicly demonstrated his independently developed powered controlled airplane in 1906 before the Wright brothers did in 1908, and there are many other claims to having been first, all independently developed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_the_first_powered_fl...
More importantly, the Wright brothers did a bad job of turning their prototypes into useful airplanes, while Glenn Curtiss and the European aviators did a better job; instead, the Wright brothers focused on guarding their patents and promoting their names as the first inventors. If anyone would agree that execution matters more than ideas, it would be the HN crowd.
If you're a professor in academia, [you say]: the tenure system is great. It's just picking the most talented people. I don't think it's that hard at all. It's completely meritocratic. And if you don't say those things, well we know you're not the person to get tenure. So I think there’s this individual incentive where if you pretend the system is working, you're simultaneously signaling that you're one of the few people who should succeed in it.
Um...and what reason is there to believe that the VC-based tech industry isn't exactly like this, and that is how Thiel himself became successful? Cancer researchers are at least objectively making progress against cancer. Thiel got rich by founding or investing in some companies that he sold to other rich people.
On the other hands, some of these are interesting thoughts:
Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance [...] A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. [...] In a definite world money is a means to an end because there are specific things you want to do with money. In an indefinite world you have no idea what to do with money [...]
I think there is a big hysteresis part to this where success begets success and then failure begets failure, where if you haven’t had any major successes in a number of decades, it does induce a certain amount of learned helplessness, and then it shifts the way science gets done or the way innovation gets done in to a more bureaucratic, political structure where the people who get the research grants are more the politicians than the scientists. You’re rewarded for very small incremental progress, not for trying to take risks.
The "two perspectives on China" thing might be interesting, but I'd want to see a lot more substantiation. Who is saying what, exactly?
The single most important economic development in recent times has been the broad stagnation of real wages and incomes since 1973, the year when oil prices quadrupled.
Actually the real price of oil was basically the same for the decade before 1973 (ranging $22.21 - $27.37) as 1993-1999 (ranging $18.86 - $33.63): https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices...
It's true that it spiked in 1974-1985, and was elevated from 1986-1992 (ranging $32.48 - $45.65 — far from quadruple), and has been much higher than pre-1973 prices since 2000, but that doesn't really match up with the stagnation of wages. Policy changes in the 80s (Reaganomics) causing rising inequality are a much better explanation:
https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/
https://www.epi.org/publication/reining-in-ceo-compensation-...
Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started.
He thought that was a problem under Obama and he sought to change that by elevating...Trump?
Tesla was out-competed by Edison, even though Edison had an inferior technology. The Wright brothers came up with the first airplane, but they didn’t get to be rich.
Edison having inferior technology is kind of a myth, or at least a vast oversimplification. DC is superior to AC in many situations; ironically, Tesla the car company is all about innovations in DC technology, as is Musk's SolarCity.
The Wright brothers are arguably the first to privately achieve powered controlled flight, and it's obviously impressive that they were "just" bicycle mechanics before, but it's an American myth that they "invented" the airplane. French-Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont actually publicly demonstrated his independently developed powered controlled airplane in 1906 before the Wright brothers did in 1908, and there are many other claims to having been first, all independently developed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_the_first_powered_fl...
More importantly, the Wright brothers did a bad job of turning their prototypes into useful airplanes, while Glenn Curtiss and the European aviators did a better job; instead, the Wright brothers focused on guarding their patents and promoting their names as the first inventors. If anyone would agree that execution matters more than ideas, it would be the HN crowd.
If you're a professor in academia, [you say]: the tenure system is great. It's just picking the most talented people. I don't think it's that hard at all. It's completely meritocratic. And if you don't say those things, well we know you're not the person to get tenure. So I think there’s this individual incentive where if you pretend the system is working, you're simultaneously signaling that you're one of the few people who should succeed in it.
Um...and what reason is there to believe that the VC-based tech industry isn't exactly like this, and that is how Thiel himself became successful? Cancer researchers are at least objectively making progress against cancer. Thiel got rich by founding or investing in some companies that he sold to other rich people.
On the other hands, some of these are interesting thoughts:
Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance [...] A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. [...] In a definite world money is a means to an end because there are specific things you want to do with money. In an indefinite world you have no idea what to do with money [...]
I think there is a big hysteresis part to this where success begets success and then failure begets failure, where if you haven’t had any major successes in a number of decades, it does induce a certain amount of learned helplessness, and then it shifts the way science gets done or the way innovation gets done in to a more bureaucratic, political structure where the people who get the research grants are more the politicians than the scientists. You’re rewarded for very small incremental progress, not for trying to take risks.
The "two perspectives on China" thing might be interesting, but I'd want to see a lot more substantiation. Who is saying what, exactly?
> I'm more scared of the stagnation world I feel ultimately goes straight to apocalypse.
What apolcalypse is he worried about? Or is it the breakdown in politics, due to the stagnation, the problem? Why should the breakdown lead to an apocalypse, rather than a reformation?
What apolcalypse is he worried about? Or is it the breakdown in politics, due to the stagnation, the problem? Why should the breakdown lead to an apocalypse, rather than a reformation?
First, Wow, this is going to take some time to chew through.
On deregulation: I totally disagree. I think he has the cart before the horse. To me, it's under regulation. $1.3B per new drug is a bargin. Look at exercise machine infomercials, that's what the drug environment looks like, at best, without regulation. To have a drug checked over, tip to tail, pregnant or not, old or young, etc., costs a lot of money. Not centralizing this process would be fantastically more expensive and error prone.
On deregulation: I totally disagree. I think he has the cart before the horse. To me, it's under regulation. $1.3B per new drug is a bargin. Look at exercise machine infomercials, that's what the drug environment looks like, at best, without regulation. To have a drug checked over, tip to tail, pregnant or not, old or young, etc., costs a lot of money. Not centralizing this process would be fantastically more expensive and error prone.
What is meant by "SAS enterprise software, really overrated"? Does he mean SAAS as in Software-as-a-Service?
I highly recommend the website https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ and in particular their excellent newsletter. Surely, it would be an oversimplification to reduce everything to one cause but how much the setup of the original gold standard of the bank of England in the late 1770s spurred on the industrial revolution and how the centralization of gold and the final abolishing of the gold standard and ensuing financial tinkering led to malinvestments and threw wrenches into the engine of capitalism, wealth generation and ever increasing living standards has IMHO not yet sufficiently been investigated (Prof. Saifedean Ammous work here being one laudable exception).
In an interview from 2019 Peter Thiel mentions that Paypal would have never succeeded had the Patriot Act existed at the time. Banking regulations would have never allowed Paypal off the ground. Just a few years between Paypal and that monstrocity: We would not have Tesla. We wouldnt have SpaceX. There wouldn't be any Boring company or any Neuralink. The opportunity cost of all of that is unfathomable.
"The easiest way to see this, and this is always my challenge—people don’t agree with this—is challenge you to name me one science fiction film that Hollywood produced in the last 25 years in which technology is portrayed in a positive light, in which it’s not dystopian, it doesn’t kill people, it doesn’t destroy the world, it doesn’t not work, etc., etc."
Interstellar?
Interstellar?