Editing 1: Peter Thiel (section)

=== Excitement and Nihilism ===

'''Eric Weinstein:''' Are you familiar with the theory of Jennifer Freyd's called Institutional Betrayal?

'''Peter Thiel:''' I know you've mentioned it to me, but I don't know all the details. So tell me a little bit about it.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' Well, I don't know all the details either. But I think what she isolated was that people who have been betrayed by institutions that have a responsibility of care, like a hospital for example, or if you trust a sense-making organ like your newspaper, and then you find that you've been betrayed by that institution that had something of a principal-agent problem where you had to trust your agent in order to take care of you, that the quality of trauma is in fact different and that it leads to a universal fear of the infrastructure of your society. That's sort of what I picked up.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' What I was going to ask you about is, given our central belief that there was something about growth that led to universal betrayal by institutions, which has compromised experts in the minds of most of people, do you think there's a preferred way of waking up as a society out of a kind of universal institutional betrayal? (If we're excited about the next chapter, what I'd love to talk to you about in a future episode is what we're excited about, about what comes next.) Is there a way of waking up from this most gracefully?

'''Peter Thiel:''' Don't know about that. It strikes me that there are ways we don't want to wake up. We don't want to wake up in a way where it de-energizes us and demotivates. I think one of the ways I think these institutions worked was they took care of people, but it was also motivational. You study. You get good grades. You'll succeed in our system. One way, when you deconstruct these institutions, there's one direction that I think is always very dangerous, that it just shifts people into a much more nihilistic, very low energy mode where it's just, "Well, there's no point. Nothing can be done." That's the way that I definitively do not want to wake people up.

'''Peter Thiel:''' So I think it has to always be coupled a little bit to... There are these paths that aren't really going anywhere and you shouldn't go down these paths. But then there's some other paths here that you need to take. There's a portal here that you need to look at. If we are just saying all the paths are blocked, I think probably the risk is people just sit down where they are and stop moving altogether. That feels like the very wrong way to wake people up.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' That sounds very wise. Let me just ask, since you've been attached to some of the highest energy ideas, whether it's crazy-sounding stuff like seasteading or radical longevity or some other ideas from your background in venture capital and as a technologist yourself, what are the things that you're most excited if we could move them back into the institutions where they probably have belonged all this time? What are the first subjects and people that you would move back into institutional support to reenergize our society? People or programs.

'''Peter Thiel:''' Well, I do think there is something about basic science that doesn't all have the for-profit character. Some of it has this nonprofit character. We're building up this knowledge base for all of humanity. I don't yet know how we do basic science without some kind of institutional context. That's one that would seem absolutely critical. I'm super interested in the problem of longevity, radical life extension. My disappointment in the nonprofit institutions and nonprofit world has directed me more and more over the years to just invest in biotech companies and try to find these better-functioning corporate solutions. And then I always have this worry in the back of my head that maybe there are these basic research problems that are being sidestepped because they're too hard. So I think basic science is one that you'd have to do, but you have to somehow also reform the institution so that you don't have this Gresham's law where the politicians replace the scientists.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' That sounds like a great one. I was very surprised to see that your friend, Aubrey de Grey, who you funded to get the radical longevity thing, was in the news for having solved a hard math problem in his spare time that nobody even knew he was working on. So it seems like even though people would treat him as crazy, he certainly has a lot on the ball and probably is exactly the kind of a person who might energize the department even if he might infuriate it.

'''Peter Thiel:''' If you can get him back in. If you were able to get him back in, I think you'd be able to solve a lot of problems.
End

'''Eric Weinstein:''' Well, Peter, it's been absolutely fantastic having you. Thank you for a very generous gift of your time, and I hope that you will consider coming back on The Portal to talk about some of the specifics about the things that you and I are most excited about doing next.

'''Peter Thiel:''' Will do. Thank you so much.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' All right, Peter. You've been watching The Portal with Peter Thiel. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein. Thanks for tuning in. Please subscribe to the podcast, and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below on YouTube. Thanks.

[[Category:The Portal Podcast]]
[[Category:Podcast Episodes]]
[[Category:Interview Episodes]]
[[Category:YouTube]]
[[Category:Video]]
[[Category:Audio]]
[[Category:Transcript]]