Editing 1: Peter Thiel (section)

=== Physics, Biology, and Polymaths ===

'''Eric Weinstein:''' So, let me focus you on two subjects that are important for trying to figure out the economy going forward. I'm very fond of perhaps over-claiming, but making a strong claim for physics. That physics gave us atomic devices and nuclear power, and it ended World War II definitively. It gave us the semiconductor, the worldwide web, theoretical physicists invented molecular biology, the communications revolution. All of these things came out of physics, and you could make the argument that physics has been really underrated as powering the world economy.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' On the other hand, it's very strange to me that we had the three-dimensional structure of DNA in '53, we had the genetic code 10 years later, and we've had very little in the way of, let's say, gene therapy to show for all of our newfound knowledge. Now, I have no doubt that we are learning all sorts of new things - to your point about specialization - in biology, but the translation hasn't been anything like what I would have imagined for physics.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' So, it feels like somehow we're in a new orchard, and we're spending a lot of time exploring it, but we haven't found the low hanging fruit in biology, and we've kind of exhausted the physics orchard, because what we've found is so exotic that, you know, whether it's two black holes colliding, or a third generation of matter, or quark substructure, we haven't been able to use these things. Are we somehow between revolutions?

'''Peter Thiel:''' Well, I'd be pessimistic on physics generally, so that sort of be my bias on that one.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' Me as well.

'''Peter Thiel:''' Biology, I continue to think we could be doing a lot more, we could be making a lot more progress. And you know, the pessimistic version is that no, biology is just, is much harder than physics, and therefore it's been slower going.

'''Peter Thiel:''' The more optimistic one is that the culture is just broken. We've had very talented people go into physics. You go into biology if you're less talented. You can sort of think of it in Darwinian terms. You can think of biology as a selection for people with bad math genes. You know, if you're good at math, go to math, or physics, or at least chemistry, and biology we sort of selected for all of these people who are somewhat less talented. So, that might be a cultural explanation for why it's been been slower progress.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' But, I mean, we had people from physics, we had, like, Teller, and, Feynman, and Crick. There's no shortage of, to my earlier point, molecular biology, anyway, was really founded by physicists more than any other thing, I think. Why is it that in an era where physics is stagnating, we don't see these kinds of minds? Like, I'm a little skeptical of that theory.

'''Peter Thiel:''' Well, I'm not so sure. Like, if you're a string theory person, or even sort of an applied experimental physicist, I don't think you can that easily reboot into biology. I mean, these disciplines have gotten sort of more rigid. It's pretty hard to transfer from one area to another.

'''Peter Thiel:''' You know, when I was an undergraduate, you still had some older professors who were polymaths, who knew a lot about a lot of different things. This is, I think, the way one should really think of, you know, Watson and Crick, or Feynman, or Teller. They were certainly world-class in their field, but also like incredible in a lot of different fields.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' They were highly transgressive.

'''Peter Thiel:''' And, you know, the cultural, or institutional, rule, is no polymaths allowed.

'''Eric Weinstein:''' Wow.

'''Peter Thiel:''' You know, you can be narrowly specialized, and if you're interested in other things you better keep it to yourself and not tell people, because if you say that you're interested in computer science and also music, or studying the Hebrew Bible, wow, that's just, that must mean you're just not very serious about computer science.