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1: Peter Thiel: Difference between revisions
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'''Peter Thiel:''' There was a lot of excitement, a lot of stuff happened. And California was like a even more extreme version of this. You know, the last three recessions in California were much more severe than in the country as a whole. The recoveries were steeper, and so California has felt incredibly volatile. The volatility gets interpreted as dynamism. And then before you know it, 30 or 40 years have passed. | '''Peter Thiel:''' There was a lot of excitement, a lot of stuff happened. And California was like a even more extreme version of this. You know, the last three recessions in California were much more severe than in the country as a whole. The recoveries were steeper, and so California has felt incredibly volatile. The volatility gets interpreted as dynamism. And then before you know it, 30 or 40 years have passed. | ||
== Individual and Collective Incentives == | === Individual and Collective Incentives === | ||
'''Eric Weinstein:''' One thing that I'm very curious about is how this discipline seems to have arisen, where almost everyone representing the institutions tell some version of this universal story. Which, I'll be honest. To my way of thinking, can be instantly invalidated by anyone who chooses to do so. It's just that the cost of invalidating it is quite high. You know, Paul Krugman wrote this column called A Protectionist Moment, where he said, "Let's be honest. The financial elite's case, for ever free-er trade, has always been something of a scam.". | '''Eric Weinstein:''' One thing that I'm very curious about is how this discipline seems to have arisen, where almost everyone representing the institutions tell some version of this universal story. Which, I'll be honest. To my way of thinking, can be instantly invalidated by anyone who chooses to do so. It's just that the cost of invalidating it is quite high. You know, Paul Krugman wrote this column called A Protectionist Moment, where he said, "Let's be honest. The financial elite's case, for ever free-er trade, has always been something of a scam.". | ||
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'''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. | '''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. | ||
== Polymaths in Universities == | === Polymaths in Universities === | ||
'''Eric Weinstein:''' Well, so I totally want to riff on on this point, because I think you've hit the nail on the head. To my way of thinking, the key problem is, if you go back to our original contention, which is, is that there is something universally pathological about the stories that every institution predicated on growth has to tell about itself when things are not growing. | '''Eric Weinstein:''' Well, so I totally want to riff on on this point, because I think you've hit the nail on the head. To my way of thinking, the key problem is, if you go back to our original contention, which is, is that there is something universally pathological about the stories that every institution predicated on growth has to tell about itself when things are not growing. | ||
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'''Peter Thiel:''' That's not what I'm advocating, or what was being advocated here, but there is a point where if you just add more and more people in a starvation Malthusian context, that's not healthy. | '''Peter Thiel:''' That's not what I'm advocating, or what was being advocated here, but there is a point where if you just add more and more people in a starvation Malthusian context, that's not healthy. | ||
== Power Laws == | === Power Laws === | ||
'''Eric Weinstein:''' Well, this gets to another topic which, I think, is really important, and it's a dangerous one to discuss, which is it seems to me that power laws, those distributions with very thick tails where you have a small number of outliers that often dominate all other activity, are ubiquitous, and that particularly with respect to talent, whether we like them or not, they seem to be present, where a small number of people do a fantastic amount of all of the innovation. | '''Eric Weinstein:''' Well, this gets to another topic which, I think, is really important, and it's a dangerous one to discuss, which is it seems to me that power laws, those distributions with very thick tails where you have a small number of outliers that often dominate all other activity, are ubiquitous, and that particularly with respect to talent, whether we like them or not, they seem to be present, where a small number of people do a fantastic amount of all of the innovation. | ||