
Peter Thiel on Progress and Stagnation - apsec112
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zao_AyBhNb8TPWrQqgXn5NzNAgfEqzTIaFYos7wdqGI/edit?usp=drivesdk
======
tehabe
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.

~~~
whb07
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?

~~~
_Microft
Why is it not permitted to create a jelly/marmalade with more than 4 fruits?

~~~
mjlawson
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...](https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=150.160)

~~~
_Microft
Thanks, I was trying to set them up for a "Chesterton's fence" situation tbh
;)

~~~
mjlawson
I hadn't come across that before! Very nice.

------
seibelj
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.

~~~
baddox
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.

~~~
ZephyrBlu
He's not irrationally optimistic about the future.

~~~
yks
A rather predictable position for a person owning a business that makes the
future worse.

------
dustingetz
> _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.

~~~
noetic_techy
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.

~~~
dustingetz
FAAMG is like 20% of the GDP of the USA, the state can't intervene with itself

~~~
edanm
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.

~~~
dustingetz
Thanks, I just found this better stat: "The “FAAMG” basket accounts for 18% of
the total S&P 500 value"

------
vngzs
> 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](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm)

~~~
pcbro141
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.

------
moralestapia
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.

~~~
alicemaz
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

~~~
moralestapia
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.

~~~
alicemaz
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

------
skmurphy
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).

------
peacefulhat
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.

~~~
istorical
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...](https://skarredghost.com/2020/04/07/senseglove-vr-haptics-gloves/)

------
read_if_gay_
I can recommend listening to Thiels episode on Eric Weinsteins The Portal
podcast if this sounds interesting to you.

~~~
scop
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s)
Audio: [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-peter-
thiel/id146999...](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-peter-
thiel/id1469999563?i=1000444670908)

------
Pokepokalypse
>“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.

~~~
novok
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.

------
novok
It's interesting that many of his date coincide with the WTF happened in 1971
website: [https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/)

~~~
marcosdumay
Wait, despite the perfect timing for a real cause that page is really trying
to attribute it to monetary policy?

~~~
novok
That is their take, but you gotta admit, something happened in the early
1970s.

~~~
marcosdumay
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.

~~~
fuzzfactor
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.

------
noetic_techy
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?

------
bem94
> 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.

------
newbie789
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??

~~~
ramraj07
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.

~~~
newbie789
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?

------
xwdv
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.

~~~
kennywinker
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.

~~~
xwdv
We’re the wrong generation to solve this problem, it’s already too late.

------
vondur
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.

~~~
kennywinker
I am super ok with "stagnation" of technologies that have the potential to
cause the extinction of our species.

------
melling
The author posted his Twitter announcement on HN a few hours ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899990)

Couldn’t edit the document so I added a few corrections there

------
buzzert
As a PDF: [https://6761deed1591e2a2-buzzertdotnet.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaw...](https://6761deed1591e2a2-buzzertdotnet.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/junk/Thiel+on+Progress+and+Stagnation.pdf)

------
Balgair
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.

------
Shmebulock
"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?

------
lordnacho
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).

------
philipkglass
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.

------
Mangalor
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.

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
It _was_ too expensive 10 years ago. Technology improvements have brought
efficiency up and cost down since then.

~~~
turdnagel
Sounds like progress to me. But since we can't travel at 2,000 MPH...

------
eb3c90
> 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?

------
Shmebulock
What is meant by "SAS enterprise software, really overrated"? Does he mean
SAAS as in Software-as-a-Service?

------
alangibson
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?

~~~
jbob2000
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.

~~~
notahacker
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.

------
viburnum
Just take all the money and build loads of solar and wind power.

------
AndrewGaspar
It would be nice if there was an .epub format version of this.

------
Animats
This is old. What's the date?

~~~
apsec112
The doc itself was only put together recently, but it's composed of quotes and
interviews from over the last decade.

~~~
Pokepokalypse
Seems like he's stagnated.

~~~
InquilineKea
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

~~~
Balgair
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.

------
novalis78
I highly recommend the website
[https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/](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.

------
laughinghan
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...](https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-
prices/historical-crude-oil-prices-table/)

It's true that it spiked in 1974-1985, and was elevated from 1986-1992
(ranging $32.48 - $45.65 &mdash; 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/productivity-
pay-gap/)

[https://www.epi.org/publication/reining-in-ceo-
compensation-...](https://www.epi.org/publication/reining-in-ceo-compensation-
and-curbing-the-rise-of-inequality/#_ref5)

 _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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_the_first_powered_flight)

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?

------
cromwellian
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.

------
Animats
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.

~~~
apsec112
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)

~~~
Animats
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.

------
kennywinker
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.

~~~
whatshisface
Taking your comment at absolute face value, this essay is about technological
progress, not the needs desires or problems of anybody.

~~~
kennywinker
"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?

------
riazrizvi
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.

