
Scott Alexander Reviews Thiel's Zero to One - jger15
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/31/book-review-zero-to-one/
======
lukasm
> Nowadays people get told that if they think they’ve figured out something
> about gravity, they’re probably a crackpot. Instead, they should wait for
> very large government-funded programs full of well-credentialled people to
> make incremental advances.

Maybe we approach limit of human cognitive abilities and another Newton is not
possible for current problems? Maybe to find a cure for cancer you need to
spend 10k hours studying biology, 10k studying chemistry, 10k studying machine
learning and then spend 100k hours on the problem, which it's not possible for
a human being.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Possibly. But then, we've always been good in solving problems with tools.
Could we reduce the necessary "10k" learning by building better tools for
accessing knowledge?

Right now, scientific papers are a shitshow, and even refined and systematized
knowledge in textbooks isn't as accessible as it could be in the digital age.
Could we encode knowledge in more powerful tools allowing us to explore
through free-form simulations?

The goal here would be to make discovery of promising solutions more time- and
effort-efficient.

Related, I feel we need to figure out a way to systematize information in
scientific papers to make mining them for cross-cutting insights possible. I
suspect there are lots of discoveries hiding in plain sight, if one knew which
particular papers from which disciplines touch on the same underlying
phenomenon or concept.

~~~
xyzzyz
_Related, I feel we need to figure out a way to systematize information in
scientific papers to make mining them for cross-cutting insights possible. I
suspect there are lots of discoveries hiding in plain sight, if one knew which
particular papers from which disciplines touch on the same underlying
phenomenon or concept._

This is interesting problem, unfortunately it's really, really hard.

I'm most familiar with mathematics, so I'll use it as an example, but this is
not limited to mathematics.

If you take any new paper on research mathematics, in a hot field like
algebraic geometry or partial differential equations, then unless you're an
expert in that field, it will almost always be literally impossible for you to
understand -- not simply hard to follow the arguments, but simply impossible
to understand even what it's about. Look, I just grabbed random example from
recent posts on arXiv[1]: try reading an abstract and explaining it back to
me. For 99.99% English speakers, this will be indistinguishable from random
gibberish in a paper written by recurrent neural network trained on arXiv
papers.

However, 0.01% of people will understand something, and for probably 1% of
these, the abstract will make perfect sense. However, if you ask these people
to explain it, you'll either spend an hour or two on getting some very
superficial understanding of what's at stake here, which won't be very useful
to you -- you still won't be able to actually read and follow the paper, and
use the insights for your own purposes. Alternatively, and if you're
intelligent enough, they can spend _a year or two_ teaching you required
background. Then you can see the insight for yourself.

The problem here is that you need literally _years_ of background studies to
appreciate the insight. There likely is no quick and easy way around it,
otherwise some of the extremely smart people involved would already have had
figured it out -- assuming otherwise is hubris. This doesn't mean that the
system cannot be improved upon: there's tons of ways to make things simpler,
clearer, more digestible. However, you'll still be left with hard problems of
hard things being hard.

[1] -
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.09846.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.09846.pdf)

~~~
nkurz
OK, let's check your numbers. There are about 1.5 billion people who speak
English, and you are telling us that only .0001 * 1.5 billion = 150,000 of
them will get anything out of the abstract? And that only .01 * 150,000 =
1,500 of those will find it to make perfect sense? That doesn't seem right.

 _Abstract. Using elliptically fibered Kummer surfaces of Picard rank 17, we
construct an explicit model for a three-parameter bielliptic plane genus-three
curve whose associated Prym variety is two-isogenous to the Jacobian variety
of the general three-parameter hyperelliptic genus-two curve in Rosenhain
normal form. Our model provides explicit expressions for all coefficients in
terms of modular forms._

Oh. Oh my. Checks list of Sokal Squared spoof papers, nope. "Indistinguishable
from random gibberish in a paper written by a recurrent neural network" it is
then. Rather than being conservative, now I see that you were wildly
optimistic in your estimate. There can't possibly be over 1,000 people in the
world to whom this would make perfect sense, can there?

------
jim-greer
> You can still visit the Bay Model in that Sausalito warehouse, but today
> it’s just a tourist attraction: big plans for the future have become archaic
> curiosities.

The Bay Model is well worth visiting. While the Reber Plan to dam up the bay
would have been an environmental disaster, the model is really cool. It was
actually used for many years after the plan was abandoned. It was only the
rise of fluid dynamics simulators that made it obsolete.

------
Reedx
_" Zero To One might be the first best-selling business book based on a
Tumblr. Stanford student Blake Masters took Peter Thiel’s class on startups.
He posted his notes on Tumblr after each lecture. They became a minor
sensation. Thiel asked if he wanted to make them into a book together. He
did."_

That's an interesting origin story.

I was curious to see the notes in question. Found them here, for anyone else
interested: [http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-
cs183-startup](http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup)

------
HarryHirsch
The Amazon example is interesting. Amazon gained a monopoly on books _in the
US_ and exploited that to become a monopoly in everything. Meanwhile in 1980s
Germany you could order books through your local bookseller of choice who
would go through one of two wholesellers who had most books in stock for next-
day delivery. But neither Libri nor KNV chose to exploit their position to
become Amazon before Amazon. That, or time wasn't yet ready.

~~~
dsr_
Some additional factors:

Ordering via a web catalog. Visiting a local bookseller takes a bigger
commitment than opening a web browser.

Price competition. Amazon typically had a better price on any given book (and
later, on most items) than any local store.

Delivery to home or office. Now you need to schedule a second visit to your
local bookstore.

~~~
mikeash
And a US-specific aspect of your second item: the weird way US sales tax is
set up meant that Amazon didn’t have to pay any for a long time, giving it an
automatic ~5% price advantage in most states.

------
40acres
Zero to One is my favorite "startup" book, Thiel has a lot of interesting
insights and I wish he was a bit more public with his thoughts. Trying to
search for Thiel talks online that don't take place during his book tour has
been tough for me.

~~~
genericone
I'm actually glad he isn't going on a self-congratulatory speaking tour, gives
me the impression he does indeed have important things to think about and work
on.

------
dvt
This might be an unpopular opinion, but the Amazon example is bad. Bezos
didn't get "richer than God" by making a _bookstore_ \-- this is just grossly
misleading. AWS and Prime (both criticized upon release; Prime lost money for
years) are the two main reasons Amazon took over the world. Amazon is a master
class in pivoting and trial and error. Sometimes it loses (Fire Phone), but
when it wins, it wins big.

~~~
hammock
Just as "make a bookstore" isn't the key to success, I don't believe you can
say "pivot a lot" or "trial and error" is the key to success either. Plenty of
startups pivot and run out of runway.

So what then is the secret sauce?

~~~
joshmarlow
My current thinking is that a big piece of success is taking risks and _being
able to absorb the losses_.

Generally big payouts don't come from a sure thing; you have to take multiple
risks that could potentially have big payouts and survive long enough for one
or more of them to pan-out.

Edit: for formatting

------
gradstudentcs
as a graduate student in CS (ML and theory) all these comments about people
not believing in their own ability to invent things via their own reasoning
runs 100% opposite to my own experience. weird. maybe i've just found a good
local optimum in my life choices and starting place (birth/white privilege
etc).

------
jseliger
_Zero to One_ is a great book: [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/09/24/zero-to-
one-peter-thiel-a...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/09/24/zero-to-one-peter-
thiel-and-blake-masters/) and you should read it if you've not already.

------
AceJohnny2
> _Google X wants to be the modern version of [Bell Labs and PARC], though I
> don’t know how much success they’ve had so far._

Google X is a startup incubator, not blue-sky research[1] in the way we
imagine Bell Labs and PARC to be.

[1] yes, Loon, I get it. Har har

------
throwaway5752
Asking honestly - who is Scott Alexander? I read the about page on the
submission, and it's even more confusing why he's reviewing this book.

~~~
the_jeremy
He's a California based psychiatrist who also happens to write rational
fiction (reddit.com/r/rational) and has interesting blog posts. I don't think
he has any special qualifications or status that would make his review any
more authoritative than anyone else's, but I really enjoy his writing style.

~~~
throwaway5752
Thanks, the reddit link is useful. Appreciate it.

------
notyourloops
He has a very interesting weekly discussion thread about the Culture War:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/akk8nc/cult...](https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/akk8nc/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_january_28/)

~~~
natalyarostova
I like /r/slatestarcodex, and I like the culture war thread.

But it's worth emphasizing Scott doesn't participate in that thread, and he
doesn't necessarily like it either. In fact, from what I can tell he's not a
huge fan of lots of the conversations that go on there, and the topics
discussed.

If anyone were to judge him on comments, please only do it based on the
curated comments on his website, where he deletes and bans people who are
uncivil.

~~~
CWuestefeld
From the latest thread:

    
    
        ----
    

As I'm sure everyone has noticed, the culture war thread has essentially grown
to devour all of /r/SlateStarCodex. Also, we talk about really weird stuff
here. That's intended, and it's something I like about this community;
however, given the weirdness, Scott Alexander no longer wants it on
/r/SlateStarCodex. We're moving this thread to another subreddit, and after
some internal discussion, we've realized that only a subset of our moderators
want to be responsible for the new culture-war-specific subreddit.

    
    
        ----
    

So it's definitely _not_ Scott's discussion.

~~~
notyourloops
So, basically an attempt at image clean-up. His audience created a regular
discussion based on the terminology of his original content, but he's trying
to become more popular to a broader audience. If people new to him were to
search, he'd be able to put some distance, should this separation be
effective. That's the gist of what I'm getting from reading the latest
discussion.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_but he 's trying to become more popular to a broader audience_

Not so much that, but to avoid repercussions in his real life. There are
topics being discussed that are real sacred cows, and even if his conclusions
are "correct", sometimes one is considered evil just for daring to question
the conventional values. (indeed, that's much of what the "culture war" thread
is _about_ )

Since his writing is just a hobby, he doesn't want fallout from that to impact
his real professional career.

~~~
notyourloops
Yeah, understood. Personally, I commend him. I sure as hell wouldn't put my
name to controversial topics (even if said discussion itself should, ideally,
NOT be controversial). In today's social climate that takes some serious
courage, and it's not really worth it unless you can be employed regardless of
opinion. I'm guessing in his sphere that's not permitted, which is unsettling.

