
Peter Thiel: Silicon Valley 'brainwashed' by higher education - ilamont
https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Peter-Thiel-Silicon-Valley-liberal-brainwashed-13232245.php
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mmmmpancakes
>"This perhaps is not so true of the founders [of Silicon Valley], but
certainly for many of the rank and file people," he said. "If you're a really
good engineer or really good at some specific thing, your education typically
does not involve you thinking that much about politics, so [being liberal] is
not necessarily from deep ideological conviction, it's often more of a fashion
statement than a question of power."

Peter Thiel thinks that only CEOs are capable of holding authentic political
views. Everyone should find this offensive.

~~~
paulddraper
A large part of the HN audience seems to struggle to read straightforward
assertions without freaking them in some polarizing all-out us-vs-them war.

"If you're a specialist, your education typically did not involve you thinking
that much about politics" != Only CEOs are capable of holding authentic
political views

Reminds me of the reaction to his 2009 essay

"welfare beneficiaries and women — two constituencies that are notoriously
tough for libertarians" != women should not have the right to vote

~~~
justtopost
Its ego driven, not political. Nobody wants to admit that their schooling put
them in financial and philosophical debt once graduated.

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neilk
> “it’s super hard to know whether people really believe this, whether they're
> just going along"

If only there was some way for people to demonstrate their political
preferences in a way which was costly, but not something that was generally
talked about or publicized.

[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nearly-all-of-
silicon-v...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/nearly-all-of-silicon-
valleys-political-dollars-are-going-to-hillary-clinton/)

Or if there were some way for them to express their collective political
preferences in a quantifiable way, with secrecy ensuring there was no
possibility of virtue-signaling.

[https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president...](https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/california/)

I guess we’ll never know.

~~~
paulddraper
> voting

That's the "they're just going along with it" argument voiced by both sides of
the aisle.

> campaign contributions

> not something that generally talked about it publicized

There's gotta be some reason Eich made it less weeks as Mozilla's CEO.

I guess we'll never know.

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kennywinker
So... learning things brainwashes you to be liberal? Makes sense to me.

~~~
lithos
Not quite the most telling statement is something close to: engineers are
intellectually invested in their work that most don't have time for caring
about politics, so they just follow what people around them are doing.

~~~
kennywinker
Or maybe they have strong political views, but choose to leave them at home -
rather than have conflict with their coworkers?

I know I personally have very strong opinions that I largely put aside at
work.

~~~
throwaway080383
Bingo. I'm left-leaning in a left-leaning environment, but I avoid talking
about politics, especially in writing, because it can only hurt me.

------
bediger4000
Is "Higher Education is not a good thing" a new trope among the financial
elite? Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle had something along the same
lines a month ago: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/imagine-a-world-
with...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/imagine-a-world-without-
mandatory-college-
diplomas/2018/08/24/6ac9bcac-a726-11e8-8fac-12e98c13528d_story.html?utm_term=.f50cbcfd05a3)

~~~
lloyd-christmas
It's part of the Trump Effect:

[https://i.imgur.com/17PHH1d.png](https://i.imgur.com/17PHH1d.png)

------
avmich
How engineering education implies not thinking that much about politics?

~~~
repolfx
Most SV employees don't have an engineering education, they have a computer
science education - not quite the same thing.

------
sidcool
So is an MS in Computer science worth it?

------
repolfx
It's interesting to see such a high profile person refer to higher education
this way. I've been thinking the same myself for a while and I recall a few
comments on HN expressing the same sentiment ... do universities make people
somehow educated but stupid simultaneously?

I've personally concluded that they do, and that society would be better off
if all government money was removed from the higher-ed system entirely (which
would presumably shrink it a lot, at least outside of the USA).

The problem is that academic culture imbues students with the notion that
educated people = smarter people = better people, that the worth of people can
be measured very precisely via grades, and that with education comes the
ability to solve any problem.

But the problem solving value add of a degree is actually not that high even
in very STEM oriented fields, and is virtually non-existent in many other
fields like economics or the social sciences. So society is suffering from
this huge river of people entering it who have little experience, little
understanding of the real world in which success and self-worth is _not_
entirely a function of grades dispensed by your betters, and yet who believe
more than anything that they are vastly superior in almost every way
(intellectual, ethical, etc) to people much older than them.

Meanwhile Silicon Valley companies drowning in money and with a culture of
never returning funds to investors via dividends or buybacks struggle to find
experienced employees to hire, so gorge themselves on this stream of new
graduates, bloating up to enormous levels with people who believe
intellectuals _can_ and _should_ do anything they believe will "make the world
a better place".

These students quickly come to dominate, and yet nothing causes their world-
views to self correct. In the artificial womb of SV where going bankrupt
because you don't make money is virtually unheard of, success and self-worth
is _still_ being determined by arbitrary scores dispensed by your intellectual
betters via promo committees and bonus schemes which are largely closed-loop
and unconnected to real world goals like happy users. See the discussion of
Googler incentives in the Inbox discussion elsewhere.

To older people who have had a much wider range of experiences, these Silicon
Valley types come to seem impossibly naive in their utopian beliefs that any
and all dissatisfactions can yield to their skills, if only 'experts' like
themselves were permanently in charge. And the SV types see in the Republican
party a bunch of uneducated angry old white men who don't value expertise and
question intellectual authority all the time; and who are obsessed with the
concept of markets - a concept that most of them have never really been
exposed to outside the lecture hall.

It is therefore inevitable that a liberal/conservative divide springs up,
oriented around the Valley. It doesn't have to be this way. If SV tech firms
were culturally capable of admitting when they've run out of ideas and are
generating too much money, re-allocating funds via to other firms using
dividend payouts and buybacks, they'd hire fewer graduates and have a more
experienced workforce overall. This in turn would reduce their "computers can
build utopia" mentality, and make it easier for them to fit in with the rest
of society.

~~~
Jonnax
All money taken out of higher education?

That's the kind of idea that would only likely happen in the USA where
education is looked down upon.

But I guess for the richest country in the world to be ranked around 30th in
terms of education. A feedback look to make the country even more stupid could
feasibly happen.

What about people going to university to be Doctors? Civil engineers?
Architects?

Do they need educations? Or I guess in your world the only two professions are
computer science and business.

~~~
repolfx
I didn't say all money, I said all government money.

People who wanted the training from universities would have to get regular
bank loans to afford it, not subsidised student loans. This would mean only
those who are likely to be able to pay the money back would be able to study
at universities: doctors and architects would probably still go.

~~~
tonyjstark
So then universities have to completely rely on money from the private sector?
Don't you think that would lead to an environment where the sponsors tell what
to teach? Don't you think that could be problematic? Not to mention what your
solution would mean for young people with less money or professions in the
humanities. You think studying history is not important?

University is not only there to teach you knowledge but more importantly
critical thinking and scientific best practices (like checking your sources).
If anyone has problems with critical questions about their reasoning or their
sources, that not the problem of the one who asked. If anyone think questions
show lack of respect, maybe they should first think why anyone should respect
them.

I'm pretty sure there is a certain culture of feeling superior if one has a
degree from a university, but this is definitely not fixed by frowning upon
higher education. Actually it makes everything worse.

~~~
repolfx
Yes to all the questions in your first paragraph bar one. Completely rely on
the private sector, check. Sponsors tell what to teach, check - that in fact
is the entire point! The closed-loop unaccountable nature of current teaching
is hugely wasteful and damaging to young people who frequently graduate in
huge debt and essentially unskilled. Don't I think that could be problematic,
no, otherwise I wouldn't propose it. I think asking whether studying history
is important is a low-value question to ask: anyone can argue any field of
human endeavour is "important". It's better to ask, important relative to what
else? People can easily study history outside the context of subsidised
academia, and the opportunity cost of subsiding huge numbers of people who (a)
don't care about history and (b) won't use anything they learned post-
graduation is enormous.

 _University is not only there to teach you knowledge but more importantly
critical thinking and scientific best practices_

Universities like to claim this. I do not believe them.

I think this angle is pure marketing spin that can't be substantiated and
covers up the truth - universities make people worse at critical thinking,
whilst giving them an undeserved sense of superiority and entitlement.

After all, if they were so devoted to critical thinking on campus, trigger
warnings and safe spaces wouldn't exist. But even putting those aside, which
parts of university courses are supposedly teaching these skills? I've studied
computer science, history and archaeology at university and at no point was
any attempt made to teach even the basics, like what the different logical
fallacies are and how to spot them.

 _Actually it makes everything worse._

Why would it? Removing the notion of academic superiority from public life
would re-orient social status towards practical experience and away from the
ivory tower. That doesn't seem likely to make things worse.

