
Why Is Peter Thiel Pessimistic About Technological Innovation? (2014) - flick
http://danwang.co/why-is-peter-thiel-pessimistic-about-technological-innovation/
======
boxcardavin
I'd recommend reading The Rise and Fall of American Growth for some useful
numbers on this. Between 1870 and 1970 the standard of living increased so
dramatically due to a few key inventions that the author calls "onetime"
events. Technology since then has led to marginal improvements compared to,
say, the widespread adoption of the filtered drinking water networks.

~~~
elchief
Paul Krugman's review:

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/the-
power...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/books/review/the-powers-that-
were.html)

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remarkEon
>The Empire State Building was built in 15 months in 1932. It’s taken 12 years
and counting to rebuild the World Trade Center. (Source: 36:00)

This is more a commentary on a broken and toxic local political and regulatory
climate in New York City than a point about a lack of engineering innovation.
Still, perhaps _that 's_ part of what he's talking about for some of his
critiques.

~~~
GuiA
_" Data from the National Safety Council from 1933 through 1997 indicate that
deaths from unintentional work-related injuries declined 90%, from 37 per
100,000 workers to 4 per 100,000. The corresponding annual number of deaths
decreased from 14,500 to 5100; during this same period, the workforce more
than tripled, from 39 million to approximately 130 million."_

[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4822a1.htm)

~~~
remarkEon
I think you're trying to make the point that the reason for long construction
timelines is directly linked to safety. In a way, that's indirectly supporting
Thiel's point. Why can't we have both? I don't see a reason that we can't have
a more responsive, swift building and infrastructure development _and_ a safe
construction environment.

~~~
foxyv
Safe, Cheap, Fast

Pick two.

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deepnotderp
Although this may irritate Thiel given his libertarian philosophy, the reason
is rather clearly the decline of focused public research initiatives.

Whereas previously we had universities and government research arms inventing
cyclotrons, rockets, GPS and internet systems, we now have an outcome where
long term research, which requires a long time with unpredictable returns and
a high chance of failure is cast aside in favor of rapid, iterative
improvements.

~~~
CalChris
I agree with all that but I still wouldn't call Thiel any sort of libertarian.
He spoke at the RNC, backed Trump and is in fact a registered Republican. Like
many he waved a libertarian flag of convenience when that was fashionable but
the dude's a right wing conservative.

I wouldn't say these sort of conservatives are pessimistic about progress so
much they are opposed to progress.

~~~
dgut
"We don't support Trump for his weaknesses but for his strengths." \- Thiel at
the RNC.

It was a pragmatic choice. Thiel _is_ a libertarian.

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kinkrtyavimoodh
Isn't there an inevitable aspect of diminishing returns here? For example, you
can't run Moore's Law forever since there are physical constraints to how
close things on your chips can be.

It is obvious that any problem to which people have not turned their attention
to probably has lots of low hanging fruits that will give you 'progress' very
quickly and relatively easily.

~~~
deathhand
I would disagree. The IoT despite being the latest fad has true possibility to
change the world. We don't see this change in English speaking countries
though. Why not? We are comfortable. If you go to an advanced Asian country
they are just now gaining traction into the world and will leap frog this
innovation. (Think Europe in the 1890s-1935.)

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NotSammyHagar
I think we don't measure productivity of knowledge workers well, so we can't
see how much progress we make based on IT changes. How do you measure the
improvements that come from me sitting at my desk and coding up the OS? You
measure second and third degree effects. You could argue windows doesn't
matter compared to linux in productivity, but in either case the lives of
pharmacists and ability to dispense drugs are much higher today than they were
in the 50s. You can have robots count out the pills. The doc doesn't call my
pharmacy, a computer manages telling them the prescription. We do have more
drugs being prescribed, but I am convinced (I do need some evidence though)
that the reason the economists claiming persistent lack of productivity growth
is because we don't measure it accurately in the modern age. It's more that
more comfort for pharmacists.

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SirLJ
Similar feelings st the beginning of the 20th sentury... everything invented,
nothing more to discover... bottom line, no body can predict the future and
something amazing can be right around the corner...

~~~
tedsanders
Personally, I think the future is more predictable than you suggest. The
standard model of physics has been stable for over half a century. New
discoveries in physics typically don't throw out what came before - they make
improvements that seem to be asymptotically smaller.

Asimov has an excellent essay on the topic of scientific progress:
[http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm](http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm)

Of course it's always possible we discover something new and groundbreaking in
the laws of physics, but given that we're having to spend billions of dollars
on accelerators and telescopes, it seems less and less likely that we'll find
things as cheap and as useful as electricity or semiconductors.

Looking at life now compared to life in 1967, there are many differences,
especially related to computer technology, but there are also many
similarities. We still have ships, trains, cars, and planes. We still have
roads. We still have schools. We still have houses. We still have plumbing for
water and waste. We still have electricity. We still have jobs and commutes.
We still have governments and corporations and money. For the most part, the
structure of modern life has been pretty stable. Of course we cannot know the
future, but it feels safe to me to expect similar stability over the next half
century.

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euske
This theme of slow technological advancement echos with a recent NPR podcast.
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/05/19/529178937/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/05/19/529178937/episode-772-small-
change)

Basically they say that productivity growth is sporadic, rather than
continuous. I took this as a cautionary tale that we shouldn't be too hyped
about the future. Keep your feet down to the earth, etc.

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SirLJ
Just think for moment, only 50 years ago people had no idea about internet,
smart phone, cell phone cd Rom, MP3, app, social media, YouTube, web page,
pvr, Netflix, amazon and so one and so forth... after another 50 years, the
world could be a very different place...

~~~
tedsanders
50 years ago Arthur C Clarke made some very decent predictions about the
future. He correctly called global satellite communications, for instance. And
if anything, his predictions were too optimistic. Genetic engineering hasn't
changed humanity, we still haven't colonized the moon or Mars, and we're still
a long way from general AI.

[http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/scifi/arthur-clarke-
predict...](http://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/scifi/arthur-clarke-predicts-
future-1964.html)

