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There is no evidence that Thiel is a genius. There's a large amount of evidence that he is not. And yet people still think that because one of his hundreds of

There is no evidence that Thiel is a genius. There's a large amount of evidence that he is not. And yet people still think that because one of his hundreds of investments made a lot of money that he must be a genius. He's just not who people want him to be. He's not another Musk.

GuiA 10y ago
Most Silicon Valley magnates are not geniuses. They're average to above-average smart, with other traits (grit, luck, the right connections, etc) that put them in their situation. Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) because you start getting access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to. But nerd culture values intelligence so much that we tell ourselves that of course Zuckerberg, Thiel, and others must be geniuses because a) how would they have gotten to where they are otherwise? and b) nerds like to think of themselves as geniuses as well, and therefore just one successful startup away from watching Game of Thrones with Zuck on a Sunday night. The problem with this is that we then don't recognize when those industry leaders are acting as ignorant/stupid as any other average educated person, and instead come up with convoluted explanation about how they're contrarians and they always play the most offensive move in chess and surely that must correlate to their political choices.
- lisper 10y ago
  > Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) because you start getting access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to. This. This is really important to understand because it's the fundamental cause of the divide between the super-rich and everyone else. Not only do you get access, but you also can start to buy influence with the government to tilt the playing field in your favor. These two things cause a positive feedback effect that lets people above a certain threshold of wealth continue to grow that wealth at the expense of everyone else. The real problem is that everyone seems to want to believe that they too can reach this level of wealth by "working hard and playing by the rules". As a corollary, they believe that if you're not rich it must be because you didn't work hard enough or didn't play by the rules. Of course, this is false, but there's no way to fix the underlying problem as long as a majority accepts this false narrative.
  - no_flags 10y ago
    > access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to. What kind of investments are you and the original comment referring to?
    - lisper 10y ago
      It's actually less about the kind of investment and more about the terms you can negotiate. If you can buy in for half of what anyone else can buy in at then your return will be twice what everyone else's return will be, and you losses will be half of what everyone else's will be, regardless of anything else that happens.
  - junko 10y ago
    Aaand that's popped the balloon and back to reality. Nevermind billion dollar ideas, let's just focus on a lifestyle business where you can't go wrong, headache and conscience-wise
- metheus 10y ago
  > Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) Or unless you're Trump! rimshot http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/ http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/ http://www.moneytalksnews.com/why-youre-probably-better-investing-than-donald-trump/ http://www.moneytalksnews.com/why-youre-probably-better-inve...
ryporter 10y ago
Can you please elaborate on the large amount of evidence that he is not a genius? If you are going to cite some of his investment failures, then you also have to consider his successes, and the fact that he has, overall, been very, very successful. He did not just have one good investment. He has had many, in addition to founding PayPal and Palantir.
- fundameen 10y ago
  He has not had many successes. He's had a very few out of a great many. Like literally anyone with his connections and money could expect to have. The Facebook deal was dropped in his lap by Reid Hoffman due to a conflict of interest he had. Probably the most damning evidence of his lack of genius is when he pushed Zuckerberg very hard to sell Facebook at like $1 billion. He also sold PayPal early in a similar situation and has pushed other founders to sell early, though I forget the specific examples. This is very clearly not genius levels of vision. Thiel wouldn't be a famous billionaire today if Zuckerberg had listened to his advice. There's also the fact that Elon Musk showed us exactly what a real genius could do with his incredibly privileged position in the world.
DefaultUserHN 10y ago
So what is the point you're trying to make. That Thiel's opinion about Trump is wrong because he is not a genuis? Dude, really, it's just his opinion, man.

GuiA 10y ago

Most Silicon Valley magnates are not geniuses. They're average to above-average smart, with other traits (grit, luck, the right connections, etc) that put them in their situation. Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) because you start getting access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to. But nerd culture values intelligence so much that we tell ourselves that of course Zuckerberg, Thiel, and others must be geniuses because a) how would they have gotten to where they are otherwise? and b) nerds like to think of themselves as geniuses as well, and therefore just one successful startup away from watching Game of Thrones with Zuck on a Sunday night. The problem with this is that we then don't recognize when those industry leaders are acting as ignorant/stupid as any other average educated person, and instead come up with convoluted explanation about how they're contrarians and they always play the most offensive move in chess and surely that must correlate to their political choices.

lisper 10y ago
> Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) because you start getting access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to. This. This is really important to understand because it's the fundamental cause of the divide between the super-rich and everyone else. Not only do you get access, but you also can start to buy influence with the government to tilt the playing field in your favor. These two things cause a positive feedback effect that lets people above a certain threshold of wealth continue to grow that wealth at the expense of everyone else. The real problem is that everyone seems to want to believe that they too can reach this level of wealth by "working hard and playing by the rules". As a corollary, they believe that if you're not rich it must be because you didn't work hard enough or didn't play by the rules. Of course, this is false, but there's no way to fix the underlying problem as long as a majority accepts this false narrative.
- no_flags 10y ago
  > access to the kind of investments that have much higher expected returns than the kind of investments a blue collar worker has access to. What kind of investments are you and the original comment referring to?
  - lisper 10y ago
    It's actually less about the kind of investment and more about the terms you can negotiate. If you can buy in for half of what anyone else can buy in at then your return will be twice what everyone else's return will be, and you losses will be half of what everyone else's will be, regardless of anything else that happens.
- junko 10y ago
  Aaand that's popped the balloon and back to reality. Nevermind billion dollar ideas, let's just focus on a lifestyle business where you can't go wrong, headache and conscience-wise
metheus 10y ago
> Once you have a few dozen million dollars, it's not so hard to maintain and grow that (unless you go on idiotic spending sprees) Or unless you're Trump! rimshot http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/ http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/ http://www.moneytalksnews.com/why-youre-probably-better-investing-than-donald-trump/ http://www.moneytalksnews.com/why-youre-probably-better-inve...

ryporter 10y ago

Can you please elaborate on the large amount of evidence that he is not a genius? If you are going to cite some of his investment failures, then you also have to consider his successes, and the fact that he has, overall, been very, very successful. He did not just have one good investment. He has had many, in addition to founding PayPal and Palantir.

fundameen 10y ago
He has not had many successes. He's had a very few out of a great many. Like literally anyone with his connections and money could expect to have. The Facebook deal was dropped in his lap by Reid Hoffman due to a conflict of interest he had. Probably the most damning evidence of his lack of genius is when he pushed Zuckerberg very hard to sell Facebook at like $1 billion. He also sold PayPal early in a similar situation and has pushed other founders to sell early, though I forget the specific examples. This is very clearly not genius levels of vision. Thiel wouldn't be a famous billionaire today if Zuckerberg had listened to his advice. There's also the fact that Elon Musk showed us exactly what a real genius could do with his incredibly privileged position in the world.

DefaultUserHN 10y ago

So what is the point you're trying to make. That Thiel's opinion about Trump is wrong because he is not a genuis? Dude, really, it's just his opinion, man.