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Peter Thiel Is a Flawed Messenger with a Crucial Message for Tech
- whatyoucantsay 9y ago> "Where Peter Thiel lives is of at best marginal import to anyone but him." This is not first rate journalism. Does Zachary Karabell not realize that people go to Mr. Thiel seeking investment? It's not simply a matter of Facebook. SpaceX and Stripe each had times when they couldn't raise investment from anyone but Thiel.
- cambaceres 9y agoIt is worth questioning why they even wrote this article in the first place if that statement were true.
- kristianc 9y ago"That’s why there is and will be an even greater pushback against the idea that a small group of companies and executives can reap vast rewards, dictate the architecture of the online, cloud, AI, and robotic worlds and maintain an insular, parochial, and narrow worldview marked by groupthink." Slightly strange from the author of 'Zero to One'..
- Jefro118 9y agoI think that's the author of the article speaking though, rather than Thiel.
- funkythingss 9y agoI don't understand the medias obsession with Thiel since Trumps election. He's a republican. K He's gay. K He's critical of the Silicon Valley echo chamber. K He's a great businessman. K There's not really a great boogieman story to make from. this.
- stryk 9y agoHim and Hulk Hogan got in a tag team fight versus the online version of a supermarket checkout aisle tabloid. And won! That's pretty cool I guess... I agree the obsession with the guy is weird, but then the entire cult of celebrity thing never really made a lot of sense, imho.
- Mountain_Skies 9y agoThink it is his refusal to toe the valley's ideological line that's causing the obsession. He's pretty much the same guy he has always been but the landscape around him has changed. He refuses to change with it. That makes him confusing to those who have successfully bullied everyone else into groupthink compliance. Why won't he just submit to the hive?
- narrator 9y agoI think being at the head of Palantir maybe gave him a deep understanding of what's really going on inside the federal government and he's a believer that there is indeed a swamp. This seems to be one of the big issues that separates the Trump supporters from everyone else. Everyone else seems to think the government was run perfectly under Obama's presidency and Hillary's state department and Trump threw the whole world into chaos.
- bwang29 9y agoFor those who wants to find the "Crucial Message" quickly, I think it is hidden in the 4th last paragraph : "That’s why there is and will be an even greater pushback against the idea that a small group of companies and executives can reap vast rewards, dictate the architecture of the online, cloud, AI, and robotic worlds and maintain an insular, parochial, and narrow worldview marked by groupthink." Or was it somewhere else? To be fair, it is not a small group of companies, but rather clusters of companies working decades together to make it all happen, and I was hoping there was at least a tiny bit of appreciation in the article. But I quickly realized that while the author did the name dropping he had to point out Amazon is not technically in the Valley but part of the equation. I was hoping he could find companies like Western Digital is also making most of the hard drives that contribute to whatever agenda he thinks the silicon valley is doing.
- discodave 9y agoThis is the 'crucial message' that the author is trying to promote: > His rationale, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, is that the Valley is now a politically intolerant culture, left-leaning in the extreme and to the exclusion of any contrarian viewpoints And it is bullshit. Who can be found shutting down democracy via gerrymandering? Republicans. Who can be found threatening the media from one of the most powerful pulpits in the land? Trump, who seems to have the unyeilding support of the Republican party. Who runs online harrassment campaigns with the explicity aim of silencing people? Gamergate and the red-pill brigade. The left has made some mistakes and could do a lot of things better, but they can't hold a candle to the right when it comes to insular, parochial, and narrow worldviews marked by groupthink
- owens99 9y agoDon't forget climate change denial.
- ramblerman 9y agoNone of your examples are in the valley though. I do agree online debate is extremely toxic and partisan on both sides, to the detriment of everyone and leading to groupthink. But that is not what's discussed here.
- bjrobz 9y agoThiel is a supporter of the presidential candidate who is throwing our children's futures away; a man who doesn't believe in climate change and whose policies help propagate its causes. I don't care how good of a programmer or businessman this guy is. He's a sellout who peddles conspiracy theories. The tech boom is something that's never been witnessed, EVER. Just because banks were regulated 100 years ago doesn't mean the same will happen with tech today. This is an unprecedented time, and we, as humans, have no reference point to compare it to. It is dangerous thinking to believe that we do.
- eksu 9y agoI feel the same way towards vegans. How dare someone have a different opinion than I! (Except I’m talking about meat consumption obviously, not political preference. Also only 0.4% of the US population are vegan, vs the 46% of voters that swung for Trump.)
- bjrobz 9y agoYea you know its cute to be okay with people having opposing opinions. But when one is supported by science, and the other by good will, and the possibility is life and death, I draw a harder line.
- eksu 9y agoI couldn’t agree more — We must reject the goodwill vegans show animals, and instead embrace goodwill towards our fellow man. Scientists agree, meat and dairy are part of a healthy diet. It’s even in the food triangle! If we don’t turn things around now, veganism could spike to 20 or 40 percent in the next generation, and after that there is no going back... the implications are clear.
- dublinclontarf 9y agoSo what you're saying is people will die? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXWhbUUE4ko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXWhbUUE4ko
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- kosei 9y agoAs much as I hate to admit, I do agree with Thiel's point (barely mentioned after the first paragraph) that the vast majority of thought is being driven by politically intolerant left-leaning liberals. I am absolutely one of them, but it's amazing that in multiple major tech companies in Seattle, there has been a near-100% shared liberal mentality, that has only exploded post-Trump. It's very difficult to make products and apps for everyone, when the people making them represents only one viewpoint. And interestingly, unlike companies that localize/culturalize their products by opening local offices, I don't know of any companies opening satellite offices in Alabama/Mississippi or even conservative counties in Washington and California. I remember when it used to be taboo to talk politics in the office. I find that doesn't even exist anymore, when everyone shares the same left-leaning mindset.
- bmarquez 9y ago> there has been a near-100% shared liberal mentality, that has only exploded post-Trump This is mainly because anyone who doesn't share that liberal mentality has learned to keep their mouths shut or risk their career.
- specialist 9y agoI'm okay with racists, xenophobes, misogynists, flat earthers, vaxxers, truthers, etc. keeping their thoughts to themselves.
- cristianpascu 9y agoIt's not only these that have learned to keep their mouth shut. I'm even skeptical that they do. Extreme positions are uncontrollable, they demand to be heard. The more moderate, the more nuanced a position is, harder it is to put it on card board and hide your face behind it. And by moderate, nowadays, we should understand anything that is not extreme left or right. There's a deep commonality, unconscious most of the time if not always, between those extremes. That's why they only think and act and hate as if only they exist. They and their enemies.
- kasperni 9y agoOne thing I have been wondering about lately is what kind of reputation will people working in the tech industry have 10-20 years from now. Will people working outside the industry think of us as the new banker wankers? Unfortunately, I would not be surprised giving the social implications of much of the technology that are being introduced through companies such as Amazon, Uber etc.
- thedailymail 9y agoSo the author says Thiel's message is that there will be more regulation of the tech industry, as if that is unquestionably a bad thing. But we've all seen how the industry, like any large scale human activity, is subject to manipulations that work against the public good, and specifically the good of its own users. At this point it seems like many industry leaders acknowledge the need for regulation, and as is historically the case with other industries, are seeking to work with the government to design regulations that will (ideally) strengthen consumer protections but not create undue burdens. Thiel appears to be staunchly libertarian and so for him regulation per se is a negative development, but there are certainly other ways to view the interaction between public and private sectors. I get the sense that lots of people working in tech can see the case for why a bit more oversight wouldn't hurt.
- arvinjoar 9y agoThe author can't have listened much to Thiel. He certainly doesn't speak without a filter, most of what he says he will repeat in interview after interview, for years. Every now and then he adds something new, but that thing is seldom very off-the-cuff. Thiel is unorthodox, not unfiltered.
- nopriorarrests 9y agoThis thread (50 comments as of now) utterly amazes me. I mean, I haven't seen americans with different political views talking to each other in a level headed manner for a long time. Heck, on reddit they just use different subreddits, /r/politics and /r/the_donald, otherwise they are on each other throats in no time. Ok, that's reddit, so it should be expected, but HN is not much different recently. And it's not like we are talking about war crimes or human lifes here; it's just an opinion from some wealthy VC dude. Hardly something to be mad about, no matter if you agree with him or not. PS: I have to make a disclaimer probably. by some coincidence, I'm russian. Weather is damn cold in Moscow, thanks for asking. No, I wasn't paid 50 rubles for this post.
- kapauldo 9y agoThis is so wrong. Tech skews rational. It's not a bias against conservatives, conservatives skew religious. Religious thinkers avoid rational explanations. Tech will always skew "left."
- originalsimba 9y agoPolitical division in the United States is insane. People do not think for themselves. They are complete tools of whatever media outlets they happen to get their "news" from. They grab hold of catch phrases and chant them as loud as possible to drown out the voices of the "opposition". There's no rational thought behind their actions, only blind loyalty to men-as-products who they think are their friends because they have chosen to be completely ignorant to the Show-Business Fraud of modern politics. Despite years of effort and media both fictional and non-fiction, showing everyone how politics manipulates their emotions and core beliefs, nothing has improved. If anything it's gotten so much worse. Insanity is the only way that a person can really summarize it. It's blind rabid insanity.
- natecavanaugh 9y agoThis is somewhat pedantic to the overall point of the article, but Peter Thiel is moving to LA because the Valley is a stifling cultural environment, but then goes on to name multiple tech companies that they consider part of the Valley, but physically removed. Why would Thiel moving to LA somehow affect this equation? They start the article using it for its importance and end it with saying it isn't, and it feels so contrived for the writer to use it as a way to editorialize on other matters. I do happen to agree with a lot of the article, but the editing here feels sloppy, and while I love a lot of Wired's content, it seems like this continues to be a problem with their articles.