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Perhaps the deficit of happiness can be better explained by one of Peter Thiel's most excellent reductionist observations: The countercultural in the '60s wa

Perhaps the deficit of happiness can be better explained by one of Peter Thiel's most excellent reductionist observations: The countercultural in the '60s was the hippies. You know, we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later, and with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress ended, and the hippies took over the country. [1][2] Perhaps, for too long, the left has engulfed and held hostage our cultural ideas of progress and advancement. And perhaps that has imbued us with a certain stripe of ideological stagnation not just in the way we perceive modernity but in also the debilitating influence on how we perceive actual technological progress itself and its relevance to the overall happiness of our society. Perhaps our dominant leftist culture's 'ideological stagnation index' is the unmeasured metric that could explain why we feel the way we feel despite technological progress. Thiel on the same topic: Today the counterculture is to believe in science and technology. You know, our society, the dominant culture doesn’t like science. It doesn’t like technology. You just look at the science-fiction movies that come out of Hollywood — Terminator, Matrix, Avatar, Elysium. I watched the Gravity movie the other day. It’s like you would never want to go into outer space. You would just want to be back on some muddy island. And so I think we’re in a world where actually believing that a better future is possible that you can have agency and work towards a better future, that is actually radically countercultural.[1] [1] Glenn Beck and Peter Thiel On How To Change What's Politically Cool http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IER50pX-FuM&t=3m22s [2] Technology Stalled in 1970 http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled-in-1970/ http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/530901/technology-stalled...

ridewinter 8y ago
Those hippies brought us Apple computer and the Internet. What have conservatives contributed other than environmental destruction? Legit question.
- rjkennedy98 8y ago
  I'm very far to the left, but the military made almost all the major inventions that silicon valley has packaged up for consumer use. The iPhone is nothing but a collection of technologies designed for war. GPS, small cameras, the internet, ect were all designed by the military not by Silicon Valley.
  - ridewinter 8y ago
    The hackers contracting in the 60s for the government and military were hardly conservative. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/25conn.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/25conn.html
    - bachbach 8y ago
      The point though is that some people in SV think that a monoculture of liberals were/are behind everything and that is just not true. Technology is a full spectrum ideological bloodsport.
blanderman 8y ago
It's odd to me how the president from 1969 to 1977 and 1981 to 1993 was a republican, but the argument is that 'hippies' took over?
- wozniacki 8y ago
  He's talking about the cultural left not the political one deployed to ensure voter turnout. Perhaps this will add more context: Today’s aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse. I wonder whether the endless fake cultural wars around identity politics are the main reason we have been able to ignore the tech slowdown for so long.[1] [1] The End of the Future https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thiel/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thie...
  - blanderman 8y ago
    I just see a lot of very bold assertions without statistical references to back them up.
baxtr 8y ago
“That’s when progress ended”, really? That alone is enough to discredit Thiel on the topic
- bachbach 8y ago
  You're not reading Thiel's full argument, it takes a while to appreciate it, you won't get it from a couple of sound bites. I've read a slew of his essays and watched his talks - it takes a while to absorb how different this interpretation of reality is. I believe Thiel is correct in what he is saying and that is terrifying. It is going to take Westerners a long time to finally wake up and when it finally does it'll be jarring and immensely depressing.
  - baxtr 8y ago
    Is there any way you could go into more detail on this or refer to some sources? In all honesty, your comment sounds vague and a bit esoteric, still interesting enough that I want to know if there some hidden truth to it. It can’t be that difficult
    - bachbach 8y ago
      Peter Thiel is really a kind of philosopher - the venture capitalism is more of an outgrowth of something else than his primary focus. This is a person who reads widely, has big ideas and is consistently ahead of everybody else - his reputation is wholly deserved. I've been following, causally at first, his ideas through books written about or by him, many hours of youtube videos and essays in and around the topics he talks about. It is difficult to distill this into a synopsis because although I can provide a TLDR it doesn't mean you'd get any predictive power of it. I suggest doing your own homework and coming to your own conclusions. I think I'd give a lot for a photo of his bookshelves. Here's a start. https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thiel/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thie... A common theme in Thiel's thought is that 'reality is often very different from the mainstream conception of it'. Ron Unz wrote this essay which gives body to this belief. http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/ http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/ Another theme is that humankind is highly mimetic - meaning they have a desire to be copying each other. This comes out of the philosophy of René Girard and you'll have to read something of his to fully understand where we're going with this. https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/ https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/ Watch this if you only watch one video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY Peter Thiel is at the intersection of an unusually large number of obscure and strange topics, that's the reason why he's ahead of the curve over and over. Things like Seasteading, Urbit, if you ferret away at the peripheral you start to see interesting stuff, some of which gets ferried back to the mainstream sooner or later he's not the only talent scout for weird ideas like this but there's surprisingly few people out there in these strange circles - I've found that I keep running into the same people over and over, only a few hundred of them I'd guess. I'm tired now, it's near GMT midnight but good luck on your quest! A lot of Tyler Cowen's ideas intersect with Thiel, that's another good line of enquiry.

ridewinter 8y ago

Those hippies brought us Apple computer and the Internet. What have conservatives contributed other than environmental destruction? Legit question.

rjkennedy98 8y ago
I'm very far to the left, but the military made almost all the major inventions that silicon valley has packaged up for consumer use. The iPhone is nothing but a collection of technologies designed for war. GPS, small cameras, the internet, ect were all designed by the military not by Silicon Valley.
- ridewinter 8y ago
  The hackers contracting in the 60s for the government and military were hardly conservative. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/25conn.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/arts/25conn.html
  - bachbach 8y ago
    The point though is that some people in SV think that a monoculture of liberals were/are behind everything and that is just not true. Technology is a full spectrum ideological bloodsport.

blanderman 8y ago

It's odd to me how the president from 1969 to 1977 and 1981 to 1993 was a republican, but the argument is that 'hippies' took over?

wozniacki 8y ago
He's talking about the cultural left not the political one deployed to ensure voter turnout. Perhaps this will add more context: Today’s aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse. I wonder whether the endless fake cultural wars around identity politics are the main reason we have been able to ignore the tech slowdown for so long.[1] [1] The End of the Future https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thiel/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thie...
- blanderman 8y ago
  I just see a lot of very bold assertions without statistical references to back them up.

baxtr 8y ago

“That’s when progress ended”, really? That alone is enough to discredit Thiel on the topic

bachbach 8y ago
You're not reading Thiel's full argument, it takes a while to appreciate it, you won't get it from a couple of sound bites. I've read a slew of his essays and watched his talks - it takes a while to absorb how different this interpretation of reality is. I believe Thiel is correct in what he is saying and that is terrifying. It is going to take Westerners a long time to finally wake up and when it finally does it'll be jarring and immensely depressing.
- baxtr 8y ago
  Is there any way you could go into more detail on this or refer to some sources? In all honesty, your comment sounds vague and a bit esoteric, still interesting enough that I want to know if there some hidden truth to it. It can’t be that difficult
  - bachbach 8y ago
    Peter Thiel is really a kind of philosopher - the venture capitalism is more of an outgrowth of something else than his primary focus. This is a person who reads widely, has big ideas and is consistently ahead of everybody else - his reputation is wholly deserved. I've been following, causally at first, his ideas through books written about or by him, many hours of youtube videos and essays in and around the topics he talks about. It is difficult to distill this into a synopsis because although I can provide a TLDR it doesn't mean you'd get any predictive power of it. I suggest doing your own homework and coming to your own conclusions. I think I'd give a lot for a photo of his bookshelves. Here's a start. https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thiel/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/end-future-peter-thie... A common theme in Thiel's thought is that 'reality is often very different from the mainstream conception of it'. Ron Unz wrote this essay which gives body to this belief. http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/ http://www.unz.com/runz/our-american-pravda/ Another theme is that humankind is highly mimetic - meaning they have a desire to be copying each other. This comes out of the philosophy of René Girard and you'll have to read something of his to fully understand where we're going with this. https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/ https://woodybelangia.com/what-is-mimetic-theory/ Watch this if you only watch one video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY Peter Thiel is at the intersection of an unusually large number of obscure and strange topics, that's the reason why he's ahead of the curve over and over. Things like Seasteading, Urbit, if you ferret away at the peripheral you start to see interesting stuff, some of which gets ferried back to the mainstream sooner or later he's not the only talent scout for weird ideas like this but there's surprisingly few people out there in these strange circles - I've found that I keep running into the same people over and over, only a few hundred of them I'd guess. I'm tired now, it's near GMT midnight but good luck on your quest! A lot of Tyler Cowen's ideas intersect with Thiel, that's another good line of enquiry.