It's worth revisiting Thiel's, "You are not a lottery ticket" (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw, in

It's worth revisiting Thiel's, "You are not a lottery ticket" (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZM_JmZdqCw, in which he outlines a compelling model for reasoning about the present world and the future: Outlook can be located on a grid where: - y-axis: optimistic/pessimistic - x-axis determinate/indeterminate The key point is that we could interpret the US in 1982-2007 as an historical moment where the general mindset was optimistic-indeterminate i.e. we assumed the future will be better but we had no idea exactly what concrete steps to take to make it better. In such an environment, finance and law are the dominant industries (while engineering and art decline). After 2008, there was a shift in mindset to pessimistic-indeterminate in which there is a large increase in discretionary expenditure on insurance/savings (with education being a form of insurance, thus the education bubble: "I don't know what my degree is for, but I had better get it anyway to avoid falling through the ever larger cracks in society."), while real investment in novel/radical projects declines.