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Entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel on liberty and scientific progress
- shafqat 18y agoThis is a great interview. Good questions, intelligent answers. I'm impressed by Thiel the more I read about him/from him.
- lyime 18y agoMust agree, his responses are very intelligent and technical. There isnt as much as I would like to read about him online. I guess hes not very public.
- DaniFong 18y agoIs Peter being dishonest, or just glossing over things? Basically creating this new payment system from scratch, which was one of these Holy Grail type of things that a lot of people had been focused on. The basic thought was if you could lessen the control of government over money and somehow shift the ability of people to control the money that was in their wallets, this would be a truly revolutionary shift. He makes it sound like that's what he intended from the get go, but it took them a bunch of major changes in concept to land in the business they're in. Regarding technological singularities, even super-human intelligences remain bound by the laws of physics, and therefore laws limiting computational complexity. Why are the concepts 'the singularity', standing for an endless, unpredictable period of technological growth, and the more reasonable advent of super-human-AI, munged together?
- gojomo 18y agoWhy are the concepts 'the singularity', standing for an endless, unpredictable period of technological growth, and the more reasonable advent of super-human-AI, munged together? Because one view of the singularity idea is that, from the perspective of us puny human intelligences, the "more reasonable advent of super-human-AI" will be indistinguishable from "an endless, unpredictable period of technological growth". (The rate of growth may seem quite reasonable/predictable to the super-human-AIs, though.)
- Eliezer 18y agoWhen Paypal was first starting up, I saw Luke Nosek give a demo that involved creating an email account for russiandrugdealer@hotmail.com and sending $10 to it. I think they've got a pretty credible claim to libertarianism. Re: munging of Singularity concepts, see http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity-schools/ http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singular...
- Prrometheus 18y agoOne of Thiel's most recent investments is the anarchist seasteading project run by Patri Friedman, Googler and grandson of Milton Friedman: http://www.reason.com/news/show/126198.html http://www.reason.com/news/show/126198.html The Seasteading Institute's homepage is here: http://seasteading.org/ http://seasteading.org/
- JMiao 18y agoah, that's right. the real-world equivalent of rapture city.
- zandorg 18y agoMy Paypal experience as a UK citizen: They shut down my account for some obscure reason, and only re-opened it when I threatened to contact the Financial Services Authority. So much for libertarianism, and yay for the FSA.
- mseebach 18y agoThanks for sorting out any ideological issues anyone might have in three sentences. Or, of course, you could try to, you know, read a book about free markets, and then one on international financial regulations (I guarantee you the latter will be much longer and harder to read), and then try to put Paypal and libertarianism into the same box again.
- zandorg 18y agoThe article in question compared them, not me, and the rest of the comment is based on my factual experience, not so subjective that I needed a book to verify it.
- msie 18y agoYou've got to be skeptical of a magazine and website that calls itself "reason". Of course! Free-market thinkers are the only reasonable people out there.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoI'm more skeptical of something that would call itself The Nation or The New Republic. Wait, the whole nation is expected to think this way?
- blogimus 18y agoThere is always TIME.
- davidw 18y agoAnd I'm skeptical of articles that lead to exchanges like these on hacker news.
- byrneseyeview 18y agoWell, I'm skeptical of people who would make a claim like that without noting that last time the article was submitted (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177504 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=177504) such comments didn't show up.
- Prrometheus 18y agoReason has been around for decades. Nowadays, it represents a very laid-back, modern, and liberal wing of the libertarian movement.
- walterk 18y agoI'm rather disappointed that he never gave a decent justification for libertarianism in that interview. About all he said was "Totalitarianism is bad, that's why I'm a libertarian. Also, I read Tolkien."
- byrneseyeview 18y agoPeople who read Reason don't need to be told why one should be libertarian.
- walterk 18y agoWell, I was reading it about 4 hours ago, and I'd like to be told why one should be libertarian. :) But I'm genuinely curious to see what sort of reasoning led to Thiel's becoming a libertarian, and there's just not much to go on in the interview. People of many political persuasions, after all, maintain a healthy dislike for totalitarianism. And anyone who's taken Lord Acton's proverb to heart should recognize that corruption can manifest itself in those who hold market power just as easily as in those who hold political power.
- byrneseyeview 18y agocorruption can manifest itself in those who hold market power just as easily as in those who hold political power. Not really. People in business pursue the profit-maximizing choice, which at its worst means providing something unique enough that you can charge a monopolistic price. People in government pursue the power-maximizing choice, which at its best means maintaining the status quo until the next election. I guess it's too bad we don't have his whole conversion story, but I notice that NPR will not ask guests how they all became indistinguishable center-leftists.
- walterk 18y ago"People in business pursue the profit-maximizing choice, which at its worst means providing something unique enough that you can charge a monopolistic price." You're assuming they're bound by laws and aren't willing to subvert them to make a profit. At their worst, people in business have done a whole lot worse.