4 ms·

I strongly agree with the premise of the article, and I wish more of society was aware of the issues that propagate what the author calls "Elite Underproduction

by wpasc 5y ago

I strongly agree with the premise of the article, and I wish more of society was aware of the issues that propagate what the author calls "Elite Underproduction". However, while I agree with the premise, I think the precise factors that create this issue are not sufficiently discussed or agreed upon (Not enough money goes into science research? Regulation imposes too heavy a burden on the outputs of scientific endeavors in the material world? We culturally are not sufficiently accepting of those people who would like to do elite-esque style research?). I'm not sure what the precise ratios of the causes are but I feel each of those question marks I just wrote contribute somewhat. Personally, I have no idea what the ratio is or a great way to go about fixing it. But hey, if some awareness of the issue helps, I'm all for it. Regardless of what you feel about Peter Thiel or Eric Weinstein, their discussion in the first episode of Eric Weinstein's podcast at least discusses the issue around "Elite Underprudction". In that episode, Eric brings a perspective from a more left-leaning viewpoint and Thiel with his signature more libterarian/right-leaning viewpoint.

pharmakom 5y ago
Thiel is right wing but definitely not libertarian.
- enchiridion 5y ago
  Isn’t Thiel essentially anarcho-capitalist? So pretty far right and extremely (in the literal sense) libertarian. EDIT: anachro->anarcho
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Thiel's hawkish military (and self-interested, given Palantir's contracts with Defense) positions on China probably put him outside of the pale of "normal" libertarian politics.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Normally libertarianism has an 'exception' for defense because it's a pure commons. There's no obvious way to have private sector military due to the nature of wars and invasions. Indeed, the government having a monopoly on violence is a core part of libertarian thinking.
      - enchiridion 5y ago
        Yes, libertarians generally define a government as having a monopoly on violence. That does not necessarily mean they think the government should have a monopoly of violence.
        native_samples 5y ago
        I've never encountered a libertarian who thought otherwise, although I guess you can have 'sub-contracted violence' via things like private police forces licensed by the government. What exactly are you thinking of here?
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        > Normally libertarianism has an 'exception' for defense because it's a pure commons. There's no obvious way to have private sector military due to the nature of wars and invasions. Indeed, the government having a monopoly on violence is a core part of libertarian thinking. This is an entirely parallel subject. The monopoly on violence (which is just a concept in the theory of state, not a uniquely libertarian concept) doesn't imply a hawkish foreign policy outlook. Put another way: the libertarian perspective (even the minarchist variants) don't entail the kind of aggression that Thiel publicly advocates. Being a hawk on China (e.g., extolling the US MIC to take a more aggressive stance in territorial disputes and information warfare) is a very conservative, not libertarian, position.
    - RNCTX 5y ago
      Considering the primary trait of right wing libertarians is hypocrisy-fused self interest, I'd say he's right on the mark.
  - ch4s3 5y ago
    Anarchism-capitalism isn’t a exactly a right wing ideology. It’s really only useful to think of it that way in comparison to the traditional anti-capitalist flavors of anarchism.
    - pharmakom 5y ago
      Right anarchism and left anarchism only really differ in what they predict the steady state of anarchic conditions would be… and the culture of their advocates I suppose.
      - ch4s3 5y ago
        That's sort of what I'm driving at. I would note that anarcho-capitalists are not pro social hierarchy which is a central belief in right wing political philosophy. Murray Rothbard described the ideology as being neither of the left nor fo the right, basically saying that self ownership is incompatible with both traditions. Notwithstanding Thiel isn't and anarcho-capitalist, he seems in practice to be almost a neoconservative. He describes himself as a "conservative libertarian", but has wrapped himself up in the war state and the surveillance industry, both of which are HIGHLY at odds with any kind of libertarianism. Thiel is much more like Liz Cheney than say Ron Paul.
        wpietri 5y ago
        > anarcho-capitalists are not pro social hierarchy Are you sure about that? I mean, I believe they don't explicitly argue for it. But the ones I've come across seem to be practically in favor of the sort of wealth concentration and freedom of the rich to do as they please that they seem to be effectively in favor of strong social hierarchy.
        ch4s3 5y ago
        Some of them are natural law types and some are definitely misanthropic but they are all opposed to central authority and hierarchy. The high concentration of wealth we see today seems to be met with Teo main responses by the more well read ancaps I know. They either view it as the result of government capture or in some cases the reward for finding a great idea first. I think it’s a weak spot for them ideologically, personally.
  - Piribedil 5y ago
    I presume you meant anarcho-capitalist but I love the concept born from your typo : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism
  - specialist 5y ago
    I thought Theil was a self-described neoreactionary, which is explicitly anti-democracy. Which I interpretted to mean something like Aristotelian philosopher-king style governance. A fairly obvious logical conclusion when one's starting assumption that people (the polis) are fundamentally stupid and corrupt. By the standards of the self annointed philosopher-king, of course.
- wpasc 5y ago
  Honestly don't know the true nature of his politics, and I didn't mean to get political in my comment. I simply meant that in Thiel's discussion alone during the podcast comes from a less-government-would-help-here perspective. I don't know his opinions on virtually anything nor do I really care; I just thought that a variety of the points he made in that episode were at least interesting and made me think in a way I had not thought previously.
btrettel 5y ago
> However, while I agree with the premise, I think the precise factors that create this issue are not sufficiently discussed or agreed upon (Not enough money goes into science research? Regulation imposes too heavy a burden on the outputs of scientific endeavors in the material world? We culturally are not sufficiently accepting of those people who would like to do elite-esque style research?). I'm not sure what the precise ratios of the causes are but I feel each of those question marks I just wrote contribute somewhat. In terms of funding, I don't think increasing the amount of funding is going to be more than a short-term fix. Seems to me that there's a lot of induced demand: Add more money and it's quickly gobbled up. While I don't know all the details, it seems to me that we simply have far too many PhD students. I have a PhD, and I feel that a lot of well-intentioned people pushed me towards that before I was wise enough to understand the implications. The cynic in me thinks that some of them were more concerned with advancing their own careers than helping me out, as they need students to advance their careers. Too much science funding goes towards PhD students in my view. We need to reduce the amount going towards PhD students and increase the amount going towards more permanent research positions. Yes, the total headcount for researchers likely would decrease as PhD students are cheaper than experienced researchers, but I think overall scientific productivity would improve as experience matters, and we'd stop disappointing people who want jobs in science before they waste too much time on it. I wrote a bit about this earlier today, by coincidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141107
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  You've got some timely details drawn from an experienced point of view. Even beyond formal credentials scientific progress can primarily only be made by relatively fewer workers then ever holding their position or inching upstream against an increasing current flowing downstream. I think what you will find is that the rewards for STEM creatives who are in position for their abilities to be leveraged by mass media, will always be greater than those without it. Microsoft started selling CD's as fast as Michael Jackson but for 10X the price. DOS had already been pulling people away from natural science since the '80's. Apple mass-marketed pop music to sell hardware. Google started as an anti-advertising utility but reversed stance to convert a huge user base into a mass market. Amazon was all about a mass market to begin with. Facebook is what the National Enquirer would be like if they had gotten the idea to scale an internet concept and had that kind of capital to strategically deploy earlier. Mass media has such a major component consisting of fiction this is an attraction plain natural science does not possess. Scientific research has such a focus on pure reality that mainstream interest just can not be maintained continuously, as so much relatively unexciting time must pass before progress finally pushes one little bit of reality to actually become better than fiction. But that's where it starts to get good.
cema 5y ago
Looks like you are talking about https://podcastnotes.org/portal-with-eric-weinstein/thiel/ https://podcastnotes.org/portal-with-eric-weinstein/thiel/ from 2019, correct? Sounds interesting, thanks!
- wpasc 5y ago
  Yeah that's the podcast, but I glance at those notes and they are kind of lacking in my opinion when compared to actually listening to the podcast. I'd recommend listening to it as it's fascinating to listen it. Enjoy the listen :)

by wpasc 5y ago

pharmakom 5y ago

Thiel is right wing but definitely not libertarian.

enchiridion 5y ago
Isn’t Thiel essentially anarcho-capitalist? So pretty far right and extremely (in the literal sense) libertarian. EDIT: anachro->anarcho
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Thiel's hawkish military (and self-interested, given Palantir's contracts with Defense) positions on China probably put him outside of the pale of "normal" libertarian politics.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Normally libertarianism has an 'exception' for defense because it's a pure commons. There's no obvious way to have private sector military due to the nature of wars and invasions. Indeed, the government having a monopoly on violence is a core part of libertarian thinking.
    - enchiridion 5y ago
      Yes, libertarians generally define a government as having a monopoly on violence. That does not necessarily mean they think the government should have a monopoly of violence.
      - native_samples 5y ago
        I've never encountered a libertarian who thought otherwise, although I guess you can have 'sub-contracted violence' via things like private police forces licensed by the government. What exactly are you thinking of here?
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      > Normally libertarianism has an 'exception' for defense because it's a pure commons. There's no obvious way to have private sector military due to the nature of wars and invasions. Indeed, the government having a monopoly on violence is a core part of libertarian thinking. This is an entirely parallel subject. The monopoly on violence (which is just a concept in the theory of state, not a uniquely libertarian concept) doesn't imply a hawkish foreign policy outlook. Put another way: the libertarian perspective (even the minarchist variants) don't entail the kind of aggression that Thiel publicly advocates. Being a hawk on China (e.g., extolling the US MIC to take a more aggressive stance in territorial disputes and information warfare) is a very conservative, not libertarian, position.
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    Considering the primary trait of right wing libertarians is hypocrisy-fused self interest, I'd say he's right on the mark.
- ch4s3 5y ago
  Anarchism-capitalism isn’t a exactly a right wing ideology. It’s really only useful to think of it that way in comparison to the traditional anti-capitalist flavors of anarchism.
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    Right anarchism and left anarchism only really differ in what they predict the steady state of anarchic conditions would be… and the culture of their advocates I suppose.
    - ch4s3 5y ago
      That's sort of what I'm driving at. I would note that anarcho-capitalists are not pro social hierarchy which is a central belief in right wing political philosophy. Murray Rothbard described the ideology as being neither of the left nor fo the right, basically saying that self ownership is incompatible with both traditions. Notwithstanding Thiel isn't and anarcho-capitalist, he seems in practice to be almost a neoconservative. He describes himself as a "conservative libertarian", but has wrapped himself up in the war state and the surveillance industry, both of which are HIGHLY at odds with any kind of libertarianism. Thiel is much more like Liz Cheney than say Ron Paul.
      - wpietri 5y ago
        > anarcho-capitalists are not pro social hierarchy Are you sure about that? I mean, I believe they don't explicitly argue for it. But the ones I've come across seem to be practically in favor of the sort of wealth concentration and freedom of the rich to do as they please that they seem to be effectively in favor of strong social hierarchy.
        ch4s3 5y ago
        Some of them are natural law types and some are definitely misanthropic but they are all opposed to central authority and hierarchy. The high concentration of wealth we see today seems to be met with Teo main responses by the more well read ancaps I know. They either view it as the result of government capture or in some cases the reward for finding a great idea first. I think it’s a weak spot for them ideologically, personally.
- Piribedil 5y ago
  I presume you meant anarcho-capitalist but I love the concept born from your typo : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anachronism
- specialist 5y ago
  I thought Theil was a self-described neoreactionary, which is explicitly anti-democracy. Which I interpretted to mean something like Aristotelian philosopher-king style governance. A fairly obvious logical conclusion when one's starting assumption that people (the polis) are fundamentally stupid and corrupt. By the standards of the self annointed philosopher-king, of course.
wpasc 5y ago
Honestly don't know the true nature of his politics, and I didn't mean to get political in my comment. I simply meant that in Thiel's discussion alone during the podcast comes from a less-government-would-help-here perspective. I don't know his opinions on virtually anything nor do I really care; I just thought that a variety of the points he made in that episode were at least interesting and made me think in a way I had not thought previously.

btrettel 5y ago

> However, while I agree with the premise, I think the precise factors that create this issue are not sufficiently discussed or agreed upon (Not enough money goes into science research? Regulation imposes too heavy a burden on the outputs of scientific endeavors in the material world? We culturally are not sufficiently accepting of those people who would like to do elite-esque style research?). I'm not sure what the precise ratios of the causes are but I feel each of those question marks I just wrote contribute somewhat. In terms of funding, I don't think increasing the amount of funding is going to be more than a short-term fix. Seems to me that there's a lot of induced demand: Add more money and it's quickly gobbled up. While I don't know all the details, it seems to me that we simply have far too many PhD students. I have a PhD, and I feel that a lot of well-intentioned people pushed me towards that before I was wise enough to understand the implications. The cynic in me thinks that some of them were more concerned with advancing their own careers than helping me out, as they need students to advance their careers. Too much science funding goes towards PhD students in my view. We need to reduce the amount going towards PhD students and increase the amount going towards more permanent research positions. Yes, the total headcount for researchers likely would decrease as PhD students are cheaper than experienced researchers, but I think overall scientific productivity would improve as experience matters, and we'd stop disappointing people who want jobs in science before they waste too much time on it. I wrote a bit about this earlier today, by coincidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29141107

fuzzfactor 5y ago
You've got some timely details drawn from an experienced point of view. Even beyond formal credentials scientific progress can primarily only be made by relatively fewer workers then ever holding their position or inching upstream against an increasing current flowing downstream. I think what you will find is that the rewards for STEM creatives who are in position for their abilities to be leveraged by mass media, will always be greater than those without it. Microsoft started selling CD's as fast as Michael Jackson but for 10X the price. DOS had already been pulling people away from natural science since the '80's. Apple mass-marketed pop music to sell hardware. Google started as an anti-advertising utility but reversed stance to convert a huge user base into a mass market. Amazon was all about a mass market to begin with. Facebook is what the National Enquirer would be like if they had gotten the idea to scale an internet concept and had that kind of capital to strategically deploy earlier. Mass media has such a major component consisting of fiction this is an attraction plain natural science does not possess. Scientific research has such a focus on pure reality that mainstream interest just can not be maintained continuously, as so much relatively unexciting time must pass before progress finally pushes one little bit of reality to actually become better than fiction. But that's where it starts to get good.

cema 5y ago

Looks like you are talking about https://podcastnotes.org/portal-with-eric-weinstein/thiel/ https://podcastnotes.org/portal-with-eric-weinstein/thiel/ from 2019, correct? Sounds interesting, thanks!

wpasc 5y ago
Yeah that's the podcast, but I glance at those notes and they are kind of lacking in my opinion when compared to actually listening to the podcast. I'd recommend listening to it as it's fascinating to listen it. Enjoy the listen :)