8 ms·

Peter Thiel gives new class of students $100K to forgo college

58 points by jackyyappp 14y ago

confluence 14y ago
Reminds me of that great quote I heard about Rhodes Scholars: A Rhodes Scholar: someone with a great future behind him. The same type of lax logic can be observed in the world's infatuation with the dramatic rise of Japan in the 80s, dubbed the "Japanese Miracle". This logic can be seen, repeatedly, throughout human history, with more recent examples being Communism in the 60s, the "Asian Tigers" of the 90s, and the "New Economy" babble of pretty much every single human period. Indeed, I'm seeing the same kind of statements about China and India as the "New World Powers". Here's the reasoning (if you want to call it that): Look at that growth rate! If this keeps up - sooner or later they'll be stronger than America! Sigh Start low enough (19 year olds anyone?), and any growth will look enormous (startups; this applies to you too). If they kept at the growth rate you claim we'd end up with India and China being greater in size and scope than the entire universe. Look everyone! This kid got into MIT at 14 years old! Extrapolate that out a few years - he'll clearly be too awesome for us mere mortals to even comprehend! I mean really, that's honestly how people think. They never check back on said prodigy 10 years later, who has become, just as one would expect, a moderately accomplished human being (reversion to the mean). Indeed many just plain flame out and disappear from sight (a sad fact). Woo extrapolation! It works right? Come on, I mean it's not like these systems are complex at all! Statistics guy just shakes his head in complete disgust
- kkowalczyk 14y ago
  I find strawmen highly curious. I re-read the article to see where it claims that those kids will grown into super-human geniuses that would make Einstein feel small. It turns out: nowhere. You've debunked a "faulty reasoning" that you yourself fabricated.
  - confluence 14y ago
    Feeling was implied I just gave it a cynical twist, and I quote: Ritik Malhotra (19, San Jose, CA) Ritik began programming at age 8; started a popular web forum at the age of 12 that grew to over 32,000 members; and ran a web hosting and software consultancy business at the age of 13, garnering over a 600x return on his initial investment. I wonder what he started with - $10? Taylor Wilson (18, Texarkana, AR) became the youngest person in history to create nuclear fusion. Since then, he has produced the lowest-cost and lowest-dose active interrogation system for the detection of enriched uranium ever developed. As a Thiel Fellow, Taylor will focus on both counter-terrorism and the production of medical isotopes for use in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. I ... no ... I can't even address this. Omar Rizwan (18, East Hanover, NJ) wants to change the world through the control and analysis of information. Nothing big there. Just changing the world. Don't mind me. Jimmy Koppel (20, St. Louis, MO) has a passion for software engineering – and a plan to make it much more efficient. Modifying software today often involves hundreds of thousands of small, similar adjustments that require a great deal of time and money. James will fix that problem by developing new tools to automate the process. It's almost like software engineering is real work. But hey, this kid is going to "automate the process". Yoonseo Kang (18, Mississauga, ON, Canada) recognizes that society’s potential for innovation and abundance can only be achieved if knowledge and the factors of production are accessible for everyone. Yeah, what's the deal with all these governments. Who needs clean water, affordable food, stable electricity load, good laws, sewerage, and a safety net. People just need open hardware, and crowd sourced community blah blah blah - that'll solve all our problems. Right? RIGHT! Noor Siddiqui (17, Clifton, VA) is inspired to galvanize people for the good of others. As a Thiel Fellow, she will work to give students across the globe access to upward mobility – and industries access to an untapped work force – with the goal of mobilizing one billion people in the next decade. That's like MBA speak meets HR meets a Dilbert comic. You can't make this stuff up. It's insane. Clearly humble there. I mean, of course, no claims, apart from the MOBILISING ONE BILLION PEOPLE. But hey, that's just me little old me. What would I know? revolutionize our country’s antiquated system using technology. As a Thiel Fellow, he will focus on Flashcards There's a Youtube hit in that sentence somewhere. And here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4. Ilya Vakhutinsky (20, Fair Lawn, NJ) wants to revolutionize the way the technology and health care communities work together. Indeed, because a poor person's biggest problem with health care is how he will access his patient data. Money? What's that? When a person's age is next to their name, preceding all actual data, you just know some real _A class bullshit_ is coming your way. And hey, it holds true! Removed Einstein reference just to make you happy :D.
- jeffchuber 14y ago
  ironically Peter Thiel has quoted that quote about Rhodes scholars in the class he is teaching at stanford.
  - confluence 14y ago
    I had no idea :D. Do you have a link or can you quote in context. I may have more in common with Peter Thiel than I first thought - or not :D.
    - dirtyaura 14y ago
      Class 4: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-4-notes-essay http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels...
  - mjwalshe 14y ago
    Well seeing as that 3 US presidents (aproximatly 6% of them) have been Rhodes Scollars he might want to re think that :-)
    - confluence 14y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_by_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_Unite... states that only Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Who are the other two?
      - planetguy 14y ago
        I think you're right, it was just Clinton. Mind you there's only 1794 living Rhodes scholars in the United States and one of them is a former President, so it increases your chance of becoming PoTuS from one in eighty million to one in 1794, and that's not bad. Anyway, the point of all this isn't to pick on Rhodes Scholars but to point out the unreliability of child prodigies. In fact, Rhodes Scholars tend not to be the child-prodigy types at all. The selection process includes not just academics but also sport, social service and character requirements, completely inaccessible to the kid who has spent his entire childhood locked in a room being drilled on calculus. Rhodes Scholars tend to be smart but well-rounded, sociable and a bit conformist, exactly the sort of people who grow up to be politicians. A Rhodes scholarship is no guarantee of success, but if I could buy shares in someone's life I'd put my money into Rhodes scholars rather than teenage prodigies.
- confluencesucks 14y ago
  confluence was probably some MIT grad in like 2005 who still cant find a job
  - planetguy 14y ago
    You created an account just to insult another user? WTF is wrong with you?
- waterhouse 14y ago
  Regarding that quote about Rhodes Scholars--since no one has mentioned it yet, I will mention the phrase: "regression to the mean". If, from a diverse population, you select a subpopulation with high scores on trait X measured by some noisy test, and you then re-test them sometime later (so that the noise is generated by fresh randomness the second time), you will likely find that they score worse. This is because it is likely that the subpopulation you selected mostly benefited from the noise, and being lucky the first time is unrelated to being lucky the second time. (That's one way to characterize luck.) The regression-to-the-mean effect is obviously proportional to the ratio of "noise" to "intrinsic qualities". If the amount of noise is close to zero, then the regression will be small; if the noise is gigantic or the intrinsic quality is zero, then the regression will be almost complete. To illustrate the second case, you might imagine a population rolling six-sided dice, and a silly researcher selecting all those who rolled sixes and being astonished that their average had dropped to 3.5 on the second roll. If you then imagine that each person had a private number from 0 to 50 that they added to their die rolls, then the test suddenly becomes much more meaningful. With that in mind, we can hope to be more than simple-mindedly impressed or simple-mindedly cynical about Rhodes Scholars, child prodigies, Thiel Fellowship recipients, and so on. How much "noise" is there, and what can be done about it? For example, suppose that they're looking for people who do amazing things. Suppose that most people who do amazing things do them because they're interested in them, and that there's a bunch of pseudo-randomness in what you happen to be interested in. Then... they'll pick a bunch of people who just happened to be interested in doing things that the scholarship people found amazing. What will these people be interested in doing next? there's a good chance it'll be completely not-amazing. (Yes, some people have a deep, established interest in some field that is unlikely to change--but even within a field or subfield, you will find interesting things that are amazing and interesting things that are not.) In that case, either they will look disappointing, or they will decide (probably due to feeling pressure) to try to work on amazing things even if they're not interesting. I doubt if it's impossible to pull off the second option, but it is (by stipulation) a significant mode change for these people, and some received wisdom[1][2] says it's not likely to go well. I hope that, instead, they are looking for people who have intense interests and great natural ability, and will try to shelter them from external pressure to produce "amazing" things, and that this press release is just crap they put out to please the media. Meanwhile, I guess there might also be successful people who thrive on that kind of pressure... I just identify most strongly with the first group. Also, it probably is a good thing to celebrate people's achievements. It just carries some danger with it... Anyway, I've described one type of amazing youth for which their apparent amazingness depends significantly on a capricious factor (what they're interested in). I'm confident about my qualitative description, because I know myself and some other people that I think are of this type. How significant is the interest factor? how capricious is it? can interest be deliberately controlled to some extent? Are there other types of amazing youth? is their current amazingness also subject to significant amounts of randomness? This, at least, would enable us to judge how much disappointingness we'd expect simply from the regression-to-the-mean principle. Do people do serious scientific investigation about this sort of thing? Seems like the Thiel Foundation had better, given that they're working in this exact field. But charity-style things probably don't have systematic incentives to perform well... maybe we can hope that Peter Thiel will apply the kind of ruthless determination to succeed that I feel he has [maybe they're in fact selecting youths who exhibit this trait, which certainly seems it'd be more deterministic than "interest"], and figure this stuff out. Maybe. [1] http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html [see: "When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in."]
vph 14y ago
Curious if Peter Thiel has children. If he does, did they or will they go to college?
- veyron 14y ago
  Thiel wouldn't let his kids skip college unless they had a blockbuster idea. I thought there was an article recently which showed one of his job offers actually required a college degree.
  - qxcv 14y ago
    As pointed out above, most of the jobs advertised by Thiel's startup require a college education: http://palantir.com/careers/positions http://palantir.com/careers/positions Edit: their about page says "We were founded in 2004 by a handful of PayPal alumni and Stanford computer scientists." Sounds like Thiel doesn't like the taste of dogfood.
    - veyron 14y ago
      Ah http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 That was posted an hour after my post :)
- kiba 14y ago
  I read the wikipedia biography of Peter Thiel several time, and nothing indicates that he have children. Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring.
  - zzzeek 14y ago
    > Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring. that means pretty much exactly nothing as gay couples adopt children all the time, and a wealthy individual like Thiel can also pay a surrogate mom to carry a child for him.
- randomdata 14y ago
stanfordkid 14y ago
I took Thiel's class at Stanford and I can tell you that Thiel is kind of a nut. He has a lot of very smart, very on point things to say -- however he is either gravely misinformed or pretty much delusional in his views of broader academia and its role in the proliferation of technology. You can see this tangibly from his founders fund investments in the bio sciences sector. Thiel views everything through the lens of incentives and grossly "overfits" this methodology to academic research arguing that the incentive to publish and be peer reviewed is responsible for the break down of truly ground breaking research. So instead he throws money at equally delusional (but somewhat qualified) PhDs in advanced fields for which he seems to have little grasp for. You see the same patterns in the people selected here -- ideas that sound "cool" as if from a sci-fi novel but tangibly very distant from real markets and profits. I doubt his fund gets deal flow from serious silicon valley technology firms.
csel 14y ago
But ironically if I want to work for him, I need a college degree :)
- confluence 14y ago
  See here my ironic friend: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4001377 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4001377 Isn't the world hilarious :D.
  - tensor 14y ago
    Your view is very biased. What if the successes are often random? What if in truth many people could be founders if in the right place at the right time? How many of those people with higher degrees go on to be successful? Even founders? Hell, I can point you one successful founder who went through a degree and even a graduate degree: Peter Thiel. Yet you say: "Of these 10, some go study medicine/law/engineering and disappear from the pool." Yes, the world is very complex, and you probably know less than you think you do. As do we all. The most honest among us always remember "we do not really understand."
    - confluence 14y ago
      Huh? Quoting out of context much? > Of these 10, some go study medicine/law/engineering and disappear from the pool. Down to 1-2. Most of these guys fail. Well there's your Peter Thiel.
      - tensor 14y ago
        I don't think I quoted out of context. You seemed to be identifying people being taken out of the "successful pool." Here is the context: "1000 possible billionaires are born everyday. Most die in the third world. The remainder come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Cuts that to about 100. Of those 100, few are located in places like Silicon Valley. Now you are around 10. Of these 10, some go study medicine/law/engineering and disappear from the pool. Down to 1-2. Most of these guys fail."
adammichaelc 14y ago
The posts on this thread remind me of that quote, "To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." I would bet good money that none of the critics below have done anything of much weight or significance. There are two kinds of criticism, the kind that builds and the kind that criticize just to criticize. The difference is in the intent. Critics who build are giving feedback because they want the hearer to reach their full potential and be better, "You are almost there, but I see a few things that you could do to really take this to the next level. Don't settle. Really take this thing to the ground and do it right." Critics who criticize for the sake of criticizing usually have nothing really useful to say. They don't care about the individual or institution they criticize. They usually have nothing of value to add. They are like spectators at a football game, who cheer or boo because it's fun. For these people, disagreeing is not done with the intent to help, but only with the intent to disagree. It's a waste of energy.
- confluence 14y ago
  > I would bet good money that none of the critics below have done anything of much weight or significance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_accomplishment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_accomplishment > There are two kinds of criticism, the kind that builds and the kind that criticize just to criticize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma. > Critics who criticize for the sake of criticizing usually have nothing really useful to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem. > full potential and be better, "You are almost there They say that they are going to change the world! I'm here to tell them that they aren't that special: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085569 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085569. Be careful with criticizing the critical my friend. You are playing on my turf now, and I have home side advantage. And I leave you with this: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.html http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.h....
  - coob 14y ago
    Oh, is it linking to fallacies time? http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fallfall.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fallfall.html
atpaino 14y ago
I think Thiel is grossly underestimating the value in college, especially for the students in this Fellowship. Thiel argues (elsewhere) that college is only worthwhile if you have a good idea of what you hope to get out of it. I completely disagree. For most people, college is the time that you discover your interests and figure out what you want to do with your life. Even for these students, who seem to know exactly what they want to do, college is invaluable. It's not a coincidence that most of the major tech companies of the world (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc.) were started while their founders were in college. In many ways, it is the perfect incubator: you have plenty of domain experts readily available to talk to, a good supply of smart tech people, and no requirement that your startup make any money yet. So, IMHO, Thiel is doing a disservice to these students by paying them to drop out.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  For most people, college is the time that you discover your interests and figure out what you want to do with your life. Is there any evidence that attending college is the only avenue to accomplishing those ends? I personally think that it looks that way simply because most people go to college during the years that they "discover your interests and figure out what you want to do with your life." Building a startup strikes me as an equally valid way to explore possibilities, discover interests, and figure things out.
  - atpaino 14y ago
    I'm certainly not arguing college is the only way, just the most common. I'm sure some people may figure things out through doing a startup, but in most cases (this Fellowship being an exception) they won't have as many resources at their disposal as they would at a college.
- rdl 14y ago
  I think you overestimate the implied value of going directly from high school to 4 year college to potentially graduate school. Taking a year or two off in the middle of that to explore things OUTSIDE college, particularly if being paid $50k/yr to do it, seems perfectly reasonable. If you have great traction in what you're doing, stick with it -- otherwise you still have the option of going back to school.
Porter_423 14y ago
Inspiring. Thiel is pretty amazing. "Peter Thiel gives new class of students $100K to forgo college
andyjohnson0 14y ago
Its not clear from the article whether the $100k is shared across the group, or each individual gets that amount. Also, why so few women (4/30)? I'm curious about what the criteria for selecting the group members was.
- akavi 14y ago
  Each person gets $100k; $50k per year for two years.
- rdl 14y ago
  From what I've seen, their raw input (applicants) is only slightly more female. They do seem to be trying to expand their reach (the first batch had a LOT Of ivy+mit+stanford+caltech applicants).
rshlo 14y ago
The "dropout of college mania" will hurt America in the long run. The most talented young people are pursuing gold rush ideas instead of investing in deep learning. College leads to grad schools and grad schools created phd's. If something is broke along the chain, the result will be catastrophic in the long run.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Startups are the new graduate school. Well, in some people's eyes anyway. I can see some merit in that position, although I think there is a place for both. That said, I'm a huge fan of this initiative by Peter Thiel. It just gives one group of people some more options, which is a good thing. And these folks can always go back to college later if they choose. Nothing says college is limited to 18-25 year olds right out of high-school.
  - planetguy 14y ago
    > Startups are the new graduate school Sure, assuming that the only worthwhile human endeavours over the next fifty years are gonna be "iPhone games" and "web apps that let you share photos of your cats". It's amazing what you can do, nowadays, with a laptop, a cafe, a collaborator and a stack of "For Dummies" books, but there's still far more things that you can't.
    - mindcrime 14y ago
      There seems to be an implicit assumption in what you just said, that I strongly disagree with. You seem to be saying that startups are only capable of tackling "iPhone games" and "web apps that let you share photos of your cats". I see no reason whatsoever to believe that that is true. Startups, especially the ones that manage to get VC funding, are not limited to the world of "a laptop, a cafe, a collaborator and a stack of "For Dummies" books." Somebody in an earlier thread mentioned how "universities are the best source of scientific papers," etc. as part of his argument against Thiel's approach. But, while it's just one anecdote, I'm working on a startup (not funded by Thiel, or anyone but the founders) and we have subscriptions to a pile of relevant IEEE, ACM and AAAI journals that relate to the work we're doing, and that's not even considering how much research is available on the 'Net. Personally I see no reason that startups can't (and shouldn't) be pushing the envelope technologically, with the caveat that certain fields would require huge capital investments for equipment and personnel, that might be beyond the reach of even deep pocketed investors. But not all fields fit that description.
pitt1980 14y ago
The average tuition cost is approximately $16,000 per year. Plus assume another $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. $26,000 in total for a complete cost of $104,000 in a 4 year period. Some people choose to go more expensive by going to a private college and some people choose to go a little cheaper by going public but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that its just for a 4 year period. According to the Department of Education, only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 years. So for the 46% that don’t graduate, or take 10 years to graduate, this is a horrible investment. But lets assume your children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years (and hopefully within four). Is it worth it? First, let’s look at it completely from a monetary perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, according to CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart that didn’t go to college. $800,000 is a big spread and it could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots. But who has and who doesn’t? If I took that $104,000 and I chose to invest it in a savings account that had interest income of 5% per year I’d end up with an extra $1.4 million dollars over a 50 year period. A full $600,000 more. That $600,000 is a lot of extra money an 18 year old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the $800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the interest and resources to go to college think it’s the only way to go if they want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread. There are other factors as well. I won’t be spending $104,000 per child when my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have historically gone up much faster than inflation. Since 1978, cost of living has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in Congress, has gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any bubble you can think of. So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded anything? They borrow it, of course. The average student now graduates with a $23,000 debt burden. Up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student borrowings totaled $75 billion, up 25% from the year before. If students go on to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to $200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can raise prices even more. http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-college/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-parents-should-not-send-their-kids-to-college/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-college/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle...
antidaily 14y ago
Yeah man. Get right to burning 60 hour weeks. You totally won't burn out.
pghimire 14y ago
I don't understand the need to encourage students drop out. There are plenty of go-getters out there who don't need to drop out (I am thinking folks who have finished college .. many solo flying hackers, etc.). and can equally contribute at the same level of competitiveness and hustle and would appreciate the opportunity even more.
leothekim 14y ago
Why is there an emphasis on foregoing college with this grant? Why not offer it to college seniors?
- rdl 14y ago
  My opinion, not at all official, even though I've helped out a tiny amount with the program as a mentor/judge: The program basically cherry picks people who are already really successful and very likely to be successful no matter what. It then gives them a great 2y opportunity to work on cool stuff in lieu of college, which may work out for them, or may just be a great experience if they go back to college or take a job somewhere. Leaving college, instantly becoming part of a well-connected silicon valley network, etc. is a big advantage; while leaving MIT or Stanford may be somewhat debatable, leaving podunk u (especially if you're going into debt while there, and not getting much out of it beyond a curriculum you can get from the internet for free) is a more clear case. There are basically two classes of people who don't belong in college now: the super high achievers for whom the opportunity cost of being in college is too high (Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook vs. Harvard, etc.), or people in marginal schools getting little out of it. It's easy to take people from the margins of the first category and help them to be more successful (or just give them "parental cover" to drop out and follow their ambition). This is nice for them and for society. More importantly, it creates great examples to use in the debate over the latter. Not statistically valid examples, but politically valid.

58 points by jackyyappp 14y ago

Reminds me of that great quote I heard about Rhodes Scholars: A Rhodes Scholar: someone with a great future behind him. The same type of lax logic can be observed in the world's infatuation with the dramatic rise of Japan in the 80s, dubbed the "Japanese Miracle". This logic can be seen, repeatedly, throughout human history, with more recent examples being Communism in the 60s, the "Asian Tigers" of the 90s, and the "New Economy" babble of pretty much every single human period. Indeed, I'm seeing the same kind of statements about China and India as the "New World Powers". Here's the reasoning (if you want to call it that): Look at that growth rate! If this keeps up - sooner or later they'll be stronger than America! Sigh Start low enough (19 year olds anyone?), and any growth will look enormous (startups; this applies to you too). If they kept at the growth rate you claim we'd end up with India and China being greater in size and scope than the entire universe. Look everyone! This kid got into MIT at 14 years old! Extrapolate that out a few years - he'll clearly be too awesome for us mere mortals to even comprehend! I mean really, that's honestly how people think. They never check back on said prodigy 10 years later, who has become, just as one would expect, a moderately accomplished human being (reversion to the mean). Indeed many just plain flame out and disappear from sight (a sad fact). Woo extrapolation! It works right? Come on, I mean it's not like these systems are complex at all! Statistics guy just shakes his head in complete disgust

kkowalczyk 14y ago
I find strawmen highly curious. I re-read the article to see where it claims that those kids will grown into super-human geniuses that would make Einstein feel small. It turns out: nowhere. You've debunked a "faulty reasoning" that you yourself fabricated.
- confluence 14y ago
  Feeling was implied I just gave it a cynical twist, and I quote: Ritik Malhotra (19, San Jose, CA) Ritik began programming at age 8; started a popular web forum at the age of 12 that grew to over 32,000 members; and ran a web hosting and software consultancy business at the age of 13, garnering over a 600x return on his initial investment. I wonder what he started with - $10? Taylor Wilson (18, Texarkana, AR) became the youngest person in history to create nuclear fusion. Since then, he has produced the lowest-cost and lowest-dose active interrogation system for the detection of enriched uranium ever developed. As a Thiel Fellow, Taylor will focus on both counter-terrorism and the production of medical isotopes for use in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. I ... no ... I can't even address this. Omar Rizwan (18, East Hanover, NJ) wants to change the world through the control and analysis of information. Nothing big there. Just changing the world. Don't mind me. Jimmy Koppel (20, St. Louis, MO) has a passion for software engineering – and a plan to make it much more efficient. Modifying software today often involves hundreds of thousands of small, similar adjustments that require a great deal of time and money. James will fix that problem by developing new tools to automate the process. It's almost like software engineering is real work. But hey, this kid is going to "automate the process". Yoonseo Kang (18, Mississauga, ON, Canada) recognizes that society’s potential for innovation and abundance can only be achieved if knowledge and the factors of production are accessible for everyone. Yeah, what's the deal with all these governments. Who needs clean water, affordable food, stable electricity load, good laws, sewerage, and a safety net. People just need open hardware, and crowd sourced community blah blah blah - that'll solve all our problems. Right? RIGHT! Noor Siddiqui (17, Clifton, VA) is inspired to galvanize people for the good of others. As a Thiel Fellow, she will work to give students across the globe access to upward mobility – and industries access to an untapped work force – with the goal of mobilizing one billion people in the next decade. That's like MBA speak meets HR meets a Dilbert comic. You can't make this stuff up. It's insane. Clearly humble there. I mean, of course, no claims, apart from the MOBILISING ONE BILLION PEOPLE. But hey, that's just me little old me. What would I know? revolutionize our country’s antiquated system using technology. As a Thiel Fellow, he will focus on Flashcards There's a Youtube hit in that sentence somewhere. And here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmdl4VltD4. Ilya Vakhutinsky (20, Fair Lawn, NJ) wants to revolutionize the way the technology and health care communities work together. Indeed, because a poor person's biggest problem with health care is how he will access his patient data. Money? What's that? When a person's age is next to their name, preceding all actual data, you just know some real _A class bullshit_ is coming your way. And hey, it holds true! Removed Einstein reference just to make you happy :D.
jeffchuber 14y ago
ironically Peter Thiel has quoted that quote about Rhodes scholars in the class he is teaching at stanford.
- confluence 14y ago
  I had no idea :D. Do you have a link or can you quote in context. I may have more in common with Peter Thiel than I first thought - or not :D.
  - dirtyaura 14y ago
    Class 4: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-4-notes-essay http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels...
- mjwalshe 14y ago
  Well seeing as that 3 US presidents (aproximatly 6% of them) have been Rhodes Scollars he might want to re think that :-)
  - confluence 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_by_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_Unite... states that only Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Who are the other two?
    - planetguy 14y ago
      I think you're right, it was just Clinton. Mind you there's only 1794 living Rhodes scholars in the United States and one of them is a former President, so it increases your chance of becoming PoTuS from one in eighty million to one in 1794, and that's not bad. Anyway, the point of all this isn't to pick on Rhodes Scholars but to point out the unreliability of child prodigies. In fact, Rhodes Scholars tend not to be the child-prodigy types at all. The selection process includes not just academics but also sport, social service and character requirements, completely inaccessible to the kid who has spent his entire childhood locked in a room being drilled on calculus. Rhodes Scholars tend to be smart but well-rounded, sociable and a bit conformist, exactly the sort of people who grow up to be politicians. A Rhodes scholarship is no guarantee of success, but if I could buy shares in someone's life I'd put my money into Rhodes scholars rather than teenage prodigies.
confluencesucks 14y ago
confluence was probably some MIT grad in like 2005 who still cant find a job
- planetguy 14y ago
  You created an account just to insult another user? WTF is wrong with you?
waterhouse 14y ago
Regarding that quote about Rhodes Scholars--since no one has mentioned it yet, I will mention the phrase: "regression to the mean". If, from a diverse population, you select a subpopulation with high scores on trait X measured by some noisy test, and you then re-test them sometime later (so that the noise is generated by fresh randomness the second time), you will likely find that they score worse. This is because it is likely that the subpopulation you selected mostly benefited from the noise, and being lucky the first time is unrelated to being lucky the second time. (That's one way to characterize luck.) The regression-to-the-mean effect is obviously proportional to the ratio of "noise" to "intrinsic qualities". If the amount of noise is close to zero, then the regression will be small; if the noise is gigantic or the intrinsic quality is zero, then the regression will be almost complete. To illustrate the second case, you might imagine a population rolling six-sided dice, and a silly researcher selecting all those who rolled sixes and being astonished that their average had dropped to 3.5 on the second roll. If you then imagine that each person had a private number from 0 to 50 that they added to their die rolls, then the test suddenly becomes much more meaningful. With that in mind, we can hope to be more than simple-mindedly impressed or simple-mindedly cynical about Rhodes Scholars, child prodigies, Thiel Fellowship recipients, and so on. How much "noise" is there, and what can be done about it? For example, suppose that they're looking for people who do amazing things. Suppose that most people who do amazing things do them because they're interested in them, and that there's a bunch of pseudo-randomness in what you happen to be interested in. Then... they'll pick a bunch of people who just happened to be interested in doing things that the scholarship people found amazing. What will these people be interested in doing next? there's a good chance it'll be completely not-amazing. (Yes, some people have a deep, established interest in some field that is unlikely to change--but even within a field or subfield, you will find interesting things that are amazing and interesting things that are not.) In that case, either they will look disappointing, or they will decide (probably due to feeling pressure) to try to work on amazing things even if they're not interesting. I doubt if it's impossible to pull off the second option, but it is (by stipulation) a significant mode change for these people, and some received wisdom[1][2] says it's not likely to go well. I hope that, instead, they are looking for people who have intense interests and great natural ability, and will try to shelter them from external pressure to produce "amazing" things, and that this press release is just crap they put out to please the media. Meanwhile, I guess there might also be successful people who thrive on that kind of pressure... I just identify most strongly with the first group. Also, it probably is a good thing to celebrate people's achievements. It just carries some danger with it... Anyway, I've described one type of amazing youth for which their apparent amazingness depends significantly on a capricious factor (what they're interested in). I'm confident about my qualitative description, because I know myself and some other people that I think are of this type. How significant is the interest factor? how capricious is it? can interest be deliberately controlled to some extent? Are there other types of amazing youth? is their current amazingness also subject to significant amounts of randomness? This, at least, would enable us to judge how much disappointingness we'd expect simply from the regression-to-the-mean principle. Do people do serious scientific investigation about this sort of thing? Seems like the Thiel Foundation had better, given that they're working in this exact field. But charity-style things probably don't have systematic incentives to perform well... maybe we can hope that Peter Thiel will apply the kind of ruthless determination to succeed that I feel he has [maybe they're in fact selecting youths who exhibit this trait, which certainly seems it'd be more deterministic than "interest"], and figure this stuff out. Maybe. [1] http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html [see: "When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in."]

vph 14y ago

Curious if Peter Thiel has children. If he does, did they or will they go to college?

veyron 14y ago
Thiel wouldn't let his kids skip college unless they had a blockbuster idea. I thought there was an article recently which showed one of his job offers actually required a college degree.
- qxcv 14y ago
  As pointed out above, most of the jobs advertised by Thiel's startup require a college education: http://palantir.com/careers/positions http://palantir.com/careers/positions Edit: their about page says "We were founded in 2004 by a handful of PayPal alumni and Stanford computer scientists." Sounds like Thiel doesn't like the taste of dogfood.
  - veyron 14y ago
    Ah http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4104642 That was posted an hour after my post :)
kiba 14y ago
I read the wikipedia biography of Peter Thiel several time, and nothing indicates that he have children. Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring.
- zzzeek 14y ago
  > Peter Thiel is gay, so it is unlikely that he will produces an offspring. that means pretty much exactly nothing as gay couples adopt children all the time, and a wealthy individual like Thiel can also pay a surrogate mom to carry a child for him.
randomdata 14y ago

stanfordkid 14y ago

I took Thiel's class at Stanford and I can tell you that Thiel is kind of a nut. He has a lot of very smart, very on point things to say -- however he is either gravely misinformed or pretty much delusional in his views of broader academia and its role in the proliferation of technology. You can see this tangibly from his founders fund investments in the bio sciences sector. Thiel views everything through the lens of incentives and grossly "overfits" this methodology to academic research arguing that the incentive to publish and be peer reviewed is responsible for the break down of truly ground breaking research. So instead he throws money at equally delusional (but somewhat qualified) PhDs in advanced fields for which he seems to have little grasp for. You see the same patterns in the people selected here -- ideas that sound "cool" as if from a sci-fi novel but tangibly very distant from real markets and profits. I doubt his fund gets deal flow from serious silicon valley technology firms.

csel 14y ago

But ironically if I want to work for him, I need a college degree :)

confluence 14y ago
See here my ironic friend: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4001377 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4001377 Isn't the world hilarious :D.
- tensor 14y ago
  Your view is very biased. What if the successes are often random? What if in truth many people could be founders if in the right place at the right time? How many of those people with higher degrees go on to be successful? Even founders? Hell, I can point you one successful founder who went through a degree and even a graduate degree: Peter Thiel. Yet you say: "Of these 10, some go study medicine/law/engineering and disappear from the pool." Yes, the world is very complex, and you probably know less than you think you do. As do we all. The most honest among us always remember "we do not really understand."
  - confluence 14y ago
    Huh? Quoting out of context much? > Of these 10, some go study medicine/law/engineering and disappear from the pool. Down to 1-2. Most of these guys fail. Well there's your Peter Thiel.
    - tensor 14y ago
      I don't think I quoted out of context. You seemed to be identifying people being taken out of the "successful pool." Here is the context: "1000 possible billionaires are born everyday. Most die in the third world. The remainder come from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Cuts that to about 100. Of those 100, few are located in places like Silicon Valley. Now you are around 10. Of these 10, some go study medicine/law/engineering and disappear from the pool. Down to 1-2. Most of these guys fail."

adammichaelc 14y ago

The posts on this thread remind me of that quote, "To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." I would bet good money that none of the critics below have done anything of much weight or significance. There are two kinds of criticism, the kind that builds and the kind that criticize just to criticize. The difference is in the intent. Critics who build are giving feedback because they want the hearer to reach their full potential and be better, "You are almost there, but I see a few things that you could do to really take this to the next level. Don't settle. Really take this thing to the ground and do it right." Critics who criticize for the sake of criticizing usually have nothing really useful to say. They don't care about the individual or institution they criticize. They usually have nothing of value to add. They are like spectators at a football game, who cheer or boo because it's fun. For these people, disagreeing is not done with the intent to help, but only with the intent to disagree. It's a waste of energy.

confluence 14y ago
> I would bet good money that none of the critics below have done anything of much weight or significance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_accomplishment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_accomplishment > There are two kinds of criticism, the kind that builds and the kind that criticize just to criticize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma. > Critics who criticize for the sake of criticizing usually have nothing really useful to say http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem. > full potential and be better, "You are almost there They say that they are going to change the world! I'm here to tell them that they aren't that special: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085569 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085569. Be careful with criticizing the critical my friend. You are playing on my turf now, and I have home side advantage. And I leave you with this: Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.html http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.h....
- coob 14y ago
  Oh, is it linking to fallacies time? http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fallfall.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/fallfall.html

atpaino 14y ago

I think Thiel is grossly underestimating the value in college, especially for the students in this Fellowship. Thiel argues (elsewhere) that college is only worthwhile if you have a good idea of what you hope to get out of it. I completely disagree. For most people, college is the time that you discover your interests and figure out what you want to do with your life. Even for these students, who seem to know exactly what they want to do, college is invaluable. It's not a coincidence that most of the major tech companies of the world (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc.) were started while their founders were in college. In many ways, it is the perfect incubator: you have plenty of domain experts readily available to talk to, a good supply of smart tech people, and no requirement that your startup make any money yet. So, IMHO, Thiel is doing a disservice to these students by paying them to drop out.

mindcrime 14y ago
For most people, college is the time that you discover your interests and figure out what you want to do with your life. Is there any evidence that attending college is the only avenue to accomplishing those ends? I personally think that it looks that way simply because most people go to college during the years that they "discover your interests and figure out what you want to do with your life." Building a startup strikes me as an equally valid way to explore possibilities, discover interests, and figure things out.
- atpaino 14y ago
  I'm certainly not arguing college is the only way, just the most common. I'm sure some people may figure things out through doing a startup, but in most cases (this Fellowship being an exception) they won't have as many resources at their disposal as they would at a college.
rdl 14y ago
I think you overestimate the implied value of going directly from high school to 4 year college to potentially graduate school. Taking a year or two off in the middle of that to explore things OUTSIDE college, particularly if being paid $50k/yr to do it, seems perfectly reasonable. If you have great traction in what you're doing, stick with it -- otherwise you still have the option of going back to school.

Porter_423 14y ago

Inspiring. Thiel is pretty amazing. "Peter Thiel gives new class of students $100K to forgo college

andyjohnson0 14y ago

Its not clear from the article whether the $100k is shared across the group, or each individual gets that amount. Also, why so few women (4/30)? I'm curious about what the criteria for selecting the group members was.

akavi 14y ago
Each person gets $100k; $50k per year for two years.
rdl 14y ago
From what I've seen, their raw input (applicants) is only slightly more female. They do seem to be trying to expand their reach (the first batch had a LOT Of ivy+mit+stanford+caltech applicants).

rshlo 14y ago

The "dropout of college mania" will hurt America in the long run. The most talented young people are pursuing gold rush ideas instead of investing in deep learning. College leads to grad schools and grad schools created phd's. If something is broke along the chain, the result will be catastrophic in the long run.

mindcrime 14y ago
Startups are the new graduate school. Well, in some people's eyes anyway. I can see some merit in that position, although I think there is a place for both. That said, I'm a huge fan of this initiative by Peter Thiel. It just gives one group of people some more options, which is a good thing. And these folks can always go back to college later if they choose. Nothing says college is limited to 18-25 year olds right out of high-school.
- planetguy 14y ago
  > Startups are the new graduate school Sure, assuming that the only worthwhile human endeavours over the next fifty years are gonna be "iPhone games" and "web apps that let you share photos of your cats". It's amazing what you can do, nowadays, with a laptop, a cafe, a collaborator and a stack of "For Dummies" books, but there's still far more things that you can't.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    There seems to be an implicit assumption in what you just said, that I strongly disagree with. You seem to be saying that startups are only capable of tackling "iPhone games" and "web apps that let you share photos of your cats". I see no reason whatsoever to believe that that is true. Startups, especially the ones that manage to get VC funding, are not limited to the world of "a laptop, a cafe, a collaborator and a stack of "For Dummies" books." Somebody in an earlier thread mentioned how "universities are the best source of scientific papers," etc. as part of his argument against Thiel's approach. But, while it's just one anecdote, I'm working on a startup (not funded by Thiel, or anyone but the founders) and we have subscriptions to a pile of relevant IEEE, ACM and AAAI journals that relate to the work we're doing, and that's not even considering how much research is available on the 'Net. Personally I see no reason that startups can't (and shouldn't) be pushing the envelope technologically, with the caveat that certain fields would require huge capital investments for equipment and personnel, that might be beyond the reach of even deep pocketed investors. But not all fields fit that description.

pitt1980 14y ago

The average tuition cost is approximately $16,000 per year. Plus assume another $10,000 in living costs, books, etc. $26,000 in total for a complete cost of $104,000 in a 4 year period. Some people choose to go more expensive by going to a private college and some people choose to go a little cheaper by going public but this is an average. Also, a huge assumption is that its just for a 4 year period. According to the Department of Education, only 54% of undergraduates graduate within 6 years. So for the 46% that don’t graduate, or take 10 years to graduate, this is a horrible investment. But lets assume your children are in the brilliant first half who finish within six years (and hopefully within four). Is it worth it? First, let’s look at it completely from a monetary perspective. Over the course of a lifetime, according to CollegeBoard, a college graduate can be expected to earn $800,000 more than his counterpart that didn’t go to college. $800,000 is a big spread and it could potentially separate the haves from the have-nots. But who has and who doesn’t? If I took that $104,000 and I chose to invest it in a savings account that had interest income of 5% per year I’d end up with an extra $1.4 million dollars over a 50 year period. A full $600,000 more. That $600,000 is a lot of extra money an 18 year old could look forward to in her retirement. I also think the $800,000 quoted above is too high. Right now most motivated kids who have the interest and resources to go to college think it’s the only way to go if they want a good job. If those same kids decided to not go to college my guess is they would quickly close the gap on that $800,000 spread. There are other factors as well. I won’t be spending $104,000 per child when my children, ages 10 and 7, decide to go to college. College costs have historically gone up much faster than inflation. Since 1978, cost of living has gone up three-fold. Medical costs, much to the horror of everyone in Congress, has gone up six-fold. And college education has gone up a whopping tenfold. This is beyond the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, any bubble you can think of. So how can people afford college? Well, how has the US consumer afforded anything? They borrow it, of course. The average student now graduates with a $23,000 debt burden. Up from $13,000 12 years ago. Last year, student borrowings totaled $75 billion, up 25% from the year before. If students go on to graduate degrees such as law degrees they can see their debt burden soar to $200,000 or more. And the easy borrowing convinces colleges that they can raise prices even more. http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-college/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/02/dont-send-your-kids-to-... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-parents-should-not-send-their-kids-to-college/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/10-more-reasons-why-par... http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-college/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/01/8-alternatives-to-colle...

antidaily 14y ago

Yeah man. Get right to burning 60 hour weeks. You totally won't burn out.

pghimire 14y ago

I don't understand the need to encourage students drop out. There are plenty of go-getters out there who don't need to drop out (I am thinking folks who have finished college .. many solo flying hackers, etc.). and can equally contribute at the same level of competitiveness and hustle and would appreciate the opportunity even more.

leothekim 14y ago

Why is there an emphasis on foregoing college with this grant? Why not offer it to college seniors?

rdl 14y ago
My opinion, not at all official, even though I've helped out a tiny amount with the program as a mentor/judge: The program basically cherry picks people who are already really successful and very likely to be successful no matter what. It then gives them a great 2y opportunity to work on cool stuff in lieu of college, which may work out for them, or may just be a great experience if they go back to college or take a job somewhere. Leaving college, instantly becoming part of a well-connected silicon valley network, etc. is a big advantage; while leaving MIT or Stanford may be somewhat debatable, leaving podunk u (especially if you're going into debt while there, and not getting much out of it beyond a curriculum you can get from the internet for free) is a more clear case. There are basically two classes of people who don't belong in college now: the super high achievers for whom the opportunity cost of being in college is too high (Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook vs. Harvard, etc.), or people in marginal schools getting little out of it. It's easy to take people from the margins of the first category and help them to be more successful (or just give them "parental cover" to drop out and follow their ambition). This is nice for them and for society. More importantly, it creates great examples to use in the debate over the latter. Not statistically valid examples, but politically valid.