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Thiel [...] believes the US has moved from an optimistic-deterministic viewpoint to an optimistic-stochastic viewpoint. The optimistic-deterministic viewpoint

Thiel [...] believes the US has moved from an optimistic-deterministic viewpoint to an optimistic-stochastic viewpoint. The optimistic-deterministic viewpoint is the opposite of the "lean startup" movement and the MVP approach, which is an almost completely pure expression of the optimistic-stochastic viewpoint, i.e.: We're *optimistic* that innovation is possible, but we also believe we can't know in advance, so we'll use (controlled) chance to find out what works (A/B testing, random trials, etc.). IMO, the culture shift to an optimistic-stochastic viewpoint is also why people hate Apple -- not because Apple is unsuccessful, but precisely because Apple is successful – wildly successful – but Apple is using the wrong paradigm to achieve that success. In Thiel's terminology, Apple works from an optimistic-deterministic viewpoint, and to the culture today, that's just wrong somehow. Hence, the hate. If you think about it, "minimum viable product" is practically the anti-thesis of innovation: let's create the least innovative thing we possibly can in the hopes that it might, someday, be successful after a lot of A/B testing to hack the buying and growth process and find a niche market. MVP is not about shooting for the stars, but it is about microscopic, incremental, improvement -- and a dramatic reduction in risk. That's the optimistic-stochastic viewpoint in action.

timr 14y ago
The problem with "deterministic optimism" (other than the obvious silliness of attributing one mindset to the entire US), is that it doesn't change the nature of reality. You can invest more in certain areas and yield a return on that investment, but you can't reliably call your shots. Life doesn't work that way. Nearly all of the fruits of government research have been as a result of "stochastic" investment (i.e. nearly everything done by the NIH and NSF and DARPA), or second-order effects from "deterministic" investment (e.g. the space program and velcro, or radar and military spending). Other than wars and (maybe, debatably) the space program, we have a pretty spotty record of saying "we're going to do $X amazing technological feat in $Y years", and then making that happen. Where we have successfully called our shots (and I'm thinking mainly of the space program here), it's only happened after decades of stochastic progress got us to the point where a politician could reasonably say "let's go to the moon" without sounding like a lunatic, and have some realistic hope that it would happen during a four-year term. Politics, as a societal force, is not particularly forward-thinking. If you're looking for something governmental to blame for lack of innovation, you don't need to assign the entire political system a mindset, or compose elaborate pseudo-philosophical lectures: you need only look at the number of science PhDs who can't work in their fields, or the declining number of smart kids who go into research. When you gut government (and industrial) research, you don't get any returns.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  Where is the research? I want to work in it, but every company in this 'hot' industry is too enamored with cranking out disposable apps.
  - timr 14y ago
    That's my point: there isn't much going on. You can try academia, but things are pretty bleak right now. There's so much competition chasing so little money that it's hard to see a path to a career for all but the luckiest few PhD graduates. And forget it if you don't have a PhD from a top school. People put so much mental energy into pondering the lack of innovation, but we've been systematically under-funding science for more than a decade. There's not much of a puzzle here.
    - yummyfajitas 14y ago
      There's so much competition chasing so little money that it's hard to see a path to a career for all but the luckiest few PhD graduates. And forget it if you don't have a PhD from a top school. The problem here is that academic research (at least in math+physics, what I'm familiar with) doesn't have a place for second best. Most academic research produced by people below the top tier is worthless and will never amount to anything. It's a very different situation from technology, where yet another CRUD app can actually bring huge value to the business.

timr 14y ago

The problem with "deterministic optimism" (other than the obvious silliness of attributing one mindset to the entire US), is that it doesn't change the nature of reality. You can invest more in certain areas and yield a return on that investment, but you can't reliably call your shots. Life doesn't work that way. Nearly all of the fruits of government research have been as a result of "stochastic" investment (i.e. nearly everything done by the NIH and NSF and DARPA), or second-order effects from "deterministic" investment (e.g. the space program and velcro, or radar and military spending). Other than wars and (maybe, debatably) the space program, we have a pretty spotty record of saying "we're going to do $X amazing technological feat in $Y years", and then making that happen. Where we have successfully called our shots (and I'm thinking mainly of the space program here), it's only happened after decades of stochastic progress got us to the point where a politician could reasonably say "let's go to the moon" without sounding like a lunatic, and have some realistic hope that it would happen during a four-year term. Politics, as a societal force, is not particularly forward-thinking. If you're looking for something governmental to blame for lack of innovation, you don't need to assign the entire political system a mindset, or compose elaborate pseudo-philosophical lectures: you need only look at the number of science PhDs who can't work in their fields, or the declining number of smart kids who go into research. When you gut government (and industrial) research, you don't get any returns.

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
Where is the research? I want to work in it, but every company in this 'hot' industry is too enamored with cranking out disposable apps.
- timr 14y ago
  That's my point: there isn't much going on. You can try academia, but things are pretty bleak right now. There's so much competition chasing so little money that it's hard to see a path to a career for all but the luckiest few PhD graduates. And forget it if you don't have a PhD from a top school. People put so much mental energy into pondering the lack of innovation, but we've been systematically under-funding science for more than a decade. There's not much of a puzzle here.
  - yummyfajitas 14y ago
    There's so much competition chasing so little money that it's hard to see a path to a career for all but the luckiest few PhD graduates. And forget it if you don't have a PhD from a top school. The problem here is that academic research (at least in math+physics, what I'm familiar with) doesn't have a place for second best. Most academic research produced by people below the top tier is worthless and will never amount to anything. It's a very different situation from technology, where yet another CRUD app can actually bring huge value to the business.