8 ms·

In Tech We Trust? A Debate with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen [video]

74 points by jordn 13y ago

jacoblyles 13y ago
Good discussion of energy technology and the electric grid a little after 40:00 Charter Cities and regulatory competition get a mention around 56:00, something that I am very excited about.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Agreed, and when they started to talk about lack of the incumbent institutions that are pressuring regulation in developing countries it made me think about how the concept of the electrical grid is obsolete and highly cost inefficient in places with lack of infrastructure and are being solved by tech in a way that would be over regulated(or not allowed) in the united states; Probably because when we as culture think of electricity, we have an existing infrastructure (and the government sponsored monopolies on such) to think of unlike in developing countries.
sethbannon 13y ago
Their disagreement can be viewed through the lens of how they view Twitter. Thiel sees it as "we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters" (a Founders Fund motto). He thinks it's an unimpressive, incremental advancement. Andreessen, however, views it as "instant global public messaging for free". In other words, fundamentally transformative. The entire video is well worth a watch, but that's it in a nutshell. [edit: fixed typo]
- david927 13y ago
  It's not nearly that simple. The question is not just are we innovating here and there, but are we gaining productivity (and therefore building wealth)? Marc mentions GNP growth but that's a horrible number to gauge on. Peter brings up mean household income and working hours, which are much better indicators -- and they indicate we're going nowhere. You say Twitter is "fundamentally transformative". But I don't see the wealth Twitter has created. And if Twitter was gone tomorrow, would anyone really notice?
  - ippisl 13y ago
    I bet that if you looked at household income and working hours and worker conditions at the beginning of the industrial revolution you wouldn't see great improvement. You've seen that only after the workers movement gotten worker rights. That's to say that those metrics are wrong to measure technological advancement per se. But of course what's important is standards of living.
    - david927 13y ago
      Peter isn't the only one saying this. Even the eminent Alan Kay raises the point: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...
      - ippisl 13y ago
        First even Thiel agrees there isn't lack of innovation in computing. Alan Kay asks about big ideas, not about innovation. I'm pretty sure that if you look at research papers you'll find amazing ideas that within a 5/10/30 years time will be important(but we can't tell, not until we worked hard to make them work). Just of the top of my head, there are many potential amazing ideas: look at literature based discovery, alan kay's project that tries to build full os + apps in less than 20KLOC, "naked objects" and meredith patterson's work on parsing and security[1]. [1]http://www.securitytube.net/video/7251 http://www.securitytube.net/video/7251
        david927 13y ago
        I guess we're disagreeing with what is meant by innovation. For me it means big ideas. Better tires on cars is innovation but it's not satisfying to me. I think Thiel also means big ideas -- hence the 140 character quote. I like your enthusiasm and your list is fantastic. I haven't seen Meredith Patterson's stuff. It looks interesting. But we were also "on the cusp" of curing cancer in the 70's. This is personal, I guess. I've spent an inordinate time on deep research and I've done it on my own. It's frustrating to watch while things like the Kickstarter for T-shirts get drowned in financing while I count pennies. I'll try to be more optimistic but there's nothing wrong with saying, "Let's stop chasing money and start chasing something more. Something bigger. Something better."
marcamillion 13y ago
Wow....Just the first few minutes alone is like a nerdgasm. I love the way these guys think and express themselves.
chx 13y ago
Transcript please.
- Killah911 13y ago
  Synopsis: Peter making the argument that innovation is decelerating and the returns from tech innovations are minor compared to tech innovations in the past. Marc arguing that while some innovations may appear trivial but it is too early to judge for sure (based on history other innovations which we now consider ground breaking were at their times often written off as a fad) & that innovations aren't actually slowing down. Fun bits about flying cars & how early automobiles required taking a mechanic with you wherever you go. Also interesting comment about Cisco, IBM & maybe MS being part of the technology rust belt. Neither are very fond of NYT.
Killah911 13y ago
I was there, probably one of the best sessions at the event. I especially liked the part about building a very strong roof if flying cars come to fruition.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  ha! Ok, sounds like it's worth a look.
spitx 13y ago
I loathe the fact that Thiel's arguments do not get enough purchase even within the technology circles. Argument 1 The fact - and it is very much a fact - that, off late, technology hasn't progressed very much at all. Argument 2 And that our scowl-faced culture, that disparages everything technological -- in favor of products of some glorious bygone era where everything that would be ever needed for human purposes has already been conceived, crafted and fabricated -- reinforces this notion in every aspect of our lives. This is the part I hate most about our culture - the utterly stupid, moribund romanticism associated with every stupid thing ever invented -- however ill-suited it is to serve a purpose in this age -- is somehow worthy of our admiration solely because it is antediluvian. Not that it is efficient or infinitely better than any candidate that has since come along to replace it (and there are a few examples of such nature. Very few indeed. Eg: the drinking straw or the common t-shirt). But purely because it served our forefathers well and therefore it is somehow worthy of continued use. Hollywood unabashedly continues to perpetuate these sickening notions to no end. Edit: Rewritten for purposes of clarity.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  I definitely think the incumbent leaders (the other 2/3 of the forbes list) and their monopolies granted by governments which allows them to sponsor much of the culture (at least in the developed world) can be attributed to this. And which makes me smile when Thiel touches on how developing countries, who are glad to get their solar panels and rain water catch systems that give them access to things they had no access to for most of these past 40 years in the same way developed countries have, might come out ahead in this next go.
  - spitx 13y ago
    Thiel had hammered home these points before, yet no one seems to take notice. Links to video footage of past debates and conversations: A Conversation with Peter Thiel and Niall Ferguson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY Innovation or stagnation - Oxford Union Debate http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/210 Fireside Chat With Peter Thiel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6taTMa4nls
mindcrime 13y ago
Definitely worth a watch. Interestingly, they agreed on quite a bit. The one thing I was struck by, was the extent to which they agreed that government regulation was an inhibitor of innovation. Actually, I expected that from Thiel, since he's well known as a libertarian, but I wasn't sure that pmarca would share that viewpoint. But they both came down pretty hard on government in that regard. I think both agreed that energy is of critical importance as well, and that the nature of the energy markets have had a big impact on shaping progress in other areas. Also, I think Peter Thiel made a fairly interesting point about the connection between our imagination (as a culture) and Hollywood's portrayal of technology. It is a little odd that some of the most well-known and popular movies with a large technological element are the ones where the machines are coming to kill us. I'm sitting here right now trying to think up some good counter-examples, and am coming up fairly blank so far... Something else that Peter Thiel mentioned at least twice was the phrase "risk averse". I think that's a pretty important point... as a society, have we become so risk averse that we aren't willing to gamble on the big breakthroughs anymore? Are we content to just sit back and wait and hope for a steady stream of incremental, sustaining innovations? I think he might be onto something with that. Edit: Something that neither Thiel nor Andressen mentioned, that I think is relevant to this discussion, is the recent re-emergence of the hobbyist / DIY / amateur scientist / solo hacker/builder movement. Hackerspaces, cheap embedded / embeddable computers, Arduino, Beagleboard, rPi, 3D printing, cheap DIY CNC milling machines, etc, are enabling thousands or millions of people to take a stab at building things they never could have tried to build before. And go visit the recent HN thread on "Hardware startups" and the CDixon post... looking at what an entrepreneur can do now, in terms of having a physical product built at scale with a much smaller capital investment than in the past... that's got to encourage some new companies to form, and some people to start working on ideas and dreams they've been stewing no, no? And hardware devices aside, cheap computers, cheap Internet access, Open Source software, etc., are making it so much easier for people to explore their software and virtual ideas as well. But, then we'd be back to Peter's point that "we got 140 chars". So, is it lack of imagination, or something else, that's keeping us from getting radical, disruptive breakthroughs? Or are they out there, on the cusp, just... about... to... happen.
- ehsanu1 13y ago
henryl 13y ago
The truth is they are both right. Technology is accelerating but it is also changing directionally. It is no longer accelerating along a physical axis but instead along a virtual one. What Peter Thiel doesn't see is that the virtual curve will be even more transformative than the physical one. Physical technology has had hundreds of thousands of years to evolve but virtual technology will obsolete it in just a few decades. How? The answer starts out looking a little like Angry Birds but probably ends up more like the Holodeck. The issue of measurement IS important. The problem with all of Peter Thiel's metrics is that they are inherently indicators of external activity. The triumph of the virtual curve reveals itself in the only metric that really matters: time. All forms of technology have the same purpose: to optimize the utility obtained during a finite lifespan. Some forms of technology increase the utility per unit time, others simply increase the units of time we have left. Therefore, more and more time spent in virtual space is an indication that virtual technology is out competing the substitutes provided by physical technology. As we go higher up the virtual curve and technology becomes more advanced at fulfilling our emotional and psychological needs by moving bits instead of atoms, eventually physical progress will slow to baseline: literally life support (maybe with gamified life extension projects taking place in virtual land). Alas, the last technology invented by man will not be the singularity, it will be near perfect virtual reality; closer to Angry Birds than Skynet.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  Therefore, more and more time spent in virtual space is an indication that virtual technology is out competing the substitutes provided by physical technology. I am slamming my head against my desk this is just that dumb. Managing to subvert people's attention spans and dopamine systems to keep them clicking on the orange-red envelope and clicking to the next page does not mean you've actually done anything good for them. It just means you're consuming their attention until they actually leave the site and walk away with that empty feeling of having outright wasted several whole hours of their day. Alas, the last technology invented by man will not be the singularity, it will be near perfect virtual reality; closer to Angry Birds than Skynet. Why? A perfect video game is still just a video game.
  - 13y ago
patrickk 13y ago
Quote from Peter Thiel starting around 39:10 in the video: "Mean wages have been stagnant (not median). It’s not an income an inequality issue. Mean wages went up 350% in the US after inflation from 1933 and 1973. [They] went up 22% from 1973 to 2013. Median wages were flat, so it’s become more unequal. Even if you had redistributed everything, it’s gone up only 22%." I feel this is an overly US-centric view of humanities progress. Globalisation produces winners and losers in the short term, and even though manufacturing jobs are being destroyed in the US, millions of people are being lifted out of poverty in China and other low cost developing nations. If you are using the argument that stagnant wages in one part of the world means human civilisation is not progressing technologically, does that argument stand up if you look at global living standards? There was an interesting argument (unfortunately I can't recall where I heard it) that put forward the idea that World War II was like a massive subsidy from the US Air Force to the US manufacturing sector. The US Air Force destroyed many of the industrial cities of America's global manufacturing competitors (mainly Germany and Japan) and other major European nations were destroyed also and were bailed out with the Marshall Plan. All this meant that for decades, the US manufacturing sector had it artificially good because of greatly reduced global competition, as factories and other manufacturing infrastructure had to be totally rebuilt in the other big industrial nations, which took decades. This was great news for US car companies (and other manufacturers) in the decades after the war, who could churn out (relatively) unreliable and fuel inefficient vehicles, which were bought in huge numbers as they were the best available. In the 1970s, the combination of the oil shocks and encroaching competition from Japanese car makers, who innovated with reliable, fuel efficient and affordable vehicles, meant that the good times were over. Tl;dr using US wages from 1933-1973, and 1973-today is the wrong metric to measure human civilisations technological progress, for a variety of reasons.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/the-europe-in-rubble-excuse/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/the-europe-in-ru...
aswanson 13y ago
One way to I've been thinking about technology is how easily the outcome of a war between our current year and a prior year in the same country would turn out. For instance, could the U.S. of 2013 easily defeat the U.S. of 1993. I know for a fact that the U.S of 1960 would make short work of the U.S. of 1940. I think the U.S. of 1973 would give the U.S. of 1993 much more of a problem, however.

74 points by jordn 13y ago

Good discussion of energy technology and the electric grid a little after 40:00 Charter Cities and regulatory competition get a mention around 56:00, something that I am very excited about.

cinquemb 13y ago
Agreed, and when they started to talk about lack of the incumbent institutions that are pressuring regulation in developing countries it made me think about how the concept of the electrical grid is obsolete and highly cost inefficient in places with lack of infrastructure and are being solved by tech in a way that would be over regulated(or not allowed) in the united states; Probably because when we as culture think of electricity, we have an existing infrastructure (and the government sponsored monopolies on such) to think of unlike in developing countries.

sethbannon 13y ago

Their disagreement can be viewed through the lens of how they view Twitter. Thiel sees it as "we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters" (a Founders Fund motto). He thinks it's an unimpressive, incremental advancement. Andreessen, however, views it as "instant global public messaging for free". In other words, fundamentally transformative. The entire video is well worth a watch, but that's it in a nutshell. [edit: fixed typo]

david927 13y ago
It's not nearly that simple. The question is not just are we innovating here and there, but are we gaining productivity (and therefore building wealth)? Marc mentions GNP growth but that's a horrible number to gauge on. Peter brings up mean household income and working hours, which are much better indicators -- and they indicate we're going nowhere. You say Twitter is "fundamentally transformative". But I don't see the wealth Twitter has created. And if Twitter was gone tomorrow, would anyone really notice?
- ippisl 13y ago
  I bet that if you looked at household income and working hours and worker conditions at the beginning of the industrial revolution you wouldn't see great improvement. You've seen that only after the workers movement gotten worker rights. That's to say that those metrics are wrong to measure technological advancement per se. But of course what's important is standards of living.
  - david927 13y ago
    Peter isn't the only one saying this. Even the eminent Alan Kay raises the point: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...
    - ippisl 13y ago
      First even Thiel agrees there isn't lack of innovation in computing. Alan Kay asks about big ideas, not about innovation. I'm pretty sure that if you look at research papers you'll find amazing ideas that within a 5/10/30 years time will be important(but we can't tell, not until we worked hard to make them work). Just of the top of my head, there are many potential amazing ideas: look at literature based discovery, alan kay's project that tries to build full os + apps in less than 20KLOC, "naked objects" and meredith patterson's work on parsing and security[1]. [1]http://www.securitytube.net/video/7251 http://www.securitytube.net/video/7251
      - david927 13y ago
        I guess we're disagreeing with what is meant by innovation. For me it means big ideas. Better tires on cars is innovation but it's not satisfying to me. I think Thiel also means big ideas -- hence the 140 character quote. I like your enthusiasm and your list is fantastic. I haven't seen Meredith Patterson's stuff. It looks interesting. But we were also "on the cusp" of curing cancer in the 70's. This is personal, I guess. I've spent an inordinate time on deep research and I've done it on my own. It's frustrating to watch while things like the Kickstarter for T-shirts get drowned in financing while I count pennies. I'll try to be more optimistic but there's nothing wrong with saying, "Let's stop chasing money and start chasing something more. Something bigger. Something better."

marcamillion 13y ago

Wow....Just the first few minutes alone is like a nerdgasm. I love the way these guys think and express themselves.

chx 13y ago

Transcript please.

Killah911 13y ago
Synopsis: Peter making the argument that innovation is decelerating and the returns from tech innovations are minor compared to tech innovations in the past. Marc arguing that while some innovations may appear trivial but it is too early to judge for sure (based on history other innovations which we now consider ground breaking were at their times often written off as a fad) & that innovations aren't actually slowing down. Fun bits about flying cars & how early automobiles required taking a mechanic with you wherever you go. Also interesting comment about Cisco, IBM & maybe MS being part of the technology rust belt. Neither are very fond of NYT.

Killah911 13y ago

I was there, probably one of the best sessions at the event. I especially liked the part about building a very strong roof if flying cars come to fruition.

GhotiFish 13y ago
ha! Ok, sounds like it's worth a look.

spitx 13y ago

I loathe the fact that Thiel's arguments do not get enough purchase even within the technology circles. Argument 1 The fact - and it is very much a fact - that, off late, technology hasn't progressed very much at all. Argument 2 And that our scowl-faced culture, that disparages everything technological -- in favor of products of some glorious bygone era where everything that would be ever needed for human purposes has already been conceived, crafted and fabricated -- reinforces this notion in every aspect of our lives. This is the part I hate most about our culture - the utterly stupid, moribund romanticism associated with every stupid thing ever invented -- however ill-suited it is to serve a purpose in this age -- is somehow worthy of our admiration solely because it is antediluvian. Not that it is efficient or infinitely better than any candidate that has since come along to replace it (and there are a few examples of such nature. Very few indeed. Eg: the drinking straw or the common t-shirt). But purely because it served our forefathers well and therefore it is somehow worthy of continued use. Hollywood unabashedly continues to perpetuate these sickening notions to no end. Edit: Rewritten for purposes of clarity.

cinquemb 13y ago
I definitely think the incumbent leaders (the other 2/3 of the forbes list) and their monopolies granted by governments which allows them to sponsor much of the culture (at least in the developed world) can be attributed to this. And which makes me smile when Thiel touches on how developing countries, who are glad to get their solar panels and rain water catch systems that give them access to things they had no access to for most of these past 40 years in the same way developed countries have, might come out ahead in this next go.
- spitx 13y ago
  Thiel had hammered home these points before, yet no one seems to take notice. Links to video footage of past debates and conversations: A Conversation with Peter Thiel and Niall Ferguson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY Innovation or stagnation - Oxford Union Debate http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/videos/view/210 Fireside Chat With Peter Thiel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6taTMa4nls

mindcrime 13y ago

Definitely worth a watch. Interestingly, they agreed on quite a bit. The one thing I was struck by, was the extent to which they agreed that government regulation was an inhibitor of innovation. Actually, I expected that from Thiel, since he's well known as a libertarian, but I wasn't sure that pmarca would share that viewpoint. But they both came down pretty hard on government in that regard. I think both agreed that energy is of critical importance as well, and that the nature of the energy markets have had a big impact on shaping progress in other areas. Also, I think Peter Thiel made a fairly interesting point about the connection between our imagination (as a culture) and Hollywood's portrayal of technology. It is a little odd that some of the most well-known and popular movies with a large technological element are the ones where the machines are coming to kill us. I'm sitting here right now trying to think up some good counter-examples, and am coming up fairly blank so far... Something else that Peter Thiel mentioned at least twice was the phrase "risk averse". I think that's a pretty important point... as a society, have we become so risk averse that we aren't willing to gamble on the big breakthroughs anymore? Are we content to just sit back and wait and hope for a steady stream of incremental, sustaining innovations? I think he might be onto something with that. Edit: Something that neither Thiel nor Andressen mentioned, that I think is relevant to this discussion, is the recent re-emergence of the hobbyist / DIY / amateur scientist / solo hacker/builder movement. Hackerspaces, cheap embedded / embeddable computers, Arduino, Beagleboard, rPi, 3D printing, cheap DIY CNC milling machines, etc, are enabling thousands or millions of people to take a stab at building things they never could have tried to build before. And go visit the recent HN thread on "Hardware startups" and the CDixon post... looking at what an entrepreneur can do now, in terms of having a physical product built at scale with a much smaller capital investment than in the past... that's got to encourage some new companies to form, and some people to start working on ideas and dreams they've been stewing no, no? And hardware devices aside, cheap computers, cheap Internet access, Open Source software, etc., are making it so much easier for people to explore their software and virtual ideas as well. But, then we'd be back to Peter's point that "we got 140 chars". So, is it lack of imagination, or something else, that's keeping us from getting radical, disruptive breakthroughs? Or are they out there, on the cusp, just... about... to... happen.

ehsanu1 13y ago

henryl 13y ago

The truth is they are both right. Technology is accelerating but it is also changing directionally. It is no longer accelerating along a physical axis but instead along a virtual one. What Peter Thiel doesn't see is that the virtual curve will be even more transformative than the physical one. Physical technology has had hundreds of thousands of years to evolve but virtual technology will obsolete it in just a few decades. How? The answer starts out looking a little like Angry Birds but probably ends up more like the Holodeck. The issue of measurement IS important. The problem with all of Peter Thiel's metrics is that they are inherently indicators of external activity. The triumph of the virtual curve reveals itself in the only metric that really matters: time. All forms of technology have the same purpose: to optimize the utility obtained during a finite lifespan. Some forms of technology increase the utility per unit time, others simply increase the units of time we have left. Therefore, more and more time spent in virtual space is an indication that virtual technology is out competing the substitutes provided by physical technology. As we go higher up the virtual curve and technology becomes more advanced at fulfilling our emotional and psychological needs by moving bits instead of atoms, eventually physical progress will slow to baseline: literally life support (maybe with gamified life extension projects taking place in virtual land). Alas, the last technology invented by man will not be the singularity, it will be near perfect virtual reality; closer to Angry Birds than Skynet.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
Therefore, more and more time spent in virtual space is an indication that virtual technology is out competing the substitutes provided by physical technology. I am slamming my head against my desk this is just that dumb. Managing to subvert people's attention spans and dopamine systems to keep them clicking on the orange-red envelope and clicking to the next page does not mean you've actually done anything good for them. It just means you're consuming their attention until they actually leave the site and walk away with that empty feeling of having outright wasted several whole hours of their day. Alas, the last technology invented by man will not be the singularity, it will be near perfect virtual reality; closer to Angry Birds than Skynet. Why? A perfect video game is still just a video game.
- 13y ago

patrickk 13y ago

Quote from Peter Thiel starting around 39:10 in the video: "Mean wages have been stagnant (not median). It’s not an income an inequality issue. Mean wages went up 350% in the US after inflation from 1933 and 1973. [They] went up 22% from 1973 to 2013. Median wages were flat, so it’s become more unequal. Even if you had redistributed everything, it’s gone up only 22%." I feel this is an overly US-centric view of humanities progress. Globalisation produces winners and losers in the short term, and even though manufacturing jobs are being destroyed in the US, millions of people are being lifted out of poverty in China and other low cost developing nations. If you are using the argument that stagnant wages in one part of the world means human civilisation is not progressing technologically, does that argument stand up if you look at global living standards? There was an interesting argument (unfortunately I can't recall where I heard it) that put forward the idea that World War II was like a massive subsidy from the US Air Force to the US manufacturing sector. The US Air Force destroyed many of the industrial cities of America's global manufacturing competitors (mainly Germany and Japan) and other major European nations were destroyed also and were bailed out with the Marshall Plan. All this meant that for decades, the US manufacturing sector had it artificially good because of greatly reduced global competition, as factories and other manufacturing infrastructure had to be totally rebuilt in the other big industrial nations, which took decades. This was great news for US car companies (and other manufacturers) in the decades after the war, who could churn out (relatively) unreliable and fuel inefficient vehicles, which were bought in huge numbers as they were the best available. In the 1970s, the combination of the oil shocks and encroaching competition from Japanese car makers, who innovated with reliable, fuel efficient and affordable vehicles, meant that the good times were over. Tl;dr using US wages from 1933-1973, and 1973-today is the wrong metric to measure human civilisations technological progress, for a variety of reasons.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/the-europe-in-rubble-excuse/ http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/the-europe-in-ru...

aswanson 13y ago

One way to I've been thinking about technology is how easily the outcome of a war between our current year and a prior year in the same country would turn out. For instance, could the U.S. of 2013 easily defeat the U.S. of 1993. I know for a fact that the U.S of 1960 would make short work of the U.S. of 1940. I think the U.S. of 1973 would give the U.S. of 1993 much more of a problem, however.