7 ms·

Peter Thiel - You are Not a Lottery Ticket [video]

76 points by beniaminmincu 13y ago

dcuthbertson 13y ago
The OP's link didn't work for me. Here's one with sound only, no video, no slides, no transcript. http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP15892 http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP15892
- Connaissance 13y ago
  Thanks for that, original link was blocked for me as well.
fizx 13y ago
transcript?
- smalter 13y ago
  Looks like the same talk as was transcribed here: http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-13-notes-essay http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-...
codemac 13y ago
Just watched this talk.. absolutely great material. I wish he was a slightly better/more confident speaker, but I got over it. For someone who is the farthest thing from libertarian, is there any more literature on the idea of big planning, deterministic optimism, etc in a libertarian framework? His examples of the US as optimistic and deterministic were all "centrally planned", and done through government, not individuals or groups of individuals (corps, ngos, etc). Or at least that's how I perceived it.
- scottjad 13y ago
  Maybe look at Mises on entrepreneurship or John Mackey (of Whole Foods) in Conscious Capitalism for deterministic optimism in libertarian framework. Perhaps "Atlas Shrugged" contrasts both indeterminite pessimism (the failing state and despair-filled question "Who's John Galt?") and the determinite optimism of engineers/makers and Galt's Gultch.
- tgrass 13y ago
  I recommend: Two Cheers for Anarchism (Scott) and Why Things Fail (Ormerod)
- adventured 13y ago
  This. It's a very good speech, but if I could change one thing about how he speaks it would be to not allow him to use uh / uhm every few words. He reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg in speech, even the quality of his voice is similar.
- hispanic 13y ago
  If you enjoyed this, you might want to read this article: Gödel Incompleteness For Startups http://skibinsky.com/godel-incompleteness-for-startups/ http://skibinsky.com/godel-incompleteness-for-startups/ Equally thought-provoking with regard to startups and how to approach them.
mh_ 13y ago
According to the Googles, you can grab the .mp3 of the talk here: http://mp3yeah.com/download.php?id=83442458&t=Peter%20Thiel:%20You%20Are%20Not%20A%20Lottery%20Ticket%20-%20SXSW%20Interactive%202013 http://mp3yeah.com/download.php?id=83442458&t=Peter%20Th...
shn 13y ago
Lecture notes from his CS183 Startup class was about similar subjects. If you found the talk interesting you'll like the notes as well. http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup
jack9 13y ago
The generalizations are really horrid and without a working knowledge of history so he has these stories built on other stories that makes it painful to sit through. This talk is bad. It's bad for a number of reasons, but primarily because it is one man's (evolved) generalizations of reality that fit to what has happened in hindsight...if you can even say he asserts anything other than "this is how I think of it".
calinet6 13y ago
I'm usually not a fan of Peter Thiel's ideas—always seemed quite a bit on the extreme side of the spectrum to me—but this talk is fantastic. I have a new respect for his viewpoints, and a renewed zeal to work harder. I still think he discounts the effect that random chance has in your ability to succeed, on many counts, but he at least seems to understand it extremely well and speaks about it in a way which seems to indicate he respects the complexities involved. Quite good and thought-provoking to watch regardless of how you think of success.
- sjg007 13y ago
  luck favors the prepared.
confluence 13y ago
Says the guy who won the lottery. I'm frankly more interested in the guy who blew up during the dot com boom and who is currently some random employee at some random company, with a past filled with mistakes - frankly you'd learn more from his actual failures, than from Thiel's failure masking success.
- kami8845 13y ago
  Why learn from the guy who made the mistakes when you can learn from the guy who didn't?
  - Millennium 13y ago
    Because success generally changes things, while mistakes generally don't. You can't clone a previous success exactly, because its presence alters the environment from the one in which it was initially achieved, and you have to account for that. You essentially have to show the same sort of creativity as the original success showed, and thus you haven't really learned much. By contrast, things that were mistakes in the past tend to still be mistakes in the present. Usually they continue to be mistakes in the future as well. That's something you can really learn from, as you go through the creative process toward success that you were going to have to go through anyway.
    - throwaway1979 13y ago
      A key word is "tend". I've tried to learn from past failures only to realize that the world has changed in a few short span and my lesson no longer applied. In the immortals words of a song "what was once good, now is bad". When one realizes this, life gets a bit harder.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    I guess you should try and learn from both, but in general we pay more attention to the successes than the failures. As an extreme example, a lottery winner should say "you should play the lottery, it made me rich!" ignoring all of those who made an overall loss. Think of it like the housing crash, everybody knew somebody who was getting rich from property.
adamgravitis 13y ago
This organizes a lot of thoughts I've had regarding the economic history of the 20th century. It seemed that something really changed in patterns of invention and investment somewhere in the late 70s, whereby - as Peter notes - big ideas and making plans became considerably less fashionable. I hadn't made the connection to the surge of effort in law and finance, but it's a convincing argument. The real question, then, is: Can we return the western economies to an optimistic-deterministic point of view? It would require really reframing a lot of public debate - or perhaps taking discourse elsewhere from regulated airwaves where the established players seem to worship an utterly indeterminate world view, as evidenced by continuous coverage of uncontrollable events.
pesenti 13y ago
One reason the western world is appearing more indeterminate and becoming less optimistic is because of the diminishing returns of progress. That's the main problem in Europe. A hundred years ago, most people had difficult lives and technical progress offered a clear path to better lives. Now most people there have a pretty good life and understandably don't want it to change.
nashadelic 13y ago
All of a sudden this video is password protected. Anyone has the password?

76 points by beniaminmincu 13y ago

The OP's link didn't work for me. Here's one with sound only, no video, no slides, no transcript. http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP15892 http://schedule.sxsw.com/2013/events/event_IAP15892

Connaissance 13y ago
Thanks for that, original link was blocked for me as well.

fizx 13y ago

transcript?

smalter 13y ago
Looks like the same talk as was transcribed here: http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-13-notes-essay http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-...

codemac 13y ago

Just watched this talk.. absolutely great material. I wish he was a slightly better/more confident speaker, but I got over it. For someone who is the farthest thing from libertarian, is there any more literature on the idea of big planning, deterministic optimism, etc in a libertarian framework? His examples of the US as optimistic and deterministic were all "centrally planned", and done through government, not individuals or groups of individuals (corps, ngos, etc). Or at least that's how I perceived it.

scottjad 13y ago
Maybe look at Mises on entrepreneurship or John Mackey (of Whole Foods) in Conscious Capitalism for deterministic optimism in libertarian framework. Perhaps "Atlas Shrugged" contrasts both indeterminite pessimism (the failing state and despair-filled question "Who's John Galt?") and the determinite optimism of engineers/makers and Galt's Gultch.
tgrass 13y ago
I recommend: Two Cheers for Anarchism (Scott) and Why Things Fail (Ormerod)
adventured 13y ago
This. It's a very good speech, but if I could change one thing about how he speaks it would be to not allow him to use uh / uhm every few words. He reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg in speech, even the quality of his voice is similar.
hispanic 13y ago
If you enjoyed this, you might want to read this article: Gödel Incompleteness For Startups http://skibinsky.com/godel-incompleteness-for-startups/ http://skibinsky.com/godel-incompleteness-for-startups/ Equally thought-provoking with regard to startups and how to approach them.

mh_ 13y ago

According to the Googles, you can grab the .mp3 of the talk here: http://mp3yeah.com/download.php?id=83442458&t=Peter%20Thiel:%20You%20Are%20Not%20A%20Lottery%20Ticket%20-%20SXSW%20Interactive%202013 http://mp3yeah.com/download.php?id=83442458&t=Peter%20Th...

shn 13y ago

Lecture notes from his CS183 Startup class was about similar subjects. If you found the talk interesting you'll like the notes as well. http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup

jack9 13y ago

The generalizations are really horrid and without a working knowledge of history so he has these stories built on other stories that makes it painful to sit through. This talk is bad. It's bad for a number of reasons, but primarily because it is one man's (evolved) generalizations of reality that fit to what has happened in hindsight...if you can even say he asserts anything other than "this is how I think of it".

calinet6 13y ago

I'm usually not a fan of Peter Thiel's ideas—always seemed quite a bit on the extreme side of the spectrum to me—but this talk is fantastic. I have a new respect for his viewpoints, and a renewed zeal to work harder. I still think he discounts the effect that random chance has in your ability to succeed, on many counts, but he at least seems to understand it extremely well and speaks about it in a way which seems to indicate he respects the complexities involved. Quite good and thought-provoking to watch regardless of how you think of success.

sjg007 13y ago
luck favors the prepared.

confluence 13y ago

Says the guy who won the lottery. I'm frankly more interested in the guy who blew up during the dot com boom and who is currently some random employee at some random company, with a past filled with mistakes - frankly you'd learn more from his actual failures, than from Thiel's failure masking success.

kami8845 13y ago
Why learn from the guy who made the mistakes when you can learn from the guy who didn't?
- Millennium 13y ago
  Because success generally changes things, while mistakes generally don't. You can't clone a previous success exactly, because its presence alters the environment from the one in which it was initially achieved, and you have to account for that. You essentially have to show the same sort of creativity as the original success showed, and thus you haven't really learned much. By contrast, things that were mistakes in the past tend to still be mistakes in the present. Usually they continue to be mistakes in the future as well. That's something you can really learn from, as you go through the creative process toward success that you were going to have to go through anyway.
  - throwaway1979 13y ago
    A key word is "tend". I've tried to learn from past failures only to realize that the world has changed in a few short span and my lesson no longer applied. In the immortals words of a song "what was once good, now is bad". When one realizes this, life gets a bit harder.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  I guess you should try and learn from both, but in general we pay more attention to the successes than the failures. As an extreme example, a lottery winner should say "you should play the lottery, it made me rich!" ignoring all of those who made an overall loss. Think of it like the housing crash, everybody knew somebody who was getting rich from property.

adamgravitis 13y ago

This organizes a lot of thoughts I've had regarding the economic history of the 20th century. It seemed that something really changed in patterns of invention and investment somewhere in the late 70s, whereby - as Peter notes - big ideas and making plans became considerably less fashionable. I hadn't made the connection to the surge of effort in law and finance, but it's a convincing argument. The real question, then, is: Can we return the western economies to an optimistic-deterministic point of view? It would require really reframing a lot of public debate - or perhaps taking discourse elsewhere from regulated airwaves where the established players seem to worship an utterly indeterminate world view, as evidenced by continuous coverage of uncontrollable events.

pesenti 13y ago

One reason the western world is appearing more indeterminate and becoming less optimistic is because of the diminishing returns of progress. That's the main problem in Europe. A hundred years ago, most people had difficult lives and technical progress offered a clear path to better lives. Now most people there have a pretty good life and understandably don't want it to change.

nashadelic 13y ago

All of a sudden this video is password protected. Anyone has the password?