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I'm surprised with he haven't got the usual HN comments which appear every year when this story is posted. That's a good thing, but here's my "inb4" reply for w

by IsaacL 13y ago

I'm surprised with he haven't got the usual HN comments which appear every year when this story is posted. That's a good thing, but here's my "inb4" reply for when those comments finally pop up. Type 1. Last year there was a comment like "I don’t want to crush dreams. But these kids are being set up to fail. They cannot, and will not, live up to these expectations." Related to this are the complaints that these kids only achieved the things they've achieved prior to the programme because their parents were well-connected and helped them out, etc. Type 2. Accusing hypocrisy on behalf of Thiel, who has two advanced degrees, and who often advocates for a return to advanced research which couldn't happen without higher education. I think type 1 comments come from envy, even if they sound like something else. That's understandable, since many HN readers probably have similar smarts to these kids but didn't get the same opportunities in their teens. I know I felt jealous when I first heard of the Thiel program. But - if you look at history, geniuses seem clustered around particular times and locations - ancient Athens, Renaissance Venice, Victorian London, and a few other cultural hubs. This implies that there were thousands of potential geniuses who died in rice paddies (or were killed in war, or who happened to be members of oppressed minorities, or who lived in an era when all the smartest people worked in investment banking, or whatever). It's not just that these individuals were robbed of their potential, it's also the world that was robbed of their contributions. So any attempt to mitigate that trend can only be a good thing, even if it means that some future Einsteins are still dying in rice paddies. Part 2 is a more interesting critique. My response: I can't speak for Peter Thiel, but I don't think he believes that university shouldn't be an option. Rather, university shouldn't be the only option.

knowtheory 13y ago
> So any attempt to mitigate that trend can only be a good thing Yeah, that is something that remains to be seen. This is an intervention in the lives of these students. Whether it's a good or a bad thing, for them or for society really is an open question. Amongst the entrepreneurial community there is a lot of discussion of trying something interesting, and failing fast to learn from it. The real question is, does giving a 17 year old 100k$ help with that? Do they need 100k$ to do something interesting? Are they at a point in their life where 100k$ the responsible amount of money to give them to experiment with? Where do they go from there? (these are not rhetorical questions, and I am not entirely convinced the answer is no) There are also broader societal questions. There has been an impetus in the US at least that everyone should get a university degree, come hell and/or high water. That's a model that in its current incarnation is really screwing over a number of people. But I don't see that Theil's program is a solution either. He's picking people he thinks will succeed, just as much as universities are pre-selecting folks who get good marks in classes (as opposed to picking people who will be improved/edified by going through university).
- spartango 13y ago
  Definitely interesting questions. The perspective I would add with respect to the money itself (relative to the <20yr old stage of life) is: 100K/2 years is a $50K/year salary. It's not poor, but not wealthy either. Paid out monthly, it's serves to cover my living expenses and some other costs (travel, equipment), but not too much more. No hiring, no vacation homes. It prevents starvation, which otherwise blocks progress. The interesting thing about that money is that in preventing starvation, it changes slightly how I approach my project. Because I know I won't starve for the next year, I can be a bit more exploratory with my work, and better understand the problems I'm solving. I can try a few more things without external pressure to make tangible progress. I can even delay fundraising for a company where I'd otherwise be in "fundraise or die"-mode. I'm not entirely sure how these benefits generalize or apply to all projects, but I'll say that in pursuing a challenging project in a medical space, they help quite a bit.
- trsohmers 13y ago
  As one of this years new fellows (Who happens to be 17), I would say $100 is not something that alone is going to help me do something interesting, but is going to help a lot. A lot of people that do not know the fellows and other finalists don't realize that we have gained a lot of knowledge and experience in our fields prior to applying for the fellowship. I've had three years experience in hardware prototyping and development at MIT, and have been hacking and tinkering for a much longer time. The $100k is there to allow you to follow your dreams... both as a safety net and a way to cover personal expenses. A lot of us hope to or are in the process of receiving Angel, VC, or some other form of funding to better cover our projects. As for whether it is a responsible thing to do, a large part of what the fellowship is is a "life accelerator", as the money is virtually "no strings attached" (Well, there are quarterly "check in" review meetings, with review forms.) There isn't a temptation to spend all the money at once as it is given in monthly payments (Though you can ask for a larger sum as long as you give a good reason.) While I suppose you aren't able to trust me due to my bias, I would say that myself and a majority of the other fellows would be "responsible" with the money we receive just on the fact that we want to succeed. I take great pride in my work, and want to fulfill the cliche of "changing the world", and I will continue trying. I think my sense of responsibility developed just like anyone else (even if the average person typically only becomes what society considers 'responsible' during/after college)... if you want to achieve something, whether it be to launch a product and start a company, get a job, buy a house, or have a family, you find a way to do it and try as hard as you can to do it. I hope that the other fellows and I are able to show that young people are able to do these things, and these "life lessons" can be learned at a much earlier age than most people think, and that we can truly change the world...with or without a piece of paper telling us what we know.
spartango 13y ago
>...who often advocates for a return to advanced research which couldn't happen without higher education. I'm not quite so interested in the hypocrisy part, but as a Thiel fellow working on a pretty research heavy project (in biomedical tech), the academia + industry interplay is quite interesting. For me, the fellowship has been anything but a way to abandon academia; indeed, my project depends heavily on collaborations I maintain with folks in the academic world, not to speak of my curiosity there. Thus, while the fellowship enables me to wear an industrial hat for the present, I see it as an interaction with a slightly different facet of academia. I've temporarily put down my classes to study the translational part of science, and hopefully help move it along. So, for me the fellowship doesn't undermine the advanced research society needs, but enables it in another way.
- IsaacL 13y ago
  Ah, interesting. One thing that strikes me from reading biographies of people who lived in the past is how different the university system used to be. Of course, old universities were only for aristocratic men, but they also seemed to be a lot less industrialised than they are now. Much more student/professor interaction (as opposed to now where a professor might lecture a classroom of a few hundred and leave all student interactions to a few overworked PhDs), more academic freedom and less need to cram for exams (even if the exams were tougher, people didn't need to beat the bell curve in the hope of a job at MckGoldmanDeloitte, freeing them to pursue knowledge for the sake of it if so inclined). I'm told Oxford and Cambridge still preserve some aspects of the old system, I don't know about other countries. The current system definitely slows down the smartest people unnecessarily, as the Thiel program has shown. I imagine there are many more leverage points in the current education system that could enable similar improvements.
  - spartango 13y ago
    I think it's very easy to cast a blanket across all universities as being more "industrialized" and having less student-professor interaction, and I'm sure there's truth to that. As a counter-anecdote, however--when I was at Harvard, I don't think I ever felt separated from professors. I spent a healthy amount of time interacting with professors from many disciplines, in the classroom, through research, and even casually. I found even the most respected professors accessible, and enjoyed discussions with them. Harvard may be a special case; I'm not to judge other schools without experience. But I will say that I actually miss that climate a bit, rather than having tried to escape it.
dsr_ 13y ago
Both comments can be answered easily: This is not the end of their lives. If they fail, they have merely failed at the project that they tried. They can go off to college in four years having gained some experience and, perhaps, maturity, that will serve them well in an academic environment.
rayiner 13y ago
Re: the Type 2 comments, it's not just that Thiel has two degrees. It's that the first 11 (18-29) years of his career was a meticulous exercise in credentialing and path-following. He got a BA and a JD at a top school. He worked as a law clerk for a federal appellate judge. He worked at an "establishment" Wall Street law firm, followed by an "establishment" Wall Street bank. This is a path that is defined at every level by artificial hurdles (mostly test-taking), and some of the most obnoxious striverism you'll ever see. At the same time it's a path that's also relatively low risk (as long as you can put up the right numbers, your risk of failure is fairly low). Here is the punchline: His subsequent success was the direct result of his original path-following. He didn't go off the beaten path and make his own. He "won" the path-following game he and his classmates were all playing. He founded Thiel Capital Management using money and connections he made working at Credit Suisse, and it was that money that put him in a position to invest in PayPal in 1998. He wouldn't have had that capital without working on Wall Street, and he wouldn't have gotten in the door in Wall Street without those credentials. To be fair to Thiel, he's not really saying that everyone should do a Thiel fellowship. He's saying that "maybe it's the right thing for some people." Which is by itself undoubtedly true. Where it goes off the rails for me is when people take the message beyond that, which I think Thiel himself sometimes does. If you just want to start a company, take a Thiel fellowship. If you want to be Peter Thiel, take that Stanford acceptance and go work on Wall Street.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  If you just want to start a company, take a Thiel fellowship. If you want to be Peter Thiel, take that Stanford acceptance and go work on Wall Street. To be fair, one has to ask "Was there a Peter Thiel-like character offering anything like a Thiel Fellowship when Peter Thiel was starting out?" Accusing him of hypocrisy seems wrong to me. For starters, because people should be allowed to learn, grow, and change their opinions over time. And also because we have, to the best of my knowledge, no particular reason to think that Thiel had the opportunity to those this (Thiel Fellowship) type of path as a youngster. Anyway, it's a bit early, isn't it, to pre-suppose that some Thiel Fellowship recipients won't turn out just as well as Peter Thiel himself?
  - 13y ago
declan 13y ago
I like your division into Type 1 and Type 2 criticisms. I think you're right about the fellowship demonstrating that university is another option (at least for some people). When I asked Peter about his 20 under 20 program, here's what he told me: "It was 20 people. It was just 20 people. You have something on the order of 6 million people a year in the U.S. who graduate from high school. If you're saying that of the top 60,000, the top 1 percent let's say, are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college--that does not seem like a terribly controversial statement. That the more talented you are, the more narrow the set of choices you should make? And that if you're a really smart person, the only thing in the world you can do is to go to Harvard? That certainly is an odd state for the world to be in, even though it's surprisingly close to the state we find ourselves in today."

by IsaacL 13y ago

knowtheory 13y ago

> So any attempt to mitigate that trend can only be a good thing Yeah, that is something that remains to be seen. This is an intervention in the lives of these students. Whether it's a good or a bad thing, for them or for society really is an open question. Amongst the entrepreneurial community there is a lot of discussion of trying something interesting, and failing fast to learn from it. The real question is, does giving a 17 year old 100k$ help with that? Do they need 100k$ to do something interesting? Are they at a point in their life where 100k$ the responsible amount of money to give them to experiment with? Where do they go from there? (these are not rhetorical questions, and I am not entirely convinced the answer is no) There are also broader societal questions. There has been an impetus in the US at least that everyone should get a university degree, come hell and/or high water. That's a model that in its current incarnation is really screwing over a number of people. But I don't see that Theil's program is a solution either. He's picking people he thinks will succeed, just as much as universities are pre-selecting folks who get good marks in classes (as opposed to picking people who will be improved/edified by going through university).

spartango 13y ago
Definitely interesting questions. The perspective I would add with respect to the money itself (relative to the <20yr old stage of life) is: 100K/2 years is a $50K/year salary. It's not poor, but not wealthy either. Paid out monthly, it's serves to cover my living expenses and some other costs (travel, equipment), but not too much more. No hiring, no vacation homes. It prevents starvation, which otherwise blocks progress. The interesting thing about that money is that in preventing starvation, it changes slightly how I approach my project. Because I know I won't starve for the next year, I can be a bit more exploratory with my work, and better understand the problems I'm solving. I can try a few more things without external pressure to make tangible progress. I can even delay fundraising for a company where I'd otherwise be in "fundraise or die"-mode. I'm not entirely sure how these benefits generalize or apply to all projects, but I'll say that in pursuing a challenging project in a medical space, they help quite a bit.
trsohmers 13y ago
As one of this years new fellows (Who happens to be 17), I would say $100 is not something that alone is going to help me do something interesting, but is going to help a lot. A lot of people that do not know the fellows and other finalists don't realize that we have gained a lot of knowledge and experience in our fields prior to applying for the fellowship. I've had three years experience in hardware prototyping and development at MIT, and have been hacking and tinkering for a much longer time. The $100k is there to allow you to follow your dreams... both as a safety net and a way to cover personal expenses. A lot of us hope to or are in the process of receiving Angel, VC, or some other form of funding to better cover our projects. As for whether it is a responsible thing to do, a large part of what the fellowship is is a "life accelerator", as the money is virtually "no strings attached" (Well, there are quarterly "check in" review meetings, with review forms.) There isn't a temptation to spend all the money at once as it is given in monthly payments (Though you can ask for a larger sum as long as you give a good reason.) While I suppose you aren't able to trust me due to my bias, I would say that myself and a majority of the other fellows would be "responsible" with the money we receive just on the fact that we want to succeed. I take great pride in my work, and want to fulfill the cliche of "changing the world", and I will continue trying. I think my sense of responsibility developed just like anyone else (even if the average person typically only becomes what society considers 'responsible' during/after college)... if you want to achieve something, whether it be to launch a product and start a company, get a job, buy a house, or have a family, you find a way to do it and try as hard as you can to do it. I hope that the other fellows and I are able to show that young people are able to do these things, and these "life lessons" can be learned at a much earlier age than most people think, and that we can truly change the world...with or without a piece of paper telling us what we know.

spartango 13y ago

>...who often advocates for a return to advanced research which couldn't happen without higher education. I'm not quite so interested in the hypocrisy part, but as a Thiel fellow working on a pretty research heavy project (in biomedical tech), the academia + industry interplay is quite interesting. For me, the fellowship has been anything but a way to abandon academia; indeed, my project depends heavily on collaborations I maintain with folks in the academic world, not to speak of my curiosity there. Thus, while the fellowship enables me to wear an industrial hat for the present, I see it as an interaction with a slightly different facet of academia. I've temporarily put down my classes to study the translational part of science, and hopefully help move it along. So, for me the fellowship doesn't undermine the advanced research society needs, but enables it in another way.

IsaacL 13y ago
Ah, interesting. One thing that strikes me from reading biographies of people who lived in the past is how different the university system used to be. Of course, old universities were only for aristocratic men, but they also seemed to be a lot less industrialised than they are now. Much more student/professor interaction (as opposed to now where a professor might lecture a classroom of a few hundred and leave all student interactions to a few overworked PhDs), more academic freedom and less need to cram for exams (even if the exams were tougher, people didn't need to beat the bell curve in the hope of a job at MckGoldmanDeloitte, freeing them to pursue knowledge for the sake of it if so inclined). I'm told Oxford and Cambridge still preserve some aspects of the old system, I don't know about other countries. The current system definitely slows down the smartest people unnecessarily, as the Thiel program has shown. I imagine there are many more leverage points in the current education system that could enable similar improvements.
- spartango 13y ago
  I think it's very easy to cast a blanket across all universities as being more "industrialized" and having less student-professor interaction, and I'm sure there's truth to that. As a counter-anecdote, however--when I was at Harvard, I don't think I ever felt separated from professors. I spent a healthy amount of time interacting with professors from many disciplines, in the classroom, through research, and even casually. I found even the most respected professors accessible, and enjoyed discussions with them. Harvard may be a special case; I'm not to judge other schools without experience. But I will say that I actually miss that climate a bit, rather than having tried to escape it.

dsr_ 13y ago

Both comments can be answered easily: This is not the end of their lives. If they fail, they have merely failed at the project that they tried. They can go off to college in four years having gained some experience and, perhaps, maturity, that will serve them well in an academic environment.

rayiner 13y ago

Re: the Type 2 comments, it's not just that Thiel has two degrees. It's that the first 11 (18-29) years of his career was a meticulous exercise in credentialing and path-following. He got a BA and a JD at a top school. He worked as a law clerk for a federal appellate judge. He worked at an "establishment" Wall Street law firm, followed by an "establishment" Wall Street bank. This is a path that is defined at every level by artificial hurdles (mostly test-taking), and some of the most obnoxious striverism you'll ever see. At the same time it's a path that's also relatively low risk (as long as you can put up the right numbers, your risk of failure is fairly low). Here is the punchline: His subsequent success was the direct result of his original path-following. He didn't go off the beaten path and make his own. He "won" the path-following game he and his classmates were all playing. He founded Thiel Capital Management using money and connections he made working at Credit Suisse, and it was that money that put him in a position to invest in PayPal in 1998. He wouldn't have had that capital without working on Wall Street, and he wouldn't have gotten in the door in Wall Street without those credentials. To be fair to Thiel, he's not really saying that everyone should do a Thiel fellowship. He's saying that "maybe it's the right thing for some people." Which is by itself undoubtedly true. Where it goes off the rails for me is when people take the message beyond that, which I think Thiel himself sometimes does. If you just want to start a company, take a Thiel fellowship. If you want to be Peter Thiel, take that Stanford acceptance and go work on Wall Street.

mindcrime 13y ago
If you just want to start a company, take a Thiel fellowship. If you want to be Peter Thiel, take that Stanford acceptance and go work on Wall Street. To be fair, one has to ask "Was there a Peter Thiel-like character offering anything like a Thiel Fellowship when Peter Thiel was starting out?" Accusing him of hypocrisy seems wrong to me. For starters, because people should be allowed to learn, grow, and change their opinions over time. And also because we have, to the best of my knowledge, no particular reason to think that Thiel had the opportunity to those this (Thiel Fellowship) type of path as a youngster. Anyway, it's a bit early, isn't it, to pre-suppose that some Thiel Fellowship recipients won't turn out just as well as Peter Thiel himself?
- 13y ago

declan 13y ago

I like your division into Type 1 and Type 2 criticisms. I think you're right about the fellowship demonstrating that university is another option (at least for some people). When I asked Peter about his 20 under 20 program, here's what he told me: "It was 20 people. It was just 20 people. You have something on the order of 6 million people a year in the U.S. who graduate from high school. If you're saying that of the top 60,000, the top 1 percent let's say, are there 20 of those 60,000 who should perhaps not go to college--that does not seem like a terribly controversial statement. That the more talented you are, the more narrow the set of choices you should make? And that if you're a really smart person, the only thing in the world you can do is to go to Harvard? That certainly is an odd state for the world to be in, even though it's surprisingly close to the state we find ourselves in today."