Unfortunately Thiel's views don't really map to a "hard" 2x2 matrix--the axes should be considered to represent spectra or gradients instead. (I'm not presuming

Unfortunately Thiel's views don't really map to a "hard" 2x2 matrix--the axes should be considered to represent spectra or gradients instead. (I'm not presuming to be smarter than Thiel here, just extrapolating rationally... nobody believes the future to be entirely determinate or entirely indeterminate.) In light of that, I suspect PG and Thiel actually live in the same quadrant of determinate optimism. I haven't read PG suggest that we should just "wait" for the future to happen--he's merely suggesting that the most common path toward building the future is on a wave. (And Thiel built PayPal that way--he recognized a version of the future that was on the cusp of being realized and took it upon himself to make it happen.)