3 ms·

I wonder why he deliberately chose to bat the hornet's nest with the "God does not exist" line. I always thought he was a very unassuming christian. That being

by moab 12y ago

I wonder why he deliberately chose to bat the hornet's nest with the "God does not exist" line. I always thought he was a very unassuming christian. That being said, he doesn't really push anything new here - we've seen plenty of anti-college rhetoric, and the anti-competition theme strikes me as contradictory to his person (even today). Willfulness, deliberation - all the qualities that make even a 'heterodox' person successful all come from some innate obsession which can really be cast as a sort of personal competition. One doesn't create something for nothing - even if the end goal is to have created the thing, or to have done it for it's own sake - even this desire is born out of some inner need that can be cast as competition. I think what Peter and a lot of other leaders in the valley are pushing these days is the ability to be cautiously obsessive. What he calls anti-competition and anti-conformity is really just the ability to stick to one's vision despite initial signals and hardships that from the world that might make the greedily-optimizing man cast his die on a table where the odds appear better.

vacri 12y ago
There are plenty of errors in the essay - the first being the idea that competition is good for a company. It's good for society. Monopolies are good for companies, to the detriment of society, which is why there are anti-monopoly laws. The whole essay reads as though the author's in his personal bubble, with the walls painted with his fantasy world. One such example is his belief that startup founders are basically Aspergers and can't hold a social connection - and yes, he uses the weasel word 'many' rather than 'most/all', but clearly he thinks that it's common enough to be an 'indictment on society'. Then he finished up with silly libertarian extremism; hand-wringing over why it's harder to develop pharmaceuticals (where a bad product can kill people or leave them in lifelong pain) over a video game company (where a bad product takes a few dollars out of your pocket and bores you for an hour), because "ebil gummint regulations".
- cousin_it 12y ago
  I'm not a libertarian, but it seems to me that making drug certification take 15 years and a billion dollars kills more people than any bad drug ever could. If you disagree, please point me to anyone, anywhere doing a cost-benefit analysis of preventing bad drugs vs discouraging new drugs, and concluding that current FDA policies are even remotely close to optimal. From where I sit, it looks like these policies are over-cautious because deaths from bad drugs are much more visible to the public than deaths from non-existent drugs, even though the latter outnumber the former by far.
  - bryanlarsen 12y ago
    A billion dollars buys you a 20 year government protected monopoly. It might not be the most efficient system, but there are certainly lots of people willing to finance that trade.
  - vacri 12y ago
    I'm so tired of people arguing that drugs are only bad if people die from them. Why is something considered bad only if it has a body count? I guess thalidomide isn't an issue in your book, because even though people end up without limbs for life because of it, they're not dead so it doesn't count. and concluding that current FDA policies are even remotely close to optimal. HOLY FUCK, what a MASSIVE rephrasing of what I said. You're going to need Mjolnir to force those words into my mouth. Where the fuck did I say the FDA system was optimal? I said comparing pharmaceuticals to video games and demanding that they have the same level of regulation is stupid. It's clear you have zero idea of what happens when pharmaceuticals go bad; anyone that talks of bad drugs only in terms of dead people really, really needs to educate themselves on the topic. The idea of doing that study you demand is nonsensical. I'm also not sure of why I'm the one who has to present it; if you want to change the status quo, you need to find your own references. And if you did actually know anything about pharma, you'd know that 'wonder drugs' pop up all the time, only to have crippling side effects found later in testing - sometimes the 'wonder drug' actually turns out to be horrific (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs has a few - and this is for released drugs). The problem is that "the feds won't release wonder drug X" is a better headline than "unreleased drug X has horrible side-effects, but they were found before the drug was okayed". It's also worth mentioning that pharma started out with 'video game' levels of regulation, and it was the life-altering errors that brought in regulation. TL;DR The FDA process may not be optimal, but they're a shitload better than no regulation.
sakri 12y ago
I've gotten lucky in life therefore my opinions must be taken seriously.

by moab 12y ago

vacri 12y ago

There are plenty of errors in the essay - the first being the idea that competition is good for a company. It's good for society. Monopolies are good for companies, to the detriment of society, which is why there are anti-monopoly laws. The whole essay reads as though the author's in his personal bubble, with the walls painted with his fantasy world. One such example is his belief that startup founders are basically Aspergers and can't hold a social connection - and yes, he uses the weasel word 'many' rather than 'most/all', but clearly he thinks that it's common enough to be an 'indictment on society'. Then he finished up with silly libertarian extremism; hand-wringing over why it's harder to develop pharmaceuticals (where a bad product can kill people or leave them in lifelong pain) over a video game company (where a bad product takes a few dollars out of your pocket and bores you for an hour), because "ebil gummint regulations".

cousin_it 12y ago
I'm not a libertarian, but it seems to me that making drug certification take 15 years and a billion dollars kills more people than any bad drug ever could. If you disagree, please point me to anyone, anywhere doing a cost-benefit analysis of preventing bad drugs vs discouraging new drugs, and concluding that current FDA policies are even remotely close to optimal. From where I sit, it looks like these policies are over-cautious because deaths from bad drugs are much more visible to the public than deaths from non-existent drugs, even though the latter outnumber the former by far.
- bryanlarsen 12y ago
  A billion dollars buys you a 20 year government protected monopoly. It might not be the most efficient system, but there are certainly lots of people willing to finance that trade.
- vacri 12y ago
  I'm so tired of people arguing that drugs are only bad if people die from them. Why is something considered bad only if it has a body count? I guess thalidomide isn't an issue in your book, because even though people end up without limbs for life because of it, they're not dead so it doesn't count. and concluding that current FDA policies are even remotely close to optimal. HOLY FUCK, what a MASSIVE rephrasing of what I said. You're going to need Mjolnir to force those words into my mouth. Where the fuck did I say the FDA system was optimal? I said comparing pharmaceuticals to video games and demanding that they have the same level of regulation is stupid. It's clear you have zero idea of what happens when pharmaceuticals go bad; anyone that talks of bad drugs only in terms of dead people really, really needs to educate themselves on the topic. The idea of doing that study you demand is nonsensical. I'm also not sure of why I'm the one who has to present it; if you want to change the status quo, you need to find your own references. And if you did actually know anything about pharma, you'd know that 'wonder drugs' pop up all the time, only to have crippling side effects found later in testing - sometimes the 'wonder drug' actually turns out to be horrific (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_withdrawn_drugs has a few - and this is for released drugs). The problem is that "the feds won't release wonder drug X" is a better headline than "unreleased drug X has horrible side-effects, but they were found before the drug was okayed". It's also worth mentioning that pharma started out with 'video game' levels of regulation, and it was the life-altering errors that brought in regulation. TL;DR The FDA process may not be optimal, but they're a shitload better than no regulation.

sakri 12y ago

I've gotten lucky in life therefore my opinions must be taken seriously.