A Conversation with Peter Thiel and Niall Ferguson - Institute of Politics
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it as one of the best single introductions to Thiel's worldview on technology and stagnation.
What it is
A 2012 Harvard Institute of Politics conversation between Peter Thiel and historian Niall Ferguson. Thiel discusses technology, politics and his stagnation hypothesis.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2013 to 2018.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec internaut · 2016-11 · on “Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?”
Gene Wolfe is better than Robert Jordan and could surpass Tolkien. He is a currently unrecognized Giant, on the level of our new Shakespeare. Literally every famous author you've heard of says it. Gene Wolfe is what the journeymen read to improve their craft but he is little known outside rarefied circles. I wrote a piece 10 days ago (so before the election) explaining why a reading of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun explains Peter Thiel's motivations in backing Trump. He was following a thread nobody else saw. So many smart people, yes on the alt right also, are missing a much bigger picture. [LINK] It is not an exaggeration that this book changed my life. You don't have to be a neorea
Strong rec bachbach · 2018-08 · on “Why Prosperity Has Increased but Happiness Has Not”
Peter Thiel is really a kind of philosopher - the venture capitalism is more of an outgrowth of something else than his primary focus. This is a person who reads widely, has big ideas and is consistently ahead of everybody else - his reputation is wholly deserved. I've been following, causally at first, his ideas through books written about or by him, many hours of youtube videos and essays in and around the topics he talks about. It is difficult to distill this into a synopsis because although I can provide a TLDR it doesn't mean you'd get any predictive power of it. I suggest doing your own homework and coming to your own conclusions. I think I'd give a lot for a photo of his bookshelves.
Recommends internaut · 2016-11 · on “Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley”
If you mean Gene Wolfe's masterwork, then yes, there are interpretations/commentary available online. If you meant the 'Wolfian World', I came up with that 2 days ago, so no. I did clean up the essay, added some material, made it a bit more accessible to non-HN readers and put it here: [LINK] In fact about 1/4 of my comments on HN relate to the 'Technological Stagnation Hypothesis'. The TSN is rather hard to appreciate (for most people in our society it seems unbelievable, they just can't shift their mental model of a world with progress because their benchmarks for that are mostly faith based) but Peter Thiel has made many videos available explaining what it means, I think this is one of th
Cites spitx · 2013-05 · on “In Tech We Trust? A Debate with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen [video]”
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 [this video] Innovation or stagnation - Oxford Union Debate [LINK] Fireside Chat With Peter Thiel [LINK]