YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKET - Notes A big question. How much of what we do is chalked up to luck? This is true in life, start ups, and somewhat philosophical too, so it’s important. So he breaks it down into 4 topics - The question of luck - Determinate vs indeterminate futures - Is indeterminate optimism possible? - The return of Design - Overview Thesis - The question of luck is very hard to answer because you only have a sample size of 1 to go on - We live in a society that’s incredibly biased to thinking that things are dominated by luck - Finally, he takes a look at some alternative ways to think about the future to explore To start, when you think about how the 21st century will unfold, there are 2 axis: a technology axis and a globalization axis. So what do these things even mean? What are technological advances and globalization advances? - Globalization: copying things that already work. - It’s the story of China and the emerging world. - They mainly just have to copy things that already work & avoid copying bad ideas from developed nations - A lot of it is horizontal extensive progress. Going from 1 to N. - Technological Advances: This is being creative, innovating, being the artist or entrepreneur doing something that’s never been done before. Going 0 to 1. There’s something very different about the 2. With innovation, there’s something singular and non repeatable about it. So if we go back to the question and ask, was a given accomplishment just luck, a fluke, or was there more at play? With a sample size of one, variance becomes infinite. Mathematical models are useless. It’s completely unclear if it’s luck or not, especially if you go from 0 to 1. There is some evidence of repeatability. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. But you could still say they just had one big break and used that to leverage their other big breaks, so it’s still hard to say. If you go back in time, the classical way of thinking was that luck was something to be overcome. - “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” - Thomas Jefferson - “The harder I work, the luckier I get” - Samuel Goldwyn Today, there’s a much different view: The lucky sperm club, you’re lucky where you’re born; and that’s what drives everything. And that applies to startups, the successful ones were accidental. And this worldview stems off of today's worldview of luck; so let’s challenge how much of this is or isn’t true. There’s 2 ways to look at the orientation of this question which is the past, how did I get here? And the future, where can I go next, where do I go from here? Is the future something dominated by chance or is thinking about it in terms of chance the wrong or incomplete way of looking at it? Now, the structure of the future, and you can think about it in terms of being determinate or indeterminate and optimistic or pessimistic. If you believe that the future is determinate, you’ll act with some level of conviction, you’ll have ideas, and you’ll have confidence to work to those ideas. If it’s indeterminate, the no. 1 rule is to diversify because you have no idea if it’s going to work and you should just try lots of different things and take some sort of portfolio approach to the future. Both of these ideas become self fulfilling. If you think it’s determinate and you focus on doing one thing extremely well, that leads to conviction, and then it becomes self fulfilling. If you think it’s fundamentally indeterminate, you have the portfolio approach and it becomes self fulfilling and more indeterminate. If you look at it in history, you can break it down in chunks of time. In the 1950s, we had determinate optimism, imaginations of flying cars, Star Trek tech. China has pessimistic determinism. If you have a definite determinism rate, you’ll know what to invest in. If it’s indeterminate, you won’t know what to invest in. The strange thing about indeterminate optimism is that it is the quadrant that has both low savings and low investment, and the big question is if that is a stable quadrant to be in at all? Is it possible for the future to be better when no one saves and no one invests because no one is thinking and everyone is outsourcing the thinking to other people. One other way you could describe this difference of this shift from determinate to indeterminate ways of the future is that the mathematical version is that the dominant form of math used to be calculus (determinate) and now it’s probability and statistics (indeterminate) The structural way is that in a determinate world you’re focused on substance, in an indeterminate world, all you focus on are processes, like, what’s the process for doing something. In practice, this translates to jobs. Optimistic determinism is engineering and art, where people have dreams about the future that no one else shares that they plan to turn into reality. Optimistic indeterminism is finance and law. Pessimistic determinism is wartime rationing, pessimistic in-determinism is insurance.
ya his argument is fundamentally flawed. there is no zero to one. everybody built on top of what came before. standing on the shoulder of giants is a thing. of course someone whose only claim to fame is a lucky investment in a social network would try and prove it was not luck. lol.
I find myself in awe right now.. Growing up I used to have radical imaginations of the future and had great conviction of them too.. but now I’m much more focused on money and safeguarding myself rather than really working to advance that future. I’m inspired by Peter Thiel and know y’all are too!
@@nintendo9231889 that was in 2020, and even before that. it's just a continuation of the same bs they say to try to look good and pretend like they care about the environment. then you have the lunatics who actually take them seriously and turn it into some wild conspiracy theory.
+David Lopez No. A lot of it is nonsense. It's similar to the advice given by naturally calm people to people who get stressed easily. The calm people never had to work on themselves... they just have a calm temperament by nature. The truth is that psychologists have studied success. The largest factor of success if emotional resilience, but the other hugely important factor that I've never heard anyone ever say is high energy levels. ALL successful people I've seen have huge energy levels... that and emotional resilience. They are above average intelligence usually too. However I don't think success is anything else but that. Having high energy levels is luck... it's mostly genetic. Resilience is also genetic, in that it can't be learned (you can increase it a reasonable amount but not enough to get huge levels of success if your emotional resilience is low).
***** I have to disagree. You are not a lottery ticket. What you call innate abilities are the product of work, environment and karma/dharma from this and previous lives. In essence we get what we deserve. If you want better, you work for it. I used to be very irritable as a kid, would get mad at my sister easily for anything. But now, I am what you call a calm person 'by nature'. Truth is, I worked on myself eliminating the ego or at least, keeping it at bay. If you are looking for a true -key advice- to success, let me share one with you. At the elites it's common to see that almost everyone (if not everyone) has some sort of spiritual activity that is practiced often, and people keep these very close to themselves. From Cleopatra, to Einstein to Bruce Lee to Oprah to Steve Jobs. There is a reason behind the "illuminati" conspiracy, the illumination is a real spiritual concept that happens every day to many people and there is no doubt that what happens inside resonates outside. Some of the very best you can follow: Zen Buddhism and Gnosis (books from Samael Aun Weor or attending to classes). Best
people say majoring in philosophy is a waste of time, yet here you have arguably the best investor, and one of the best minds of our time using it as a clear foundation for everything he does in both metaphysical and utilitarian terms. of course, him being a genius helps as well.
Everytime I hear Peter talking it enlights me. He is just so freaking right... It's just so sad how well he describes the world. This shift from determinate optimism to indeterminate optimism, and, after all, to pessimism.
Thiel’s grid basically covered a major question on my mind for a while now. Somehow he’s able to structure the question, provide a simple framework to explain the observed phenomenon, and extrapolate on the underlying reasons. That’s when I realize how far away I am from genius level intelligence.
Clarity and intelligence are not so correlated. A lot of geniuses are babblers. He probably had a lot of conflicting theories before coming up with an answer and presenting it in a cohesive way.
Love his ideas a lot..Speaks like a true visionary with tons of lessons and case studies from the past (from all geographies) and all structures- capitalist or socialist and comes up with non partisan analysis of the world. Amazing speaker to listen to. Thanks for the upload.
...just to clarify, anyone can say what he is saying and come up with a compelling narrative of how we got here, but he has consistently put his money where is mouth was, and his investments have delivered, big time. This gives his word much greater impact.
He is one of a kind thinker. The main point of the book was that you should not rely on luck but it is good if you do get lucky. The title is " you are not a lottery ticket" meaning that you just don't get random chance. You have to make preparations and plans regardless of you are lucky or not. It would help to be lucky but relying on luck is bad.
It wouldn’t help to get lucky, it’s the deciding factor. And begins way before you’re cognizant of it. If you have enough talent, you can work your way to success. But if you don’t, you’re just wasting time
@@mackeejack6731 you are ignoring luck is which basically unknown variables. You think that success or failure is just based on skills alone. Which is wrong. Even smart people fails when the conditions are not in their favour.
@@osamataha336 At the beginning yes but how long can you hold your position if you have no skills. Getting to somewhere is hard but retaining that position is even harder.
@@rhythmandacoustics absolutely, however you do need to get lucky first and sometimes there’s a buffer until the competition catch up so luck is 80% of the equation I would say
Ok here from a Solving the Money Problem comment. Great thing about these videos is that we can have deeper perspectives with nuances of times and years past, I might have even been at that SXSW.
I love Peter Thiel, I love what he has to say. What I do not love is that for all the unique ideas he has, he doesn't act any of them out. He invests a small percentage of his money into research, and small amount into the Thiel foundation. If he wants the world to revert back to an optimistic certainty, he should be the first person to commit as much of his wealth as he can. And not wait for a braver billionaire/millionaire to do it first. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezo's do this somewhat, but to the length Thiel proposes, he bawks at decision to do it first.
For more information please read his book "Zero to One" especially if you are working in core technologies, could be mobile apps or AI or anything more specific. It will change your mindset and open you to a new world of possibilities.
- when people have ideas for a better future, money is a means to an end, there are specific things people want to do with the money. When people have no idea how to build a better future, money becomes an end in itself, people accumulate money and don't know what to do with it. - monotonic and potentially never-ending improvement
Practical, simplified, and deductive reasoning to help evaluate existing, emerging, and novel markets & opportunities. Creating the future or responding to the present.
The Einstein of entrepreneurship. 99.999% of entrepreneurship advice out there is pure garbage about creating scams and copying others, thank you Peter for inspiring us to think for ourselves and value vision over risk management.
24:12 Shift from definite to indefinite views of the future = Shift from engineering to finance. Money becomes much more important, transforms from a means to an end to an end in itself. 29:00 Natural drift from finance to insurance (Warren Buffett play).
Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are near-perfect examples of entrepreneurship. They have the 'moonshot thinking' mentality and that is what we need to contunie innovation and improve humanity.
Thks much for sharing. Having overcome a great many years of profound self-sacrifices, achieved an incredible personal breakthrough, progress in technology, wealth, power, and conventional fame to this date; however, many great men, women, and the whole world continue neglecting and unable to identify some of the greatest, most meaningful, and much more needed projects to timely rescue and heal the many internal, desperately state illnesses, wounded physical, mental, and spirits of the people throughout the world, not in space or Mars. *** What is it and when? Best wishes always, altc, Paideia Academy & Society
Living in a society where agency is viewed as limited to nonexistent is actually a real advantage for those who believe in it; by going after a more valuable long-term outcome and beginning to succeed towards it, they are imbued with an aura of "evolutionary validation", becoming the safe outcome in a landscape of dangerously unproven options. In an environment of optimistic determinism; they would not be able to attract as much attention/capital because it would "optimistically" be elsewhere.
Birth is the only time when we are at the mercy of luck. Every single action you take has a consequence. Those consequences are never luck. By saying, "getting into the entertainment industry is like winning the lottery!" you are failing to acknowledge the work agents do and the reasoning and decision making process behind the work they do. "To be able to say "you're wrong, and here are the reasons," is respect." ~ Penn Jillette
Really smart guy, I really admire him alot on paper and like him as a person... I just can't get through his talking engagements without completely losing interest in the thing he is talking about... hmmm...
The very fact you are born is unbelievably lucky in this vast Universe. Notwithstanding that axiomatic position, let's focus in on the preoccupation of human existence.
24:16- About future: Definite(People have ideas about how the future's gonna look like)/Indefinite(People have no clue about future) and Optimism/Pessimism. Combination of 1 from each sums up the situation of the society, most of the times. More of that.
I enjoyed this talk and I found it rather amusing and interesting that he actually acknowledged one of the arguments made by environmentalists against a pure unregulated market, and at the end even had a nice thing to say about Marx. Though I'm sure Peter Thiel isn't endorsing Marx here in anything but an extremely limited and narrow sense on one topic, it was still rather shocking and funny to hear one of the most famous libertarians on the planet say anything positive about either environmentalists or Marx... :)
Mitsu Hadeishi He's certainly libertarian, but I think he's of the variety that focuses on logic rather than political persuasion :) we need more people like him.
He's a deep and original thinker with broad influences, not a caricature of [insert label]. He's not going to have obvious reasons for the positions he takes.
Thiel is right. I see this alot in countries aswell. America is a country that beleives strictly in deterministic futures. Germany is a country that beleives in indtereminate and statistics driven future. Germany feels more driven by finances and traditional/conservative business practices imo, while America seems bigger on tech and "the next big thing". America is subsequently known for the shit ton of money it gives startup while Germany is known to have a severe brain drain crisis to America. America has no free healthcare and has a sever elack of social services, while Germany has a strong set of social services since they beleive you can fall through the cracks purely by chance. America is a special country imo. Just because of how deterministic people are.
Amazing talk. One quibble @33:30. Nozick only presumes the existence of an individual - we can prove that individuals exist in base reality. Rawls presumes that social democracy is real. We can't show that it isn't a mass delusion because we know that it only exists at the level of ideas Point to Nozick.
Peter Thiel is smart, rich, eloquent and “makes sense”. Personally, I’m always skeptical of what Daniel Kahneman calls “illusion of understanding and Nassim Taleb refers to as “Epistomologic Arrogance”.
"outsourcing the thinking" - that's the US... the bottom line of this talk is: "why doesn't the US build new stuff anymore? answer: engineers/physicists became app programmers because they arent allowed to build anything else (because of regulatory environment)..."
Canada has more gov grants. Companies come here just for the grants. US has a better investment industry in New York and Silicon Valley. Easier to raise a few mill in the US.
This speech focuses on future, where we go from here..? Is the future dominated by chance? He has an alternate perspective on that question using his {2 by 2 matrix based on optimism and determinism}. Which of the quadrants of the matrix you believe in, determines what approach you take in life. Your beliefs become self-fulfilling.
I want to understand what Peter Thiel was talking about, that there is a specific way to track the poorer version of the developed world where people will get old before they get rich. What is that specific way?
The optimism of old, such as building the tallest buildings in the world, is now called “duck waving” and rockets are called “phallic-shaped wastes of money which could be given to the impoverished” as if no extraordinary pursuits are worthwhile and they’re all ultimately some form of injustice, which has become a cudgel
And therefore, for the sake of Oneself, humanity, and immortality, according to the Ancient Chinese Secret Wisdom Tradition, what are the five kinds of most prosperous, most powerful knowledge and wisdom that every individual could and should possess? altc, Paideia Esoteric Society
I would add that Western culture is mostly sensate and Epicurean, whom Peter mentioned. It's a model of individualism, Ayn Rand, dog-eat-dog mentality, rent-seeking, leisure and entertainment. Health and wealth to live a good, enjoyable life. The defining word of sensate culture is happiness. The opposite would be the ideational culture. Modern radical Islamism, nazism and communism before, medieval Europe. The defining word of ideational culture is meaning. There are ideational fragments in US as well, for example working yourself to the bone for your company. Companies that manifest collective meaning are rare and very popular: Tesla+SpaceX, Apple. In absence of religion, most ppl today believe in Tech that will save the world +AI (or destroy it), in social justice, in vegetarianism, in climate change. There's a perpetual tension between these opposing worldviews, and each generation, as well as each individual have to find a way of synthetizing them, because each of them taken to extremes leads to catastrophes.
I aggree with alot of these things, but I'm stuck trying to figure out where all these people with money are, there are massive ammounts of unemployed people, they're scrounging the change they have thats why they're saving, not because they want to...
When you speak to many Chinese today they are both doing very well and optimistic, I'm finding Americans quite pessimistic regards the economy and US dollar, amongst other political issues, granted it's hard to define a nation and predict the future, since the butterfly effect and chaos will always play it's hand. Life usually doesn't agree with your projections, modelling complex systems is difficult.
Dominant theme is EXTERNAL.. No where the PERSON / INDIVIDUAL took to main stream. This is peculiar to WESTERN mode of thinking... Eastern way of thinking will be different and opposite to this kind of thinking ! . Over all it is great to see this approach !
Do you consider the communist ideology, which is/was adopted by several Asian countries, not to be focused on creating progress through external assertions? I think the lines are more blurred than you are making them out to be, especially in the 21st century.
Disagree with the saving rate’s correlation with optimism or pessimism in China. The culture has been highly valued saving as an essential virtue for thousands of years. Vertical comparison with itself shall make more sense than horizontal comparison.
Well I have to disagree on the "certain" character that Thiel uses to qualify the Chinese. They are quite the opposite of "certain". In Chinese culture, everything is based on adapting to ever changing and unknown circumstances. They are purely pragmatic in addressing issues. Even when said issues could not be foreseen by applying their old set of beliefs. While in our current eastern societies, we are so ideological that we prefer to ignore issues that disrupt our ideological model. We act as though theses problems didn't exist, until they blow up in our face because it's too late. Recognising them would mean accepting that our beliefs were wrong. As time passes we are less and less capable of doing so. So when a glitch occurs, the system freezes and take ages to reconfigure (one day it might not even reboot). I feel like that is an indicator that our civilisation is nearing the end, rapidly decaying. Trying to make reality fit our beliefs has never played well over the course of the centuries. Whereas the Chinese don't hold strong beliefs about the future. As such, when a problem occurs, the global system gets reconfigured almost instantly because it is not dragged down by ideology out of synch with reality. And before you say anything, China is not communist anymore. I has not been for a long time. That is just an anachronic reminiscence of their past that is used to justify their authoritarian regime.
The statement is 100% spot on. When Pres. 习 back in Jan 2017 announced the new way forward, “The New Normal”, upon the first time not hitting the GDP targets by the previous year close I was astounded. The entire country and economic focus pivoted on a dime and charged forward. It’s unfortunate that the language and culture are seen as “too difficult of an obstacle” for outsiders to get past which allows gross generalizations cloud what’s really going on. Huge lessons to learn in the Chinese ability to adapt to and take advantage of change, everything is fluid nothing is black or white.
Peter Thiel: I think there is massive infrastructure progress in humanity, still. It just looks different from what "old infrastructure" meant. Now we have: - Extremely fast telephony infrastructure, 4G, 5G - Communication infrastructure: well, the internet ;D - Cloud infrastructure: AWS, Azure, GCP - Social infrastructure: FB, Twitter, Insta - Video infrastructure: YT, Twitch, ... All of the above things are WAY more important to our optimistic future than ole' roads and bridges.
I really do not like Facebook...Every time I slip into it I quickly feel sick and unsettled.. I do like the lost dogs site and have used it more than once.
3:20 The question if a given invention, a given start-up, a given scientific discovery would have happened anyway is not that difficult. Almost each time you go deeper into the history of a scientific achievement than just pop-science, you'll find that there were many researchers focusing on a singular topic, and who gets full credit is often chosen by either who is the first to publish, or who described the idea in the most convincing and most concise way. In most cases it's decided by who understands the idea the deepest, meaning who can predict most consequences and make most useful predictions, and then back these up with evidence. Of the greatest ideas in history, such as calculus (Newton + Leibnitz), evolution (Darwin + Wallace), special relativity (Einstein + Hilbert + Lorentz), quantum theory (Bohr + Heisenberg + Schoedinger + dozens of others), none of them come out of thin air. Same for every single start-up or invention. They are always standing on the shoulders of giants. And that's a beautiful thing. The myth of the lone genius is exactly that, a myth.
YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKET
- Notes
A big question. How much of what we do is chalked up to luck? This is true in life, start ups, and somewhat philosophical too, so it’s important.
So he breaks it down into 4 topics
- The question of luck
- Determinate vs indeterminate futures
- Is indeterminate optimism possible?
- The return of Design
- Overview Thesis
- The question of luck is very hard to answer because you only have a sample size of 1 to go on
- We live in a society that’s incredibly biased to thinking that things are dominated by luck
- Finally, he takes a look at some alternative ways to think about the future to explore
To start, when you think about how the 21st century will unfold, there are 2 axis: a technology axis and a globalization axis.
So what do these things even mean? What are technological advances and globalization advances?
- Globalization: copying things that already work.
- It’s the story of China and the emerging world.
- They mainly just have to copy things that already work & avoid copying bad ideas from developed nations
- A lot of it is horizontal extensive progress. Going from 1 to N.
- Technological Advances: This is being creative, innovating, being the artist or entrepreneur doing something that’s never been done before. Going 0 to 1.
There’s something very different about the 2. With innovation, there’s something singular and non repeatable about it. So if we go back to the question and ask, was a given accomplishment just luck, a fluke, or was there more at play?
With a sample size of one, variance becomes infinite. Mathematical models are useless. It’s completely unclear if it’s luck or not, especially if you go from 0 to 1.
There is some evidence of repeatability. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. But you could still say they just had one big break and used that to leverage their other big breaks, so it’s still hard to say.
If you go back in time, the classical way of thinking was that luck was something to be overcome.
- “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” - Thomas Jefferson
- “The harder I work, the luckier I get” - Samuel Goldwyn
Today, there’s a much different view: The lucky sperm club, you’re lucky where you’re born; and that’s what drives everything. And that applies to startups, the successful ones were accidental. And this worldview stems off of today's worldview of luck; so let’s challenge how much of this is or isn’t true.
There’s 2 ways to look at the orientation of this question which is the past, how did I get here? And the future, where can I go next, where do I go from here?
Is the future something dominated by chance or is thinking about it in terms of chance the wrong or incomplete way of looking at it?
Now, the structure of the future, and you can think about it in terms of being determinate or indeterminate and optimistic or pessimistic.
If you believe that the future is determinate, you’ll act with some level of conviction, you’ll have ideas, and you’ll have confidence to work to those ideas. If it’s indeterminate, the no. 1 rule is to diversify because you have no idea if it’s going to work and you should just try lots of different things and take some sort of portfolio approach to the future. Both of these ideas become self fulfilling. If you think it’s determinate and you focus on doing one thing extremely well, that leads to conviction, and then it becomes self fulfilling. If you think it’s fundamentally indeterminate, you have the portfolio approach and it becomes self fulfilling and more indeterminate.
If you look at it in history, you can break it down in chunks of time. In the 1950s, we had determinate optimism, imaginations of flying cars, Star Trek tech. China has pessimistic determinism.
If you have a definite determinism rate, you’ll know what to invest in. If it’s indeterminate, you won’t know what to invest in. The strange thing about indeterminate optimism is that it is the quadrant that has both low savings and low investment, and the big question is if that is a stable quadrant to be in at all? Is it possible for the future to be better when no one saves and no one invests because no one is thinking and everyone is outsourcing the thinking to other people.
One other way you could describe this difference of this shift from determinate to indeterminate ways of the future is that the mathematical version is that the dominant form of math used to be calculus (determinate) and now it’s probability and statistics (indeterminate)
The structural way is that in a determinate world you’re focused on substance, in an indeterminate world, all you focus on are processes, like, what’s the process for doing something. In practice, this translates to jobs. Optimistic determinism is engineering and art, where people have dreams about the future that no one else shares that they plan to turn into reality. Optimistic indeterminism is finance and law. Pessimistic determinism is wartime rationing, pessimistic in-determinism is insurance.
Man, you're a beast!
Thanks 🙏
damn, making conspects is a skill that i forgot how to use
ya his argument is fundamentally flawed. there is no zero to one. everybody built on top of what came before. standing on the shoulder of giants is a thing. of course someone whose only claim to fame is a lucky investment in a social network would try and prove it was not luck. lol.
👏 👏 👏
I find myself in awe right now.. Growing up I used to have radical imaginations of the future and had great conviction of them too.. but now I’m much more focused on money and safeguarding myself rather than really working to advance that future.
I’m inspired by Peter Thiel and know y’all are too!
More relevant than ever in late 2020.
Truly timeless wisdom.
Especially in 2022 considering the klaus schwab great reset.
@@nintendo9231889 that was in 2020, and even before that. it's just a continuation of the same bs they say to try to look good and pretend like they care about the environment. then you have the lunatics who actually take them seriously and turn it into some wild conspiracy theory.
Even more now
even more now
even more now
Holy crap. I knew Thiel was a great mind, but this is the best one yet. Really fascinating, practical and ingenious view of society.
Anyone else enjoying every word of this presentation?
+David Lopez No. A lot of it is nonsense. It's similar to the advice given by naturally calm people to people who get stressed easily. The calm people never had to work on themselves... they just have a calm temperament by nature. The truth is that psychologists have studied success. The largest factor of success if emotional resilience, but the other hugely important factor that I've never heard anyone ever say is high energy levels. ALL successful people I've seen have huge energy levels... that and emotional resilience. They are above average intelligence usually too. However I don't think success is anything else but that. Having high energy levels is luck... it's mostly genetic. Resilience is also genetic, in that it can't be learned (you can increase it a reasonable amount but not enough to get huge levels of success if your emotional resilience is low).
***** I have to disagree. You are not a lottery ticket. What you call innate abilities are the product of work, environment and karma/dharma from this and previous lives. In essence we get what we deserve. If you want better, you work for it. I used to be very irritable as a kid, would get mad at my sister easily for anything. But now, I am what you call a calm person 'by nature'. Truth is, I worked on myself eliminating the ego or at least, keeping it at bay. If you are looking for a true -key advice- to success, let me share one with you. At the elites it's common to see that almost everyone (if not everyone) has some sort of spiritual activity that is practiced often, and people keep these very close to themselves. From Cleopatra, to Einstein to Bruce Lee to Oprah to Steve Jobs. There is a reason behind the "illuminati" conspiracy, the illumination is a real spiritual concept that happens every day to many people and there is no doubt that what happens inside resonates outside. Some of the very best you can follow: Zen Buddhism and Gnosis (books from Samael Aun Weor or attending to classes). Best
um uh...sort of...um uh...in some sense...um uh...but again...um uh...in some way...um uh...
Yes, love it, very insightful.
David Lopez Absolutely yes! :)
people say majoring in philosophy is a waste of time, yet here you have arguably the best investor, and one of the best minds of our time using it as a clear foundation for everything he does in both metaphysical and utilitarian terms. of course, him being a genius helps as well.
Wow... i always heard that Thiel was a brilliant guy....I can't believe I never heard him speak until now. Amazing talk.
Everytime I hear Peter talking it enlights me. He is just so freaking right...
It's just so sad how well he describes the world. This shift from determinate optimism to indeterminate optimism, and, after all, to pessimism.
Bootlicker
@@Tdtdtosyodpdydpypx commie
@@demetrius8594 bootlicker
Thiel’s grid basically covered a major question on my mind for a while now. Somehow he’s able to structure the question, provide a simple framework to explain the observed phenomenon, and extrapolate on the underlying reasons. That’s when I realize how far away I am from genius level intelligence.
relax bro hes a synth
Yeah it's batshit insane!
there is nothing genius about this talk.
Ease up on the cool-aid.
Clarity and intelligence are not so correlated. A lot of geniuses are babblers. He probably had a lot of conflicting theories before coming up with an answer and presenting it in a cohesive way.
I love that he talks about infrastructure! We can’t even maintain what was built 70 years ago let alone build with the passion of that time!
Love his ideas a lot..Speaks like a true visionary with tons of lessons and case studies from the past (from all geographies) and all structures- capitalist or socialist and comes up with non partisan analysis of the world. Amazing speaker to listen to. Thanks for the upload.
How is anyone this intelligent! Man! Thanks for this! I loooooved it!
Broadly agree but would you agree his philosophy trumps his intellect?
Thiel’s philosophy>Aristotle’s and Plato’s and Socrates’ philosophy
Lololol
@Space Monkey Hello pot! I'm kettle!
This guy is genius, his ideas are breathtaking.
YOU are breathtaking
@@ianzeta8839 What the hell is wrong with you?
@@bahroum69 Its a meme dumbass
@@ianzeta8839 looooool
@@ianzeta8839 Savage 😭
Just simply fantastic speech. Bravo.
...just to clarify, anyone can say what he is saying and come up with a compelling narrative of how we got here, but he has consistently put his money where is mouth was, and his investments have delivered, big time. This gives his word much greater impact.
How is this 8 years old and I'm just now hearing this? I'm only a few minutes in and this is already seeming like an incredibly important talk
He is one of a kind thinker. The main point of the book was that you should not rely on luck but it is good if you do get lucky. The title is " you are not a lottery ticket" meaning that you just don't get random chance. You have to make preparations and plans regardless of you are lucky or not. It would help to be lucky but relying on luck is bad.
It wouldn’t help to get lucky, it’s the deciding factor. And begins way before you’re cognizant of it. If you have enough talent, you can work your way to success. But if you don’t, you’re just wasting time
@@mackeejack6731 you are ignoring luck is which basically unknown variables. You think that success or failure is just based on skills alone. Which is wrong. Even smart people fails when the conditions are not in their favour.
Isn't this basically, being at the right place and time (aka luck) more important than being the right person?
@@osamataha336 At the beginning yes but how long can you hold your position if you have no skills. Getting to somewhere is hard but retaining that position is even harder.
@@rhythmandacoustics absolutely, however you do need to get lucky first and sometimes there’s a buffer until the competition catch up so luck is 80% of the equation I would say
Ok here from a Solving the Money Problem comment. Great thing about these videos is that we can have deeper perspectives with nuances of times and years past, I might have even been at that SXSW.
WOW! Peter thiel is the ultimate philosophical thinker!
Guru worshipper
he studied philosophy
@@tattah96 ah i didn't know that
Lol r u srs
I love Peter Thiel, I love what he has to say. What I do not love is that for all the unique ideas he has, he doesn't act any of them out. He invests a small percentage of his money into research, and small amount into the Thiel foundation. If he wants the world to revert back to an optimistic certainty, he should be the first person to commit as much of his wealth as he can. And not wait for a braver billionaire/millionaire to do it first. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezo's do this somewhat, but to the length Thiel proposes, he bawks at decision to do it first.
He already is, in palantir, but he does not do it in an bombarstic elon jeff style
he is not an engineer (he admits this) so his technical knowledge is limited
@@seanpierre1338 Engineers have limited knowledge too. Every human is limited.
Excellent presentation by Mr. Thiel. Thank you.
For more information please read his book "Zero to One" especially if you are working in core technologies, could be mobile apps or AI or anything more specific. It will change your mindset and open you to a new world of possibilities.
best thing i ever read honestly. bought the audio book. listened to 5times.
I’m thinking starting a company in Blockchain or Fintech in time condensing sequence.🌱
I didnt expect to, but oh my word, did I resonate with this! New found respect for Peter Thiel!
I love to hear this man speak
Thiel's Thoughts are terrific. He is a futurist. I appreciate his vision. I bet hanging out at a cocktail party with Peter and Ann Coulter is fun.
- when people have ideas for a better future, money is a means to an end, there are specific things people want to do with the money. When people have no idea how to build a better future, money becomes an end in itself, people accumulate money and don't know what to do with it.
- monotonic and potentially never-ending improvement
Practical, simplified, and deductive reasoning to help evaluate existing, emerging, and novel markets & opportunities. Creating the future or responding to the present.
wow, what incredible ideas, and thinking, its great that he has the succesfull history to back it all up.
This was really good. I was firmly on the luck camp before watching this talk. Now, I'm not so sure. Peter Thiel makes some really good points here
Great talk. The analysis overlays on the 2x2 grid gives a lot of insight.
The Einstein of entrepreneurship. 99.999% of entrepreneurship advice out there is pure garbage about creating scams and copying others, thank you Peter for inspiring us to think for ourselves and value vision over risk management.
Thiel is the smartest man of the 21st century. Treasure his every word.
Lmao
Not even close
nah it's Elon. He could be #100.
24:12 Shift from definite to indefinite views of the future = Shift from engineering to finance. Money becomes much more important, transforms from a means to an end to an end in itself.
29:00 Natural drift from finance to insurance (Warren Buffett play).
Very cool. Listening on and off throughout the workday. Audio quality is excellent. Video great as well.
Unbelievable. This 1 hour talk gives me more ideas than a year in college
Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are near-perfect examples of entrepreneurship. They have the 'moonshot thinking' mentality and that is what we need to contunie innovation and improve humanity.
Except that Peter Confessed that he'll never bet against Elon... hah aha
Bootlicker
I respect this man so much …
Thks much for sharing. Having overcome a great many years of profound self-sacrifices, achieved an incredible personal breakthrough, progress in technology, wealth, power, and conventional fame to this date; however, many great men, women, and the whole world continue neglecting and unable to identify some of the greatest, most meaningful, and much more needed projects to timely rescue and heal the many internal, desperately state illnesses, wounded physical, mental, and spirits of the people throughout the world, not in space or Mars. *** What is it and when?
Best wishes always, altc, Paideia Academy & Society
6:36 "Right place, right time"-- by person(s) who *decided* to be a certain place doing a certain thing at a certain time.
His speaking style was much better here than now.
Best Peter Thiel talk ever?
Living in a society where agency is viewed as limited to nonexistent is actually a real advantage for those who believe in it; by going after a more valuable long-term outcome and beginning to succeed towards it, they are imbued with an aura of "evolutionary validation", becoming the safe outcome in a landscape of dangerously unproven options. In an environment of optimistic determinism; they would not be able to attract as much attention/capital because it would "optimistically" be elsewhere.
My favorite part of Peter is him helping Hulk Hogan absolutely rek that trash company gawker
*Seek revenge on the dude who outed him as gay.
He secretly told Hogan's lawyer, I will fund the lawsuit for years if necessary.
Hey, any reason is a good reason to destroy that kind of social trash.
Absolutely amazing talk and vastly deep knowledge that's beyond insightful.
ahh these old gold mine videos
Birth is the only time when we are at the mercy of luck. Every single action you take has a consequence. Those consequences are never luck. By saying, "getting into the entertainment industry is like winning the lottery!" you are failing to acknowledge the work agents do and the reasoning and decision making process behind the work they do. "To be able to say "you're wrong, and here are the reasons," is respect." ~ Penn Jillette
Really smart guy, I really admire him alot on paper and like him as a person... I just can't get through his talking engagements without completely losing interest in the thing he is talking about... hmmm...
The very fact you are born is unbelievably lucky in this vast Universe. Notwithstanding that axiomatic position, let's focus in on the preoccupation of human existence.
Peter Thiel = Badass
We really don’t need anything new anymore what is really needed is to do what we do make what is made but do it better.
It is pretty amazing how he oversees the other options in his deterministic vs indeterminate and positive vs negative.
1. One of the most important guys currently alive.
2. "Um", "sort of" and "you know" ought to be removed from vocabulary for maximal effect.
knowing that one does not and cannot know is the mark of a true philosopher
Peter Thiel for President, this should have 300 million views
24:16- About future: Definite(People have ideas about how the future's gonna look like)/Indefinite(People have no clue about future) and Optimism/Pessimism. Combination of 1 from each sums up the situation of the society, most of the times. More of that.
Very interesting. Btw, that is one of my favorite movie scenes.
One hour of Peter Thiel not understanding luck.
There are people who know and they are the ones who are lucky. Usually both in one person.
I enjoyed this talk and I found it rather amusing and interesting that he actually acknowledged one of the arguments made by environmentalists against a pure unregulated market, and at the end even had a nice thing to say about Marx. Though I'm sure Peter Thiel isn't endorsing Marx here in anything but an extremely limited and narrow sense on one topic, it was still rather shocking and funny to hear one of the most famous libertarians on the planet say anything positive about either environmentalists or Marx... :)
Mitsu Hadeishi He's certainly libertarian, but I think he's of the variety that focuses on logic rather than political persuasion :) we need more people like him.
He's a deep and original thinker with broad influences, not a caricature of [insert label]. He's not going to have obvious reasons for the positions he takes.
Great talk. Would have like to see more emphasis on conclusions at the end.
Amazing . Thank you
Thiel is right.
I see this alot in countries aswell.
America is a country that beleives strictly in deterministic futures.
Germany is a country that beleives in indtereminate and statistics driven future.
Germany feels more driven by finances and traditional/conservative business practices imo, while America seems bigger on tech and "the next big thing".
America is subsequently known for the shit ton of money it gives startup while Germany is known to have a severe brain drain crisis to America.
America has no free healthcare and has a sever elack of social services, while Germany has a strong set of social services since they beleive you can fall through the cracks purely by chance.
America is a special country imo. Just because of how deterministic people are.
I feel like I’m listening to a homily. 💎☯️💗💎
Every word is a gem
Amazing talk. One quibble @33:30. Nozick only presumes the existence of an individual - we can prove that individuals exist in base reality. Rawls presumes that social democracy is real. We can't show that it isn't a mass delusion because we know that it only exists at the level of ideas Point to Nozick.
Peter Thiel is smart, rich, eloquent and “makes sense”.
Personally, I’m always skeptical of what Daniel Kahneman calls “illusion of understanding and Nassim Taleb refers to as “Epistomologic Arrogance”.
"outsourcing the thinking" - that's the US...
the bottom line of this talk is:
"why doesn't the US build new stuff anymore? answer: engineers/physicists became app programmers because they arent allowed to build anything else (because of regulatory environment)..."
...
I was going to move my startup to the US until Donald Trump got elected. There are more laws in Canada, but the US political environment is unstable.
Mykyta P.
Good, we won't be wasting SBA grants/incubation funds on foreign citizens....there are plenty of patriotic Americans who deserve them.
Canada has more gov grants. Companies come here just for the grants. US has a better investment industry in New York and Silicon Valley. Easier to raise a few mill in the US.
Mykyta P.
For software or other non-manufacturing...for anything to do with durable goods it's a bitch to get a small business thru the loops...
This speech focuses on future, where we go from here..? Is the future dominated by chance? He has an alternate perspective on that question using his {2 by 2 matrix based on optimism and determinism}. Which of the quadrants of the matrix you believe in, determines what approach you take in life. Your beliefs become self-fulfilling.
I want to understand what Peter Thiel was talking about, that there is a specific way to track the poorer version of the developed world where people will get old before they get rich. What is that specific way?
The high class mobility in the USA shows that intelligence and hard work are the keys to success.
The optimism of old, such as building the tallest buildings in the world, is now called “duck waving” and rockets are called “phallic-shaped wastes of money which could be given to the impoverished” as if no extraordinary pursuits are worthwhile and they’re all ultimately some form of injustice, which has become a cudgel
Peter now speaks at 1.25x the speed he did in this video
mad props to this guy; fuckin genius; love listening to him
And therefore, for the sake of Oneself, humanity, and immortality, according to the Ancient Chinese Secret Wisdom Tradition, what are the five kinds of most prosperous, most powerful knowledge and wisdom that every individual could and should possess?
altc, Paideia Esoteric Society
The idea of investing into companies with no cash flow because they have ideas really aged well with the recent successes of Tesla.
Not so much for Uber since IPO or on a different level, Nikolas though.
He should read up on the studies that have found luck to be one of if not the biggest factors in the success of rich people
Awesome! THANKS!
Was that a secret elevator pitch by Thiel to be a monarch? If it is, I cannot wait. All hail the one true King!! :P
26:28 Growth stock that reinvest their cash are better than companies that have large sums of cash
The information is great. I want more people to see this. However, the delivery is a bit on the dry side. 0_o
I would add that Western culture is mostly sensate and Epicurean, whom Peter mentioned. It's a model of individualism, Ayn Rand, dog-eat-dog mentality, rent-seeking, leisure and entertainment. Health and wealth to live a good, enjoyable life. The defining word of sensate culture is happiness.
The opposite would be the ideational culture. Modern radical Islamism, nazism and communism before, medieval Europe. The defining word of ideational culture is meaning.
There are ideational fragments in US as well, for example working yourself to the bone for your company. Companies that manifest collective meaning are rare and very popular: Tesla+SpaceX, Apple. In absence of religion, most ppl today believe in Tech that will save the world +AI (or destroy it), in social justice, in vegetarianism, in climate change.
There's a perpetual tension between these opposing worldviews, and each generation, as well as each individual have to find a way of synthetizing them, because each of them taken to extremes leads to catastrophes.
This is reminiscent of Robert Pirsig. i.e. qualityless view of reality.
When does Pirsig talk about the view of reality which lacks quality ?
I aggree with alot of these things, but I'm stuck trying to figure out where all these people with money are, there are massive ammounts of unemployed people, they're scrounging the change they have thats why they're saving, not because they want to...
If your watching this your lucky
When you speak to many Chinese today they are both doing very well and optimistic, I'm finding Americans quite pessimistic regards the economy and US dollar, amongst other political issues, granted it's hard to define a nation and predict the future, since the butterfly effect and chaos will always play it's hand. Life usually doesn't agree with your projections, modelling complex systems is difficult.
Great conference
Dominant theme is EXTERNAL.. No where the PERSON / INDIVIDUAL took to main stream. This is peculiar to WESTERN mode of thinking... Eastern way of thinking will be different and opposite to this kind of thinking ! . Over all it is great to see this approach !
Do you consider the communist ideology, which is/was adopted by several Asian countries, not to be focused on creating progress through external assertions? I think the lines are more blurred than you are making them out to be, especially in the 21st century.
Very Bullish on Facebook - I have great respect for Mark Zuck as a business man even though I disagree with his politics on occasion.
Going from zero to one!
What was the movie playing around the 38:00 mark?
2013, he's already behind the times.
how?
Ahead***
Disagree with the saving rate’s correlation with optimism or pessimism in China. The culture has been highly valued saving as an essential virtue for thousands of years. Vertical comparison with itself shall make more sense than horizontal comparison.
Well I have to disagree on the "certain" character that Thiel uses to qualify the Chinese. They are quite the opposite of "certain". In Chinese culture, everything is based on adapting to ever changing and unknown circumstances. They are purely pragmatic in addressing issues. Even when said issues could not be foreseen by applying their old set of beliefs.
While in our current eastern societies, we are so ideological that we prefer to ignore issues that disrupt our ideological model. We act as though theses problems didn't exist, until they blow up in our face because it's too late. Recognising them would mean accepting that our beliefs were wrong. As time passes we are less and less capable of doing so. So when a glitch occurs, the system freezes and take ages to reconfigure (one day it might not even reboot). I feel like that is an indicator that our civilisation is nearing the end, rapidly decaying. Trying to make reality fit our beliefs has never played well over the course of the centuries.
Whereas the Chinese don't hold strong beliefs about the future. As such, when a problem occurs, the global system gets reconfigured almost instantly because it is not dragged down by ideology out of synch with reality. And before you say anything, China is not communist anymore. I has not been for a long time. That is just an anachronic reminiscence of their past that is used to justify their authoritarian regime.
The statement is 100% spot on. When Pres. 习 back in Jan 2017 announced the new way forward, “The New Normal”, upon the first time not hitting the GDP targets by the previous year close I was astounded. The entire country and economic focus pivoted on a dime and charged forward. It’s unfortunate that the language and culture are seen as “too difficult of an obstacle” for outsiders to get past which allows gross generalizations cloud what’s really going on. Huge lessons to learn in the Chinese ability to adapt to and take advantage of change, everything is fluid nothing is black or white.
Very interesting discussion
Peter Theil for President 2020
Peter Thiel: I think there is massive infrastructure progress in humanity, still. It just looks different from what "old infrastructure" meant. Now we have:
- Extremely fast telephony infrastructure, 4G, 5G
- Communication infrastructure: well, the internet ;D
- Cloud infrastructure: AWS, Azure, GCP
- Social infrastructure: FB, Twitter, Insta
- Video infrastructure: YT, Twitch, ...
All of the above things are WAY more important to our optimistic future than ole' roads and bridges.
I really do not like Facebook...Every time I slip into it I quickly feel sick and unsettled..
I do like the lost dogs site and have used it more than once.
No, people that say those words are THINKERS. Some people pause.
what movie was shown at the 38 minute mark
no country for old men ;)
Sounds like it's time for me to take a more determinate and optimistic view of the future, then use it to take other people's money for investments.
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I am glad to be of service by dispelling the fundamental randomness and meaninglessness of the universe perception of reality as erroneous… 😎
amazing
3:20 The question if a given invention, a given start-up, a given scientific discovery would have happened anyway is not that difficult. Almost each time you go deeper into the history of a scientific achievement than just pop-science, you'll find that there were many researchers focusing on a singular topic, and who gets full credit is often chosen by either who is the first to publish, or who described the idea in the most convincing and most concise way. In most cases it's decided by who understands the idea the deepest, meaning who can predict most consequences and make most useful predictions, and then back these up with evidence. Of the greatest ideas in history, such as calculus (Newton + Leibnitz), evolution (Darwin + Wallace), special relativity (Einstein + Hilbert + Lorentz), quantum theory (Bohr + Heisenberg + Schoedinger + dozens of others), none of them come out of thin air. Same for every single start-up or invention. They are always standing on the shoulders of giants. And that's a beautiful thing. The myth of the lone genius is exactly that, a myth.