Says the guy who won the lottery. I'm frankly more interested in the guy who blew up during the dot com boom and who is currently some random employee at some random company, with a past filled with mistakes - frankly you'd learn more from his actual failures, than from Thiel's failure masking success.
It's as hard to learn from failure as it is to learn from success.
I saw this vividly when I was in law school. You get your whole grade based on one exam at the end of the year, which is typically comprised of several essays.
People who did well often had an inordinately high opinion of themselves, but people who did poorly often had an inordinately low opinion of the system. It's random, it's based on luck, I did better in classes I didn't study for than classes I did, etc.
It's hard to learn from mistakes. Just as we rationalize success, we rationalize failure. It's not about whether the person speaking is a success or failure at all, but the merits of the argument being made.
You might learn more from the first person you looked at from a random employee at a random company.
The second person, you might not. The 100th, you wouldn't. There is only so much you can learn from failure, when it is the rare, immense success you care about.
It might be rare, but in terms of outcome averaged sampling, you'd learn much more from examining the few, significant strings of immense success.
It is not a series of independent random events, summing up. Wealth distribution is not normally distributed.
It is not a series of independent multiplicative random events. Wealth distribution isn't even log-normal.
It's a severe power law. There is some ordering principle that is not captured by simplistic luck based models that people put forward. Luck may still dominate, but it is not clear how, or why. And strict wealth based "Matthew effect" models don't work either, since throughout most of history the advantages of a socioeconomic advantage decays, rather than compounds, over 15 generations.
Skill hypotheses become much more plausible when you look at the statistics.
For anyone potentially dissuaded to watch the talk based upon this parent comment, please know that this talk is not actually about the dynamics of individual success.
Instead, it reflects on how the aggregate outlook of a society across two axes (optimistic-to-pessimistic and determinate-to-indeterminate) affects its strategies, pursuits, and stability.
The title of the talk is just Thiel pushing back on our society's increasingly indeterminate yet optimistic outlook, which, as Thiel subtlety alludes, may be tragically unstable.
>I'm frankly more interested in the guy who blew up during the dot com boom and who is currently some random employee at some random company, with a past filled with mistakes
Just watched this talk.. absolutely great material. I wish he was a slightly better/more confident speaker, but I got over it.
For someone who is the farthest thing from libertarian, is there any more literature on the idea of big planning, deterministic optimism, etc in a libertarian framework? His examples of the US as optimistic and deterministic were all "centrally planned", and done through government, not individuals or groups of individuals (corps, ngos, etc). Or at least that's how I perceived it.
Maybe look at Mises on entrepreneurship or John Mackey (of Whole Foods) in Conscious Capitalism for deterministic optimism in libertarian framework.
Perhaps "Atlas Shrugged" contrasts both indeterminite pessimism (the failing state and despair-filled question "Who's John Galt?") and the determinite optimism of engineers/makers and Galt's Gultch.
I'm usually not a fan of Peter Thiel's ideas—always seemed quite a bit on the extreme side of the spectrum to me—but this talk is fantastic. I have a new respect for his viewpoints, and a renewed zeal to work harder.
I still think he discounts the effect that random chance has in your ability to succeed, on many counts, but he at least seems to understand it extremely well and speaks about it in a way which seems to indicate he respects the complexities involved. Quite good and thought-provoking to watch regardless of how you think of success.
This organizes a lot of thoughts I've had regarding the economic history of the 20th century. It seemed that something really changed in patterns of invention and investment somewhere in the late 70s, whereby - as Peter notes - big ideas and making plans became considerably less fashionable.
I hadn't made the connection to the surge of effort in law and finance, but it's a convincing argument.
The real question, then, is: Can we return the western economies to an optimistic-deterministic point of view? It would require really reframing a lot of public debate - or perhaps taking discourse elsewhere from regulated airwaves where the established players seem to worship an utterly indeterminate world view, as evidenced by continuous coverage of uncontrollable events.
One reason the western world is appearing more indeterminate and becoming less optimistic is because of the diminishing returns of progress. That's the main problem in Europe. A hundred years ago, most people had difficult lives and technical progress offered a clear path to better lives. Now most people there have a pretty good life and understandably don't want it to change.
[+] [-] confluence|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smalter|13 years ago|reply
I saw this vividly when I was in law school. You get your whole grade based on one exam at the end of the year, which is typically comprised of several essays.
People who did well often had an inordinately high opinion of themselves, but people who did poorly often had an inordinately low opinion of the system. It's random, it's based on luck, I did better in classes I didn't study for than classes I did, etc.
It's hard to learn from mistakes. Just as we rationalize success, we rationalize failure. It's not about whether the person speaking is a success or failure at all, but the merits of the argument being made.
[+] [-] DaniFong|13 years ago|reply
The second person, you might not. The 100th, you wouldn't. There is only so much you can learn from failure, when it is the rare, immense success you care about.
It might be rare, but in terms of outcome averaged sampling, you'd learn much more from examining the few, significant strings of immense success.
It is not a series of independent random events, summing up. Wealth distribution is not normally distributed.
It is not a series of independent multiplicative random events. Wealth distribution isn't even log-normal.
It's a severe power law. There is some ordering principle that is not captured by simplistic luck based models that people put forward. Luck may still dominate, but it is not clear how, or why. And strict wealth based "Matthew effect" models don't work either, since throughout most of history the advantages of a socioeconomic advantage decays, rather than compounds, over 15 generations.
Skill hypotheses become much more plausible when you look at the statistics.
[+] [-] foysavas|13 years ago|reply
Instead, it reflects on how the aggregate outlook of a society across two axes (optimistic-to-pessimistic and determinate-to-indeterminate) affects its strategies, pursuits, and stability.
The title of the talk is just Thiel pushing back on our society's increasingly indeterminate yet optimistic outlook, which, as Thiel subtlety alludes, may be tragically unstable.
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|13 years ago|reply
Here you go, sort of:
http://www.businessinsider.com/james-altucher-mistakes-2013-...
[+] [-] kami8845|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codemac|13 years ago|reply
For someone who is the farthest thing from libertarian, is there any more literature on the idea of big planning, deterministic optimism, etc in a libertarian framework? His examples of the US as optimistic and deterministic were all "centrally planned", and done through government, not individuals or groups of individuals (corps, ngos, etc). Or at least that's how I perceived it.
[+] [-] scottjad|13 years ago|reply
Perhaps "Atlas Shrugged" contrasts both indeterminite pessimism (the failing state and despair-filled question "Who's John Galt?") and the determinite optimism of engineers/makers and Galt's Gultch.
[+] [-] hispanic|13 years ago|reply
Equally thought-provoking with regard to startups and how to approach them.
[+] [-] adventured|13 years ago|reply
He reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg in speech, even the quality of his voice is similar.
[+] [-] tgrass|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calinet6|13 years ago|reply
I still think he discounts the effect that random chance has in your ability to succeed, on many counts, but he at least seems to understand it extremely well and speaks about it in a way which seems to indicate he respects the complexities involved. Quite good and thought-provoking to watch regardless of how you think of success.
[+] [-] sjg007|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamgravitis|13 years ago|reply
I hadn't made the connection to the surge of effort in law and finance, but it's a convincing argument.
The real question, then, is: Can we return the western economies to an optimistic-deterministic point of view? It would require really reframing a lot of public debate - or perhaps taking discourse elsewhere from regulated airwaves where the established players seem to worship an utterly indeterminate world view, as evidenced by continuous coverage of uncontrollable events.
[+] [-] shn|13 years ago|reply
http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup
[+] [-] pesenti|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcuthbertson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Connaissance|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mh_|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fizx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smalter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nashadelic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jack9|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]