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100 sats \ 7 replies \ @elvismercury 6 Mar \ on: The Education of a Libertarian (2009) - Peter Thiel BooksAndArticles
I struggle so hard with this guy. He's talked about like some genius messiah, but I usually find his takes ... underwhelming. Good at business, though.
I'm reading this(pdf) from him right now.
I'm probably easy to impress. In contrast to most people thinking about these things, he's thinking with the purpose of acting on his thoughts, with an enormous arsenal of resources that only one-in-ten-million people have, and sharing them. That's what I imagine we're all hypnotized by.
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That sounds right. It's like he's a smart, thoughtful guy who's trying to understand the world, with a billion dollars of influence to exert. I think we're so used to the mega-rich who are good at business, but not at all thoughtful about anything else, and with no aspirations larger than increasing their own stack, that when one appears we're collectively mesmerized.
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I don't agree with a lot of Thiel's views, but I do think he's an insightful thinker.
I think it was Thiel who said, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters," referring to how all the tech talent was getting employed on socially trivial (and even destructive) things
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It was him that said that. The bigger point he was making, at the time and continues to make now, is that we've technologically stagnated outside of the narrow cone of information tech.
More recently (it seems) he's concluded we didn't get flying cars because we are afraid of destroying ourselves.
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I think one thing I appreciate so much about Elon is that he seems to be one of the few people trying to bring back the spirit of exploration and of mastering the elements back into the tech world
we got so wrapped up in doomsday thinking about climate, inequality, and just short-sighted financial gain, that we stopped reaching for the stars, but reaching for the stars is what we need to do to tackle those other problems
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There's something awe-inspiring and also horrific about people who remake the world in their own image, whatever that is, regardless of what stands against them.