Harvard University
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2013–2018
1:13:21 · 26K views · Feb 14, 2012
A 2012 Harvard Institute of Politics conversation between Peter Thiel and historian Niall Ferguson. Thiel discusses technology, politics and his stagnation hypothesis.
HN commenters recommend it as one of the best single introductions to Thiel's worldview on technology and stagnation.
4 comments from Hacker News
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. Here's a start. [LINK] A common theme in Thiel's thought is that 'reality is often very different from the mainstream conception of it'. Ron Unz wrote this essay which gives body to this belief. [LINK] Another theme is that humankind is highly mimetic - meaning they have a desire to be copying each other. This comes out of the philosophy of René Girard and you'll have to read something of his to fully understand where we're going with this. [LINK] Watch this if you only watch one video: this video Peter Thiel is at the intersection of an unusually large number of obscure and strange topics, that's the reason why he's ahead of the curve over and over. Things like Seasteading, Urbit, if you ferret away at the peripheral you start to see interesting stuff, some of which gets ferried back to the
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 neoreactionary to read it but reading it alongside Joeseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies is a wonderful and enriching life experience that will definitely change how you view the world. In addition I strongly recommend you watch Peter Thiel's videos on Youtube such as this: this video Tainter, Thiel, Wolfe, Moldbug. If you wish to scry deeply into the world, that's how I'd start. Many people reading this will be liberals or progressives. To them I say, this is a rabbit hole nobody else is going to recommend, if you sincerely are interested in the order of the right's thought, here it is.
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 the best ones: this video The 'Wolfian World' is merely a way to look at our world sideways through a (brilliant) work of fiction with very similar themes to Peter Thiel's Technological Stagnation Hypothesis.
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]