The Great Stagnation

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Wiki

Here's a short vid from TEDx (2011), author Tyler Cowen:



Peter Thiel and George Gilder debate on "The Prospects for Technology and Economic Growth" (2012)



Peter Thiel, Co-founder of PayPal, Technology Entrepreneur, Investor, and Philanthropist VS. George Gilder, Chairman, George Gilder Fund Management, and Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute.

Thiel's thesis that technological progress is decelerating has been featured prominently as of late in a number of opinion journals and popular magazines, while George Gilder holds to the supremely optimistic premise of his famous 'Microcosm: The Quantum Revolution in Economics and Technology'.

Interesting to hear Thiel's rationale & thinking from 10 years ago. He gives some good examples.

From a week ago: The End of the Future with Peter Thiel Peter Thiel presents a new explanation for the Great Stagnation: in the mid-20th century, dire dystopian narratives about science and technology began seeping into the culture.

People don't want to feel as if they're building the machines that will destroy the world. Dystopian narratives have been facilitated by the dual-use nature of so many modern technologies.

For example, Thiel sees the turning point on nuclear power as 1975, when India got the bomb after the US transferred its nuclear technology. (?)

But, also entirely pulled out of thin air and based on his feelings and ideology. It’s just a narrative, nothing more. Some interesting evidence for this is that the 1970s saw an explosion of "scientific" models showing the end of civilization was near. E.g., Limits to Growth (MIT study), Population Bomb (Ehrlich), peak oil predictions, co-founder of Earth day saying mass starvation was inevitable, etc. and yet here we are. Thiel is, after all, an expert on this topic; having founded one of the most dystopian listed companies i.e. Palantir.

Probably a good time to revisit this 2014 piece by Peter Thiel...

You Should Run Your Startup Like a Cult. Here's How (WIRED, Sept 2014)

No company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside. The first team that I built has become known in Silicon Valley as the “PayPal Mafia” because so many of my former colleagues, including Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and David Sacks, have gone on to help each other start and invest in successful tech companies.

Rule 1: The Best Startups Work a Lot Like Cults

In the most intense kind of organization, members abandon the outside world and hang out only with other members. We have a word for such organizations: cults. Cultures of total dedication look crazy from the outside. But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.

The extreme opposite of a cult is a consulting firm like Accenture: not only does it lack a distinctive mission, but individual consultants are regularly dropping in and out of companies to which they have no long‑term connection whatsoever.

Every company culture can be plotted on a linear spectrum:

The best startups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.

Adapted from Thiel & Blake Masters’s 2014 book "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future".




"Every company is a culture" - I think he described The 21st Century Corporation.


Here's a LittleSis Org Dynamic map of Thiel's web layer of connections that will lead you down many rabbit holes and he has his fingers in many pies, like Elon, Gates, Bezos:


Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel's Surveillance Empire

And blood too: Peter Thiel and Count Dracula, company Ambrosia that sells young blood is back in business.