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Peter Thiel's Rise to Wealth and Libertarian Futurism
- joshuahedlund 14y agoHow many digits does the number 125100 have? Two hundred and ten. They mean 125^100. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=125%5E100 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=125%5E100
- tocomment 14y agoI counted six digits in 125,100. Am I too dumb for this game?
- pbreit 14y agoI suspect in the magazine it was printed properly as 125 to the 100th power.
- dxbydt 14y agoIn Indian high schools, you are supposed to memorize a ton of "useless" shit like atomic weights of 50+ elements in the periodic table, logs upto 20, exponentials, factorials, avogardo constant & tons of physics constants like g and speed of light & sound & diffraction constants & the like. So from the age of 12,I happen to know that log 5 is 0.7 Ergo, log(125^100) = 300log(5) = 210, hence 210 digits in 125^100. But I do wonder - do schoolkids these days memorize this trivia or do they just reach for a calculator/wikipedia ?
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- vecinu 14y agoI would argue that memorization for a lot of 'useless' constants is in fact, useless. We had the same curriculum in Romania during the communist era, where Ceausescu forced everyone to memorize as many trigonometric functions as possible and physics constants. I personally don't see the need for memorizing items I will not use more than once. It clogs my brain and impedes my memory.
- godarderik 14y agoCurrent high schooler in the US here. I feel that today the trend is definitely more towards looking things up as opposed to memorizing them. For example, in my chemistry class, we always got a periodic table (with weights) and were given things like Planck's constant. We did, however, have to memorize some of the more basic ones such as speed of light and Avogadro's number. With regards to math, all tests involving more than trivial amounts of math you get a calculator, so I have never even thought of memorizing logs or exponents.
- pcopley 14y agoWasn't it Einstein who said something along the lines of "Don't memorize anything you can look up?"
- noodlehopper 14y agoI believe this was Henry Ford
- planetguy 14y agoI looked it up. It was Einstein. :) Or at least, it's attributed to Einstein. It's a common enough sentiment, though, I'm sure I've independently said similar things myself. On the other hand, it can easily be taken too far. Sometimes a random factoid isn't just a random factoid, it's part of the scaffolding on which you hang your knowledge. If you have to go to your periodic table to look up things like "Carbon" and "Hydrogen" you're never gonna have an intuitive understanding of chemistry.
- noodlehopper 14y ago"I don't know the answers because I do not need to clutter my head with the answers you seek. I hire smart young people from your schools who have memorized information(like the indians) that you think is intelligence. My job is to keep my head clear of such clutter and trivial facts so that I can think" Henry Ford
- daniel-cussen 14y agoTry wolfram alpha/siri for that one. No way they'd figure out how to do it on a calculator. Having said that I kind of envy your Indian schooling, that's some important information right there, and I've learned a lot of it over time for my own projects.
- K2h 14y agothanks, I was super confused. all I figured was that 'One hundred twenty five thousand one hundred' has 44 characters with spaces, and was about to start ascii conversion of the string. you saved me.
- revelation 14y agoArticle from 2011. If you are more of a hard facts type of person, Wikipedia has the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarium_Capital
- lps41 14y agoI find his company's investment record eerily aligned with Francisco D'Anconia, of Atlas Shrugged. Unintentional, I'm sure, though I wouldn't be surprised if he noticed it himself and proclaims the parallel loudly among his peers.
- calinet6 14y ago"I asked what the poles of the oscillation were. “It’s uh—it’s the, uh—it’s the—it’s um—it’s probably, uh—it’s probably just that it’s not that—well, the pro-seat-belt argument is that it’s safer, and the anti-seat-belt argument is that if you know that it’s not as safe you’ll be a more careful driver.” He made a left turn and fastened his seat belt. “Empirically, it’s actually the safest if you wear a seat belt and are careful at the same time, so I’m not even going to try to debate this point.”" This theoretical-dichotomy-interrupted-by-empirical-reality is the hilariously false core of libertarianism. They're a class of abstract thinkers stuck in an imperfect world where their theories will always be unapologetically shattered by complex and unpredictable realities.
- DanielBMarkham 14y ago"They're a class of abstract thinkers stuck in an imperfect world where their theories will always be unapologetically shattered by complex and unpredictable realities." First, this is a blanket ad hominem about an entire group of people. Second, it's bullshit. There's nothing wrong with being a pragmatic libertarian. In fact, that's the way it's supposed to work. It's the purists on all sides of issues that present the most problems for civil discourse. Yes, you can find lots of crazy talk in libertarian circles: people owning their own nuclear bombs and such. But hell, you can find a lot of crazy talk in any political movement -- it becomes a matter of whether you are looking for reasons to dis-empower an entire group or not. This type of "people of political group X _say_ this thing, but when push comes to shove they're really like this" can be applied to any group you'd like. It's completely generic. Arguments like this have no value except as an attempt to persuade listeners not to hear what somebody is saying. If I could downvote you a dozen times I would. People of all political persuasions are generally intelligent, well-meaning, and acting on the world as best as they understand it. Why not try to treat them that way? We don't need to assume they're unused to practicality or intelligent observation and reflection simply because their opinions are divergent from our own.
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- chrismealy 14y agoAnd no girls: http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-couldnt-vote http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-could...
- TimPC 14y agoIt's good press to put inflammatory words in someones mouth. It's a far step from suggesting a causal link between two constituencies and what Thiel views as political regress and advocating the disenfranchisement of women. In fact, Thiel doesn't, he advocates the abandonment of politics as the vehicle for solving problems, which is something quite different.
- moldbug 14y agoI've never understood why anyone gets so hung up on their "right to vote." Why should women have the right to vote? Why should anyone have the right to vote? In what possible conceivable sense is political power a "human right?" Is it a moral right, like the right not to be beaten with sticks? Or is it an instrumental right, ie, a political engineering mechanism designed to produce good government? Or both? If I moved to London, say, I'd find myself obeying a government in no way responsible to me. I don't see at all how this would be anything like being beaten with sticks. But then, maybe it's just me. Whereas if democracy is an engineering mechanism, it's a pretty freakin' strange one, you've got to admit. Would you expect it to produce good results? Is it producing good results? Well, see, there ya go.
- tomjen3 14y agoThiel is arguing, congruently with the facts, that females are more likely than males to vote for a larger government and a bigger social safety net and you believe that nobody has the right to take others stuff (through taxes) then it is understandable that he would prefer they didn't have the right to vote. I don't think anyone ought to have the right to vote, except on matters of the military (which cannot work if it was subjected to market forces) -- the rest is just giving groups the right to do things individuals can't.
- TimPC 14y ago
- qdog 14y agoThat article read like The Great Gatsby, I gave up after a few paragraphs. I don't think I'm into idolizing rich people anymore, I probably would have devoured this in high school, though.
- jsnk 14y agoWhat is it about a person being rich that bothers you?
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- qdog 14y agoPeople being rich doesn't bother me, reading fluffy New Yorker articles about them just doesn't interest me. Other people obviously enjoy it, but it doesn't really read like the kind of article I look for on HN, or even in the New Yorker. Thiel's nose is bulbous? I needed to know that for some reason? It just read like a fawning article about some rich guy to me. The author met with Thiel in this fancy coffee shop, Thiel recently bought 2 multi-million dollar houses blah blah blah. Great, just not anything I personally care that much about.
- jaredmck 14y agoI didn't think it was fawning, in fact quite the opposite - that some of these details were intended ironically, and the tone of the piece was actually more negative? Did I just read what I wanted to see?
- qdog 14y agoI read a few paragraphs, started skimming, and eventually gave up, maybe it was only those first few paragraphs. It just didn't seem like a meaty article to me, and if it was, it was too much work for me to get to the meat. The internet may have made me lazy. Or maybe I read jwz too often and was pre-biased against Thiel - http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/paypal-founder-has-played-far-too-much-bioshock/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/paypal-founder-has-played-fa...
- grandalf 14y agoThe tone of this article is annoying b/c it assumes that the reader is (or should be) delighted to be a part of some large group of humans who are normal compared to the eccentric person being profiled.
- bluekeybox 14y agoI read this through Instapaper four days after this was posted to HN, and your comment pinpoints exactly the thing I didn't like about the article.
- darrellsilver 14y agoThe author's follow up to this article a couple weeks later is pretty excellent. By some fluke of timing, the Thiel article was published shortly before a fantastic profile on Occupy Wall St. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/the-politics-of-dissolution.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/the-po...
- mindcrime 14y agoToday, the sci-fi novels of the sixties feel like artifacts from a distant age. “One way you can describe the collapse of the idea of the future is the collapse of science fiction,” Thiel said. “Now it’s either about technology that doesn’t work or about technology that’s used in bad ways. The anthology of the top twenty-five sci-fi stories in 1970 was, like, ‘Me and my friend the robot went for a walk on the moon,’ and in 2008 it was, like, ‘The galaxy is run by a fundamentalist Islamic confederacy, and there are people who are hunting planets and killing them for fun.’" You know, I think he's on to something there. Modern sci-fi really doesn't seem to have a whole lot left to say about potential advances in technology, and the tone does seem to have shifted away from the optimism of yesteryear. The best new scifi I've read lately was a post-apocalyptic zombie story trilogy, for crying out loud.
- grandalf 14y agoWhat more is there to really aspire to? Virtual sex with an indiscernibly lifelike avatar of anyone we've ever met? Wall-E covered the utopian concept of robot-aided leisure pretty well. His comment resonated with me as well. However I think there's a libertarian explanation for the decline of Utopian Sci-Fi. It existed out of a general optimism about problems too large for a ragtag group of individualists to solve. Space travel, etc., is the realm of big governments, and exploration of the universe is the stuff of political hegemony. The real world has gone way beyond that to a place where Peter Thiel is wealthy enough to fund his own space explorations. The problem for Sci-fi is that market based approaches to solving problems are a lot less glamourous than those undertaken by the state. There is also (quite often) far less drama, a simple profit motive, and rather boring incremental progress. State actions are always impossible to disconnect from the propaganda story accompanying them. Scientific advancement, often undertaken by governments solely for the purpose of warmaking, has been the locus of much propaganda, and it wasn't until the 50s were over that the nation started to get a clue. That said I hope someone writes a story that proves me wrong.
- mindcrime 14y agoWhat more is there to really aspire to? Virtual sex with an indiscernibly lifelike avatar of anyone we've ever met? Wall-E covered the utopian concept of robot-aided leisure pretty well. You make a good point. Have we reached a point where we've already imagined all of the wonderful things we could possibly imagine? Well, vis-a-vis technological progress anyway. I don't know, but it is a bit disconcerting to see sci-fi seemingly no longer pushing the boundaries of what might be possible.
- DividesByZero 14y agoI can understand how one might come to be a libertarian: through disillusionment with the government of the day, one comes to believe government itself is the problem rather than its particular form. The problem at the core of libertarianism is the slavish belief that the 'free market' is somehow guaranteed to produce results beneficial to society as a whole, or in the more sociopathic cases (which I suspect are the majority), benefit for themselves at the expense of others in a way that government cannot. This argument neglects the fact that there does not exist any such beast as the 'free market' except in the platonic form - real transcational characteristics of goods and services, as well as the characteristics of the medium of exchange, always lead to a particular form of market emerging. Specifically, because of the fact that capital compounds capital - it is in the very nature of unregulated markets to concentrate resources in the hands of a few. Why should we therefore be satisfied with 'free' markets that lead to enormous concentrations of resources in the hands of small numbers of individuals, far skewed away from the distributions of human ability according to measures of intelligence, aptitude or what have you? A market is a physical system to be engineered to produce the social outcome of most benefit. How you decide what is of 'most benefit' has some contention, but I'm pretty sure concentrating resources created by a majority in the hands of a minority is not it.