Peter Thiel Is a Flawed Messenger with a Crucial Message for Tech

https://www.wired.com/story/peter-thiel-is-a-flawed-messenger-with-a-crucial-message-for-tech

by wskinner • 8 years ago

54 39 8 years ago

"Where Peter Thiel lives is of at best marginal import to anyone but him."

This is not first rate journalism. Does Zachary Karabell not realize that people go to Mr. Thiel seeking investment? It's not simply a matter of Facebook. SpaceX and Stripe each had times when they couldn't raise investment from anyone but Thiel.

cambaceres• 8 years ago

It is worth questioning why they even wrote this article in the first place if that statement were true.

funkythingss3• 8 years ago

I don't understand the medias obsession with Thiel since Trumps election.

He's a republican. K

He's gay. K

He's critical of the Silicon Valley echo chamber. K

He's a great businessman. K

There's not really a great boogieman story to make from. this.

stryk• 8 years ago

Him and Hulk Hogan got in a tag team fight versus the online version of a supermarket checkout aisle tabloid. And won! That's pretty cool I guess...

I agree the obsession with the guy is weird, but then the entire cult of celebrity thing never really made a lot of sense, imho.

Mountain_Skies• 8 years ago

Think it is his refusal to toe the valley's ideological line that's causing the obsession. He's pretty much the same guy he has always been but the landscape around him has changed. He refuses to change with it. That makes him confusing to those who have successfully bullied everyone else into groupthink compliance. Why won't he just submit to the hive?

funkythingss3• 8 years ago

oh yeah, the Gawker thing was pretty awesome actually. Gawker got what he deserved

kosei2• 8 years ago

He's a lightning rod of political opinions where pretty much all others (wisely) stay quiet.

He and Mark Cuban should have their own reality TV show.

godzillabrennus• 8 years ago

I think they'll call it the 2024 election cycle coverage.

etoir• 8 years ago

You forgot:

A website published a story about him being gay and he spent an 8 figure sum to shut down that whole company and ruin everyone involved.

and:

He controls a company which builds mass surveillance technology for the government and selected private companies.

bwang29• 8 years ago

For those who wants to find the "Crucial Message" quickly, I think it is hidden in the 4th last paragraph :

"That’s why there is and will be an even greater pushback against the idea that a small group of companies and executives can reap vast rewards, dictate the architecture of the online, cloud, AI, and robotic worlds and maintain an insular, parochial, and narrow worldview marked by groupthink."

Or was it somewhere else?

To be fair, it is not a small group of companies, but rather clusters of companies working decades together to make it all happen, and I was hoping there was at least a tiny bit of appreciation in the article. But I quickly realized that while the author did the name dropping he had to point out Amazon is not technically in the Valley but part of the equation. I was hoping he could find companies like Western Digital is also making most of the hard drives that contribute to whatever agenda he thinks the silicon valley is doing.

discodave• 8 years ago

This is the 'crucial message' that the author is trying to promote:

His rationale, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, is that the Valley is now a politically intolerant culture, left-leaning in the extreme and to the exclusion of any contrarian viewpoints

And it is bullshit. Who can be found shutting down democracy via gerrymandering? Republicans. Who can be found threatening the media from one of the most powerful pulpits in the land? Trump, who seems to have the unyeilding support of the Republican party. Who runs online harrassment campaigns with the explicity aim of silencing people? Gamergate and the red-pill brigade.

The left has made some mistakes and could do a lot of things better, but they can't hold a candle to the right when it comes to insular, parochial, and narrow worldviews marked by groupthink

owens99• 8 years ago

Don't forget climate change denial.

ramblerman• 8 years ago

None of your examples are in the valley though.

I do agree online debate is extremely toxic and partisan on both sides, to the detriment of everyone and leading to groupthink. But that is not what's discussed here.

elefanten• 8 years ago

No, it's bullshit simply because it's prima facie bullshit.

"The Valley" (something no one here says out loud) has the same liberal bias it's had for decades. It has changed in some ways, much the same way our national politics have changed over time. There are ebbs and flows in what's liberal vs conservative, to what degree, on which issues... etc.

But "the Valley" has not suddenly become some unique bastion of intolerance (beyond the general shift in polarization that's been, again, nationwide) or 'groupthink', the newly beloved piece of mud to sling by right-y cultural agitators. It's just a large target for the current wave of culture clash and change.

Thiel is welcome to go chill wherever he feels happy. But no need to be such a baby about it really.

oh_sigh• 8 years ago

Your entire ridiculous post is predicated upon an incorrect assumption:

OP says

left-leaning in the extreme and to the exclusion of any contrarian viewpoints

You respond with an attack on Republicans, but they are not the only group or philosophy which fits the description 'any contrarian viewpoints'.

Even if you didn't make that assumption, you assumed that people with 'contrarian viewpoints' don't vote for your coveted Democratic party as well, and they simply don't believe in the 'left-leaning in the extreme' vision but prefer it for other reasons.

shard972• 8 years ago

This is just exactly the kind of attitude that keeps people like myself on the other side. The issue Tiel is obviously talking about is within the context of silicon valley and the online platforms they control.

It's irrelevant that repubs are gerrymandering, that trump talking about suing the media as a private citizen or that you believe that gamergate was a harassment campaign.

Yet you lay them out as if it's some solid evidence to imply right wing views are being discounted justly. That the current situation is just a case of bad opinions being beaten up on fairly.

kosei2• 8 years ago

As much as I hate to admit, I do agree with Thiel's point (barely mentioned after the first paragraph) that the vast majority of thought is being driven by politically intolerant left-leaning liberals. I am absolutely one of them, but it's amazing that in multiple major tech companies in Seattle, there has been a near-100% shared liberal mentality, that has only exploded post-Trump.

It's very difficult to make products and apps for everyone, when the people making them represents only one viewpoint. And interestingly, unlike companies that localize/culturalize their products by opening local offices, I don't know of any companies opening satellite offices in Alabama/Mississippi or even conservative counties in Washington and California.

I remember when it used to be taboo to talk politics in the office. I find that doesn't even exist anymore, when everyone shares the same left-leaning mindset.

bmarquez• 8 years ago

there has been a near-100% shared liberal mentality, that has only exploded post-Trump

This is mainly because anyone who doesn't share that liberal mentality has learned to keep their mouths shut or risk their career.

speby• 8 years ago

And this is kind of the problem with politics. Something I've never understood with people is why they have a desire to punish others who disagree or don't share their political beliefs.

Sadly, it is this opposing views between people that causes wars and yet on a local/individual level, it results in things like not promoting someone who doesn't share your views or limiting a salary increase or bonus.

It's really disappointing about ourselves, I guess.

treebeard901• 8 years ago

The same is true on the opposite end of the spectrum. Red state groupthink exists and is not exactly welcoming to outsiders.

dogma1138• 8 years ago

The first portion of the Joe Rogan podcast with Douglus Murray touched this very specific issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBp4afbDeLk

The core of the issue here is that the left is not uniformly liberal a large part of what is associated with the left is not liberal but ranges from authoritarian to old plain tyrannical just like with the right.

kristianc• 8 years ago

Slightly strange from the author of 'Zero to One'..

Jefro118• 8 years ago

I think that's the author of the article speaking though, rather than Thiel.

kasperni• 8 years ago

One thing I have been wondering about lately is what kind of reputation will people working in the tech industry have 10-20 years from now. Will people working outside the industry think of us as the new banker wankers?

Unfortunately, I would not be surprised giving the social implications of much of the technology that are being introduced through companies such as Amazon, Uber etc.

thedailymail• 8 years ago

So the author says Thiel's message is that there will be more regulation of the tech industry, as if that is unquestionably a bad thing. But we've all seen how the industry, like any large scale human activity, is subject to manipulations that work against the public good, and specifically the good of its own users. At this point it seems like many industry leaders acknowledge the need for regulation, and as is historically the case with other industries, are seeking to work with the government to design regulations that will (ideally) strengthen consumer protections but not create undue burdens. Thiel appears to be staunchly libertarian and so for him regulation per se is a negative development, but there are certainly other ways to view the interaction between public and private sectors. I get the sense that lots of people working in tech can see the case for why a bit more oversight wouldn't hurt.

arvinjoar• 8 years ago

The author can't have listened much to Thiel. He certainly doesn't speak without a filter, most of what he says he will repeat in interview after interview, for years. Every now and then he adds something new, but that thing is seldom very off-the-cuff. Thiel is unorthodox, not unfiltered.

nopriorarrests• 8 years ago

This thread (50 comments as of now) utterly amazes me.

I mean, I haven't seen americans with different political views talking to each other in a level headed manner for a long time. Heck, on reddit they just use different subreddits, /r/politics and /r/the_donald, otherwise they are on each other throats in no time. Ok, that's reddit, so it should be expected, but HN is not much different recently. And it's not like we are talking about war crimes or human lifes here; it's just an opinion from some wealthy VC dude. Hardly something to be mad about, no matter if you agree with him or not.

PS: I have to make a disclaimer probably. by some coincidence, I'm russian. Weather is damn cold in Moscow, thanks for asking. No, I wasn't paid 50 rubles for this post.

originalsimba• 8 years ago

Political division in the United States is insane. People do not think for themselves. They are complete tools of whatever media outlets they happen to get their "news" from. They grab hold of catch phrases and chant them as loud as possible to drown out the voices of the "opposition". There's no rational thought behind their actions, only blind loyalty to men-as-products who they think are their friends because they have chosen to be completely ignorant to the Show-Business Fraud of modern politics.

Despite years of effort and media both fictional and non-fiction, showing everyone how politics manipulates their emotions and core beliefs, nothing has improved. If anything it's gotten so much worse. Insanity is the only way that a person can really summarize it. It's blind rabid insanity.

natecavanaugh• 8 years ago

This is somewhat pedantic to the overall point of the article, but Peter Thiel is moving to LA because the Valley is a stifling cultural environment, but then goes on to name multiple tech companies that they consider part of the Valley, but physically removed.

Why would Thiel moving to LA somehow affect this equation? They start the article using it for its importance and end it with saying it isn't, and it feels so contrived for the writer to use it as a way to editorialize on other matters.

I do happen to agree with a lot of the article, but the editing here feels sloppy, and while I love a lot of Wired's content, it seems like this continues to be a problem with their articles.

Peter Thiel Is a Flawed Messenger with a Crucial Message for Tech

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