Peter Thiel: The Stagnation of Science and the AI Revolution

Peter Thiel is one of the greatest entrepreneurs and investors of his generation. #peterthiel #AI #vc #diversitymyth #zerotoone

Peter was the co-founder and CEO of PayPal (PYPL), the first investor in Facebook, and co-founder of Palantir Technologies (PLTR). He’s the founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Founders Fund, and the author of Zero to One, one of the best business books of all time.

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00:00 Peter Thiel - Tech investor & Entrepreneur
00:35 Zero to One and market size
03:20 Monopolies in venture capital
05:30 Why scientific progress has slowed
21:02 Steven Pinker and positive progress
26:10 Religion, science and skepticism
31:18 Why AI researchers believe we’re in a simulation
40:03 US debt and economic growth
55:06 A conspiracy theory Peter Thiel believes
59:12 Peter’s take for common bad advice

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In this episode with Peter Thiel, we discuss:

🔬 The Stagnation of Science and the AI Revolution

💡 Startups, Monopolies, and why “Competition is for losers”

🌐 Wokeness, Safety, and the Soft Lockdown of Society

🤖 AI, Existential Risks, and the Simulation Hypothesis: Could we be living in a simulated reality?

🚀 From Zero to One: Peter Thiel's Unconventional Insights on Startups & Investing in 2023

In December 2015, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Infosys, and YC Research announced the formation of OpenAI and pledged over $1 billion to the venture.

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[aurenh]

this is my favorite World of DaaS episode. jam-packed learnings.

[gobluechung]

What a world we live in... that I can, in my PJs wake up early and listen to the nuanced views of Thiel. Thank you!

[mikulcek]

The amount of thought that goes into each thing Peter talks about is astonishing. Wow, wow, epic, thank you both for creating this.

[VideoMagician]

I think technological progress has slowed since the 1970s for the following reasons.
1. An Older Population - As life expectancy went up and birth rates fell, the average age of the population has increased. As the population got older, we became less innovative since younger people tend to be the ones with all of the new ideas.
2. Bloated Government - The number of federal regulations has exploded in the past several decades which has increased regulatory compliance cost and litigation risk which makes regulation harder.
3. The Repeal of Prohibitions Against Stock Buyback - In the early 1980s, the U.S government repealed a law which forbad companies from buying their own stock. The result is that corporate America has reduced their R&D budgets in favor of inflating their stock values.
4. Low-Interest Rates - Interest rates starting in the 2000s entered into low-interest rate territory which had negative implications for the overall rate of innovation. This is because if the interest rates become too low, non-productive companies can exist indefinitely by borrowing more money. Over time if the rates remain low like they have been, non-productive companies share of the overall economy increases which reduces the overall innovation rate since capital allocation isn't being directed towards innovative companies like they should be.
5. Comfort - Human beings are aggressive and driven in a state of survival and non-aggressive in a state of comfort. By 1970, everything needed for a comfortable and happy life were in place which led to a drop in our collective ambition to engage in further innovation.

[irfanaslamcom]

Peter's insight on springing simulation theory as a mental balm by technology buffs to solve the existential question of upcoming AGI alignment problem is spot on.

[danielt]

One thing I appreciated was the long pauses where Peter was really thinking about his answers.

[planetmuskvlog]

I spent a month in China, Bejing and Shanghai. When I returned to Los Angeles, the city felt underdeveloped and stagnant.

[akj]

I wish I could meet Peter one day. He has impacted a lot of my thinking.

[titocosta]

Interesting how Peter seems to take each question very seriously

[KALLAN]

this was epic, well done for getting Peter to think about his answers instead of getting him to repeat his well known cliches!

[markom]

Wow, excellent chat guys! Thanks so much for bringing Peter, he is a treasure of knowledge.
Could you maybe bring on Alex Karp, Peter’s co-founder from Palantir? That would be amazing.

[tayloranderson]

When he talks about the biomedical stuff I can tell you why it is so slow...healthcare is 14% of the workforce. We could probably make half those jobs redundant in a few years if we did an adequate job with nutrition. But that would be very bad for the healthcare industry so you see them continually turning a blind eye to it, making a good living mopping without ever turning off the faucet. For example this is why the American Dental Association tells people to limit sugar intake but never advocates for regulation of refined sugar. It's the only thing that really makes sense in a country where the average person eats 60lbs sugar a year and has dental decay, but it would be devastating for the dental industry. So we have this continual thing in healthcare of pretend like we don't know the cause or have no control and make $ "managing" the preventible problem.

[dameanvil]

00:00 🌐 Peter Thiel believes society has been in a soft lockdown for around 50 years, suggesting a stagnation in progress.
06:18 🛠️ Thiel points out that progress in science and technology has slowed down significantly since the 1970s, particularly in fields like nuclear engineering.
14:02 🏗️ Thiel suggests that centralized government funding initially accelerated science and technology, but led to bureaucratic institutions that hindered long-term progress.
17:17 ☢️ Thiel believes the development of nuclear weapons shifted society's attitude towards risk and innovation, leading to more cautious approaches.
19:25 🌆 Thiel criticizes excessive safety measures inareas like real estate zoning laws, suggesting they stifle progress.
20:45 🧬 Thiel believes the biomedical field could achieve more but faces high barriers, cautioning against complacency in the pursuit of breakthroughs.
44:52 🌍 Peter Thiel discusses the shift in societal divisions, noting a move from factors like race or religion towards political ideology.
46:03 🤝 Thiel suggests that the political polarization in the US may not reflect significant differences in important issues like tech innovation or deficit reduction between Republicans and Democrats.
47:48 💹 Thiel emphasizes the importance of addressing overall economic stagnation as a more critical issue than focusing solely on income inequality or lack of social mobility.
50:44 💰 Thiel discusses the complex tax policy debate around differentiating tax rates for billionaires and millionaires, highlighting challenges in achieving a balanced approach.
52:54 🧠 Thiel suggests that independent thinking and heterodox views might be harder to express in today's digital age, where everything posted online remains permanently accessible.
55:58 🛢️ Thiel speculates on potential emergent properties that mimic conspiracies, particularly in industries with highly inelastic goods like oil, leading to unintended collusion effects.
58:57 🚫 Thiel challenges the idea of universally applicable conventional wisdom, asserting that advice should be tailored to specific contexts and times, rather than adhering to timeless truths.

[sebastianaguiarbrunemeier]

I'm a simple man. If I see a new Thiel talk, I click.

[harrison]

These are really interesting points!

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43:22 This is my favorite
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47:22 Good point, if the pie doesn't grow, it will be a zero sum game, and then to get ahead, you'd have to take it from someone else.
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[richiemello]

It is so inspiring to see someone who is so intelligent show that there is a depth of knowledge or theories that he doesn't have an answer for. That to me, is the true sign of an intellectual.

[josher]

Great interview. Good questions and just let the guest speak. Thank you!

[MitchellPorter]

Skipped through this to hear the argument that science has stagnated for 50 years, and couldn't find it. But I noticed that stagnation in science and stagnation in technology were being discussed as if they were the same thing.

I do think there has been a marked slowdown in the number of inventions being turned into commercial products, relative to decades ago. I think there are multiple reasons for this, one being that most of the effort went into computing.

But I do not think that a slowdown in scientific discovery is a factor. It is my impression that there is a backlog of scientific and even technical innovation, especially in biology and biotechnology, which has not been commercialized or otherwise brought into daily life.

This is not to say that science or invention could not have proceeded faster than it did. In areas of discovery, it's hard to know ahead of time what will work; but, for example, if the human race had bothered to prioritize a goal like rejuvenation, we would probably know much more about the aging process by now, and we would have better ways of easing it or even ways of reversing it.

However, in my opinion most of this is academic because of the breakthroughs in AI. We are racing towards superhuman AI there, and of course that means the end of the world as we know it, one way or another.

[MrClockwrk]

I'm glad you brought up his disagreements with Pinker.

Most hosts seem afraid to mention it, even though their disagreements on violence are foundational to many of Theil's worldviews. I suspect it's because they don't believe Theil has compelling rebuttals, so bringing it up would risk making him uncomfortable.

Peter is brilliant, but his potential energy argument isn't very compelling without data. If he's as interested in hard science as his comment about Pinker failing chemistry suggests, where’s the data? Wheres the study to measure potential violent energy in societies, and how that energy tends to manifest?

Theil may be right in the end, but it's going to require a level of rigor similar to Pinker’s.

[nemitghosalkar]

Been his fan for years now. Thanks for this