I disagree with Thiel on almost every page on this document. And I don't know which topic to really critise. Like his view on regulation, which he calls a burden. I don't want to live in a world w/o regulations, I want to know what is in my food, I want to know that the devices I use are safe. We could see what happens, when regulation fails, when two 737MAX crashed due to the fact that Boeing was able to hide MCAS from the FAA and the FAA let Boeing go forward with the plane.
At one point Thiel is quoted with "The public transportation systems don’t work." Which is a bold and false statement, because public transportation can work extremely well. And in the source they don't even talk about public transportation but about Uber, which I think is a failure and pointless and not really innovative at all. Services like Uber existed long before Uber, Uber just put an app on it instead of a phone call. Also Thiel complaints about parking. That he can't think of any other modes of mobility than a car, it rather telling.
His definition of progress and innovation is not technical or defined by quality of life but merely what he as an investor can earn money from it. This is very visible when Thiel dismisses incremental progress with wind turbines and photovoltaic cells.
>> This is very visible when Thiel dismisses incremental progress with wind turbines and photovoltaic cells.
I think you've missed his point which he lays out in the opener. If you've listened to him speak on podcasts about this topic (I recommend episode 1 of The Portal with Eric Weinstein) you will realize that his ENTIRE point is that incremental progress is simply refinement of things we already have since the 60s and for him thats NOT good enough. He isn't looking for incremental refinement at all, he is looking for the equivalent of the emergence of the solar cell or the wind turbine from nothing. Basically the emergence of a totally new way of arranging atoms to bring about big leaps, not small refinements. He isnt looking for the next best rocket, he is looking for the emergence of the warp drive. He always pressed the point that if you take away bites, our tech progress has been largely stagnant since the 60s. I've never heard anyone put it that way and I largely have come to agree. Most of what we have today is just better refinement of tech we had in the 60s. TV's, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Cars, Rockets that land themselves. Even computers.
Also, like it or not, capital investment drives innovation, otherwise there is no real incentive. Now I will say one can argue for better models for more longterm investment moon shots that might take decades to achieve, such as say Fusion reactors. ITER is largely stagnant as a multi-government funded 40 billion dollar project and MIT has some incredible designs for fusion reactor prototypes that would put ITER to shame. Problem is they estimate needing 300 million and 10 years to achieve this. Ultimately you need investors to create a company to make this marketable. If Thiel has the money and wants to invest in these sorts of mega leaps ONLY then more power to him and to us all.
I think it's a mistake to assume that technology advancements will come in great leaps and bounds since the day of the wright brothers are over... we've been out of our atmosphere and to the bottom of the sea and made nukes++ and transistors at nm levels. Humanity has been so experienced in the domain of physics for so long that there is no low-hanging fruit left within the periodic table. The physical world has limits that our higher order thinking has identified and relentlessly struggled against. This is done every day by independent humans in labs and dreams around the world and seems by it's distributed nature to be incremental. I think Thiel's being quite foolish for lamenting/admonishing a trend that I believe will only getting stronger as the sophistication of collective human knowledge increases...
Oh, than his views on innovation are even more wrong than I thought. Most progress, most innovation is the result of incremental progress. Sometimes you can see a leap forward, which usually comes that someone puts several incremental innovations together and combines them in the right way.
Yeah, ITER is not really a fast project. Weirdly enough there is also Wendelstein 7-X in Germany, which is also mostly funded by the German government is way ahead of other fusion project. No idea if this research will lead to a power source or not, but I'm pretty if it does, those power plants will be subsidised by the government.
There are so many points he makes. Which ones do you agree with? I have a hard time understanding your opposition and painting everything he says as some what illogical, unreasonable, impossible or absurd. The examples you've given, I agree with (and even the most far right people would). But the document is massive and I feel like you're painting a broad stroke with a tiny brush. Peter Thiel is a controversial figure, but your comment to me comes across as rather less objective (besides giving strawman examples) and not substantiated enough for the bold claims you lay down.
Happy to listen to you and figure out what points you disagree with, and also understand which ones you agree with.
With respect to the regulations - this is a huge topic. You've picked ones that makes sense. But there are regulations like patent laws, and absurd state laws (can't fill gas in Portland yourself) that need to be abolished. From car dealership lobby to a whole bunch of nasty things in Agriculture, there are protective laws that benefit the small proportionally advantaged people and prevent real innovation. There is a lot of gate-keeping in the regulations lobbied to death by companies with big and deep pockets (Philip Morris for e.g. and even companies like Google who spend millions in lobbying).
This is not fair with all due respect. I am in the same boat as you in some ways, I think Peter Thiel is a weird guy, but there is no denying - he is smart, tactical and he knows how to play the political chess. There are many progressive ideas in there too that align with Bernie sanders (wages section).
Not inclined to you, but I feel like SV folks have tattoed "PROGRESSIVE" in big bold letters and they've stopped thinking for themselves anymore. FYI - I live in SV. Get rid of that label, think from the bottom up - not from left or right.
I focused mostly on the parts I have some or a lot of knowledge about: energy and tranportation/mobility. I simply can't rule out that in the other fields Thiel might have an opinion I would share if I knew more about those topics.
Where I agree with him is the issue of real wages stagnation and even decline in the US and in other countries. Sadly, I don't think we would agree on the cause.
I guess, with SV you mean Silicon Valley? I live nowhere near that place. I also don't work in IT. And I hold a degree in economics.
> At one point Thiel is quoted with "The public transportation systems don’t work." Which is a bold and false statement, because public transportation can work extremely well.
I mean, it doesn’t work for him, since he doesn’t need it..
As someone without a car or even a license, who relies on public transport (albeit in Europe), I think this highlights the issues I have with economic inequality... Interests diverging until they become opposed.
(Just to be clear, I agree that Peter Thiel’s claims with regards to public transport is false in general)
A lot of what Thiel writes is from a US centric viewpoint, which is fine, he's an American living in America. And in the biggest US cities public transport doesn't work all that well.
I’m saddened that you think it’s okay to make it a federal crime to create a jelly/marmalade with more than 4 fruits (seriously).
What you’re doing now is imposing the current day to the past, like looking at the current Airbnb and pretending that’s how it was when it first started.
What if perhaps today wouldn’t be achieved if there had been so many rules and regulations? So picture the same government from now and place it in say 1870. What would you say the odds are we DONT end up anywhere as advanced as we are today?
That's a really unfair comparison. Suggesting that all regulation is akin to your marmalade example is akin to suggesting that we shouldn't enforce any laws because adultery laws are still on the books.
There are good laws, and there are bad laws. There is good regulation, and there is bad regulation. The solution is to curate from the good set, and weed out from the bad set - not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I think if you left it up to the market we would have even more misleading food labels than we do now. It’s already hard enough to determine what is and isn’t healthy at the supermarket, regulation ensures that we at least have the most basic calorie, nutrient and ingridient information.
I wouldn’t even disagree that regulation slows down advancement. That is probably the case! But I also know that in the early 1900s you didn’t have the kinds of child labor laws and workplace safety protections in place that we have now. I’d rather a society without child labor even if it runs a little slower and less efficiently.
Thiel is interesting to me because he is so different than others in the SV bubble. Whether you agree with him or think he is the devil, at least he has independent views. I find a lot of people don’t think for themselves anymore.
I don't think he's that different beyond partisanship. Especially in the YC ecosystem with peers like Balaji Srinivasan. A lot of SV people want to "disrupt" basic foundations of our government like the education system.
What strikes you as different about him? I can’t really articulate why exactly, but to me he’s right up there on the list of archetypical SV personalities.
honestly I think that's an artifact of how often he is imitated. having read more than my share of seed fund about pages in the past few months, there is particular flavor you encounter over and over again that can only be described like "ah yes, I see you also have read zero to one." heavy emphasis on the transformative over the incremental, hard tech, disinterest in pedigree and traction given a shamanistic insistance that they are uniquely capable of identifying the visionaries of tomorrow, constant reminders they go against the grain and buck consensus, punchy copy talking about bold iconoclasts making the future of tomorrow yadda yadda
the three big aesthetic/intellectual strains of sv thought as I see them are truetype protagonist gleaming tech optimism a la early pmarca blog, folksy practicality a la pg, and dark horse contrarianism a la thiel. leonardo, donatello, raphael (turtles, not painters). but he did originate the kernel of it and can't really be faulted for the imitators
what actually makes him interesting tho is he's a disciple of rene girard, who argued among other things that the basis of socialization and social conflict is mimesis, which goes a long way to explaining his fixation on avoidance of imitation (and makes the raft of imitators that much funnier imo)
If all your views line up with the mainstream you’re most definitely not thinking for yourself though. Thiel in fact suggests a question framed in way to force people to think for themselves:
> What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
I think it is his heavy introvert side, which focuses on reflection and strategy. (In the pseudo-personality type world, "INTJ"). Entrepreneurs are typically ENTP, or ESTP and are extroverted, jump out and figure it out types. They reflect a whole lot less - strategize less - and power through things more.
> Google also has $50 billion in cash. It has no idea how to invest that money in technology effectively ... if we're living in an accelerating technological world, and you have zero percent interest rates, you should be able to invest all of your money in things that will return it many times over. The fact is you're out of ideas.
Idea possibly bad: Free market progress is a force in balance with consolidation of power and interests. So some lack of progress can be explained by reaching a tipping point in the monopoly power where concentrated interests just kill anything disruptive. Michael Seibel has written about this.
In balance with? The free market is the mechanism for power consolidation, not its opponent. Companies merge and grow until they build a moat big enough to fend off their competitors and then the market enters nash equilibrium.
Growth (or anything chaotic, really) shakes up the stable condition, changes the rules, and lets new entrants compete with Goliath. That's why we covet it so much.
I think Eric Weinstein would agree with you on this point. You should really listen to his podcast with Peter Thiel where they talk about similar interests disrupting advancement (The Portal - Episode 1).
I don't buy the argument that the whole system is therefore useless and corrupt, but that it very much needs intervention to keep this sort of regulatory capture from occurring.
> If meaningful scientific and technological progress occurs, then we reasonably would expect greater economic prosperity (though this may be offset by other factors). And also in reverse: If economic gains, as measured by certain key indicators, have been limited or nonexistent, then perhaps so has scientific and technological progress.
My eye-opening realization of American stagnation came in history class during high school. The teacher told us the narrative of progress through the 1800s, how industrialization brought more wealth and electricity improved quality of life. He spoke of an increase in wages that came with it: each decade, Americans were wealthier than before.
People assume the lives of their children would be better than their own. But in the 1960s, an American man could support a family of five: himself, his wife, and three kids was the norm. Sure, part of that can be explained by sexism and gender issues of the time, but the point was that women didn't have to work because a single income was sufficient to support a family. Today, most families are dual-income[0] as a matter of necessity, not necessarily desire. It's no longer obvious that progress will continue, and certainly not obvious that the progress we are making is a good thing for most people.
My grandparents, separately, once remarked that they had seen "perhaps the last real changes in quality of life any generation would have." Running water in homes, indoor toilets, microwaves, refrigerators, and the development of computer networks all happened in the 20th century. They predicted continued stagnation in human innovation, that most of the universe's great ideas had already been discovered.
Where are the big, boundary-pushing changes to life that the relentless pursuit of technology had promised? Where do we go from here? My father once speculated it would come from far-field wireless power transmission. That would kick off the next space race, pushing humanity farther into space than we could ever imagine by fuel. And certainly it would push a new generation of innovation forward, enabling ideas that would not have been possible before. What are the next transformative technologies waiting just around the corner, capable of changing and improving life for everyone on the planet?
Only a part of the mission, but there should be ambitious action taken to dramatically improve education and provide truly equal opportunity for all in the US. Pay teachers properly, give a proper education in all schools especially impoverished neighborhoods. The US should be ranking higher than it is in Math/Reading/Science scores compared to other countries. Other special programs to remedy the huge racial wealth gap from the slavery/Jim Crow/other institutional racism legacy. The US can and should do a much better job at providing better education and opportunities for all of its citizens.
I agree that the hard problems are not being worked on, that's what happens when VCs descend on the market and are looking to 100X their investments.
It's incredibly hard to work hard on difficult problems when you have to grow for growth's sake and pump out numbers that satisfy the market/VCs every quarter.
You should at least bring up the story of Max Planck in the late 1800s. He was basically told not to enter physics, because supposedly nearly all of physics has already been discovery. We know what came next in physics.
We don't know the future, and there's no way to say for sure that we've see the last big changes in life. Your grandparents could be proven laughably wrong in next few decades.
That said, it is likely at this point that we've exhausted the current paradigm. That there isn't much left to gain in maximizing existing scientific theories, or pumping billions into mature technologies. These concepts and philosophies have failed to real creating something of note lately, and that might be a sign that they are at their limits.
So the next step would be a step-change function and something completely unexpected.
Robotics and AI have the ability to transform a great deal. We have still not fully explored Crispr and what's possible with biotech. AR & VR I think, once they reach maturity, will also transform society. Finally, I do think cryptocurrency will change as much about society as double entry bookkeeping did in the 14th century. This change may not be as radical for 1st world countries, but I think it will allow many developing countries to catch up much more rapidly.
Why do we have to go? The big question is: What is awareness? That awareness is wherever you are. No need to go to outer space. However, once you can create awareness artificially, you can send it into space, without human time constraints. There is no problem in travelling for millions of years if your awareness doesn't end.
Most people are not wired to be explorers or risk takers. That's where the whole rent-seeking mentality comes from, which is a form of risk aversion, and the incumbent laws and whatnot have put a hard stop on "what could have been".
>The problem that I remain the most passionate about is for us to make some real and continued progress in the fight against aging and death.
But how does one help? Really. I've been in academia for more than 10 years. I've had done some really promising stuff and know people with pretty cool projects that are 1,000% worth pursuing. Yet I have found virtually zero support as I don't play well with the "the politics of science".
The problem is that the "politics of science" are typically against "actually doing science" as there is no surplus of time, energy and willpower that allows one to pursue both ends.
I would like people to consider that this is one of the biggest obstacles hindering human development (in science at least). This thing really needs to change, for the benefit of everybody involved.
Totally agreed. Dumped (hopefully temporarily) a decade of bio training due to this. I think the fundamental issue with every attempt at reinventing biology research is that they end up recruiting the same professors from academia who bring the exact same culture with them.
The ideal institution that can break this cycle will have funding (only limited, see Hammings lecture) from a source with no questions or expectations, and be worked on by people with almost no academic influence. But they can't be herectics or crackpots because you can't just hack your way around biology like you did with computers. This is more akin to reinventing the transistor than creating tiktok.
the way my and my partners look at this is an infrastructure problem. our hope anyway is we can build tools and methods (better mathematical modeling, better bioinformatics software, faster/more accurate sequencing, eventually standardized gear for continuous process chemistry) that can serve startups of a bioengineering bent while also making it more practical for independent researchers to work outside academia. the biologist of our team is particularly interested in longevity research herself so partly we're trying to make the things that she'd need to do her own research 5-10 years down the line
I'm pessimistic about institutions but optimistic about people. I think the academy is an impediment to a lot of interesting and necessary projects, not just here but in general. risk-averse, prestige-obsessed, heavily bureaucratized. most of the institutions in our society are like this, hollowed out. there's a lot of basic research that needs to be done, so I think the highest leverage thing we can do is knock down barriers to more people being able to do it. route around the institutions
Hello Alice, off-topic but it's great to see you here.
I keep a binder at my desk with printed articles from the web that I find interesting enough to want to keep forever (and give to my children one day). In there is your take on 'playing to win' on the minecraft economy. Thanks for that.
There are several funds and dozens of companies trying to solve this problem (appeared in the last 5 years or so). I would consider searching there.
I'm not even remotely related to biotech stuff, but I'm considering moving there in a couple of years just because it's the most important problem I could possibly be working on.
EDIT: "There" is the ecosystem around Aubrey de Grey (whatever you think of him personally).
People live for about 80 years. The first 20 are spent learning the ropes, the middle 40 are spent doing good work, and the final 20 are (ideally) spent in repose and reflection. Half of life is spent contributing to family/society, and half is spent in dependence on family/society; 1 year of contribution for every 1 year of dependence.
By adding even 20 years of quality life, we would make a tremendous leap forward in terms of human productivity, wealth generation and quality of life; instead of 1 year of contribution for every year of dependence, you'd have 1.5 years. That would do wonders in terms of building wealth and improving lives.
Not GP, but science is becoming increasingly hierarchical in it's funding mechanisms, placing bigger bets on bigger projects that reflect the perspective of older scientists and the status quo. This pulls funding away from up and coming scientists with new ideas they'd like to try out. Classic increase of risk aversion.
From first paragraph: this is a 56,000 word summary of Peter Thiel’s view on progress and stagnation in his own words, sourced from a number of his interviews and articles. This document consists only of direct quotes from Thiel, lightly edited for clarity (except for headings and where marked otherwise). Key quotes are in the summary. Compiled by Richard Ngo (@richardmcngo) and Jeremy Nixon (@jvnixon).
I've listened to some of these interviews and agree completely with the basic premise. However, I don't think it's correct that China's success is entirely explained from simply copying America. Of course copying is responsible for part of their success, but there are clear examples of the reverse. For example, integration of payments into WeChat, which has been duplicated by Facebook and others (but not as successfully as in China). They certainly disruptively innovate by making extremely cheap electric cars that poor Chinese can afford.
The language barrier is really making it difficult to see progress in China even for people interested in a particular space.
For example, in just the VR space, if I follow the most popular VR related subreddits and podcasts I often miss important Chinese VR hardware and software. And sometimes the hardware is better than anything available in the US.
I only found out about these cutting edge haptic gloves called Dexmo because I happened upon a review of an American product on an expert blog and the review compared them to a Chinese version.
China did what Germany did in the 19th century and Japan did after World War II but differently. Germany and Japan copied and made own things until they were experts and made better things than the original. China did that differently, they invited western companies through cheap labour and made officially those things, copied it then and became experts and eventually made their own products, which at least as good or better than the originals.
It is also helpful, that the Chinese government can just do things w/o any meaningful interference. In the 1960s and 70s, German cities wanted to build huge motorway like road through the city centres, which would have destroyed the cities, many of those project could be prevented from happening. Thiel would have critised those protests as a barrier for progress. Like he does, when he is mentioning zoning laws prevented a high-speed railway in San Francisco.
Readit News
At one point Thiel is quoted with "The public transportation systems don’t work." Which is a bold and false statement, because public transportation can work extremely well. And in the source they don't even talk about public transportation but about Uber, which I think is a failure and pointless and not really innovative at all. Services like Uber existed long before Uber, Uber just put an app on it instead of a phone call. Also Thiel complaints about parking. That he can't think of any other modes of mobility than a car, it rather telling.
His definition of progress and innovation is not technical or defined by quality of life but merely what he as an investor can earn money from it. This is very visible when Thiel dismisses incremental progress with wind turbines and photovoltaic cells.
I think you've missed his point which he lays out in the opener. If you've listened to him speak on podcasts about this topic (I recommend episode 1 of The Portal with Eric Weinstein) you will realize that his ENTIRE point is that incremental progress is simply refinement of things we already have since the 60s and for him thats NOT good enough. He isn't looking for incremental refinement at all, he is looking for the equivalent of the emergence of the solar cell or the wind turbine from nothing. Basically the emergence of a totally new way of arranging atoms to bring about big leaps, not small refinements. He isnt looking for the next best rocket, he is looking for the emergence of the warp drive. He always pressed the point that if you take away bites, our tech progress has been largely stagnant since the 60s. I've never heard anyone put it that way and I largely have come to agree. Most of what we have today is just better refinement of tech we had in the 60s. TV's, Refrigerators, Microwaves, Cars, Rockets that land themselves. Even computers.
Also, like it or not, capital investment drives innovation, otherwise there is no real incentive. Now I will say one can argue for better models for more longterm investment moon shots that might take decades to achieve, such as say Fusion reactors. ITER is largely stagnant as a multi-government funded 40 billion dollar project and MIT has some incredible designs for fusion reactor prototypes that would put ITER to shame. Problem is they estimate needing 300 million and 10 years to achieve this. Ultimately you need investors to create a company to make this marketable. If Thiel has the money and wants to invest in these sorts of mega leaps ONLY then more power to him and to us all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
Yeah, ITER is not really a fast project. Weirdly enough there is also Wendelstein 7-X in Germany, which is also mostly funded by the German government is way ahead of other fusion project. No idea if this research will lead to a power source or not, but I'm pretty if it does, those power plants will be subsidised by the government.
Happy to listen to you and figure out what points you disagree with, and also understand which ones you agree with.
With respect to the regulations - this is a huge topic. You've picked ones that makes sense. But there are regulations like patent laws, and absurd state laws (can't fill gas in Portland yourself) that need to be abolished. From car dealership lobby to a whole bunch of nasty things in Agriculture, there are protective laws that benefit the small proportionally advantaged people and prevent real innovation. There is a lot of gate-keeping in the regulations lobbied to death by companies with big and deep pockets (Philip Morris for e.g. and even companies like Google who spend millions in lobbying).
This is not fair with all due respect. I am in the same boat as you in some ways, I think Peter Thiel is a weird guy, but there is no denying - he is smart, tactical and he knows how to play the political chess. There are many progressive ideas in there too that align with Bernie sanders (wages section).
Not inclined to you, but I feel like SV folks have tattoed "PROGRESSIVE" in big bold letters and they've stopped thinking for themselves anymore. FYI - I live in SV. Get rid of that label, think from the bottom up - not from left or right.
Where I agree with him is the issue of real wages stagnation and even decline in the US and in other countries. Sadly, I don't think we would agree on the cause.
I guess, with SV you mean Silicon Valley? I live nowhere near that place. I also don't work in IT. And I hold a degree in economics.
I mean, it doesn’t work for him, since he doesn’t need it..
As someone without a car or even a license, who relies on public transport (albeit in Europe), I think this highlights the issues I have with economic inequality... Interests diverging until they become opposed.
(Just to be clear, I agree that Peter Thiel’s claims with regards to public transport is false in general)
What you’re doing now is imposing the current day to the past, like looking at the current Airbnb and pretending that’s how it was when it first started.
What if perhaps today wouldn’t be achieved if there had been so many rules and regulations? So picture the same government from now and place it in say 1870. What would you say the odds are we DONT end up anywhere as advanced as we are today?
There are good laws, and there are bad laws. There is good regulation, and there is bad regulation. The solution is to curate from the good set, and weed out from the bad set - not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Personally, I prefer that to the days of radioactive toothpaste.
I wouldn’t even disagree that regulation slows down advancement. That is probably the case! But I also know that in the early 1900s you didn’t have the kinds of child labor laws and workplace safety protections in place that we have now. I’d rather a society without child labor even if it runs a little slower and less efficiently.
the three big aesthetic/intellectual strains of sv thought as I see them are truetype protagonist gleaming tech optimism a la early pmarca blog, folksy practicality a la pg, and dark horse contrarianism a la thiel. leonardo, donatello, raphael (turtles, not painters). but he did originate the kernel of it and can't really be faulted for the imitators
what actually makes him interesting tho is he's a disciple of rene girard, who argued among other things that the basis of socialization and social conflict is mimesis, which goes a long way to explaining his fixation on avoidance of imitation (and makes the raft of imitators that much funnier imo)
> What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Dead Comment
Idea possibly bad: Free market progress is a force in balance with consolidation of power and interests. So some lack of progress can be explained by reaching a tipping point in the monopoly power where concentrated interests just kill anything disruptive. Michael Seibel has written about this.
Growth (or anything chaotic, really) shakes up the stable condition, changes the rules, and lets new entrants compete with Goliath. That's why we covet it so much.
I don't buy the argument that the whole system is therefore useless and corrupt, but that it very much needs intervention to keep this sort of regulatory capture from occurring.
Deleted Comment
My eye-opening realization of American stagnation came in history class during high school. The teacher told us the narrative of progress through the 1800s, how industrialization brought more wealth and electricity improved quality of life. He spoke of an increase in wages that came with it: each decade, Americans were wealthier than before.
People assume the lives of their children would be better than their own. But in the 1960s, an American man could support a family of five: himself, his wife, and three kids was the norm. Sure, part of that can be explained by sexism and gender issues of the time, but the point was that women didn't have to work because a single income was sufficient to support a family. Today, most families are dual-income[0] as a matter of necessity, not necessarily desire. It's no longer obvious that progress will continue, and certainly not obvious that the progress we are making is a good thing for most people.
My grandparents, separately, once remarked that they had seen "perhaps the last real changes in quality of life any generation would have." Running water in homes, indoor toilets, microwaves, refrigerators, and the development of computer networks all happened in the 20th century. They predicted continued stagnation in human innovation, that most of the universe's great ideas had already been discovered.
Where are the big, boundary-pushing changes to life that the relentless pursuit of technology had promised? Where do we go from here? My father once speculated it would come from far-field wireless power transmission. That would kick off the next space race, pushing humanity farther into space than we could ever imagine by fuel. And certainly it would push a new generation of innovation forward, enabling ideas that would not have been possible before. What are the next transformative technologies waiting just around the corner, capable of changing and improving life for everyone on the planet?
[0]: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/famee.nr0.htm
We don't know the future, and there's no way to say for sure that we've see the last big changes in life. Your grandparents could be proven laughably wrong in next few decades.
That said, it is likely at this point that we've exhausted the current paradigm. That there isn't much left to gain in maximizing existing scientific theories, or pumping billions into mature technologies. These concepts and philosophies have failed to real creating something of note lately, and that might be a sign that they are at their limits.
So the next step would be a step-change function and something completely unexpected.
Deleted Comment
>The problem that I remain the most passionate about is for us to make some real and continued progress in the fight against aging and death.
But how does one help? Really. I've been in academia for more than 10 years. I've had done some really promising stuff and know people with pretty cool projects that are 1,000% worth pursuing. Yet I have found virtually zero support as I don't play well with the "the politics of science".
The problem is that the "politics of science" are typically against "actually doing science" as there is no surplus of time, energy and willpower that allows one to pursue both ends.
I would like people to consider that this is one of the biggest obstacles hindering human development (in science at least). This thing really needs to change, for the benefit of everybody involved.
The ideal institution that can break this cycle will have funding (only limited, see Hammings lecture) from a source with no questions or expectations, and be worked on by people with almost no academic influence. But they can't be herectics or crackpots because you can't just hack your way around biology like you did with computers. This is more akin to reinventing the transistor than creating tiktok.
I'm pessimistic about institutions but optimistic about people. I think the academy is an impediment to a lot of interesting and necessary projects, not just here but in general. risk-averse, prestige-obsessed, heavily bureaucratized. most of the institutions in our society are like this, hollowed out. there's a lot of basic research that needs to be done, so I think the highest leverage thing we can do is knock down barriers to more people being able to do it. route around the institutions
I keep a binder at my desk with printed articles from the web that I find interesting enough to want to keep forever (and give to my children one day). In there is your take on 'playing to win' on the minecraft economy. Thanks for that.
I'm not even remotely related to biotech stuff, but I'm considering moving there in a couple of years just because it's the most important problem I could possibly be working on.
EDIT: "There" is the ecosystem around Aubrey de Grey (whatever you think of him personally).
People live for about 80 years. The first 20 are spent learning the ropes, the middle 40 are spent doing good work, and the final 20 are (ideally) spent in repose and reflection. Half of life is spent contributing to family/society, and half is spent in dependence on family/society; 1 year of contribution for every 1 year of dependence.
By adding even 20 years of quality life, we would make a tremendous leap forward in terms of human productivity, wealth generation and quality of life; instead of 1 year of contribution for every year of dependence, you'd have 1.5 years. That would do wonders in terms of building wealth and improving lives.
For example, in just the VR space, if I follow the most popular VR related subreddits and podcasts I often miss important Chinese VR hardware and software. And sometimes the hardware is better than anything available in the US.
I only found out about these cutting edge haptic gloves called Dexmo because I happened upon a review of an American product on an expert blog and the review compared them to a Chinese version.
https://skarredghost.com/2020/04/07/senseglove-vr-haptics-gl...
It is also helpful, that the Chinese government can just do things w/o any meaningful interference. In the 1960s and 70s, German cities wanted to build huge motorway like road through the city centres, which would have destroyed the cities, many of those project could be prevented from happening. Thiel would have critised those protests as a barrier for progress. Like he does, when he is mentioning zoning laws prevented a high-speed railway in San Francisco.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s Audio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/1-peter-thiel/id146999...