“… and to go to a world where luck is something for us to overcome as we go along the way, but not something that becomes this absolute dominating force that stops all thought before it even starts.”
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I don’t agree with all the assertions Thiel makes, but the argument should be taken seriously. It probably *is* better for the world to believe in a determinate future, and to make plans.
Whereas a bias for hedging and optionality stems from an indeterminate view of the future.
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Scott Alexander, on Thiel’s Zero To One:
“If you write a book that goes ‘hey guys, conspiracies are doable and often successful’, and then a few years later succeed at multiple ambitious conspiracies … I think you are allowed to say this is something other than coincidence”
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There’s a very subtle argument at the heart of Thiel’s talk that might not be clear, if you’re not looking out for it.
The basic setup: how do we think about luck? In the past, people saw luck as this thing to overcome. Today, we think luck is the natural order of things.
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As a result, people in the past were more likely to make ambitious plans and then try and achieve them, overcoming the vagaries of luck in the process.
Today, we make less ambitious plans and instead talk about ‘making bets’ and ‘hedging risks’ and ‘diversifying our portfolios’.
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If you believe in the former, you try to build crazy ambitious things and maybe you succeed, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you believe in the latter, you go into finance and manage a portfolio and maybe you succeed, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Thiel doesn’t argue that one is correct and the other is wrong. He just points out that, “look, the way we think about luck and determinism has changed”.
Ok and then he says “fuck indeterminism” so I guess he has a stance here.
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But his main point is that believing in deterministic optimism is a net good thing for society, and we should encourage more of it.
Of course, you could say he has a biased view, since he is a VC, but then he DID used to run a global macro hedge fund, and he stopped.
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Like I said, this argument can haunt you, once you let it get into your head. 🤷♂️
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Replying to @dineshraju
The core of Thiel's argument, the bit that's so haunting to me, is his implicit argument that a) yes, reality may be probabilistic but b) if you want to build crazy ambitious things, it's not useful to believe that it is — because you won't try as hard to make things succeed.
The only way to have chips to go all-in when it’s time to go all-in is to walk away from the table enough days when you’re up enough to come back the next day
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