A Reagan Forum with Peter Thiel and Ryan Holiday — 09/24/2018

[Applause] good evening everyone my name is John hogwash I have the honor of being the executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and I just want to welcome all of you here this evening if you would in honor of our men and women who defend our freedom around the world please stand and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thanks please be seated I don't know how many of you were here close to 40 years ago when we first had Peter Thiel an entrepreneur the founder of PayPal investor venture capitalist and philanthropist speak at the Reagan Library but his visit today is really quite special Matt and I say that because appearing here once is considered to be a real honor to speak here a second time as Peter well today is extremely rare it's quite an exclusive club so mark my words Peter if you find yourself speaking here a third time so if I said to say that your name might be on the auditorium when Peter last spoke it was in relation to the release of his newest book zero to one I remember his visit well because of how sorry I was to miss it I was in the middle of a health challenge but I vividly recall at the time it was not my treatments that had me so concerned but rather the fact that I had to miss the remarks of someone I have greatly admired for a number of years so today Peter is with us again not only because his last appearance went so well but because frankly I get a do-over I also want to note that this is Peters Peters appearance today is really quite unique and at this time he comes to us as the subject of rather than author of a fantastic book who's the author well indeed joining Peter on stage is Ryan holiday a celebrated writer blogger marketing specialist life advisor cattle rancher and personality all his own who has written a stunning treatise on what well on conspiratorial justice I would say now I won't explain what I mean by that I made it up but no doubt when Peter joins Ryan on stage you will quickly get a very unique first-hand account from them both I think that will best define it Atlantic magazine described the subject of Ryan's book the lawsuit known as Belaya V Gawker as quote one of the most consequential lawsuits in the history of modern American media the story behind that lawsuit how it came about the conspiratorial actors behind the search for justice the strategy involved the winners and the losers comes together beautifully in Ryan's work in fact this is a book that I should have written darn it my Envy aside I want to not only introduce both of these talented men I also want to congratulate Peter for having the wisdom the courage and the determination to see the story through to a great end and certainly kudos to Ryan as well for his keen eye in recognizing the value of this story in the first place as well as his ability to tell it so well so with that let me just say this is a remarkable book so to our guest today so ladies and gentleman if you would please join me in welcoming to the Reagan Library stage mr. Peter teal and mr. Ryan holiday [Applause] are you used to introductions like that that was very very nice it's always too flattering always feels like just goes downhill from there I know it's always yeah let us maybe i should begin by apologizing for under dressing i think one of the reasons I was attracted to becoming a writer as they told me I would never have to wear a suit and so I thought I this book came under some strange circumstances for me it wasn't a book that I thought I would be able to write I didn't think anyone would be able to write it I've written an article for the New York Observer shortly after the the verdict of the lawsuit had come down and I got an email from from Peter I'm not quite sure how he got my email but it just said you know I really liked your article perhaps we should get together sometime and discuss the MBTA and then in parentheses he said the Manhattan based terrorist organization which was my first insight into some of Peters motivations and thinking in this incredible story and then a few weeks later I had written an article about why people should stop watching the news that was all making us all miserable and upset and after that I got an email from Nick Benton whose email I was not sure how he got my email either but then I realized that I was probably the only person on the planet talking to these two mortal enemies at the same time and the book was born and so I'm very grateful to you for for one giving me the access and being so forthcoming about your motivations and your ideology and then for coming here and talking today awesome thank you get into it wonderful well it it struck me as I was preparing that it's been a little over ten years since those first Gawker articles were written about you can you take us back to what your reaction was how did that feel well it it was it was uh you know Gawker was a sort of gossip web site in which they you know the writers were underpaid they were fourth they were paid by how many people they got to click on the articles and the articles tended to you know it's not someone were true some were not true somewhere half true but they they tended to range you know irrelevant to an extremely hurtful and damaging and maybe career-ending in certain cases for different people and you know they had a Silicon Valley affiliate and this were going after people in the tech industry called Bali wag and basically and basically you know the some of my friends had gotten attacked by it and then eventually they gradually sort of turned their guns on to me so the first few pieces we're not that negative but it was that was part of the mo was just to sort of build people up yeah and then gradually gradually tear them down you know I think the first one that came out in late oh seven that I I really disliked was was where you know they they outed me as gay Peter Theo is a totally gay P and and it felt like a you know just a stunning violation of privacy to me at the time and and of course it was and of course if you want to put this in context these things are never done it's never just a factual statement so you know you have to say you know one of the things that had sort of the comment section on on their articles where the writers were encouraged to sort of write extremely nasty comments so the art the the the short you know five hundred two thousand word article was neutral to negative but then you'd have super mean comments and you try to egg on your readers write mean comments by starting by writing some mean ones yourself sure and and so then he sort of had no in the comment section it was things like well we don't know why don't understand why he was uncomfortable this telling it maybe it's a problem of his parents or maybe you know it's this thing or the other so so we sort of never it's never even a remotely neutral thing but anyway yeah and it was it was it was really crazy for Mike Michael who ever felt like in a punch into the stomach because you know I had no connection with these people I had never done anything bad to them it wasn't like you know I mean sometimes people do something bad to you there's no know that some history or something there was no history at all so it felt it felt sort of nihilistic totally sociopathic something like that and it affected you because you felt like you were not a public figure because the the tone or that why did it strike you as being so over the line or so nihilistic well I think I think it was it was an attempt to to sort of to damage you know Mike my fund to damage me to you know to reputationally sort of smear me as like a crazy strange person one way or another and and and so I think you know I think there were all these ways these things were were more damaging than they they looked they had you know they had I think they were ready you know there were a few people I'd already seen had gone through this where I was always hard to judge you know it's like because people when people read gossip sites they they of course pretend that it doesn't influence them but it influences people great deal and so I I had a suspicion of these things have much more of an impact than than you think so you're not necessarily just looking at the one article but you're playing out in your mind where the arc of this sort of course you know this was this was the first of you know of many things and of course I I wouldn't I wouldn't claim that I was remotely the person they victimized the most we're sort of there's so many other people there were people you know I would say I was not a public figure at the time I was sort of a you know you know moderately successful investor in in Silicon Valley and and there's many other people of course who had an even lower profile and we're sort of in an even weaker place that they they went after you know far far more nasty Lane and so you know one of the kinds of conversations that it ended up triggering over the next few years was was this conversation what do you do about this yeah and and basically you can't do anything or there's nothing natural even to so that the the narrow things you can do are if you complain yeah they'll they'll attack you even more so they're like the psychology of a schoolyard bully where if you say you're a bully stop hitting me yeah it's kind of that's not the right thing to do yeah and then and then you know if you sort of if you punch back directly they're gonna they're gonna punch back much harder and so and this was sort of a recurrent conversation theme that I had with various friends in Silicon Valley what do you do about it what do you do and the you know the general thing was just you sort of you try to get go into some fetal position and hope the beatings would stop pretty soon and they move on to the next person and and that's sort of and that's sort of that sort of was the the view I had for four years we sort of talk about all kinds of fanciful ideas of what one could do but but but nothing nothing it felt like there was just nothing you could do about it yeah I found it talking to lots of people and then being written about conquer myself that it's almost like being invited to join a special club that no one wants to be a member of being written about by Gawker in this way and that you would get in some cases contacted by other people who had gone through what you were going through did you find that after the first articles about you and maybe when you've made some of your first public comments that you began to hear from other people maybe there were worse nikto there were quite a few different people let me I'll tell the stories without giving away a name so one person they sort of gone through his personal life he was convinced that he would gotten a Nobel Peace Prize but for Gawker I wasn't clear that was true but he was he was really upset you know there was another there was a you know a venture capitalist who who felt that it that he wasn't able to say anything in Silicon Valley to give put any ideas into circulation because anyone who had strange ideas was know especially ripe scapegoat and sort of an easy person to target but yeah there were sort of all sorts of you know all sorts of conversations like this there were you know there were a number of people in the media who actually felt this very strongly so even though because you know the disproportionate number of their targets were other people in the media generally people who are more successful than them so it was all this sort of like incredible jealousy resentment tearing down people who are a little bit better than you and so this is especially large amount of vitriol was directed at various media people and and you know a number of them you know over the years would then encourage me to do more than just sit by obviously you've you've said that one of your motivations was a was this was about the protection of privacy and I think we should talk about the difference between public and private in a second but it's a criticism of yu-er or one of the push backs from I guess the the people who came to see what you did as being a you know a form of bullying in and of itself was that you were actually interested in protecting your business interests and I'm just curious how much of that played into your what were you thinking about this violated my you know my my personal privacy about my sexual orientation or were you concerned that this sort of spotlight accurately or inaccurately would be pointed your business interest that you know in a way that be well I certainly think the the the privacy violations were you know extremely extremely bad should never done that I think there were other things you know that were damaging in other ways but I you know and again and maybe I'm wrong about my motives here but I I sincerely don't think it was about you know revenge or retributive justice for for any of those sorts of things and action protectors the damage had been done okay whatever whatever damage had been done had been done nothing I could do about that it was it was more about specific deterrence it was that they weren't going to hurt other people or myself even more in the future and so the the worry was much more you know this is just gonna keep going and whatever damage they done to me they've done but it's it's gonna be much more damaging to other people at future and that's that's that's why I thought it was you know important try to do something it's always interesting talking to you and and I've gotten to spend a good time of a amount of time with Peter I'm not sure that if I was interviewing someone else they would be questioning their own motives on so I'm always interested in the way that you sort of step back and analyze what you're doing is that a bit of lifelong habit for you it's always I'm always like probably little bit too self reflective on things but no I think I think I think that were you know there probably were a number of different factors that came together in doing it the big one was just that I'd seen them you know hurt a lot of people and I thought they were gonna hurt a lot more why is that privacy so important to you like why why is the sexuality of a semi public figure worth protecting what is privacy mean to you well we have well privacy you know it's it's it's I I think it is implicit in you know it is implicit in in on in the fourth amendment so here we have a first amendment the people in the media always like to talk about we also have a Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure not just by you know government actors but certainly also by private actors and and you know if you if you had a society without any privacy at all that would be a a frightening Society it would be a totalitarian society we sort of like you know I don't it's like it's like the it's the East German movie but let's toss you need to trim me the lives of others we're gonna everyone's spying on everybody else and and and that's that's an incredibly you know incredibly screwed up place you know I don't think and then I think and then I do think that if we if we look under people under an electron microscope you will find you know a lot of different faults you will if you look closely enough you will find a moat and the other person's eye yeah or something like that and and it's and I think these things they never work in some sort of equal way it's it's always sort of somewhat it's not like we can have a mutual thing we're gonna say we're all getting rid of privacy together we're all gonna get rid of it everybody will know everything about everybody and it'll be sort of our society will be incandescent ly illuminated and there'll be no secrets left and that'll be you know everything will be perfectly transparent I don't think that ever happens I think it's I think it's always you know a weapon that gets used to take certain people down you know there was a I think the sociologist Elias Canetti had this line that the power consists of the right not to answer questions and so if you if you have to answer every question that's a way to disempower you if if and and and that's not the way our country is supposed to work and and what does privacy protect so is it in your mind the ability to be flawed or to think differently why what is what do we lose when we lose privacy I I think we lose we lose a lot of things I think we I think we some sense we lose our freedom we lose lose our ability to think we lose on you know we we I think you end up you end up I think in practice it always means you end up you're you're gonna be subject to some sort of destructive process right it's always it's it's uh yeah it's never it's never just a sort of a neutral thing like that how do you balance that tension then with I mean two of the companies you're most publicly associated with have both privacy issues but then are inherently about taking data which would maybe otherwise be private and using it to some public end we'll talk about Facebook and Palantir yes I'd always be careful you know what I what I say in these things so there's there's a on the on the on the Facebook side you know this certainly is is one things that's controversial about the company and we need to you know and there is for this question about where the right balance gets struck now in the case of Facebook it is it is it is it is the users themselves that put all the information out there and maybe they don't know what they're doing or there's something wrong with it but it's it is voluntary so you think there's a very big difference in things that are voluntary versus things that are or not I think that I think that in the case of pounds here which sort of national security context so you're trying to trying to identify terrorists and so okay so what kind of stuff can we know about people to identify terrorists and you have all kinds of you have all kinds of protections on that and I the the the the way we position pounds here is a pro privacy company okay is that the high-tech solution is that you find very targeted ways to get information about people the the low-tech solution is you get every all the information about everybody so if you don't have any technology you end up with a sort of a sweeping low-tech solution think about think about like sort of the low-tech Airport security systems we have which are you know sort of very intrusive and and the goal was to actually have something that you know is higher tech and less intrusive you know one we have often thought defining technologies technology means doing more with less it's in the context of a national security company like pounds here it means more security with fewer privacy violations as a trade-off okay and then the the non technological debate we have in our societies between people are concerned about security what's like less privacy with with you know with more privacy violations with more security which there may be the ACLU where you have you know more more privacy and fewer things but they sort of go together first go differently ya know I'm I'm interested not necessarily just in you know some of the controversies about those two companies but just the idea of you know if privacy is so important to why do we willingly give up so much of our privacy you know well I think but again I think I would just say there's there's a very sharp distinction between us giving it up versus it being taken away from people and I think I think in cases where it gets taken away that that's where we should draw a bright line around that got it that makes sense well let's go let's go back to the discussion so you're these lots of sorry that the articles have happened you're talking to other people you're getting this been rudely introduced to this sort of new form of online media and you talk to people and you hear over and over again there's nothing you can do about it that strikes me as a phrase you don't like hearing it was like well I kept I kept asking anything I can do about it yeah and you know we um we finally had we had one of the one of the people I sort of met by chance at a at a speaking event you know Tom ended up pitching me on this idea yeah and I refer to as mr. a in your book yes and and basically was that that you know it was sort of they had just finished getting a law degree and it was sort of that we could you know that the works are a lot of different cases we could bring on behalf of different people whose privacy had been violated you know I was of course I was I was not that courageous I didn't want to be the person who did it myself but but we could bring cases on behalf of various other people through it probably a lot of great plaintiffs and and that nobody had really tried and and she sort of and so there was sort of jujitsu move we said you know it's it's it's not been done and I realized that that's something that wasn't hadn't always been not not only had always been told me it also been told to a whole bunch of other people and and because everybody had been told that there was nothing you could do nobody had tried to do anything and paradoxically that might mean that the wood might be a surprising amount you could do if you just tried speaking of violating someone's privacy I I did hear a rumor that mr. a was in the audience is that true I thought Ian Stern ight there you go that's almost a hit in a hidden in plain sight plain sight but to go to this to go to this idea of there's nothing you can do about it your your friend and colleague Eric Weinstein talks about the idea of a high agency individual how sort of that life is defined by how we respond respond to there's nothing you can do about it and it strikes me that that's what an entrepreneur does right is basically someone thinks there isn't an opportunity and an entrepreneur goes and finds it did you see this as a was part of what attracted you to doing something here that it was a challenge that no one thought you could do that was probably that was probably part I was it was a whole bunch of things that came together that was probably part of it but but I think I think a lot of it was was um you know I was just it was just I felt something had to be done yeah and I I did I did you know the the line mister I had was you know if you don't do it nobody will or every thinks that it won't happen and then and then then I at least thought we should we should we should you know hire some lawyers and and and you know and start some sort of process and see what would come up what do you feel like that sense of agency is on the increase or the decline these days like I'm curious where you think it breaks down generationally or culturally you know are we is America the country where we dive into problems like that or we the country that says there's nothing you can do about it I would say historically America was the country where he could do did things like this so is this it was a place where you did new things it was the frontier country and and you think of the frontier as a place where there's sort of a in a maximal amount of agency and there probably are all sorts of ways in which I think it's been you know eroded some over you know over over recent decades and it would be complicated to sort of say you know why that is yeah certainly I think you know one things will very different kind of context I've never coughed and spoken out against the education bubble and the hyper tracking and our in our school system and and that's sort of in some ways the opposite of agencies if everybody does the same thing sure that's that's sort of a lack of agency now the question I start zero to one with is tell me something you believe that's true that nobody agrees with you on and that's you have to have age there's intellectual agency there's some you know things like this are are the spark that makes makes us do do great new things and and it is interesting to me that we you know the the the sort of the the current sort of liable defamation standard in this country the idea that you can only sue sue a media outlet for for libel if it you know it's sort of deliberate malice it's not like that precedent goes back to 1787 right that precedent is only from the late sixties yeah of course of course yeah the actual malice standard the New York Times we solve in case the thing was 1964 yeah is is basically that's only for public figures and you could all say it's not actually been that well to find what a public figure is right and I'm not sure you know I'm not sure I would have counted as a public figure in 2007 and certainly many of the people that that they went after were not public figures by any reasonable stretch to the imagination yeah and to me the central issue of the of what you did here and again people we we were by the way we were very careful not to not to bring a libel case and so you know we thought it was very important to go after the things the aspects of Gawker that were uniquely sociopathic and and we didn't didn't want there to be we didn't want there to be all solidarity with the rest of the media and so and so that's why might you know my one might one mandate was it could not it could not be liable cases it had to be something else and and so we went after privacy violations we looked at you know intellectual property theft we looked at you know sort of all sorts of different kinds of cases but we we looked at the interns weren't being paid minimum wage laws would try to bring that case in front of a liberal judge in Manhattan got some traction that's other words throw all these different to labor law violations IP violations privacy violations look at you look at a range of very different things and what I mean by that is that you just the precedents have to be set by someone at some time right and that you said well why not set a new precedent or why not come up with new areas where precedent could be set I think this would certainly and certainly like in the and the case that we ended up becoming the motor of your book was the Terry Bollea case where I don't know if you want me or you to say something about this was a this was a Terry Bollea also known as Hulk Hogan and and they're sort of crazy back story to the case but basically it's sort of uh involved a sex tape of him and his best friend's wife sort of like not great fact that his his best friend had secretly tape recorded the two of them doing it and and then years later on the sex tape somehow made its way to Gawker and it got posted on Gawker and in 20 in 2012 yes and I think there's a lot more comp crazy it's weirder though yeah all these crazy things going to go into but basically and and that was that was sort of one of the cases we brought where it was um you know and the question would be was it as a sex tape speech yes and and or is it just a privacy violation right and and this this this is something I think is very far from political speech or other kinds of speech and much closer to the Fourth Amendment much less much less close to the First Amendment you know that I mean the so the one you know the one line right I've had on this is just that you know if you think of a a pornographer is someone who makes sex tapes of people and pays them and then with the Gawker people were saying was the journalist was someone who made sex tapes and published them without asking people for permission or even much less paying them sure and so on and so that that is a real insult to journalists to say that they're much worse than pornographers and that was that was the implicit argument at Gawker made and it jury found that very compelling well you know in a jury trial you're supposed to always argue you know you argue the facts not the law so you know it was I mean they they they they screwed things up so massively in the in the trial I mean took about four years to get to trial in early 2016 but they basically you know they sort of argued you know we're journalists and there's a First Amendment and therefore we get to do whatever we want and we said you know this is this is this is this isn't specious just a sex tape it's just outrageous and it sort of went through the specific facts and and that's that's that's what that's what that's what that's what drove and and you know I you know we can debate without with the breadth of what it stands for I think it Stan I I do think there been a lot fewer sex tapes posted since the ruling came down so it at least stands for that proposition sure and you can't find the Terry Bollea tape if you wanted to it's very hard to find online I think that's even that's even that sort of down yeah so I'm curious you set out what I defined in the book is sort of a conspiracy you said these people shouldn't be doing what they're doing everyone says I can't do something about it I'm going to do something about it and you you end up being successful we'll sort we can flash forward to that some some of that later but what do you what did you learn about that as a methodology not just using the legal system but what did you you know you didn't buy an ad in the New York Times a full-page ad in the New York Times where you laid out your case you didn't hire lobbyists to go to Congress to get a law passed you sort of tried to secretly do something to the legal system I'm curious what you found about that methodology well it's um you know conspiracies your word not mine so let's just be I think that's nice for you but look let's be let's be careful on that but but I would I would say that it's you know it is it is something that's that is done in all sorts of cases where you know you you bring litigation you know and people fund litigation on behalf of other people for for all sorts of all sorts of different kinds of reasons I think the you know there was a sense that the secrecy would help us in all sorts of ways it probably and it probably also complicated things tremendously because you had you know all these different compartments of people so there was the we went with we end up going with a law firm in Los Angeles because we figured that if we went went in New York or Gawker was based they'd learned too much because everyone talked in Manhattan and then if we did in Silicon Valley we could traced back to me and we thought there were probably a lot of sort of high profile celebrity type people who would be yeah might anyone suspect that someone was behind it there'd be so many suspects in LA you'd have no idea who it was but but then you see I demanded you had to manage the law firm in Los Angeles you had to you know mr. a only the top two people law firm new mysteries identity and then and then you know Terry Bollea did not know did not know who was behind it and so it was sort of you had you'd have you had to have all these things pretty uh it was and was pretty complicated to keep all these compartments separate yeah but but I mean on you know I think I think the I think one of the one of the advantages of it certainly was that it you know it what ones you know there is a certain advantage where if you if you get if you get tuned actual if the other people's not expecting it there's there's something there's something you move it that's not that's not the expected move and so they're the two pro-wrestling terms that I learned in this hope in this whole process so one of them is uh kayfabe ka y fa b e and that means something looks looks real but is fake as an all pro wrestling everything's kayfabe and then a second a second term very rare is a shoot sh o OT and it's like if you're the designated commie Muslims wrestler who always loses it's possible that one day on live TV something will snap and you will decide to just win and and and so a shoot is when things become real yeah and there's always a chance that things can become real and one of the messages I read what messages I relayed to Hulk Hogan on the eve of the trial early 2016 was that the other side thought it was K fake they thought it was all a theatrical production and it was actually gonna be a shoot we were gonna go to trial and we were gonna win and I think I think they they sincerely didn't even think we're gonna go to trial even the day before the thought of course is just it's all just theater it's all gonna settle they're just trying to get it get a larger amount and you know we're gonna go til til we want well what we're talking to people who are close to Nick one of the reasons that they gave for why he didn't suspect what was going on or if he did suspect if you didn't verbalize it was that he didn't want to be seen as as believing in conspiracy theories yeah I mean it would you know if he if he sort of spoke to all the Gawker people a few months before this trial so you know I'm become convinced that were the victim of a giant conspiracy and something I meet people you'd probably get taken to the insane asylum or something like that you know there was there was sort of an early on you know there's sort of various shanks in this a one that came up during the trial was was one reporter who's covering the trial in Tampa Florida got wind that something like this was going on I guess there was sort of people from the Terry Bollea legal team that we're talking about it and then you know wrote an article you know Gawker hater secretly funding the lawsuit and then heads through the whole analysis and the people guess it but the bill the bottom lines they'd been told yes but then and then and then you know I was I was talking to mr. a we had sort of an emergency phone call and it was about the games just about up because we're not you know we can't let this come out beforehand and then you know it got it got covered on Reddit you know every news article goes on reddit there's some sort of reddit thread and the reddit thread if you went every single person just attacked the writer where it was like this is ridiculous as the pathetic conspiracy theory this is on you know it's like asking asking who's behind it it's like asking which hater killed mr. burns and Simpsons and so and so and so it was actually it was actually pretty pretty inconceivable I mean I certainly made the mistake on the other side where on and you know one of the most you know I bragged about it into way too many people's was such a cool thing to do and I felt I had had to talk to people about it and you know it was sort of selective in 2014-2015 and then it was it was but you know it probably by the eve of the trial I'd probably told twenty people and it's amazing that it's amazing that it hadn't come out already in retrospect it was just people either didn't believe me or they or you know and and so so there was this sort of thing where the idea was audacious in a way that that gave us a surprisingly large amount of cover aren't there in the circles that you run in now put both politically and financially would you say there's more conspiracies happening behind the scenes than people would think or fewer i man that's that's that's hard to hard to fully assess I I think there are I think there are not that many yeah but but it's it's it's often I think it's often a it's often a good it's often a good though the conspiracy question is often a good question to ask so that the non conspiracy question is on what causes something the conspiratorial question is who caused something to happen okay and and and I think that can often be a very generative question even if the specific theories are wrong so if you ask you know who was behind who else was involved in the Oswald assassination of JFK that's the conspiratorial question sure and then you get sort of answers like well was organized labor with mafia it was the CIA was the Cubans the idea article says it was all of them together maybe all of them I've heard well one of my former colleagues had servo theory where he's connected them all very a very powerful way but but what they what what all those things tell you is something about the reality the underbelly of American life in the early 60s that was very important it was that was not fully thought through in fact the mob was bigger than people realized and you know there were all these crazy unions that were sort of fighting for support between JFK and LBJ and there's all these different things going on CIA was kind of out of control so it's interesting to me obviously you spent a considerable amount of money on this particular venture but there are many people in today's world that could have afforded to spend something like that on a project like this right so I think I think the main thing that deters people is they think they can't do it okay so it's it's just it's just a self fulfilling thing you know probably probably one of the UM one of the early indications that we were on the on the that we had you know the question was how does one assess the probabilities of success how likely is it that something's going to work I would say one of the early indications on this was when we did the deposition of Nick Denton the the Gawker owner / publisher in mid-2013 it was about a year end and first um and we weed through discovered we had found there were 3,000 people who had written letters of complaint to Gawker of one sort or another threatened them with legal action etc etc so a first question what to mr. Denton was um you know have you ever appeared in a court of law answer no first question in every deposition but yeah the typical first and the second question have you ever been deposed answer no and at that point we knew that we've gotten further than the other 3,000 people and and so we were ready not uncharted territory and so it's and that's like that's an amazing commentary on the lack of agency in our society that that even even if you had this site that was had you know maybe a quarter of a million two million or whoever posts attacking mostly attacking people many erroneous you know they own it you know as as I think one of I mean we occasionally accidentally practice journalists was just something it accidentally happened was time was it wasn't even at that level yeah and and nobody had even gotten to a deposition a deposition is something even normally I mean this is a mechanical thing you sue someone you can normally get to a deposition and it hadn't no that was that was a big indicator that that Chancellor might be better than we thought yeah because I think people have this fantasy that that rich people were billionaires once they get there they're gonna be moving the levers of power around because they can do so but it sounds it sounds like maybe that happens less than people think and is that because there's is there something about well that makes you think like does wealth make you more conservative less conservative I don't mean politically I mean risk-averse is well I it's it's hard to it's hard to I think that there's always did any any action that involves eight agency of the sort we're talking about you have to want to do something that other people haven't done or that has not been done before and and there's always a question who's advising you how do you you know how do you how do you come across the kinds of ideas and we have you know we have we have an awful lot of things in our society that tell people you can't do things certain things don't work you shouldn't even try this is this project of the main way you know the main way politics works in our society is that you know you're gonna lose don't try to win it so we try to try to sort of interfere with people's ages and we try to demotivate them and and and so if you if you don't let that sort of social control that sort of interference operate you can you can do a lot your famously labeled a contrarian which you've pushed back on what I've mentioned it before I think you see yourself for a contrarian is simply reacting against what other people think right yeah you don't want to just put a minus sign in front of consensus okay I mean and I think I think that the truly contrarian thing is to is to think for yourself I do think I do think there are a lot of times when consensus is wrong in all sorts of weird ways you know it's always it's always this question on is that Malcolm Gladwell has a book with though the wisdom of crowds and I think one always has to contrast this with the madness of crowds and the question is when is um when is the crowd wise and when is it insane and and and this is sort of like and so you know there are all sorts of yet versions of this but but but I I tend to think that the crowd is more often insane than wise it's actually the way the way Matt Malcolm Gladwell goes through it is the crowd is wise if we had like a jelly a large glass with jelly beans and we're trying to figure out how many jelly beans were in and we took a little survey and everybody's thought of an independent number then the average number from the crowd would actually be pretty good yeah and so it works when people make independent decisions okay and when everyone decisions are derivative when I'm I'm doing what other people in the crowd are doing that's when that's when no one thinks for themselves that's when the crowd is unusually wrong and so the question I have to ask is how often do you have a crowd of people where people are thinking for themselves and how often do you have one where they're simply it simply becomes sort of this this this mob of one sort or another and my my judgment beads it's much more often much more often the latter than the former how have you cultivated the ability or maintain the ability you know given your your success and the circle zebra how do you maintain that ability to think for yourself what do you have you have secrets you have tips like how if someone is trying to step out of groupthink what should they do you try you try not to be too beholden to fashion you know it's it's I mean it's it's it's hard to say you know what what the formula for that is but I am always keenly aware of how much pressure I'm under to do this how much pressure we're all under you know I didn't sort of the autobiographical thing I always like to tell is you know I I was I wasn't a super tracked thing where you know eighth grade when my friends said I dare you I know you're gonna get into Stanford in four years and then four years later I got into Stanford and I got into Stanford Law School and then I ended up a big prestigious law firm in Manhattan and from the outside it was a place where everybody wanted to get in on the inside it was a place where everybody wanted to get out and so when you left after when I left after seven months and three days you know one appealed down the hall said it's amazing even escaped from Alcatraz and the only thing you had to do was go out the front door not to come back but but it was somehow weird like mentally a way to driven by by the things we've done the people around us and all these sort of crazy forms of peer pressure Gawker saw itself as the outsider of the media business the sort of free thinkers the ones who would say things that other people wouldn't say wouldn't get my version of that would be that it was exactly the opposite this basically it was and this is this is this is sort of one of the most insidious parts of the internet but it was basically the it was basically the hate factory in action and it was you know it was just it was a scapegoating machine in which you got the writer and readers to gang up on you know one person after another and the people they targeted were targeted in some ways at random and in some ways for being different in one way or another and so I tend to think it was this scapegoating machine that that that basically pushed people towards not saying things and or saying only very bland conformist things so your view is if the cost of that about that we might analysis of how it it out so your view then is the cost of Dockers is not imply tennis but it that it's suppressing the kind of independent thought that you think we need to be cultivating it is it's it's it's well it's it's it's it's certainly it's certainly again politeness is to kind of work so it's it's certainly if you if you you know do these things that are that range from being hurtful to catastrophic ly damaging to people people will be less comfortable to speak up in certain ways and and that's that's probably bad in all sorts of all sorts of context you know the the you know I often I've often said that I think the biggest political problem we have is the problem of political correctness it's it's it's the inability to you know to articulate various sorts of things and and it's not because it's not you know it's not that politics is always the most important a kind of a thing but it is it is sort of it's it's a thing where you have common sense access to you you know and and and and if you say people can't have different political opinions you're not allowed to have an opinion it's different from that of other people that's that sort of an insane insane version where things things go very wrong I'm curious where you see the line though because you know someone like Milo yeah innopolis whose book be blurb or or James O'Keefe who I know early on you you paid some of his legal fees where's the line between what they're doing what Gawker is doing and say you know just generally i opening but politically incorrect speech but how do what's what's positive independent thinking what's bullying you know and what's you get what I'm saying sure well it's it's um I think you sort of know it when you see it and so that's you you have to sort of go that I do think that you know in a political context um there probably are there are a lot of kinds of things when when questions I don't know you should always go after after the people I think even politicians or in a human beings and there's there's some limit to what you should do to yeah politicians oppression go after their families and all sorts of terrible things that that happen in these contexts but but then there are all sorts of things where it's it's just sort of it's done for vicarious kicks and giggles for it for the audience and that's that's really bad and that's really bad that where there's no higher purpose at all and the the judgment I would have on on on Gawker was that it it might have portrayed itself as this you know fighter against convention or no sort of maybe maybe maybe in some ways a sort of a you know left-wing social justice warrior stuff like this it wasn't about that at all it was it was it was it was mostly just nihilistic attacks on people that's that's the center that's the that's the judgment call you did make so the the ideological intention has some impact on or justification for the tone and style and approach if something was ideological that that would actually see more sincere to me okay you know it's at least it's least motivated there's some higher reason you're doing it than just like tall poppy syndrome or yeah you don't you know I don't like he was a writer because you sold more books than I did and I'm gonna know I was out Zacchaeus list of 100 worst American writers several years ago quite proud of you presumably done better than the person put the list together I would think stuff so this is one of your first events in LA since you moved here I'm curious how much the move was motivated by trying to think independently gets outside of a bubble or do you just like the weather that's to LA and ants are not quite there yet but but I would say that I would say that you know Silicon Valley the the tech industry has you know is is certainly prone to its share of a bubble like thinking of mass insanity of one form or another and and you know there is a certain there's a judgement that I would make that you know there's again there's a part of it or it's the wisdom of crowds where it's just um network effect and everyone's in the same place everyone learns from everybody else that's sort of the positive spin and then the negative part is where it just becomes lemming-like you know behavior where everyone's imitating everyone else and and and this was in this was the dot-com bubble it was the clean tech bubble in the 2000s and and I think it's it's again gotten you know very far on that on that spectrum is certainly one of the and I don't this was a minor factor in this but if it was one that you know played why I supported President Trump in the election in 2016 and I had no idea what I was getting myself into and doing that in a Silicon Valley context where it was it was deemed to be you know completely unacceptable completely beyond the pale I thought it was you know the least contrarian thing I've ever done how can I be contrarian if half the country is on one side and then in the Silicon Valley context it felt like you know the most contrarian thing that I had done and and there is and you know the the the context is it's it's you know if you have and and the reason I think in politics is such a interesting tell of something being super unhealthy on these things is that in politics there's some point where when you get to a large enough lopsided thing something's gone wrong so we think 5149 democracy the 51% is more right 70/30 they're even more right when it's 99 to 1 we assume not that the 99% are totally right we assume here in North Korea ok and so and so again the the the thing that's problem at the the unanimity in Silicon Valley in being opposed to President Trump is is it's not because that's what people believe yeah it's it's you know there it's a liberal place it's not that liberal it's you know there are I had I had a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg you know the day before the election and was another 15,000 people at Facebook how many of these people do you think are gonna vote for President Trump tomorrow and I need to sort of thought about it for a second maybe maybe a thousand people and I said well that's that's a lot of people and then he said well it's not that many it's only six or seven percent it's a pretty liberal company so well that's still that's still a lot of people um and do you have any idea who they are and of course it looked like there was zero yeah and so and so I think the I think the the crazy part of the dynamic is when when you have this unanimity where you don't get views articulated at all that's right my judgment calls that always trib the election has sort of become true in many other aspects of of the technique of system where it's healthier the to look and from the outside then to be caught up in the mass insanity from the inside I remember I emailed you the day after the election I was sitting in the hospital my son had just been born he was watching the news not a good thing to do pretty depressing not being a Donald Trump supporter and and I said something to you about you know looks like another contrarian bet paid off and you said contrarian czar I think you were paraphrasing something with Jeff Bezos had said you know you said like contrarians are often wrong but when they're right they're very right and so I'm curious how how have you thought since you've made that bet and now we've got some time to look at the results how do you feel like it's going well it's been why I still I still support stress and trauma I'm not gonna I'm not gonna have some sort of you know conversion experience to support Bernie Sanders on stage here or something like that even though even though that be that kind of dramatic not gonna be that I'm not going to do that but I think it is let's see what you say about it it is it is it is um it's amazing to me how a polar ice things are and how and how you know how how people you know have not been able to come to terms with it you know I think I think I think one let me let me say let me say one thing about the tactics of the election it was a close election there were a lot of but 4x Hillary Clinton would have won so but for her rapist husband Hillary Clinton would have won but for but for on the Goldman Sachs speeches Hillary Clinton would have won yeah but for the ridiculous email server Hillary Clinton would have won now the the but for thesis that I like the month at I like to stress the most was but for the political correctness that caused people to lie to pollsters and therefore distort it the Hillary Clinton analysis of the election she would have been able to adjust her strategy and she would have won and and I think nobody inside the Hillary campaign was the things somebody needed to say was um you know hey look we're intimidating people like crazy they're not even telling the truth to pollsters and the polls apply not quite as good as they look and and they weren't able to have that that conversation but I think that and I think there was sort of this this this this this hidden energy who's not unclear how big it was and I had a conversation a week before the election at my house in San Francisco where I was a venture capital and prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist was a group has sort of center-right people and he said you know I'm um I am I'm voting for Trump next week but because I'm in Silicon Valley I'm lying about it and uh and then I think the question was how do you lie and so it was unusual it was unusual to be dishonest about lying right sort of unusual and then and then the way the way I lie is I tell people I'm voting for Gary Johnson the libertarian say could if you said you were voting for Hillary Clinton like your facial muscles wouldn't work it wouldn't work but you could say you could say that you were voting for Gary Johnson yeah and and then if you look what actually happened you know in the four weeks before the election on the Gary Johnson support went from something like 8 percent to 3 percent it all went to Trump and the general question you have to ask is how many of those people change their minds at the last minute versus were lying all along or worse or lying to themselves which is sort of the in-between version and and so I think the I think the political correctness was so toxic that people couldn't even get accurate polls and and that's that's like a extraordinary thing and in a way you know the first time that I thought that I thought President Trump had a good chance of winning was in March of 2016 when when the when Terry Bollea won the case against Gawker and again I was I was too obsessed with this case but the one-to-one mapping was you know you know Donald Trump is sort of like Hulk Hogan he sort of this unlikely hero who's you know it's taking on Hogan ran for president in the 90s but I did not yeah you know he's he's there there you know he Trump is taking on the media and then and then you know Hogan is is taking on the in Manhattan based terrorist organization known as Gawker and then and then you had and then you have the jury it was sort of like the voters and and Gawker did not you know they thought I know maybe it'll be bad maybe it'll be good but it was catastrophic and and you you know it's when you the day you get the jury verdict no it's it's it's sort of all over in our our in the closing arguments you know and we sort of asked for damages our lawyer asked asked the jury to give and it was a mr. Hart he felt this was the largest amount he could ask with a straight face and you know we'd like a hundred million dollars in damages for this for the sex tape and then after in a seven hours of deliberation the jury came back and awarded 115 million and so and so and and that was sort of when I thought you know sort of some I had these vaguely similar resident dynamics are working this whole country and it's possible it'll be as dramatic a surprise on you know on November 2016 as it as it was in that courthouse in Tampa I have one last quick political question then one final question that maybe we can look at some audience questions real briefly but did you think electing an outsider a controversial figure like Donald Trump of you know my alone can fix it did you think more would get done or are you surprised by sort of how stalemated or resistant things have been well I I thought that I did I did think that the the solutions for the problems in our country were no longer are no longer to be found within some sort of very narrow politically correct window that's sort of defined by maybe Hillary Clinton to Jeb Bush or something like that which was sort of what and and that the solutions were going to be somewhere outside the box I thought that and I'd met many of the other Republican politician candidates in 20 2015 2016 and you know Laden felt just like zombies I was just sort of you know it was just know nothing out of the box nothing dynamic and and I thought that yeah the first step was you needed you need someone to to identified various problems and talked about them and and you know we can we probably disagree about this but I think in all and also it's a very powerful I think President Trump has been has I make America great again that's like that's that's a shocking truth that you know the country's not as great as it used to be that's that's a shocking truth to be able to articulate on the first step to solving problems is to articulate them in ways that that that they they haven't been I think I think that's that that's you know that's been quite powerful so last question so there's it one of my favorite quotes from the book from you not from me is you said you said something this was around the time you were thinking it was an interview given that around the time you were sort of working on this this sort of Gawker conspiracy as I call it you were saying that most of the things you think about or you're working on it's not that people think that you're wrong it's that they're not even thinking about it so it's not even contrarian in the sense that it's a reaction it's just something people aren't even considering I wondered if it's over the last questions for me in terms of closing is there anything you're thinking about or that we're not thinking about or that you think people should be thinking more about oh boy that's that's tough without giving away any of your conspiracies I suppose wow that's that's that would be like that that would be like a whole but there are a lot of things like this so you know I think I don't think that no this is we could talk for hours about this stuff so it's not like you know I think there are sort of maybe this is like a different cut on the political correctness question so so the defense of political correctness is we don't have the answers we have the truth we don't need to ask questions anymore and and if you're asking questions you are an error and you're wasting time and you need to just get get with the program and so a certain amount of political correctness might make sense if we were at the end of history and we sort of knew we had all the right answers for for everything and the kind of question that's always worth asking is you know how much is that true versus how much is it the case that there are all sorts of things you know we don't understand I'm gonna go through you know the examples always make us you know it's like climate change is that something we can have a debate on or not and and if you think it's you know settle science then you're wasting time and it's not worth having debate if you think it's not then it's maybe very important to have a debate or maybe climate science is true but maybe methane is a worse carbon gas than carbon dioxide and problem is not with people driving cars but with any mistake it's maybe you think of their nuanced versions of this but but my general sense is that that on questions across the board we are more wrong than we think we're not asking the right questions the sort of are far more answers you know outside the box and that we need to find those answers if we're going to take our civilization to the next level so I think I think this is this is again why I would say that the that you know the our greatest political problem science is this problem of political correctness because I think we're very far from the end of history and there's there's sort of there's an awful lot of stuff that we need to try to figure out and do differently that's a little bit of abstract but that's that would that be that would be the motive the motivational thing that and that you can sort of do this you can do this you know and they're all these different things we can sort of do this and sort of think about what's going on do I have time for a couple audience questions or okay I don't know what that symbol needs [Applause] sorry these are these aren't these aren't great these are a little confusing um so so let's let's close on on that then so I guess your your your point is sorry guys your point is that they're the the big questions of our time still need exploration and thinking and that perhaps you're sort of contrarian viewer the thing you believe that other people don't believe is that we need to continue to sort of question these that we take too much for granted or assume as a settle than that issue right I mean this is you can say this like the educational version the question is always the question is how much education is just brainwashing and or does one's real education begin when you you realize how crazy your education was or something like that and that's that's that's sort of a a perspective I would I would have very strongly and and then and then I think the the sort of the the sort of consensus you know center-left establishment view in this country is know we have all the answers everything's set and you know maybe maybe there's some things that are super esoteric that you can still explore so maybe we can figure out like some some permutation of string theory or in if you study for twenty years you get to work on some small little problem that hasn't been figured out but I think there are there are a lot of big questions that are very open and there's sort of very much in plain sight that's a great place to end thank you very much awesome [Applause] you

Channel: Reagan Foundation

Views: 35,244

Keywords: Ronald Reagan, President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, First Lady, POTUS, FLOTUS, Peter Thiel, Ryan Holiday, PayPal, Gawker

Id: rVBRUyQya8Y

Length: 65min 37sec (3937 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018