Cardinal Conversations: Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel on "Technology and Politics"

welcome good evening I'm purses drell the Provost of Stanford University and I am here on behalf of myself and president Tessier Levine to welcome you to Cardinal conversations last fall mark and I asked several University thought leaders in conjunction with student leaders to organize a series of discussions we ask that these discussions advance to commitments at the heart of Stanford's research and education mission our commitment to the free expression of ideas and our commitment to fostering an inclusive campus culture the students and thought leaders were asked to decide the format of the events the discussion topics and the guest speakers and in just a few moments you will see their collaboration fair fruit so tonight I'm pleased to welcome you to the first event in this new discussion series the initiative is very important to both me and to mark so important that we're actually doing a balancing act to participate I normally teach a physics class from 6:30 to 8:30 on Wednesday night mark is currently teaching my physics class for me he's undergraduate physics degree so I can inaugurate the series after my remarks I will return to my classroom and Mark will join you for the conversation in a few minutes Mike McFaul the head of Freeman spogli Institute will describe how he and Neil Ferguson of Hoover convened a group of students and work together with them to initiate this series and he'll describe their plans moving forward then Neil will moderate a discussion on the topic of technology and politics between well-known entrepreneurs and Stanford alumni Reid Hoffman and Peter teal so I have to start by thanking Mike Neil and the student leaders from a broad range of organizations across the political spectrum for putting together the series and I have to thank Reid and Peter of course for agreeing to be our first Cardinal conversations participants and I know everyone here is eager to hear their thoughts the goal of Cardinal conversations is to courage the free expression of diverse viewpoints to stimulate critical thinking by considering opinions beyond our own and to engage in civil and intellectually rigorous conversation so why is this initiative such an important priority for mark and myself well first we believe that in both research and education breakthroughs and understanding come not from considering familiar limited ranges of ideas but from considering a broad range of ideas including those we might find objectionable and engaging in rigorous testing of them through analysis conversations and debate second our strengths at Stanford derives from our diversity diversity of backgrounds religions nationalities races genders sexual identities ages physical abilities political views and ways of thinking we are only successful as an intellectual community when our discussion benefits from the entire range of diverse perspectives present on our campus and finally we feel it's the responsibility of all of us not just that we ensure that the expression of a diversity of views is not just a possibility but we also work to make it a reality at Stanford both in the classroom and outside of it and one way to do that is to ensure that diverse perspectives are actually discussed at Stanford so it is in this spirit that tonight's conversation we hope the carnival's conversations to come will help open all of our minds to diverse opinions and that we will all commit to intellectually rigorous and respectful dialogue across differences whether in the classroom in the dorm or in social media whether as a student a scholar or a citizen of the world as you are all aware we cannot mandate respectful disagreement but we can model it and we can encourage it and I thank you all for being here tonight as ambassadors of that cause thank you very much and I would now like Mike McFaul to come up and make some remarks thank you hey everybody thanks for coming I'm Mike McFaul I'm the director of the Freeman spogli Institute professor political science and senior fellow here at the Hoover Institution it's fantastic to see so many people here tonight I you call it thought leaders as Provost draw I don't know if I'm a thought leader but I am a professor and I am an adviser to Cardinal conversations and it's a real thrill and privilege to do that I want to say three points to add to what our Provost just said first I want to congratulate the students and the faculty members for the idea for this program and to thank president Tessier Levine and provost drell from bracing and supporting this novel idea we have thousands of speakers at Stanford all the time sometimes I feel like all I do is provide entertainment for people over at FSI and sometimes here at Hoover we have secretaries of state we have national security advisors in my field I work on international security we have ambassadors we have senators we've had presidential candidates she came twice actually to Stanford and we've had presidents president george w bush has been here twice just in the last couple of years and president obama has been here twice in the last couple of years in fact I'm working on bringing him for a third time imagine Obama unhinged but he promised me let's see if he holds true on that but there's something significantly different two things significantly different about what we're trying to do here tonight first in a somewhat dangerous experiment we are pairing speakers together not just giving them a podium alone and not just giving a podium with a safe into la Couture like I have done with some of those other people we have Neil Ferguson today to moderate and second students are at the forefront of what we're doing here at least as far as I'm concerned considering the topics the speakers and also the participation it is fantastic to see much so many students in this room today probably more students are in this room today than ever before that's exactly what we want second point Cardinal conversation is an experiment in the vernacular of tonight it's a start out as such it's an imperfect product and we want to improve it in the future I'm excited about some of the speakers we've lined up already and Appelbaum christina summers Cornel West he just confirmed Wendy Sherman fareed zakaria and many others but as we move forward we want to increase the diversity of speakers perspectives and topics including in the fall from my point of view more attention to foreign policy and international issues and then third and finally the best way to increase that diversity is to have more of you involved in that both faculty members here tonight but also more students so I encourage you to send us your ideas I encourage you to join our little committee I encourage you to be engaged and help to form Cardinal conversation as we move forward it's a pretty good product right now but it's gonna be better if you engage with us but if you're gonna launch a product I've been told sitting in the back with some folks who have done that and in ways that I have not you should start with a big bang you should start with a fantastic program and that's exactly what we have tonight so let me now turn it over to my colleague Neil Ferguson and introduce our fantastic conversationalist and get this program started thank you all for coming [Applause] the wind of freedom blows Stanford's motto des lucify outlaid it's on the tree or above the tree in the university's seal and I think Cardinal conversations is all about letting that wind of freedom blow in establishing this series of conversations to affirm this University's commitment to free speech we that's Mike McFaul and myself along with the eight member students steering committee we're all agreed that we wanted high-profile public intellectuals not politicians and not professional provocateurs tonight as we launched Cardinal conversations we're extraordinary fortunate to have two of Stanford's most successful alumni ever but both men are public intellectuals only as a hobby which is rather annoying for those of us who do it for a living but because their day jobs as you probably are aware our being technology entrepreneurs and investors I'm not sure they need an introduction to this audience but I'll do it anyway Reid Hoffman on my left and your right is the co-founder of LinkedIn the professional network that you will be on if you're not already and a partner at Greylock partners he's currently on the boards of Airbnb modo convoy block stream I could go on Mozilla Corporation he's also the host of masters of scale a podcast series which I highly recommend and which actually gave me the idea for this opening event it's it's a really extraordinarily good introduction to the world of technology entrepreneurship and he's got a book coming out and not his first because there's already the startup of you and the Alliance the new book focuses on what Reed calls blitz scaling based on the Stanford course that went by that name he has in addition the master's degree in philosophy from Oxford mild University where he was a Marshall scholar but here he was a major he has a bachelor's degree with distinction in symbolic systems on my right and your left Peter Thiel started PayPal along with reap they were once on the same team back in the 1990s Peter led PayPal as chief executive officer took it public in 2002 in 2004 as you doubtless know from the movie The Social Network he made the first outside investment and little Harvard company called Facebook he's still a director of that company that same year he launched Palantir technologies he's a fount for a partner at founders fund which is the venture capital firm that funded such companies as SpaceX and Airbnb Peter also started the teal fellowship which encourages young people like many of you to put as he says learning before schooling he's another author which is maddening to those of us who only write books his book zero to one notes on startups was a New York Times bestseller and it too started life as a Stanford course so actually the only person you'll see tonight on this stage who has not taught a course at Stanford here he studied philosophy and law as an undergraduate he founded the still running Stanford Review gentlemen we're here to talk about technology and politics and I want to ask it kind of simple opening question to you both let me start with you reading what do you think the lessons are of 2016 for Silicon Valley so Slocum Valley generally looks at politics and the political sphere as a kind of a rugby scrum that moves very slowly doesn't actually engage coherent view of the future and usually figures out how do we build technologies and technology companies that have huge leverage effects and so I think broadly speaking Silicon Valley's you know general you the kind of engagement with politics is say well you know just kind of keep a friendly relationship while we go out and build the future and I think that the shock and the the fact that we were definitely as a area out of touch with the with what was going on as was shocked is like cycle action in fact if you get to a movement that wants to enshrine the past against the future that has actually in fact a set of areas where there's a lot of pain being felt whether its economic futures opioid epidemics and other kinds of things that says look there were not we're not convinced that this future is going to be good for us or our children and so one of the things I think broadly what Silicon Valley learned was oh we need to focus on that now in addition to the future I think part of that is also a shift from challenger to incumbent which is you know part of how the competition amongst companies and technologies and startups because there's you know thousands of startups it's so fierce that there's this this focus on just like okay I'm young I'm small I'm building and that includes all the way to what our current giants whether it's Facebook Google etc they still feel like you know if you look at businesses letters you know kind of day one you know kind of things that shift from what we're building something new and we're on that path to actually in fact we are part of the medium we are actually in fact part of what's fundamental to how information flows in society and that changes a sense of responsibilities and so you know one of the things I've been saying over the last year has been that we need to kind of get to spider-man ethics which is with power comes responsibility we're now in a position where we have the incumbency and power and we need to step up to that responsibility and we need to figure out what that right dialogue is for what is a society that we all want so that in terms of inventing the future there's a conversation about it I think that's broadly you know what I think the valley has learned there's you know different differential levels along that curve there's differential levels of response but I think it's that sense of oh we were out of touch and with the now and we need to do that as well while continuing to try to build the future so get in the course of this conversation to what that great responsibility might look like now that you guys have realized you have great power but let me let me turn to Peter you were played a prominent role more prominent than read in 2016 looking back on it what what do you think the significance of the political events of that year have been for Silicon Valley do you buy read story that there's been a kind of shock awakening that there are forces out there that don't want the future Silicon Valley's building well I agree part in part but I said I suppose my impression that if you define lessons learned as places where people have actually changed their minds there were very few lessons learned because I think people in Silicon Valley didn't change their minds on very many substantive things at all the the sort of the way I'd slightly reframe the question Reid posed is is how should we think about the nature of technological and scientific progress and how it is happening and there are a lot of different ways to describe this but I would suggest you can have sort of a basic tripartite division that part of it is accelerating which is the sort of official Silicon Valley that's the Google propaganda technology is accelerating it's going faster science is great it's making it's progressing at a you know incredible pace there's an inequality version which you know we're you know it's it's leading to sort of a more unequal world and but then there's also a stagnation version which is that the future isn't happening at all and and I think there's some truth to all three too you know acceleration inequality and stagnation but I think the the stagnation issue question is one that we don't think enough about in Silicon Valley where we tend to have this debate that's a narrow debate between inequality and acceleration and and the way you know the way I would describe what's been happening is that we've had sort of a narrow cone of of progress around computers IT the internet the world of bets the world of atoms has seen much less progress and so when you know when we were undergraduates at Stanford in the in the late 80s you know the the one good field to study would have been computer science just about all the engineering fields that people studied at the time were bad fields who didn't want to major in electrical engineering you know aerospace was catastrophic I mean nothing already by then people figure out not to do nuclear engineering and you go down down the list and that we were in a world where there was not that much progress in the world of atoms only in the world of bits and that this sort of stagnation which runs very much counter to this you know official propaganda of acceleration that dominates Silicon Valley it's reflected in stagnant wages it's reflected in the ways in which the millennial generation has lower expectation it's than their baby boomer parents and and I think this is a you know this is a very big big part of the the story we need to talk about and had you know even even if you think about more local politics like the state of California it's close to bankrupt as a state and and so it's amazing that we have this incredible tech thing going on in Silicon Valley and if you go east of it just to the East Bay across the Bay Bridge or the Dumbarton bridge you're in this you know in this basically failing this failing state that you know in the next recession probably will go broke and so that there's sort of a question how to how to scale this I do think that you know on the rough political mapping I would give on this tripartite division is you know the the centrist establishment this country is acceleration estoy be clinton that would be you know the Bush family that you know Obama was broadly in that camp there's sort of a non establishment left that would be which was the Sanders line and then and then you know the non-establishment right which Trump represented was the things that that's stagnation so make America great again is very offensive to Silicon Valley because you're telling people in Silicon Valley that you're not that the future is not progressing and then and then the substantive question that I think it would be good for us to find a way to discuss more is is the fast is the future progressing you know is it progressing in a in a positive direction how much this is really happening and it doesn't show up in the macroeconomic data it doesn't show up in the productivity numbers and that's I think that's I think sort of one of the one of the kinds of things that that you know we need to engage more you know I but I by the way tyonna echo with the wood you know all the speakers at the beginning said about the importance of having these debates and conversations I think that I think there's always you know a tendency for us to reduce the other side to a caricature of itself and there's of course a way this can get done a lot in US politics at this time we sort of strawman the arguments you you pick out the weakest point you make fun of that and what I what I think we should always try to do is is find ways to to steal man the arguments I was the opposite of straw man we should take the arguments of our opponents and try to make them given the strongest construction possible so we understand them as well as we possibly can and I think you know the left will be able to win again at some point but it has to start by by steel Manning what's something like make America great again means what it means in terms of this question about stagnation and it has to have arguments that are more than just telling Trump's voters to you know hurry up and die what did you say about characterizing things in essential both saying that Silicon Valley had got detached from that part of the country the voted for Trump and in your characterization Peter that's that's where the stagnation was happening where the acceleration was simply not perceptible and I think in the same way your your identification of a part of the country that wasn't interested in Silicon Valley's futures the same the same way of making a similar point it's only a few years ago that people in Silicon Valley seemed very confident about what they were doing for politics I'm gonna quote from a book that Eric Schmidt wrote with Jared Cohen just a few years ago the new digital age current network technology they wrote truly favors the citizens in an article in 2010 they predicted quite accurately with respect to North Africa in the Middle East that authoritarian governments would be caught off guard when large numbers of their citizens armed with virtually nothing but cell phones took to the streets so glad confident morning back then said the Internet is good for democracy somehow that story seems less plausible in 2018 so how do we think about the politics of a networked world when some authoritarian regimes seem to know exactly how to use these tools Reid so I think that the the optimism comes from people who say well if you don't count bad actors you don't count the attempt to interfere with other folks and you say we have this empowerment of individuals that goes across the fact that you have a mini-computer you have access to information you can learn things you can communicate with a wide variety of people those are all the things that Eric and Jared we're talking about they're still definitely true but you have to part of moving from challenger to incumbent is when you begin to have a the medium of communication the medium of transaction the medium of interaction the medium of political decision then that becomes something where in the contest of of human tribes that then becomes manipulable corruptible you know game a bull in various ways and by the way entrepreneurs do it too like they figure out how to game you know you know kind of virality and other kinds of things this is the is not actually in fact completely new what's new is that the scale is now at kind of the realpolitik and the politic of Nations and you know a microcosm of that could be the Peter Gabriel witness thing which used to distribute video cameras to say film Human Rights atrocities because bringing those films then sheds you know some light to them and now of course what you have is you have authoritarian regimes looking at social media as to say who was at the protest to try to track down them and their family which is a you know kind of an alternative way and a way of doing that I think that the general problem with many people's reactions and they say well there was a fault of technology like we can't really discern truth amongst the fake news we can have the Russians not doing cyber hacking but by doing essentially social meme hacking and that that is a problem and that you should roll back and actually the usual answer is roll forward the usual answer is we should figure out what to do about that and we should evolve the system in the right way and so I remain you know kind of optimistic but not utopian and in the technological possibilities but what it means is you have to look when you think about it is just as like example when we got PayPal to a certain size you have to start thinking that there's criminals using it and other things and then you have to start building against that as part of what you're doing and I think that's part of what's happening with information flows trust it's it's it's influence within kind of a democratic political system let me just follow up on on that point because you mentioned the fake news issue which is very much in people's minds also the Russian role your forthcoming book a blitz-scaling on my reading says these are fixable problems but we have to go forward we can't hire an army of fact-checkers yes or superannuated newspaper editors talk a little bit about how you do that fixing how you imagine that that working well so part of I mean that part of what you can do so people imagine that you can do an AI to do truth tale checking that's I think a way is off I think that's fictional however what you can do is you can do for example because we already do this with credit systems PayPal cetera you can do identity checking you can do things that have a way of saying okay is this information like you can have example a in information registry say these are sources of information that have signed up for journalistic accountability like I can be questioned or or attacked on not fact-checking because I don't think there is such a thing as alternative facts and those those kind of things can actually be baked into the platform it's not so much as X is true as much as like what is the a better source of identity and provenance of the information and what where do you go to cross-check or to say is someone standing up for this and saying this is really true and I followed a journalistic process for and I think you can see more of that kind of thing and by the way you already see some of this in like for example what happens in search quality results like part of the whole emphasis on search quality is to say this is actually accurate information against this query and you're essentially trying to bring that kind of thing to looking at information across these platforms Peter let me put this question in a slightly different way to you has has the internet have the network platforms altered the nature of politics itself in other words are we still going to be having left-right debates like you were having as undergraduates I was having as an undergraduate in the 1980s or is there going to be a different kind of politics it is going to be a forit aryan versus democratic is it going to be establishment versus populist growth believers versus stagnation ists how do you think about the the new terminology even of politics it's always hard to say because the I think these technologies don't naturally always map in a very precise way and so making predictions was a treacherous business for Eric Schmidt and it's probably also somewhat treacherous business for us today and in 2018 you know one that one access that I am struck by sort of the central versus decentralization axis and so I think read you just represented the centralization thing where it's all everything happens in one place and then it has to sort of get curated in just the right way so that you know you you have a you know you have a good debate but within the proper limits within the right proper limits and and that's that's the sort of question that happens in a massively centralized context in a more decentralized context that that would perhaps not not happen in quite the same way so for example you know one of the two of the areas of tech that the people are very excited about Silicon Valley today are crypto on the one hand and AI on the other and even though I think these things are under determined I do think these two map you know in a way politically very tightly on this centralization decentralization thing Kryptos decentralizing AI is centralizing or if you want to frame it you know more ideologically you could say that crypto is libertarian and AI is communist and of course we always hear only the first half because we're biased to the left but but you know AI is communist in the sense that's about big data it's about big government's controlling all the data knowing more about you than you know about yourself so baroque rat and Moscow could in fact set the prices of potatoes in a Leningrad and hold you know the whole system together and you know if you look at the you know Chinese Communist Party it loves AI and hates crypto so it actually gonna actually fits pretty closely on that level and I think that's that's sort of a that's a purely technological version of this debate and and I do think so you know I think I think there probably are ways that AI could be libertarian and there are ways that crypto could be communist but I I think that's harder to do if all the cryptocurrencies are mined in China and Russia that might think there's trying to stop even that at this point can I follow up on the implications of that because I guess in Reed's world of not necessarily AI but some some authority authenticating or validating what is good news but there are authorities that will give the good seal of the seed of Good Housekeeping approval for some sources whereas a new more libertarian model presumably through some blockchain decentralized architecture we'll be able to differentiate the fake from the true what's always well in an in a centralized world the question emerges and a decentralized one it doesn't emerge as well so so yeah of course the the larger platform companies have you have a challenge along the lines that Reid describes and is you know it's uh it's I would describe it as a two-front war that they have to fight they have to fight on the one hand you know against hate speech fake news you know that whole ensemble of things and then they have to also fight against the people who want to limit speech in a overly narrow speech in the name of fighting fake news and because it's a two-front war it's much more complicated than than just fighting on one front can we talk a little bit in the decentralized world it's much harder to set up kind of like you know it's an interesting thing to say it's libertarian versus communist you could say it's libertarian versus rule of law right it's much harder to set up kind of a yes exactly yes so it's it's actually much harder in the decentralized system to set up rules and norms like for example one of the things that's massive problem in the crypt of community right now is it makes gamergate look you know relatively tame in its in the way that it treats women in terms of public discourse and so forth so there's a whole bunch of problems that need to be fixed over there that are much harder to fix in that arena now that being said we're both we both think that the invention of cryptocurrency is a important kind of innovation alongside the internet for allowing a bunch of apps to be developed within the kind of the Internet of money the internet value as a way of doing it so it's neither of us are are negative on cryptocurrency or at least not negative the same way but but that's one of the virtues of the kind of the rule law systems well but but this is always like you could say I would say AI is a much more transparent world and then the quest but the centralized world is more transparent and then the question you could always ask is what's the opposite of transparency is it criminality or is it privacy and you know from the point of view of a centralized state the opposite you know yes it's always you know why do you want to have secrets why do we not know who you are and what you're doing why do you need privacy if you're doing everything if you're behaving yourself perfectly you have nothing to hide and so but and you're a criminal not only a criminal doesn't want to have transparency but I think it can really cut both ways I want to come back to this issue of the relationship between China and particular and big data company because I think it's a hugely important one before we get there let's talk a bit about inequality which popped up at the beginning of our discussion but is is I think pretty central to what Silicon Valley's doing perhaps unintentionally and you know even if one just looks at the case of crypto it looks like another case of the smart people who thought of it first become spectacularly wealthy and then the suckers like me who arrived late to the game having ignored their teenage sons right the way through the bubble and by at the top get crushed the stock market yeah well we this is existent before but it's what's striking to me about about Silicon Valley's economics is the winner takes all and you put make this point in blitzscaling as indeed Peter you do in your book zero to one that's great for the winner and you can see the winners in this neck of the woods and their Tesla's but is there not a sense in which from the losers vantage point this is deeply alienating and it just seems as if each new innovation is a fast-track to wealth for a bunch of smart young well-educated insiders and everybody else is just a user handing over their data for free well what I would say is a couple things so one is well it's not handing over their data for free so frequently that comment it's like well does Google done for me well provided search for example right you know free information free access to a whole bunch of videos a bunch of other things so you know apps I mean as a ton of service like what are they done for me is like well that's what the data exchange that Monty Python the sketch what did yes Romans other than roads are education and so glad we've got the Google Roman Empire analogy lovers for there so I think that the but the inequality problem yeah but the unintended consequence of all this innovation seems to be to amplify an inequality that was already quite advanced in the 1990s and it's only got worse and a large part of what's driving it is these extraordinary roots credible returns to to the blitzscale as the winners well so I think that there's always in most times in human history you're the historian there has been a fairly large divergence and wealth whether it's financial systems whether it's you know aristocracy and landowners and so forth and there's no you know that is actually in tech broadly a feature of human society not a not a bug and not know so he knew I think what's a feature of the current thing is like for example you're mentioning cryptocurrency is something that Silicon Valley is getting wealthy off of actually in fact I think cryptocurrency most the people were getting wealthy auto outside of Silicon Valley cryptocurrency was most adopted and there's a couple of good companies here but like the general range of mining cryptocurrency of early trading in it like it took a couple years for Silicon Valley to realize cryptocurrency was happening it was one of those things that was more like the person I refer to as patient zero for Bitcoin in Silicon Valley is an Argentinian entre named wences Casares who is right now down in Patagonia but you know he generally lives in Woodside not you know too far from here and and so I actually think that the the notion that that the incentive is for the creation of the new thing the thing that actually in fact could have a global impact and that the benefit of that global impact going to some individuals is not necessarily a bad thing I think that the important thing is to make sure that the bulk of people are having a sense of meaning and progress in their lives and include and one of the things that an over focus on in comes this is a little bit of like for example what were Peters making the stagnation point is is not paying sufficient attention to well what happens when we get like free encyclopedias for everyone and and free learning materials for everyone and and and free entertainment for everyone and a bunch of other things that all come about with kind of quality of life and the only measure of human progress is not what is relatively arcane GDP measure but also various kind of quality of life measures and I think that those things are coming about for it and what you would I think feel justly saying is if well this person created cryptocurrency or these set of people create a cryptocurrency and made a bunch of money and everyone else is losing if there aren't other paths forward to winning then that would be a problem I actually think one of the good things is is if if I were to make a prediction I think I'd say that five to ten years from now there will be at least 50% as many additional big tech companies and so forth they won't be shrinking it will be growing in terms of the number of different options and where they fit in the world in life and what I would want to see from those is more ability because like for example a centralized platform is a good thing if it's creating generativity if it allows a lot of people like for example you take Airbnb or you take eBay you say actually in fact I can add to my income I can be a micro entrepreneur on this platform I can make more things happen I think we want to see more of those to enable more of more people to say well I don't have to be a coder I don't have to be a tech entrepreneur and I can still make progress in my life and I think that's the thing that we need to be more focused on as we figure out okay how to be inclusive do you think convention economics actually underestimation the benefits of the internet you find that let me just respond to this inequality thing first right I I don't I don't think I think we should maybe start by talking a little bit about where the inequality is actually experienced and let you know Silicon Valley's in some ways a very unequal place when people leave Silicon Valley it's not because there are no economic opportunities it's because the real estate costs too much and you know there's some studies I've seen where almost the entire increase in inequality in the last 20 or 30 years is simply increase in inequality of land ownership you know if you were a Stanford graduate 50 years ago you worked got a job at hewlett-packard you could have gotten you know three bedrooms starter home as a 22 year old in Palo Alto and so you know in a way this is this is sort of this is how the stagnation manifests itself in you know in land prices as a venture capitalist I often think that almost all the venture capital money I'm investing is going to you know urban slum Lords in the form of you know incredibly onerous commercial leases and of course the perrolli high salaries you have to pay people in Silicon Valley which they have to then pay to rent to all their their landlords and this is you know this is maybe maybe this is loosely linked to tech because we're a networked economy and it's it's very hard to do things outside of Silicon Valley and network cities like New York City or London for finance but but I think that's sort of where the problem is and then the you and then the the remedy in my mind would be would be that you know seriously think about changing zoning laws or things like that there's a there's an economist I always like to refer to in the late 19th century Henry George who had this there was a theorem that I think Stiglitz actually proved about a hundred years later the Henry George theorem which says that in a in a certain kind of urban area where not enough new things can be built all the value gets captured by landlords and so you know Reid saying you know you're saying the value gets captured by a few tech entrepreneurs risa it's this consumer surplus that gets captured by everybody and I think the question we have to ask is perhaps perhaps a great deal of it was actually just captured by by landlords they're not the people who get you know I put on the front pages of magazines but but that's sort of that's that's the way in which inequality is extremely profound and I think I think if you solve the zoning problem I don't think people would have problems with some people making more money than others in crypto or at Google or anything like that you know it's just it's just the line use problem I suppose I'm struggling a bit to believe that there are somewhere hidden in these neighborhoods landlords making more money from rents than you guys are collecting collected less but collectively it's much more distributed but yeah it's it's it's it's been a phenominal bull market in in in in in in in the land price you know Mike my parents uh you know got a home in Foster City when just north of here for $120,000 in nineteen seventy eight today it's worth two and a half million and and you know if you if you were in the older generation in the US and you got a house in a major urban center you're able to retire if you didn't you weren't able to save for your retirement so it and then if you're a young person it's almost impossible to even get started it was a pupil of Henry George who came up if memory serves with the game Monopoly and I can't resist asking you both about monopoly since there's a sense in which your books in their different ways of celebrations of Monopoly and conventional economics said that the monopoly wasn't a good thing and certainly would tend to be to rent-seeking by the owners of the monopolies can you defend these winner-take-all type companies which blitz-scaling produces is this just inherent in the nature of the business that there will be if not monopolies then things that are very like them yeah I mean frequently we refer to them as winner takes most businesses versus all but you know this is and when people talk about network effects that's that's the kind of thing that they're talking about this is a yes as a point way of putting it it's a you know Peter thinks it's a classically deceptive way of putting it which is the reason I hate in zero to one and try to call it out as you know no this is actually just a monopoly i think the key question is what happens if there is a centralization of a platform is about a lot of virtues and centralization zuv platforms they can create enormous generativity they can create like a lot of like for example you have a platform iOS android can create a lot of apps on top of it you have an open platform like the internet you have any huge amount of productivity those kinds of things I think are very valuable to have those platforms and platforms are more about we'll the broader base they are in terms of your ability to build businesses on them which customers have communications do transactions etc it's part of the reason why there's only a few you know relatively few like credit cards and so forth because once they're processing like the the thing as well should I accept this random new card or should I accept a Visa or MasterCard well I'll take Visa MasterCard just easier and it makes the whole system run more efficiently the key thing you have to look at is does it accelerate the right kind of opportunities and futures and innovation and build towards the future or does it lock away the future so the classic concern that people have around monopolies is that they try to enshrine the past versus the future and so they go okay I just couldn't collect run so I'm not going to invent anything because I can I can sit on my monopoly in order to collect the rents that's obviously a problem that's obviously bad that's the kind of thing you need to act against now Peter and I've actually been on stage before talking about monopoly with zero to one in his book and you know part of actually in fact if they're actually in contention even if they're very profitable and they're actually reinvesting their profits in order to compete with each other and try to bring products and services to the world frequently in the in the modern cases free products and services you know that's not clear that that isn't actually in fact a substantial social benefit in terms of how that's playing out and that's the reason why I like part of what I look at and I say well what way should we be trying as technologists and inventors of the future is say well make paths by which people can not just find information or communicate or find entertainment or find education but also make things by which people can create work for themselves create economic opportunity that's part of the reason I you know airy and be and eBay it's kind of simple examples of these kinds of things and he said well there's a marketplace marketplace have natural network effects they tend to be dominant that's where trading happens well that's okay if you're actually enabling a lot of business in creation on top of it may even be good before we get to you Peter I want to just point out to the audience that we'll be taking questions from you but this being close to Silicon Valley we won't be doing it in some kind of old-school way with microphones or bits of paper god forbid no we'll be using a slide oh and you'll be with the aid of your electronic device isn't too bad if you didn't bring one able to put on your questions via slide Oh they will then be moderated by our undergraduate committee and I'll I'll get the winners and that's how we're going to do Q&A tonight and telling you this now so that you have time to follow the instructions which I hope have now appeared above us and and and figure out how to get online to slide oh and pose a question I hope this works because if it doesn't then we will have to use scraps of paper and it will be a great embarrassment certainly for me Peter well while everybody's figuring out slide oh and preparing devastating questions the conventional response to any mention of monopoly was always antitrust and I guess to somebody who was at the law school here you're the right person to ask is this is this coming eventually let's assume fast forward there's some swing to the left and American politics maybe the next populist is is Bernie Sanders does antitrust finally show up in Silicon Valley and say you naughty monopolies have to be broken up will it be like Standard Oil well antitrust is always a an extremely you know big crazy weapon and it's sort of very unclear you know when that gets when that gets used in different contexts you know that by the way I'm not simply Pro monopoly gonna be very clear on that the distinction I always make is between dynamic monopolies where people invent things and that's where we also protect those in our society we protect those with patent copyright laws and so if you have a dynamic monopoly that's good static monopoly that's more like a rent EA like a landlord or a you know maybe a troll collecting attacks the bridge or something like that those are those are more problematic and the the question is what kinds monopolies do we want to actually encourage as that our serve analogous type II and which ones are more static and problematic and that are the subdue bankers and that's sort of a that's why it's a complicated question because there are in fact good monopolies and bad monopolies the way that allows I say that the more you know the more general question is just you know how much of a you know how much regulation is coming towards towards the tech companies in Silicon Valley this is again sort of somewhat hard hard to predict my um the thing that I'm struck by is how and that I worry about is how how poorly the big tech companies are playing the sort of political game that they're they're supposed to supposed to play and you know we had in 2008 we had a you know we had an enormous financial crisis that you know where I think the banks are still worse actors than the the tech companies and the banks got relatively light regulation after 2008 because they they were sort of bipartisan they backed both parties and the sort of thing that maybe he's idealistic or maybe stupid or maybe just wrong is that Silicon Valley is a one-party state it's it's all in on one party and that's when you get in trouble politically in our society when you're all on one side the other side doesn't care for you and your side doesn't care if you either at the end of the day because they don't need to and and so the thing you know you said that the regulation will come from the left it may well come from the Republicans at this point they may start with the Republicans not you're really in trouble when the Republicans want to regulate you how might they do that because I can't imagine Republicans doing a began to trust action well it's you know there are sort of a lot of I'm not gonna try to give them ideas but but there we go but it could you know it can you're really in trouble when you get conservative Republicans and Liberal Democrats to agree and the the the worry I have is that the response the one-party culture of Silicon Valley is you know we'll never get you versus we don't really we have you anyway so we don't need it and both parties end up end up coming after you I drink they expand on this a little bit because actually one of the mistakes I think is made a lot and thinking about this is we are moving from a u.s. hyper polar and and so everything that is this discussed here is presumes that the US is the world and everything else is a shadow and so I actually think we are already in a place where really what you're seeing with monopoly antitrust and so forth is actually a return to competition from nation-states so it's part of the reason why you know the Europeans kind of blend some legitimate social concerns together with the we're not happy with the fact that we don't have as strong a tech industry as we'd like so we'd like to impose some regulation and they really focus on Silicon Valley not realizing that China is coming along you know kind of full steam and I don't think China is going to dismantle its monopolies because I think it understands that actually in fact creation of industries of the future is really important and so I think that the interesting question that is people say well we should slow down we should enshrine in the past you know I'm quite certain here I'll engage since Peter already took a shot at the left you know and quite certain that we'll want coal mining jobs back in in in great profusion and quantity because it's the right work in history in the future for us and so you know basically I think that the the question is you have to say look what is the industries of the future we want to be there and part of it and and the the because it's political fighting and infighting that's precisely where you begin to see you know the decay of wrong it's like nothing else matters it's only fighting within so it's like okay we're we're Republicans we think the tech industry is is progressive and not for us so we're gonna go regulate them and that's gonna be you know not an America first policy that's gonna be an America last policy so I'm starting to get questions through slider I'm truly to say that it's working and I can't help going to one of them now because it sort of it fits in with the conv we've had so far Randi asks you've agreed more than disagreed what is something you strongly disagree about and I'm guessing from what's being said at the moment that this administration might be the answer to that question well I did actually in fact create a card game I was hoping you have a card called trumped-up cards which is a model on cards against humanity' and just for entertainment value one of the cards in that deck I give Peter one of the very first decks is Peter teal is as actually in fact one of the cards on the deck so there there would be one more of the more humorous areas pizza so America first could end up being America last if Republicans just go after Silicon Valley out of sheer political spite it's not a plausible scenario in your view well there are there are a lot of ways the Trump administration could get things wrong and you know the you know there's a lot that's of course very broken in Washington DC generally and so I think it's a mistake just to blame on any any sort of one one person on I I would say that that I do do you always think that there are some very real problems the Trump has pointed to that we should take more seriously you know the one that that you know sort of from an elite point of views is the craziest is that you should be more restriction astonied that always seems like a no really crazy view that Trump hasn't and it's not clear the restriction this is a good idea on the other hand there's obviously something you know deeply screwed up in the trade relations you know in a in a in a globalizing healthfully globalizing world the capital should flow from the developed to the developing world because you have higher growth rates in the developing countries in the developed world that's sort of the convergence theory of globalization this was the UK in nineteen hundred had a current account surplus four percent of GDP and the money flowed out if you look at our world planet from outer space the money is flowing the wrong way is flowing from a fast-growing China to a slow growing us or you say poor peasants in China are saving money to invest in the US and it's because in that it's because that's that's just the other side of these incredible trade deficits and and so you know if you believe in globalization we should have trade surpluses and and that tells you there's something wrong with the trade arrangements now you know it doesn't necessarily mean that that you want to be protectionist or that you want to create national champion companies or anything like that but it is at least a question that that one should should raise very hard about you know is there something wrong with the us-china relationship when the only thing they seem to want from us are McDonald's hamburgers well then you can blame that on us because we're not building anything and you can blame it on China it's at least a question we should be asking let me follow up on China does Ravi's asks what does the rise of China mean for the future of Silicon Valley and technology more generally you alluded to it talk a bit more about this to me this is the fascinating thing Europeans blew this they're nowhere they don't really have any any major technology companies the Chinese perhaps as much by accident as but by design kept the US technology companies at Bain allowed their own so-called bat companies Baidu Alibaba 10 Center to flourish and now these are the real rivals for the Silicon Valley companies and yet their relationship with governments completely different from the relationship that we've been talking about in the United States it's far from the hostile relationship that we see between Silicon Valley and Washington today their hand in glove so talk a little bit about what you think China's success in technology means for silicon valley's is the future perhaps there rather than here well it's it's badly underestimated in Silicon Valley and I do think I do think Alibaba intense and in particular in particular at some point are going to be trying to expand outside of China I expect that it will try to do so in a fairly aggressive way and it's and I think people in Silicon Valley are are probably fairly myopic about that maybe maybe in the US in the US generally and certainly certainly the question of you know what year does China overtake the US this was a very big question people asked say in 2005 2006 2007 you know it's it's worth 13 years closer to that than we were in 2005 and we seem to be asking the question much less today than we were 13 years ago even though you're presumably 13 years closer to when that happens and it's almost as though we've stopped thinking it about it as the date has gotten closer my calculation would be if you if you look at it on a you know PPP basis China's ready overtaking US GDP it's like 2030 if you an average of purchasing power parity and GDP which I think is a better measure than either of the two alone you get to about 2020 it's gonna happen in three years three four years and and that's barely that's barely registering as a as a conversation conversation here Reid so since it was a request for Peter and I to disagree the specific thing that I would disagree with Peter on is I actually don't think Silicon Valley's blind to China I think Silicon Valley is quite aware that in the entire world the shape of the technological future the the most significant contender is China they worry about the protected Chinese market there's a whole variety of Silicon Valley companies that can't play with in China they worry about more support from the government anything from data to kind of generally labor laws they worry about the fact that there is a city in China that's graduating a million engineers every year you know let alone the whole thing and so that's part of the reason why Silicon Valley tends to be such a large advocate of you know especially high end emigration although all to some degree of fairness but that's the you know how do we how do we play against that and you know part of when I you know meet with various European government officials I say well you're really focused on Silicon Valley but what we're worried about is is what the future looks like Pisa V China and there's all these issues and I think if you you went around and talked to every single law you know medium to large company in Silicon Valley they're all thinking about what is the China market look like what is competition with China look like 10 cent Alibaba Baidu are highly innovative companies there's a lot of interesting things they're doing there's things that we now have you know kind of ideas and copies of startups here that are of ideas that are made in China right and then there's a there's a ton of these things going on and so the specific disagreement is actually in fact Silicon Valley treats this as a very serious threat indeed and you know it's kind of you know it's either healthy competition which I think Peter thinks is an oxymoron or a contest for the future so you're the perfect people to ask a follow-up question on this I was just a couple of weeks ago in Hangzhou which is the headquarters of Alibaba but you don't just need to go there you can go anywhere and you'll see that in financial technology China is a long way ahead why is it that we don't pay for everything with PayPal but the Chinese pay for everything with Ali pay or WeChat pay I mean to the extent that you do not see a credit card and when Chinese people come to the United States they chortle that's our antiquated behavior you guys were way ahead of China in thinking about an online payment system and yeah from where I'm sitting they've completely overtaken now I would love to know why you think that is because all I see when I go to China is ubiquitous online payment systems that have becomes all this is not just payments there are all sorts of places where if you're a undeveloped country you can go straight to the technological frontier whereas if you're reasonably developed maybe the Delta is not that big and so it's it's a it's it's slower to adopt things and so you would find the same thing to be true of mobile payments in the developing world generally versus the developed wouldn't pay so you know ecommerce is much bigger in China as a percent of commerce because people never built big retail stores I think Japan has you know the most elaborate you know retail industry and that's probably the country where you have the smallest percent of e-commerce and it's not because you know Japan is unusually backward but because the old economy of Japan actually functioned reasonably well and the payment system in the u.s. is not seamlessly efficient but it is it works reasonably well it's not a trivial thing to start a new payments company you have to always you know find something where there's a big Delta that you know can really drive an intense need for adoption and and having something that's just a little bit better for a lot of people is often a very difficult technology to drive Jacmel said something at Davos last week which really struck home for me namely that the the Chinese model would work better in emerging markets pretty much for the reason you've just given and that left me wondering if essentially companies like Ali Baba will be able to roll out their platforms really easily in emerging markets and the Silicon Valley companies may be left with just the developed world is that a scenario that you think's plausible one of the things they've been saying for a few years is three internets is the English internet the Chinese internet and everything else and where the actual combat will be is in the everything outside and who do you think will win in that in that contest is it conceivable that in fact the Chinese companies but be a teef that rat could beat Fang very conceivable what do you think yes but I still disagree with Reed that this is generally understood in Silicon Valley because the big Chinese companies so dominate China that you know people in Silicon Valley don't even think they can break into China that much when they don't think they can break in they don't think about it that much and so one of the one of the benefits for China of the sort of state champions of the Chinese firewall is that there's no incentive for us to think about what's going on in China that much because it's gotten so hard to do anything and and so I think whenever whenever China starts do things aggressively outside of it we will not be paying as much attention as we should questions that are pouring in a number of them about American politics and I want to come to those in a minute but there was a big question that Ben has asked is American democracy in Christ and do big tech companies have any moral responsibility to preserve or defend American democracy 3 does it feel like a crisis of democracy to you I think it's unquestionably a crisis of democracy I think that the notion of political polarization where legitimate news organizations are called fake news and you have attack on institutions where the question about foreign government interference within our democratic policy process is weakly responded to I think all of those things lead to an unquestionable turmoil and challenge I think that the I think that tech companies have a responsibility as do I think citizens and other companies and the government to try to do stuff about this I think that the you know like example people say well a Facebook should they have known that their Russians are gonna try to social mean hack it and that's legitimate for a company to say look we didn't think that was our thing we were a company we're doing business stuff we're not trying to be you know in the game between nation states but now that you know about it there's a question of how do you how do you provide services well fortunately I think the people there are you know have you know actually care and are trying to figure out how how to learn the right lessons and how to be good citizens in this but I think it's it's it's unquestionable that our democracy is in turmoil I would eat I you know you can agree that things are more polarized than they were in the past the polarization trend I would say did not start with the internet you know even though that may be there are things about internet communication technologies that are on you know sort of create an unfair a crazed intensity where you have sort of the your daily minute of hate on Twitter yes or those or you know sort of these sort of virtual mobs on the internet where you just sort of random people and and that's you know there so there are aspects of it that you know may be contributing to polarization but that doesn't mean that that's the the main thing that's causing you know I would say polarization in the u.s. has been increasing since the late 60s and I would date it to roughly the time period when the growth slowed and we've been in a era of relative economic stagnation since the 1970s and that's why I think the the primary cause for polarization is his economic stagnation because in a world without growth it's not clear and we're not in a strictly a democracy where a sort of a representative or a constitutional republic we're an indirect democracy and that's you know the democracies modified with Republic the relics modified by the Constitution but even that system doesn't work that well without growth because the way our system of government works is you have a bunch of people sitting around the table and a state legislature or legislature and they craft legislation where there's more for you and more for you and it reads the difficult person is not no more for read and and in a when a pie is growing it's relatively easy to craft win/win legislation when the pie is not growing you know everything becomes zero-sum it becomes much more hostile there's a loser for every winner and I think that's the that's the dynamic that that you know I would say is 80% of the problem with polarization and you know maybe tech maybe the way the message forms is 20% don't want to minimize that 20% but we shouldn't turn it into the scapegoat for all of our all of the problems in our society did you buy that the polarization would have happened anyway even if none of this stuff had been invented oh it all it takes with TV and newspapers I don't yeah you know one of my favorites Fox News you know or various forms of Tosh show you what you get glued to the state exactly such visionaries as Sean Hannity who you know you know whose every word I hang upon the and so look I think the polarization okay oddly speaking where Peter and I agree is actually in fact growth is super-important nonzero-sum psychology where you kind of say hey look we can keep playing because even if you know Peter gets more of this hand and and Anil gets less we play again and see where we end up that's extremely important part and I think that is a contributory portion of this and I didn't mean to say that I think that technology was a unique contributor to the polarization as much as I think part of you know what has happened is that there's now kind of these new media these new ways of kind of sharing information and we have to kind of get to a how do we get to collective truth and actually I think we should be focusing on how do we get to real news versus labeling things fake news okay that's true P it's always a two-front war so there is a there is a war against fake news and real news I don't know how you can get to real news without labeling things as fake news by the way since the way you sound make it sound like there are two categories but but but the other front is is that there are all these people who also want to fight you know for certain types of news in the name of excluding things and so it's always a two-front war that's what makes it complicated if it was simply well you know anyone who complains about certain types of speech will listen to them and will get rid of that speech because it's not true or it's offensive or something that gets weaponized very problematically and you don't end up in a good equi Librium that prompts a question which um which has been in my mind for a while and was brought to the surface by what happened after the Charlottesville events and and that is the possibility that without our even being aware of it internet companies begin to censor the public sphere and the process of exclusion that you just alluded to gets much less attention but might actually be a more insidious problem it is that of the front that you talk about one that we should worry more about well I I'm not I'm not going to try to offend hate speech at all and that's not I don't think that's what we're that's what we're talking about I think it's where the line gets drawn that seems to be problematic who who decides what is hate speech on the Internet well it's it I think it's always this two-front problem so I mean there's certainly certain categories of speech that are hate speech that you know if you that I think we could all we'd all agree to I don't think that's what I don't think that's where you know the really problematic aspect of this debate is it's not about it's not about hate speech it's about you know all it's about things that are not true or not important you know or distracting sort of all these varieties of fake news but not the hateful versions of it are just a small small subset press you both a bit on this issue because it seems to me to be very important and a number of questions have have alluded to it and this really has to do with the fact that Silicon Valley itself has not polarized I mean if only there was some polarization here one could say the same incidentally about universities but there's an almost total lack of it in fact you have a as a number of questioners are pointed out a very liberal culture and one question comes from eyes are very liberal cultures in tech companies a cause for concern reading I thought that would be a question for Peter well Peter and I figured out we met each other in 87 and philosophy a tea mine manner and meeting as undergraduates and a kind of a classic argument that we had had was is the university's biased left and ideologically narrow-minded and part of the argument that I use and I think there's truth on both sides of this one which is the argument I'd use is actually in fact if you have a bunch of people who are truth seekers who all end up in a in kind of a cluster of points of view that may be an argument for it versus an argument for bias in terms of truth seeking and then you know I think one of the points that Peter made and this is one of things I like about having these kinds of discussions was that generally speaking more people on the right can you the intelligent points from the point on the left and vice versa and I think it's an important thing for people and progressives to be able to do that so Peters opening remarks sir if you're if you're a village atheist in a small town in Alabama you can probably argue the other side better too so yeah but but the sort of context we're in at places like Stanford places like Silicon Valley it excuse very much one way so I think I think yeah I think if you're a conservative or libertarian student at Stanford you will get a much better political education than if you're a liberal student if you're liberal you will just get your views reinforced and you can be in this sort of epistemic closure for for four years for the rest of your life and and and so I think it is I think it's not even good for for your side when it's it's it's always straw Manning never steel Manning so that was the point that I was essentially building to as to what the challenge would think within Silicon Valley is that I think that we need to have a better discuss discourse in theory about what is a good society you know kind of what is theories of human nature and so forth and not have a fallback of a certain ideological stance and I think that active discussion is very important so that's one of the things I think is a problem with it the thing I think is not a problem with it is a is a sense of well actually in fact we have a sense of kind of broad social good you know parodied someone for the Silicon Valley television show and kind of good ways that says you know like okay what is that feature that we're building towards and that we are actually in fact trying to build things that will that we have an optimism that there are technologies that we can build and this is like back to the I don't think that people in Silicon Valley think that we're actually in stagnation and think Merrick America great again is a problem because we're in stagnation I think they think it's the inequality issue and I'd say I think the thing that they learned to really focus on as kind of what's going on and I think that they say well sure there's slower progress and Adams with bits is now infecting all of the world of atoms everything from robots and manufacture everything else and so we are seeing progress amount as I think they countered the to the kind of opening argument I think that kind of optimism about the future that may have a broad kind of liberal ideology behind it as a good thing so that's that's the both in speech well you know there's I think it's at least ambiguous so you know if you have network effects if you quickly get to you know if they're more efficient so you say Silicon Valley is an efficient place we very quickly get to the truth you quickly figure out what the right companies are what the future is going to be and and then the downside of an overly networked context is that you get bubbles you get epistemic closure you get the madness of crowds and and that is that is also a very you know big danger in our universities and and you know in these sort of networked centers of the economy and I think and I do think it's always hard to know you know exactly where you where you draw that line my own sense is that it's uh it's wildly on on the wrong side so the the question about networked versus madness of crowds you know one way of asking this question is are we sort of at the end of history which is sort of the liberal conceit where we know all the basic answers we know what's right there are few people who are retrograde they're bad they're gonna die soon and the earlier characters they say well you're making my point it's like the networked economies are like saying hurry up you can die but but then versus are there so a lot of things that we just don't know and and therefore are there a lot of topics on which these these debates are still open and I think the I think the the mistake in my judgment would be that we were constantly you know getting to you know there's there's a right answer that and you get to the right answer very quickly and very efficiently you don't waste your time on things that's the that's the Silicon Valley concede and and my view would be that on on many topics the answers aren't aren't clearly right they're not clearly right on globalization they're not clearly right on on any of these of these issues and so I think to get to the truth we need to need a broader debate because I think we are more wrong than we think here's a question for ya Reid so I mean I think just to be precise I think there is precisely that lack in that there is the kind of cult of efficiency and the efficiency and techno determinism is the the answer that should should be there and I think that is too simple and should include discussion of what is good society human nature and so forth and that does need more you know contrasting points of view and it's not just contrasting left-right it's actually in fact more historical knowledge more philosophical knowledge I think those kinds of things I mean it's it is entertaining to be part of conversations that are things like okay we're just gonna upload ourselves in or robot and you're like well do you know what how do you know what that means like what is that exactly and that that kind of thing is I think important so it's kind of a cognitive diversity for thinking about the good society in the future now that being said I think that the notion that actually in fact being very optimistic being a look we can go do things that are very big is I think action an important thing and I don't think is ambiguous I want to ask doc just one point on this so heterodoxy I could leave on I we think that's unusual I think I think there's a sense in which I would say science philosophy religion these are much more important than politics and so heterodoxy in those fields having genuine debates in those fields is much more important than diversity in politics but politics is simple if you can't even have diversity of views in politics that's telling you you're in an incredibly unhealthy society if that's that's sort of where you know the average person is able to engage in political debates we don't expect them you know to engage in these other debates but it would be good if they if people could engage in these debates more if you can't even engage in a political debate if you can't even have different views on that that means you have you have no diversity of views on all these other topics which I think are much more and clearly it's been heterodox thinkers in those other fields that have been the pioneers the pioneers certainly in fields of science and philosophy in the 18th century we're not surrounded by like-minded will as there was a very big difference between good science and great science and I think the good the good version that you sort of get taught in a programmatic way is is somehow you know connecting the dots and just you know copying things that other people have done and and I think the the great science always has has it's much more heterodox feel to it so Hagen has asked a really nice question which goes to your friendship I don't think we need to ask a question about what you think of Trump's first year to establish that you have different political views a number of people wanted me to ask that but I you know what I think it's kind of obvious you're not gonna give the same answer that question but hardly these questions this how much of your friendship is attributed to the fact that you met in the benign environment of the University and would you still become friends if you met today that's a very good question the I think if we had the context to discover the thing that we did discover at Stanford which is it's the truth is very important discourse is very important broadening your thinking by talking to super intelligent people who disagree with you is valuable and that the the question is really a discourse about what is the what is the aspirations of humanity what are the what are the way to try to get to the better version of ourselves which is the essentially a lot of the different forms or arguments that Peter and I had if we if we could have those discussions and discover that attribute about each other then I think the answer would be yes now obviously part of the challenge is in the the fact that I kind of worry about the current state of the Republic is kind of the decline of Rome as a way of doing it would we be able to see - those virtues unless that would be that would be the challenge but I think that if we could see that it's not so much the benevolent as much as discovering that importance of truth that importance of what is the best most the way that we can evolve our humanity the best then I think the answered be s be you you will views when you were an undergraduate certainly weren't his in a whole range of issues and yet you were friends in fact you were describing to me in the green room campaigning for the Students Union together talk a bit about that relationship which somehow could transcend fundamental differences of political ideology well I look I think I think we you know alluded to this already in many different ways tonight it it is that that there is there sort of a lot of open questions a lot of things to try to figure out it is it is that you learn by by understanding the other side's arguments that they're strongest not not at their at their weakest I do I do think you know I can't I can't answer your question counterfactually would we still become friends that's that's like an almost insane counterfactual question I think I like but that we you know I I think that I think there is probably something about the time when you're at Stanford where it is it is a little bit easier to do this then then then then then then later and so it is it's definitely an opportunity people should not miss out on these sort of the you know sort of the your reads networking point but the networks I think are always the wrong words the better words are things like friendships things like that and this is a good time to make to build real friendships coming the more succinct way of putting it is the time to understand each other that was the thing it wasn't a benevolent environment it was the time to understand each other and that was very valuable we're getting towards the clothes I've got a question here from Natalie which i think is is a good one to point us towards a conclusion as discussed tonight she says Silicon Valley is out of touch with large swathes of the United States what do you both think the path forward to reconnect with people Rena you gonna go in one of those tours of 50 states meet people in Wisconsin look I think that while and that's very funny to put it that way look I think that it was I think those tours were very well intended because if you say look how do I understand people let me go at least talk to some of them let me meet people and I think that go have the conversation is extremely important I think that the I think that's somewhat challenging I think the thing is is the problem has been brought to the mind like there's a sense in which all of the geekiness and nerdiness of Silicon Valley also means that something I was a little less kind of socially adept a little less like okay how do we have this conversation as a as a tribe or something and so I think the I think that probably the bridge is understanding what those challenges are and then approaching it somewhat like engineering about how do we build solutions and I think that can be helpful that was a little bit of the reason why the kinds of things I gesture to or there are products that come out of Silicon Valley that say actually in fact this can help people build meaning and businesses and work and generate economics into their lives those kinds of things and in can we create kind of a growth psychology not just for our industry but for other industries as well those kinds of things I think can create a lot of value and can bridge that bridge the current gap Peter you were an outlier in 2016 in Silicon Valley how did you manage to establish that connection with the rest of the country with the flyover States middle America whatever you want to call it it doesn't look like you're obviously connected to people in rural Wisconsin and yet somehow you picked up that signal of deep frustration with the status quo tell us a bit about how you did that well I'd been making the stagnation argument that I tried to outline here for you know for the better part of a decade and and I you know it's it's it's it you sort of get enormous pushback in in Silicon Valley part of it is for good reasons part are sort of more reasons that people you know want to think they're everything they're doing is great and so if this was this was an axis that that was that was that was that was very important it was one that was whether it was going to be a very big blind spot you know the the advice that I'd given all the more on the Republican side with the advice I'd given all the candidates was they needed to have someone who was more pessimist they were not pessimistic enough and you needed to be pessimistic because if you were optimistic that just showed you were out of touch and optimism may be a good trait if you're a tech entrepreneur it's and it's you know somewhat good trait as a politician but too optimistic is toxic you know and and this was this was the core mistake you know people like Romney made people like Jeb Bush made they think it's fundamentally a progressive narrative where things are fundamentally working you know I always thought it was very difficult to run a candidate who was sufficiently pessimistic because you're too pessimistic you'll demotivate your own voters you know everything's going to hell in a handbasket that's not a that encouraging political frame but if there was if there was some way to be both extremely pessimistic and motivational that was a that was a super powerful combination that I think people were were very much under under estimating you know I think the question I would I'd want to leave for people here is to come back to this question of the nature of scientific and technological progress it's a question that's a I think an all-important cultural social political question what is the truth about it are we are we in fact in a society that's with a few Eric a few signal signal exceptions broadly stagnating you know are the economists right there's no productivity gains or or is the sort of Google propaganda the more correct view of the world and that's that's a that's a question that I think we should try to engage with it's very hard to engage with by the way because it's the nature of late modernity that science and technology are specialized they're the domain of specialized experts and so we are told that you can't think about this it's not like the 18th century where a well-educated person understood something about everything and so is physics progressing is string theory representing a lot of progress in physics and sir don't know it's quantum or quantum computers around the corner don't know about that either and and when the answer to every single one of these questions is we don't know this all-important question about the nature of the progress of our society we have a sort of learned helplessness with respect we have to figure out some way to be able to to think about these things more effectively the I'm not gonna try to go into you know every single one of those topics right now that's the leaf because we only have one minute but but the political the political layer on it is that I suspect that the extreme specialization leads to an incentive in which the experts in each of their designated fields are self congratulatory and so the string theorists will talk about how wonderful they are you know the cancer researchers will say you know we're about to cure cancer it's just around the corner yeah that's what we've been saying to the last 50 years but this time we're telling you the truth and on and on down the line and you know there's a tech version there's a venture capital version of this where people are really guilty and so I think the extreme specialization I suspect leads to a massive systemic skew to the answer so this is I I broadly agree on the importance of being future-oriented of saying look how do we have as much science progress as possible I would say in the sense we have extremely short time the fact that we are we today have apps on our cell phone that can recognize skin cancer that can be present for seven billion people is actually in fact a sign of progress prefer having a cure for cancer it seems like the moment has come to draw this wonderful conversation are too close our next Cardinal conversation segwaying rather nicely from what Peter was just talking about will take place in the same place at the same time on February the 22nd and will feature Francis Fukuyama and charles murray discussing populism and inequality it only remains for me to do some very quick thank-yous I want to thank Hoover's amazing event staff Alexander Bradley Chris Dodd Deniz Elson Shanna Farley Linda Hernandez Jeff Jones Justin Petty Janet Smith and Aaron Tillman as well as Magdalena Fittipaldi at FSI big thank you to the students who made this happen Stephanie Chen Kartini Christos McRib Asst Anna Mitchell just as tension Palmer Ravi Jake's Antigone's Annapolis and Rory Arrieta Kenna however the biggest thank you and you're going to give it should be for our extraordinary guests in this first Cardinal conversation please join me in thanking Reed Hoffman a Peter teal [Applause]

Channel: Hoover Institution

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Length: 91min 25sec (5485 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 08 2018