Peter Thiel on René Girard

so bitterly thank you so much for receiving us you know beautiful building and you are very close to Anita and so my first question will be how did you meet honey well I met him first as an undergraduate in the late 1980s it's when I was studying philosophy at Stanford and it was it was one of these ideas that was sort of starting to percolate in the underground that there was a very interesting professor of these different different different account from the world it was very much I think out of temper with the times and so it had sort of a natural appeal to somewhat rebellious undergraduate I mean you didn't listen did they do it yes well I think I think there's certainly a conformity of idea is that when one one has probably in most times in most places and and there was certainly a sense in which it presented this this very different critique both of the modern world of Christianity of thinking about a number of different topics so what would be your first impression anyway that would be that he's and he has it jeweled the word when it would be a first impression of plenty well the first impression of the view was that it's crazy and this can't be true that imitation is this important drives as many different things and I found that it was it was one of these ideas that took a while to sink and but as I as I thought about it more over a period of several years it struck me as being incredibly powerful describing both things that I thought would prove my own experience as well as that making sense of a lot of aspects of the world outside of that and it's like Vinay Jaya is a very controversial person that he doesn't and easy yes and it took so many years you know for people to understand what you just said that is Mary person you know - in the world of philosophy and the way to see the world yes oh I suspect I suspect that when the history of the 20th century is written circa 2100 he will he'll be seen as truly one of the great intellectuals but it may still be a long time till it settles fully fully understood you'd have a lunch discussion or a discussion with him in the inn at some of the colloquium seminars that we did at Stanford where one would really be struck just by his incredible perceptiveness into human nature so it was it was not it was it was it was always these uh these very particular moments where this was what was going on this is what really was happening in this context and and there was just an unbelievable uh perceptiveness of course or the breadth of interest to where you know I think I think Gerard is one of the one of the last great generalists who's really interested in everything yeah and for me it's like HMAC honey isn't it I feel younger I feel fresh and with new ideas to see the world and to go further into where do we end this thing yes if yes exactly I think it's it's it's uh it's always that there are there are elements of it where you see this you see this is completely new perspective on life that you not otherwise otherwise thought about and you're such a successful businessman Chessmaster worth - can you recover for the European public what our young men stepped in in in your life and but did a number of things study philosophy as an undergraduate at Stanford went to law school and then sort of feared unprofessional law and finance career in New York and and then I moved back to California in the late 1990s and got involved in the knology boom of the time I was the co-founder of CEO of a company called PayPal which was successful online payments company and then from 2002 onwards I ended up working as a more as an investor working with a variety of tech companies on notably Facebook where was the original investor as well as as well as managing money trying to figure out the future of the world and still the same time trying to pursue some some intellectual nonprofit pursuits and trying to make sense of the future and trying to try to leave the world a better place yeah and so but how nimitta theory has influenced your business in a way to see the word entry to the business we lost brilliant I think it has influenced it very powerfully although it's it's again I it's always with a very particular context that I'll give you two or three examples of how it was influenced me I think one one piece that's very important is both an entrepreneur and as an investor is that there's a tremendous value in trying to do things that are new or that are different and and so thinking about how disturbingly herd-like people to come in so many different context is something that the medical theory forces you it forces you to think about that which is sort of knowledge that's generally suppressed and hidden and and so you will be as an investor on Drive always try to be contrarian to go against the crowd identify opportunities that in places where people are not looking I think that those are the places one finds that the greatest opportunities whether it's starting companies aren't making investments on the level of of managing a business one of the ways in which it's influenced me a great deal is thinking about how to avoid conflict within a business and and how to the standard account look is that it Rison people fight about differences whereas a mimetic theory conflict arises when people fight about the same thing and certainly my experience over the last 10 12 years is that that's almost always the case that the really great conflicts were over people wanting the same thing same position the same promotion the same set of responsibilities and and so one of the challenges as a as a CEO in a lot of these companies I think is to try to apply medical theory and preemptively avoid conflict by making sure the rules are reasonably well differentiated and an early stage entrepreneurial setting this is extremely difficult because the roles tend to be very fluid and so there's sort of a tremendous possibility for mimetic conflict and there's tremendous value in avoiding it most of these companies whether they succeed or fail is often driven by internal dynamics not by external ones it is whether other people are able to work together well enough to create a new product or build a new technology rather than other sort of external competitive landscape which is the way the conventional business world describes describes companies and what you'll be the ethic in business using pneumatic theory that would be the special ethic and when you are so much involved in and in the process of making a bit aware well in business it's I don't know if there's a simple formula that you can just say this is the formula I do think that there's an incredible importance on avoiding certain types of conflict and that there are ways in which there are a lot of conflicts that spiral in very very bad directions and and I think they are counterproductive both in the business context of personal context in a political context and I think that's that's probably the piece that I find that I find most most compelling but then also probably understanding what healthy relationships look like where you know you're mentoring somebody in a way that's constructive where there's no rivalry or and figured out a good way to sort of collaborate with people and trying to avoid sort of the bad aspects of mimesis will keeping the good I mean there's always office a very important question how much theoretical knowledge translates into into practical knowledge so you could have you could have people who know that in theory eating lots of doughnuts is bad for you but they silly doughnuts or something like that so there are all sorts of ways in which it doesn't translate but I do I do think there is there's some way that it translates it's very um it's very I should put it's very imprecise how that happens but I do think obviously there's a general sense where scapegoating only works if you do not know the scapegoat is and so as the mechanism gets better understood I think it will become harder to do now it may it may simply manifest itself in other new ways which may be better or worse but I I do think there's a hope that as these mechanisms understood it will stop happening as mechanisms of crazy Weibull regard understood it will happen less rather than more yes it's a very positive thinking about yeah and future very good nowadays well everybody's so negative but it's good everything is going to be destroyed too didn't mean to be something you can to help people yes well it's it's um it's certainly on why not I'm not sort of always sort of tank lossy and optimistic I I do think that sort of any hopeful future of the 21st century is one where there'll be more good memories as than bad Mises the forms of transcendence people buying in to be healthy not not fake and so I think I think it is it is it is very much linked to whether the world blows itself up in this next century we learned it I figure out ways to live with one another you

Channel: ImitatioVideo

Views: 77,288

Rating: 4.927928 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: esk7W9Jowtc

Length: 10min 55sec (655 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 04 2011