Peter Thiel: Zero to One

welcome to Socrates in the city first of all it's always touching and wonderful to see so many old friends and new friends in the room also a handful of pseudo friends you know who you are and it's very important to be honest about that I hate you I hate you you don't fool anybody and sadly a few former friends as well that but you know once once I get the money back we'll talk but we couldn't have done this for the last 20 years if not for the generosity of a number of you in the room I want to particularly thank David and Laura Thayer I saw David is here there are a number of you who've been generous in helping us do this tonight the big question that we are daring to ask is how much money does Peter teal really have no I mean I mean really I mean really of course I'm joking but the reason we do have Peter here tonight I want to know that's my question what is Elon Musk really like that's that's I hope you don't feel used but that's just the way it is there's a we've got a number of special guests here tonight I won't point you out unless you're in Coulter who's sitting right over there she's here with her boyfriend Jimmy JJ Walker from good times kid dynomite is uh is in the house and I'm sorry am i embarrassing you and have you put on weight what the hell happened unbelievable Wow I think you got a boyfriend you could eat I mean come on anyway I'm so grateful that Ann still might be my friend and following tonight's conversation Peter and I are gonna have a conversation up here I think most of you know Peter has to leave immediately I guess he's catching a bus at the Port Authority or something like that which is very impressive if I mean even if I had a million bucks I wouldn't go to the Port Authority so I just got to say that's kind of amazing in any event he cannot stay around so we have to let him sneak away and the Union League club has a couple of housekeeping things I should cover number one anybody here wearing a catheter actually you don't have to you don't have to tell me but I've just we're trying to join the club - not the catheter Club the Union League club because they they they don't let you do events anymore they have led us for 20 years but unless you're actually a members I'm joining the club and I just want to get all the rules right so let me just say so I've said it if you're wearing a catheter you need to register it with the club let them know and that's I've done my part okay I've done my part but you don't want them it's very embarrassing if they they catch you with an unregistered catheter I don't know why I bring up catheter I guess it's gone we're looking at my friend Richie and I always think of catheters when I think of rich and I know you I know you've registered anyway so all right now I'm gonna introduce Peter Thiel we'll get on with it now I guess it's such an awkward thing I realize Peter sitting here wondering what he's gotten into and I and I I guess you know just to be honest Peter I know you're probably a little intimidated by me and let me let me just say I get that okay my intellect my accomplishments whatever it is my heart toward others perhaps but a lot of times guests are intimidated by that kind of stuff but I just want you to know or I'm just letting you know that I put my legs on two pants at a time just like everybody else I'm no different and now I'm gonna tell you who Peter Thiel is now I get the problem with certain people as you already know who they are so what am I going to tell you in case you just stumbled in Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and investor probably most famous for having started PayPal in 1998 at which point he led it as a CEO and then he took it public in 2002 and got really really rich it's unbelievable in he he made so much money that in 2004 he made the first outside investment in Facebook did you know that some of you knew that and in making that investment he helped to accelerate the establishment of a global bank one-world government in the coming of the Antichrist which is really I he didn't he didn't mean to do that I want to be I want to be clear but you know got to be careful where you invest because you because he didn't yeah okay I gave $20 to the breeding of a red heifer I don't know if you know about that but so hey man we're equal peter has written a number of books the one we're gonna touch on tonight is called zero to one I think a lot of you are familiar with that and I have by now for sure gone on too long and embarrassed Peter too much so ladies and gentlemen mr. Peter Thiel it's such a joy to have you here that I joke joking is my love language so don't don't feel bad you asked me upstairs where we're gonna start and I said I don't know because a lot of the folks here don't realize that we we were together last evening and we had a conversation and I realized we could just talk about anything you say we meaning human beings are the only ones who can invent new things talk a little bit about that idea if people have read the book they know it but you know the the vertical and the horizontal that you that you refer to in the book as a principle thesis of entrepreneurship well the yes I I believe they're sort of outlined two basic ways that we have progress as a society and one is what I describe is horizontal or extensive growth which involves copying things that work and this is a most evidently seen through globalization in the last 40 50 years and then the other one is sort of intensive or vertical progress doing new things and this is sort of iconically seen in technology or new inventions or things like that and I think these are two sort of modalities of progress that I I contrast and I think for those of us living in the United States Western Europe in the advanced countries my claim is that the the second is much more important than the first globalization is perhaps good if you're in burkina faso or you know in china or places where you have a lot of catching up to do it it's not how we're going to improve living standards and in the West now when you say globalization just to be clear when I read that in the book it wasn't immediately clear to me what you meant any case there's anybody not getting that you you mean I guess correct me if I'm wrong that they just to sort of spread what we have right in other words not in a to take what we have in the West and the best of the west and to you know get it into every corner of China or any part of the world that's what that's what you mean effectively yeah I mean I I mean the standard sense I mean it means all these different things which basically some homogenous ation of the world convergence things becoming the same when you describe the world as the developed and developing world that is a globalization narrative the developed the developing countries are the ones that are going to become developed by copying and converging and then it's also an anti TechNet of because the developed world's the place where nothing new is going to happen it's developed it's done it's finished and this is very different from the way we describe the world 50 years ago when we were to describe in terms of the first world in the third world in the third world was permanently screwed up and the first world was the one that's technologically advancing and so we are living in a world that is extremely Pro globalization that has bet everything on globalization and that is that is not at all that excited about progress in in other forms and my in my underlying thesis is that we've had relatively little progress in technology broadly defined in the West in the last 50 years there's perhaps been you know a narrow zone of progress around the world of bits computers internet mobile internet even that we can get into debates as to whether it's a positive or negative you sort of alluded to a little bit in the the intro and I'm not trying to take you up on that but we could we but but certainly I just said that because I don't care certainly um you know most engineering fields were bad fields for people to go in in the Western world in the last 40 or 50 years if you didn't want to come a mechanical engineer chemical engineer electrical engineering was already on its way out when I was at Stanford in the late 80s and certainly if you were so stupid as to become a narrow ass door engineer or nuclear engineer that that was a bad idea a full-stop for the last 40 50 years and and I I think I I do think that a lot of the challenges and problems we have in our society is that we are you know we're no longer progressing as as fast as we're often told you make this case really strongly and I was just staggered by I didn't mean to cut you off we you you just make this statement in the book that in a way since 1970 we haven't progressed much and when I read that I thought that's that's the first thing I want to ask you in other words when you're talking about not much happening in in 50 years I sort of get it but tell us what you mean by that and at some point you can bring up Apollo 11 in Woodstock as he did last night because I it was a very fascinating way of framing the whole thing I thought well I mean I'm not saying there's been zero progress in the last 50 years but you know outside of the world of computers there's not been much and if you were you know the main function of our iPhone seemed to be to distract us from the way in which were in Subway's that are a hundred years old and the ways in which nothing in the rest in the rest of the world has a change or progressed very much and if you look at you know cars or houses or things like this haven't changed that much in the last 20 30 years maybe 70s we're still a little bit different but but it is not it's not progressed very much at all there's um you know I think there's a meta-level question you could ask which is that you know in science we measure Avogadro's number the fine structure constant physics to many many significant figures but the question of the progress of science how fast it is progressing is it accelerating is it decelerating is it relatively stagnant never gets asked and if it gets asked we get nothing but short propagandistic answers from let's say university presidents will tell us using adverbs and as a substitute for thought that clearly and demonstrably science is progressing faster than ever before and I think I think it is instead rather stuck and we can we can go through sort of any of a number of places where things have fallen way short of expectation Nixon declared war on cancer in 1970 it was going to be defeated by the Bicentennial by 1976 so we're in fast-forward 50 years were presumably 50 years closer to curing cancer and we were 50 years ago but the expected time has gone up quite a bit you can't forget that LBJ declared war on poverty in 1965 so that was really meant mainly as a joke but when you say that Nixon I really have to say I'm hugely fascinated by I mean you are a science guy and so I want to hear more from you about this because when we think of we're talking about this last night the Manhattan Project the Apollo project put a man on the moon those were times when people came together and accomplished extraordinary thing there's just no way around it and obviously you know since since then you're right we don't seem to have done anything like that but is there really nothing we can think of I mean with the Human Genome Project at least impress you a little bit um a little bit although I'd say it fooled me a lot since you know I thought it would translate it and try all sorts of cures but right now 20 plus years later right and and so so so you know there's always sort of a question how this actually translates and we you know we can you know I think even if we say that things are progressing at roughly the same rate I think that they're slower they're objectively slower life expectancy is not going up any more this would be like one way to measure progress in medicine is how fast is life expectancy going up last three years actually been going down which is you know like even someone as pessimistic as me would have never predicted that it's that it actually would go backwards because surely you know we might progress more slowly it's it's scary it's scary to hear and to hear that and I think one of the things I you know the sort of the failure the question you know why has this happened what changed what went wrong is always a little bit over determined but but certainly one cut on it is that big science is something like an oxymoron and when you make it big it stops being science it and you know we have probably about a hundred times as many people today in the world or in the United States have PhDs in the sciences as in 1920 if progress was happening still at the same rate as in 1920 that would it would it you'd infer that the productivity of the average scientist is 99 percent less than it was a hundred years ago and I think it's even it's even worse than that so so one you know one partial history I would tell of what happened is that we had sort of a decentralized healthy scientific world before the New Deal and you know the who's heterodox it was science as discovery not sign you know I always think you have science as discovery which is sort of the science one now only reads about in children's books on Einstein it sort of like a creative person thinks of new things and there's science as governance where it's sort of you know you're a robot in a lab and that's what you do and most of science is Sciences governance not Sciences as discoveries so what and so what what I part of my history what happened is that in the 1940s with with the Manhattan Project it was possible to take this pre-existing healthy system and accelerated one-time-only the New York Times I'm gonna paraphrase this but there was about four or five days after the Hiroshima bomb the op-ed in the New York Times was um you know hopefully this will silence the sort of conservative and libertarian people who said that the army could not ever direct scientists and just tell them what to do because the Army has proven all these people wrong and hopefully they will not be quiet because they were able to get a new invention to the world in three and a half short years of the bomb that if you'd left these pre-madonna scientists to their own devices might have taken them 50 years so now I will say the New York Times doesn't write editorials like that anymore today and and I think part of the part of the history is you were able to accelerate science one time by pouring money into it and scaling it but then it came at the price of completely corrupting the institutions it still worked with NASA and Apollo but at this point it is all just a slow bureaucracy it's you know it's peer-review never have any heterodox ideas and you have sort of a you've created a very large monoculture which is uh pretty unhealthy so and that's that's sort of one cut of what happened it was it was you know the government was able to accelerated and then at the price of destroying it forever there's so much here but but but the basic thesis I have to say it startled me I thought huh I haven't thought very much about this I think you mentioned in the book that you know jetliners you know in the 60s everybody can jump on a jetliner and we can go 650 miles an hour and today if anything we're going slower but we're certainly not going faster and for sure as a kid I was sure that we would have flights to the moon or at least that planes would be able to go 2,000 miles an hour or something like that so I get it when I begin thinking about it but I guess my question is is there anything we can do is this the same problem we have with growing government is is is this just part of what happens in a free culture is that entropy causes you to become less and less free unless people are really vigilant about understanding how freedom works well I think um let's see uh you know I I'm pessimistic in the sense I think we've had stagnation I don't think it's a problem with money which is one of the liberal explanations we had Larry Summers here he might say there's a stagnation oh yeah we news more money you are not spending enough money so I think it's a shortage of money but I also don't think that it's a natural problem I don't think it's the case that all the low-hanging fruit has been picked and there are no new ideas there are no new discoveries that we could make so I'm I actually think it's more of a cultural problem which is you know better than nature but still hard to change and they're sort of a series of cultural things that are wrong about the nature of science we're not willing to take risks we're not um you know there's there's too much conformity of thought but but I think we could be making progress in all these areas there's no reason we couldn't cure cancer there's no reason we couldn't cure Alzheimer's and when you say that right why is there no why why do you think that's the case because I think those of us who've lived it was kind of like growing up with the Soviet Union you sort of just assume it'll always be there you just assume will always be dealing with cancer when people talk about a cure for cancer why should we assume that that's possible it's always a question who has the burden of proof in doing these things and I think you know I think that I would say the burden of proof is still on the side that it's you know if you say it's impossible there's no mathematical proof that it's impossible there's nothing we don't know enough about biology to say say this stuff doesn't work um you know I think I think one you know one cut I always have on biology is it's it's sort of a the field that people with lower IQs went into sort of it's sorta like people had bad math genes went into biology any biologists in the room you know I think there probably are some cultural interventions that that could improve it quite a bit physics might be harder you know we we seem to not be making progress on string theory and maybe we're not gonna make a lot of progress there because you've had smart people working on that so that's one I'd be a little bit more agnostic on what you could do but but biology I think you could do a lot better and and I think the explanation that it's in the nature of the world that you can't change this you have to always think of this as a baby boomer scientist who's failed and you sort of we're talking to an imaginary conversation with a baby boomer cancer researcher first well first thing is we're making so much progress we're gonna cure cancer in the next five years but you've been saying that for the last 50 years um well we don't have enough money second line of defense responsible you've been getting more money every year for 50 years and then third line of defense is well it's an impossible problem and we're doing the best we can and so if you think of these as you know the excuses they're made the natural excuses by a generation of scientists have failed to do things which take the contrarian view the minority view is that it's yet stagnant didn't wasn't about the money and it's the culture and therefore these things could be fixed like you doing a lot better but you're not suggesting I don't think that they don't want to cure cancer in other words I would assume that anybody working in a lab anyplace it would be it would be their dream to get on the map to have done that so what what do you think is that is the issue you know I'm not I'm not really sure what what I would say they want to do I think they they want to get money from the government to do to get to keep keep whatever research so is this like welfare they're disincentivized because they're happy it's certainly it's certainly questions about this do not get asked you know one of them one of my um one of the people I know that Stanford is uh this guy Bob Laughlin he got a Nobel Prize in Physics in the late 1990s and professor Laughlin that once he had a nobel prize in physics he would have complete academic freedom he could do whatever he wants he was extremely delusional person as you can tell and and then you know the area he decided to go after was not something like you know climate change or evolution or you know topics like this they're pretty dangerous you went after something far more dangerous than than those topics he was convinced there were all sorts of other scientists and he started with the biology department at Stanford that were basically stealing money from the government and engaged in semi fraudulent research and you could sort of imagine how this movie ended and you know professor Laughlin promptly got defunded and and so the questions about the integrity of the process are ones that nobody can ask we have a we have a replicability crisis and science people are starting to talk about that but you the politically correct way to talk about it is always in broad statistical terms that what do you mean replicability crisis well they're all these experiments that can never be replicated and so I think psychology something like 80% of the psychology results can't be replicated it's psychology as science well it claims to be doing experiments that in theory you should be able to replicate and and then the replicability crisis suggests that yeah there's something between lying and fraud and self delusion or and there's some something very weird going on in in a lot of these fields and you can talk about that you can't of course you can't name names this particular scientists is know that the results can be replicated that that gets to be very problematic so yes I think it's a I think it's a pretty corrupt system at this point I I read earlier today I got my Discovery Institute newsletter in the mail and they were talking about James tour he is a nano scientist in Houston at Rice University are you familiar with him at all he he really seems to be doing some truly groundbreaking things the kinds of things that you're saying aren't happening very much I I find it ironic or at least funny that he is very outspoken about his Christian faith I mean clearly one of the greatest scientists of our time is very outspoken about his Christian faith but you can't argue with these kind of results i don't think there's a nano scientist in the world who really could touch him you know he's he's the best so there there are things happening and i guess i wonder i wish he were here he can answer the question but i wonder if there are places where the culture is different than than what you're describing it uh-huh I think if it's messed up in the United States we should assume it's it's worse and most of the rest of the world I mean the you know the United States is the country on the frontier it's the country where we do new things and so if it's gotten very hard to do new things in the US you know you're not going to be you're not going to be saved by science and in Western Europe or Japan or you know China or in any of these places so this is this is our area of comparative advantage as a country and we're a frontier country we're the place where you should be able to do new things and if even in the United States it's very challenged it's it's likely to be that way in most other places although I mean I guess you'd say that we are still doing new things because China is still ripping us off they're not doing new things they're you know in other words there there's the globalization for them means you know stealing our technologies but it is interesting to me that we deal in they haven't quite gotten the memo that we're not doing that much so they're still they're still trying to steal a lot but I I'm not sure they've figured out that there isn't that much left right well when you talk about us being the only ones who can invent new things obviously you well I should say you seem to be alluding to the idea in that statement in your book that we are unique were created in the image of God obviously there's something there I want to know if we could explore that a little bit because it's a concept I mean the idea that anyone would be able to do what you describe in your book to come up with something completely new and you know suddenly go vertical in that way it's it sounds miraculous right like why should we be able to do anything like that um well there's a lot of different threads here I I think that I think that one of the you know I think one of the healthy modalities of progress of thinking about the future in business or you know in in politics and culture in science is that you have I think you have some sort of definite goal and you have agency and it's it's directed towards that towards that goal and and that you you know you have agency and you you design you create you create the future and I think I often contrast this on to to the sort of view of the future is just a fundamentally unknowable random process and and so if we if we say that it's just completely random completely unknowable that's that sort of abdication of agency you know the powerful images of the future are are concrete they're specific and they're they're things we can we can work towards and we can we can build towards I think one of the things that's that's gotten very unhealthy and in the Western world is we no longer have a idea of the future that's that's powerful we don't have an image of how it's going to look different in 10 20 years that will be generally better I sort of come up with an illustration for this and in Western Europe where if you ask what are the actual pictures of the future people have in Western Europe that are different from the present because if it's just Groundhog Day it's an eternal Groundhog Day that's not charismatic that's politically weak and I believe there are three pictures that people have a behind door number one is Islamic sharia law and if you're a woman you'll be wearing a burqa so that's a that's a very different picture behind door number two is the Chinese Communist a I that will be monitoring you all the time in every way possible it's sort of the big eye of Sauron to use the Tolkien reference that we'll be looking at you in all times in all places and behind door number three is great of Thornburg and it is you'll be puttering around with an East scooter and you'll be recycling everything and and those are those are the only those are the only three doors there no other doors available and if I didn't want to make a pro grader argument but I actually uh I could understand why she's relatively more charismatic than the big eye of Sauron and the the the Isis Sharia law and and that's and you have to understand that if you're if you're going to create an alternative you have to have an alternative specific picture of the future you have to have an alternative of what the future can look like and until you have that you know she's gonna win you mean Greta yes well actually given those three choices in Europe I don't even blame them right I just feel so sorry for her she's a she's a kid my gosh it's so insane that her parents are allowing her to do this yeah when you're talking about Europe like that it is interesting because I always think of America I'm certainly not alone in this we you know and you have to really go back to the 60s as you say but we really believed you can put a man on the moon you can do these things the reason and we were talking about this last night so we can go back to this where the reason it seems to me or the reasons that we don't have that view of the world anymore one of them and I've never heard anyone say this before but I literally thought of it last night if there were a place near the moon a little farther away we would have gone there next but the next place we could have gone is Mars and it's so far away we just kind of sank into the beanbag chairs and started playing video games because you know we went to the moon we're done that that was it but so that's one really practical thing that you know when you achieve something like that once you climb Mount Everest you have climbed the highest mountain you are done with that you can't really there's not a way to do that again well but I think I think we're a lot I think I think there were a lot of things you could do that we're not in outer space there were a lot of things you could do on this planet here on earth there were a lot of things and of course this was not the only thing that went wrong people were expecting to go to Mars but you know we landed Apollo line 11 landed on the moon in July of 1969 and for three weeks later you had Woodstock and I think you know in some ways there was a cultural shift and it was the shift from thinking about about sort of an exterior world that we were going to change and improve and explore to an interior world of psychedelic drugs and yoga and meditation and video games in a basement and and I think this shift from exteriority to interior tea is is something that's characterized the the last of the last 50 years let's talk about that because when you say interior tea you were we have to say that all interior tea isn't bad right in other words if I am NOT you know taking acid or wasting my life in my parents basement playing video games right there are a number of things that I could be doing that are somewhat interior if I'm using the term right that are that are good things I could be reading great books I could be thinking about great ideas so I know you don't mean to be denigrating that and then when you talk about exteriority if that was the term if you really have gone to the moon what what do you mean right like you know if there's a if there isn't another mountain to climb that I guess the point is that there's something about reaching the moon that really is hard to top it doesn't mean that there aren't other things to do but it seems reasonable to me that once you reach the moon it's hard to come up with a second act um well we can we can we can debate about how the history you know how many how many choices there really were and what the counterfactuals were and and and yes we didn't we didn't we have not yet sent a man to Mars that still is probably you know quite a ways quite a ways off there's something about space that you know has lost you know a lot of its a lot of its magic and its appeal but I think I think there were many you know there were many other things that we could have done where we we could have progressed and and and I and I think on level it's not again this is the question is it nature is it just too hard to get to Mars or is the culture that we're not we're not reaching we're not we're not trying well one example of this that I've noticed for years is that I thought since I was a kid nothing has gotten better in the sense that there are no new bridges or tunnels they were all built before I was born or around the time I was born I mean the idea of building another bridge across the Hudson or another tunnel and I thought what a wild idea that that they were doing this they were doing plenty of this in the earlier parts of the century and then it just stopped completely the number I've seen is that in Manhattan or New York City in inflation-adjusted dollars it costs about 50 times as much to build a mile of subway in real dollars as it did a hundred years ago the Union it's it's a corrupt government it's uh its environmental rules it's it's you know it's all it's it's all sorts of things but but yes it's it's if you define you know one word one sort of economic definition of technology is doing more with less yeah and there are a lot of these sort of profoundly diseased sick institutions including the city of New York where which are characterized as very anti technological you know we're doing we're doing less we're doing less and less with more and more this true of Education it's true probably significant parts of our health care system where you're not it's costing more and more to best stay in place since we're we're leaping around let me just pick up on something you've you've touched on here yeah you um you mentioned in our previous conversation that universities today the level of corruption in academia is similar to the corruption of the medieval church and that we need some kind of reformation can you expand on that because I think for sure most people in this room know that something is very very wrong with the Academy but when you talk about it as corrupt talk about that because it's well just let me be a centre of a lot of wealthy now do you basic the basic analogy is that you know if you sort of think of the eve of the Reformation 500 years ago you had you know you got sort of runaway indulgences which are like the runaway tuition costs you had this sort of priestly class that often had sort of tenured seniors which are sort of like the professor's and the university they didn't have a sort of soteriology a theory of salvation where if you if you get a diploma you're saved and if you do not have a college diploma you end up in a bad place you know you go to Yale or you go to jail but that sort of thing and so I think I think it is it is it is sort of yes I think we should think of the universities as in a sense the successor to the Catholic Church it is the Atheist church and you mean a bad Catholic there's I just want to be clear I'm not Catholic but I'm a pro at most even most Catholics like this because they think the Catholic Church is pretty screwed up and so um so if the universities are as bad as the Catholic Church maybe the Catholic Church isn't as bad as well people talk about the Catholic Church of the pre-reformation there's no question that what was going on there was bad I mean I think that many people like you know Erasmus and Francis who never would dream of leaving the church they knew it was bad and it needed Reformation so we're and the Reformation had to come from without these institutions they are not Reforma before within that's that's the that's the main point of the analogy I would get you know what do we do with the universities what do you mean we just try to get people out of them we try to you know you're you're you know one of the one of the things I one of the things I try to do years ago I had this fantasy of starting a new university that we sort of a better aversion sort of a all-around good liberal arts education with less political correctness less you know thought control and one of the people who worked for me spend about a year looking at all the universities that had started in preceding 100 years 1907 to 2007 when we were looking at this and it was a sorry tale of donor intent betrayed wasted money just all the stuff had not worked and you got the sense that there's something about this this set up that's that's that's really bad um there's a mathematical description you can give this where on corporations are mortal beings and over time corporations get worse and worse and then if they're sort of very corrupt they sort of go out of business and universities tend to be immortal they last forever and you know the top universities the most prestigious ones in the u.s. are the ones that were here you know 17th early 18th century and so we're we're sort of dealing with the corruption of something that's a quasi immoral be I mean I don't think it's you know I'm nepeta I don't either omnipotent but I'm glad to hear that but but but it's you know it's it's cotton it's dramatically there dramatically dramatically worse than they were thirty forty years ago and it's still very hard to come up two alternatives are still some sense which you know Harvard is at the top of the pecking order but but yeah I think I think the I think we have to try to find just ways to exit the system altogether well no way to sort of co-opt it to change it from within right those are all I think complete fools errands but I guess my question would be don't you have a situation where Harvard and Yale or the New York Times to skip over to you know another kind of institution their institutions that have value because people say they have value right it's that simple right I having been to Yale I can say that it has really really minimal actual value there's no question in my mind that the value that it has is I think but I think when you're saying things like this that's not what you're not even supposed to say this what do you why well because if they value what some people say they have value then if someone like you says the things are saying right now that's undercutting what other people are supposed to say right well that's the whole point of this that's that's why we're here I don't mean to freak you out but that's exactly what I want to talk about because it's you you realize this is true right they're people who are unwilling to say that or unwilling to see well that that they become politically correct asylums they're just there's pure madness and they're kids you're spending all this money so really so that your kid can can catch this virus and have a messed up worldview forever and once people realize that once that people stop giving money once people start stop saying I want my kid to go to that place those places won't any longer be able to have the value that they're seen to have and so you I'm slightly more passive I mean I think they are very robust they're not going to go away that that quickly the analogy I would have for Yale or Harvard is it's like a studio 54 nightclub and you have which is probably bad for the morals of the people and maybe it's good for their status and we goes for a debate which is more important which is less important but it's a these institutions are remarkably robust you know if you were if you were a university president Harvard Yale Stanford one of these places and you had some secret fantasy of getting lynched and you wanted a coalition of alumni students faculty to come after you you'd give a speech saying you know we have we are giving such a great education that we're gonna increase the enrollment we're gonna let more people and we're gonna double or triple our enrollment over the next 20 or 30 years we're not you know since we're serving the whole world you know 1970 over 200 million people in the US now they're eight billion in the world it's 40 times as many people are just gonna double our enrollment will still be and you would get lynched because people understand it is a zero-sum tournament it's not a positive some education it's not about education it's a studio 54 night club you're running and and you know for what that is it's it can be pretty robust for for a long time yeah there's probably some point where it gets so deranged that I mean we're effectively there I honestly have to say that where we are now there's a brilliant novel out I've interviewed the author on my radio program Scott Johnston it's called campus land and it is brilliant it's a brilliant criticism lampooning of the whole world of you know Ivy League culture but generally higher IDI and you see that it eats itself at some point we're kind of at that point how long can it sustain itself I mean again I say the same thing about the New York Times near time says value because people say it has value but when you really look at these places at some point the word has to get out to the Alumni to the parents it's not as good as it used to be it's not what it once was somehow that that I mean you have to allow that it's possible to have that kind of a we could call it a market correction it has to be possible and and I would have predicted it 30 40 years ago so it's been it's been hard it's been harder I'm not saying like next decade I'm you know I think they may finally break this decade but but it's it was probably something about the student debt that's unsustainable we had 300 billion in mm up to 1.7 trillion today so there are I think there are certain trends that I can't see going on for another decade even and so I think something is going to break is not so clear it isn't a little bit like the Soviet Union I mean at some point it has to break down at some point the truth will out so the fact that it could go on for seven decades is horrifying but it did end you know and I I guess I wonder because I wouldn't have said that a hundred years ago Yale and all these places were corrupt lost leading young people astray I don't think it was true I think it's something that's more recently true or it's a kind of a flower that has finally come to bloom we know that Yale was going a lot of these schools were going in those directions already in the 20s and the 30s but it didn't really come into the mainstream so that you have the madness that you're seeing until until now so I guess it seems to me that it will take a while but but it has to fall apart knows I'm not sure how they can sustain it you know I I I think the the overall system can't be sustained because of the the runaway debt the the top parts of it on you know it's possible it can just keep going because it's exclusive and this is this is what this is what drives it you know I think um I think you know I have this sort of theory that one of the reasons you know Republican political leaders senators congressmen governors aren't going after the universities more is because they still just want their kids to go to top schools so if you were if you were if you were a senator some of those people are in this room by the way or you know or and you know it's um we had we had this you know we had this crazy we had this crazy college admissions thing where it was you know people go and get in through the front door or the back door or the side door and and the you know I think all these places there's place some number even at Harvard or Stanford where if you make this number your kid can get in no matter how unqualified your child is I think it's something like 25 million dollars and you know I think will be helpful to publicize these things but the fact that there are people who are doing this suggest it's gonna keep going for some time and it's it's but it is I mean I I know what you mean and I and I fear you may be right but I'm still thinking that because we're talking about this people hadn't been talking about this it seems where we've arrived at a point where it's possible some people will see this and and if you see what is happening at these colleges it's it's it's dramatically different I mean when I was at Yale in the 80s it was hard for the Alumni to know the lunacy of political correctness that we were living out it was hard for them to get it but now because the way the world is because of social media I don't mean to bring up a sore subject but we have to talk about social media but it seems to me that that people can see the things that they wouldn't have been able to see even 30 or 40 years ago but that that's a larger conversation I do want to talk to you a little bit about social media and yesterday our genius friend Ann Coulter was saying that you Peter teal ought to create a social media platform that will not kick people off if if they have the quote/unquote wrong views will you look I think that I think that there is sort of a question how and I'm on the board of Facebook's I have to always be like very careful what I say I'm not I'm not planning you're on the board of Facebook on the board of face totally yeah and so I'm not going to I have to be someone careful what I what I say in these contexts but I think that look I think I think there are obviously all these questions about the homogenous ation of thought the way in which these institutions a channel thought and you know do not allow as wide variety of used to be heard and it's sort of the Overton Window seems to always get narrower and keep shifting to the left on the discussions we have in our society I think that you know there was there was a hope in the late 1990s that the internet was going to be like the Gutenberg press that it was fundamentally this technology that would widen debate just like and there would be sort of Protestant it would be sort of somewhat schismatic you'd have be able to dissent from from views and that it would have the effective of undermining the monopoly of these of these of the large you know old media type type companies you know if I if I had to give a reading of the landscape in in 2020 I think it's it's certainly not as libertarian as people thought it was going to be in the late 90s I would still I would still defend the Silicon Valley companies partially in the sense that I think they are still there still are more views that can be broadcast on the Internet then you get in in you know in The New York Times or The Washington Post or or things like this could you set a lower bar well that's that is the alternative easing that is the alternative you know that is the alternative and and and you know I think that you know if only I'll pick a little bit on Twitter since I can I can I can focus on that once out on the board of Twitter and and so if you have if you want to understand the sort of the the political dynamic in Silicon Valley was you know in 2015-2016 everybody at Twitter wanted Sanders to become president that was probably the person that the the median employee at Twitter would have would have liked and you know the sort of smoking pot and not doing much work but in sort of the business just sort of runs itself but it dawned on them one day that they were actually they were just working for for mr. Trump every day that they came to work that he you know he's the most effective user of their platform and and that that leads to you know a really extreme amount of cognitive dissonance and a lot of log derangement the night more certainly think that that Twitter was more helpful to to the Republicans in 2016 than to the Democrats that that's that's clear and I think something like this is probably true a you know of a Facebook and of Google and of all all these all these on all these platforms because the mainstream media had a you know super narrowly controlled narrative and we were able to get you know other ideas out you know there was a you know there's a question whether you know there was you know the mainstream media talked about President Trump's tax returns it never talked about you know Hillary Clinton's health and then you know Hillary Clinton had you know her 911 on September 11 2016 where she had her fainting spell in Brooklyn and you know and there were these other channels through which you could get questions out about her health and have a debate and you could have a sort of a two-way discussion like this and I think you know and I think there's obviously some attempt to rein this in to get it even more controlled you know in 2020 and 2024 and we have to push back but I would say at this point in time it's still better than the alternative if you shut down the internet that would help the left part of what we're talking about you know it touches when we're talking let's say about Google for example you're talking about companies that I mean we have the advent now of these companies that aren't really American companies and so they don't really or at least they don't feel that they have to answer to anyone they can be they can prostitute themselves completely they don't have to think about is this right or is this wrong if if they can make more money they can they can do whatever and so when you see this happening for the first time I mean whether it's the NBA or Nike or Google that they don't seem to understand what freedom is what has allowed them to become who they are and so they're going to places like China and they seem to me at least partially to be selling their souls to get more money and and I think in in their defense they seem genuinely to be ignorant of what American style freedom is or what a virtuous free market is they really don't seem to get that one of the reasons that I've supported this president and I know that you have is because he sees some of this and he sees that there are values that we should uphold and he sees that China presents a particular threat to us and temptation to others so what are you what are your views I guess on on what I've just said and particularly with regard to China well I look I think I think you know the the the sort of geopolitical rivalry between the US and China are going to be the defining one for for this country for the next next few decades it is amazing that it took us this long to focus on it I think that you know I think there was somehow we had you know zombie years with with the bushes and the Clintons and the bushes again and and Obama we had sort of you know it was like I understand why Nixon and Reagan were Pro China because it was seen as a counterweight to the Soviet Union and but after 89 there should have been a reassessment and Bush 41 he was too in cahoots with China the Clintons you know that they they campaigned to be tough on China and then that changed about two years into the Clinton administration in 94 Bush 43 again no pushback on China and then Obama you know just not nothing at all so it's the hours very late but but I think there is sort of a recognition that you know we are we are major on we have very radically different views of the world of the future the world and and we need to take take this stuff seriously on many levels I think I think within you know I one of the things I've criticized Google for is and this or like an arrow thing but in some ways illustrative of sort of the insanity of Silicon Valley where the sort of after thing of the crown jewels of Google's research are sort of ARDS AI research and they sort of pulled out of a contract with the military project may even where they were gonna help the military with some of their there a I technology and then at the same time they continued to transfer to you know various Chinese research institutes which are of course linked to the Chinese military because everything in China is sort of one one giant Borg like thing and and this is to my to my way of thinking something that is absolutely extraordinary never happened in the Cold War that a company the scale of Google would not work with our government and would work with with our geopolitical rivals and and I think you know I think it was like genuinely surprising to Google when I pointed this out and this was you know that maybe they were doing something wrong or some people don't mind what am I asking when did you how did you give a speech on this summer of last summer and and then you know there's always some sort of pushback but but i think i think the self understanding at a place like Google is that it's cosmopolitan and it's Universal and it's sort of multicultural and it's open its global it's open to the whole world and then I think the reality is that it's not causing appalling at all it's incredibly parochial sort of designed to have the look and feel of an word facing college campus that's completely unaware and completely clueless about about the rest of the world well everything you've just said though really to sum it up is that those people who think that way and certainly they think that way in most of the cultural elites in the West today think along the same lines and you could boil it down to the phrase anti Americanism fundamentally they they they have an animus toward the United States of America toward what we have been toward what we've represented I mean you saw that in Obama to some extent a kind of a sense of shame for our greatness rather than a pride in our in our greatness and I feel like you know unless you're teaching people why America is great what has made her great how can you expect people at places like Google I mean we should have assumed that why would we ever think that they would be proud to help America whether it's against China or just to help us in in general I wasn't surprised I was horrified well it wasn't you expect I mean it is after all it is mainly an American company and you'd think well that's the point that there would be some sort of rational self-interest where they would help us even if they didn't really believe but but it's not like saying that Yale is an American University they couldn't be more anti-american they they just can't say it but their their worldview is is very hostile to what we think of as American yeah I'm not going to disagree with the idea I can't quite explain it maybe maybe you know I think I think I think sort of the the way in which Silicon Valley is sort of a a one-party state and you know sort of looking ask questions why why it has gotten as extreme as it has and I think think certainly a part of it links back to the university's discussion where Silicon Valley has the most educated workforce in the country with the most largest percentage of people went to these top elite universities and so somehow the Yale problem is a Silicon Valley problem at this point they're the same thing and and and from my point of view you know what let's go on these places is not the people getting educated they're just getting brainwashed yeah well there's there's no doubt about that and I guess so my question then sort of touches on Trump it has thrilled me to see him after decades of presidents ignoring these things really shamefully ignoring a great threat to see him deal with China and in a way seem to get that we we need to deal with with Google and and and others is that one of the reasons did you see any of that early on is that one of the reasons you supported Trump as publicly as you did well I I certainly think that the whole globalization project isn't quite working the way it's it's supposed to anymore and and you can sort of think of globalization on I always think of it as um there's a lot of different ways to cut it but one way to think of the globalization project is on four separate metrics you have the movement of people which is immigration policy you have the movement of goods which is trade you have the movement of money which is banking and capital markets and you have the movement of ideas which is which is the internet and and for you know variety of reasons we can go into we've sort of been invested in in this globalization project look a hook line and sinker as a country for for many decades and there's sort of all sorts of ways it hasn't quite been been working for quite some time and at least the first two and maybe maybe all all four of these and and that you know perhaps the thing that the United States should do is that you know it should become the center of the resistance to the one world state this is the this is the country where the one of old state stops and you know I can understand that there were different there's sort of there were libertarian there were conservative reasons to believe in supernational structures at different times you know Margaret Thatcher as late as 1979 still was pro-eu because she thought that the bureaucracy in Brussels would help her smash the labor unions in the UK and this is why this is why Jeremy Corbyn today is still a closeted brexit here because he's still stuck in the 1970s and he still thinks that these super national institutions are somehow capitalist or something like this but but we need to update our thinking and we need to realize that 2020 is not 1980 or 1970 and and that these sort of super national institutions are actually you know they're not working in the interest of the United States you know there was I think there was a new dealer conceit like this in the late 1940s that you were gonna have these global institutions that would help the United States run run the planet and at this point and it's Sam I worked in the 1950s you know in the 1950s even the United Nations was a pro-american institution and then we can sort of date you know at what point did these various institutions get hijacked and taken over I think the UN was somewhere in the 1960s you know the WTO is probably certainly by the time China hundred in 2001 at this point most of the most of these supranational institutions are anti-american and probably instead of trying to work inside them we should we should withdraw we should resist and the US should be the center of the resistance of one world state I heartily agreed I I'm looking through my notes there's a there's a quote that you did an interview with The New Yorker magazine in 2011 and you said that you believe oh here it is you said I believe Christianity to be true I don't feel a compelling need to convince other people of that I think that somehow at least somehow self-contradictory because I think it's at the heart of believing that Christianity is true that you would feel that compulsion to convince other people of that so what did you mean by that or do you mean the same thing by that net you feel the same way as you did then or can you expand on that idea well maybe that was maybe that was not as artfully worded as I would have would have worded that today I were you afraid that New Yorker would call you out on your Christmas I know I think I think that i think that in certain contexts like in New York City perhaps just saying that your Christian is is enough courage for there was this this whole this whole doc doctrine where you were not supposed to sin against the Holy Spirit if you denied the Holy Spirit you couldn't be saying there's all these debates in the third fourth century about that and and you know probably not it's probably quite as bad as the you know Roman Empire under Diocletian or something like that but but one gets the sense that it's I kind of think it's a decent amount of courage to just say that you're Christian and and so you know maybe not in a small town in Alabama maybe you have to do more there but if you're in Manhattan and that's all you say in my book that's the what do you honey will you agree that by following up by saying that you believe Christianity to be true if that takes courage would you say by saying I don't feel a compelling need to convince other people of that that you have reduced the amount of courage Nancy I look and see I would not word it quite the same way today eh of course this 2011 we were just kids then I know but when you say you think Christianity is true what what do you mean by that if I can ask a really open question well I think I think it says I think that well I believe in the resurrection of Christ I think the Donnelly resurrect the bodily resurrection of Christ so I think that's the central miracle and I think that I think that there is a way in which it gives us an understanding of the world I think that it is you know there's I studied under Rene Girard who's this professor at Stanford who I think was one of the greater Christian thinkers of the of the 20th century and I think that there's an anthropology in Christianity there's an understanding of human nature where we are in the image of God we're mimetic we try to you know and we need we need good role models the only good role model for us is Christ you know all other role models lead to interpersonal conflicts of one sort or another and and so I think there are sort of a lot of things about it that are they're true they're sort of ways we can you know offer apologetic for it you know but it but it is you know on some level I often I often think that if you go back to the Old Testament the ten commandments I often think that the two most important ones are the first and last on the list the first commandment in the tenth the first one is you should only worship God you should look up to the one true God and then the tenth one is you should not look around at your neighbors should not covet the things that belong to your neighbor and when you know when you do not have a transcendent religious belief it you end up just looking around at other people and I think and I think that is sort of the problem with with our sort of atheist liberal world that it is it is just the madness of crowds it's it's it's it's it's it's not it's not reason it's it's not rational it's just mass insanity does that tie into your idea in the in the book it's it's there's always you know I always think if you sort of contrast evangelical Christian Bible study where the the outward facing thing is often the people somehow more moral or better and then the inward facing thing is that you're kind of sinful and that you have to there's a lot of stuff he fix if you were in the Bible setting said you know I figured out and everything's perfect in my life you probably haven't quite gotten the message but I but whatever the sort of paradox and contradictions around that are I think there's sort of a strange contrast with what I saw described is the Atheist rationalist sort of group where the outward facing thing is that you're more rational than people and the inward facing thing is that you're not capable of thought at all that it's just spaghetti code and the mind is not capable of thought and to use the sort of tow mystic medieval distinction you know the medievals believed in the weakness of the will but the power of the intellect and the moderns believe in the power of the will but the weakness of the intellect and so I think you know yes I think faith and reason are compatible and and in fact in fact when you get rid of faith you end up in a world where there's no reason either and that's and we're living in a much less rational world than we lived in a hundred years ago you when you talk about you know coveting in your book zero to one you talk about how when you're trying to build a company and and when they get stuck on competing with you know Hertz Avis whatever it is when they get stuck on competing they lose sight of the larger goal which is not just to defeat the other guy but to do something greater or whatever those ideas talk together or am I just making that sure so if you're if you're if you're if you're too focused on your enemies your rivals your competition it becomes very hard to form a team that's gonna work on some transcendent goal or transcendent purpose you know if you if you categorize it and terms of the seven mortal sins of medieval Catholicism I always think you know you can sort of debate which ones are the worst you know officially pride is supposed to be the worst I always thinking use Gilligan's Island is sort of a mnemonic for this where the professor is pride and you know the skipper is anger and mr. Howell is greed and mrs. Howell is sloth that's why she married mr. Howell and you know ginger is lust Gilligan's always eating food he's gluttony but Mary Ann Mary Ann's Envy she wants to be ginger and I think and I think I think in some ways that that's the one I'm most worried about the Mary Ann's in our society and that's that's I believe that's the that's the that's the that's the that's the envy is is it is the one mortal sin that is still completely taboo all the others can be sort of turned into something positive you know greed is good Gordon Gekko whatever and there's several ways you can flip all the others around you know n B's is the one we still don't talk about and as a result I suspect it's the one that's somehow still sort of pervasive and the most destructive to to bring things to a shallower level briefly I should point out that in 2006 we did a Socrates in the city event around CS Lewis and my friend the film director Norman stone is here he had directed a film about CS Lewis and who showed up with a friend to that event to my shock but I have a picture Tina Tina Louise who played ginger just just so we know that that really happened that really happened well you you you talk about in the book and this is it's all related I mean it's it's interesting to me but you say that we've given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered so to go back to the beginning of the conversation the idea that you know we could wipe out cancer or Alzheimer's or anything like that so so two questions first of all why are you hopeful if you are hopeful and also related to the sense of wonder and the secrets left to be discovered I think somehow I would argue and maybe this goes against this interior tea idea of yours but that God faith in God is an endlessly self-revealing secret in other words that as we pursued God we are inescapably pursuing a kind of science because to know God is to become more and more grounded in the reality of his creation and that those things are related so so the first question was why are you hopeful if you think we've given up our sense of wonder that secrets left to be discovered well I I think I don't think we're at the end of history I don't think we know everything I certainly refuse to believe that everything has been discovered that's going to be discovered and I think there are all sorts of contexts where where we can still still come come to understand understand new things I I think you know just to push back a little bit on you know sort of the I don't I don't think there's anything wrong with Christian Terry already the way you describe it but I always think it would be somewhat inadequate if if it was just that and nothing more you know when when I was you know when I was an undergraduate that sort of the Campus Crusade idea was still always you know God has a plan for you and for your life and you can figure it out but then it would translate into a vocation to something you were supposed to do we don't talk like that anymore as a culture not just Christians as Christians we don't talk like that anymore and we it's it's sort of much more the sort of pop psychology Allah Jordan Peterson or or something like that and I don't think I think it has to be more than than just psychological you you refer in the book we've just got a couple of minutes left here but um somebody called Peter Pan and hold that bus I know you have to get out of here but um I just want to say I want to say that when you talk about this I think of people like William Wilberforce who saw the slave trade as an abomination and spent his life effectively because he was a Christian crusading against that and that seems to me to sum up the kind of thing you're talking about an our faith has to be translated into action if I had to sum it up but let's let's let's go in a slightly different direction with this you know we sort of think about like what are what are the the real challenges in our our society and what was sort of you know at the core of of let's say of atheist liberalism today and I always think there are two different kinds of arguments it's worth differentiate and one is one is is that it's sort of a metaphysical set of arguments God doesn't exist the Bible's not true from a set of arguments like that but there's a second which is something like the Christians aren't Christian enough and and I think that we have to think of what we're struggling against as hyper Christianity ultra Christianity something like that it is is sort of an extreme deformation of it and I think there are all sorts of forms that this this takes and so it's it's I think it's not that there's a shortage of morality I think there's too much morality I'm greater is so moral she wants to shoot everybody he doesn't you know line though against the wall and shoot them if you're not as committed to climate change or if you think about sort of medieval Christianity you know the two most important attributes of Christ were his divinity and second most important one it was that he was porns anyone is always poor it might be Christ in disguise but then in the 19th century it has people like Tolstoy or Marx that sort of pushed this in a hyper Christian direction and we had to do more than the Christians we had have a violent revolution we're gonna do more for the poor in this world right away and that's that that's what I think the the contrast always is and so I think I think the I think the Christian alternative to this is always to come back to see that you know we're in this context that we're not that that you know it's only if you realize that you're in a context where things are pretty screwed up do you have any chance of moving moving beyond it so you know it's it's uh the the - the two vignettes I always give on this are you know there's a that I think of it sort of examples of the alternative to hyper Christianity what the alternative look like there's the Ethiopian Coptic tradition Pontius Pilate is seen as a saint and the reason is that you can't expect more from a politician you can't expect more from government it is it is you know he well he almost listened his wife and he had this dream and he had some misgivings and you know you just can't expect more and that's that's and it's not that if you had lived in the time of Christ you would have done better which was you know the cause for medieval anti-semitism was you know you should go after the Jews because they'd killed Christ if we live in the time of Christ we would have done better or the modern liberals who say they would have been more tolerant in the Middle Ages whereas you know it's the people who are who style themselves as being part of the resistance that that very fact often tells you that they would have just been collaborators because they you know or something like that that's and and the second the second vignette on this side that I always give is you know not not Catholic but I think the there's something about the Catholic doctrine of the transubstantiation that's always super humbling where it's it's literally the body and blood of Christ and you are still no better than a cannibal and it's a cannibalistic meal and you're still the problems of human nature the problems of violence are this continuous with the past and the only hope we have of doing better are to realize that we're still discontent contiguous with the entire human past and when we think we've set that behind us we've transcended it we're much better or hyper Christian were communist were you know we're we're the the tolerant people who would have been super tall in the Middle Ages that's when you're simply worse I have to say you're pretty sharp guy Pete it's a I don't know I don't know what when Ann was thinking about when she said you weren't I think that everybody here would would disagree would say that you're pretty sharp guy and I think most of us would also say and I at the head of the pack that we're just so grateful to you for coming here being a part of our little group called Socrates in the city I know you didn't do it for the money that was I think actually that was my final question it was given given your tremendous wealth how can you help me specifically I'm gonna leave it at that I I really will let you go but not before I say again how genuinely grateful I am Peter for much of what you do but specifically for for just coming here and being willing to you know submit to the petty humiliation of being introduced by me and and then submit to the to the freeform nature of the conversation I'm just really really grateful to you and we're gonna we're gonna let you go but before that I'm gonna give you a copy of my my new books here you go and I know I know Bonhoeffer was a little heady for you and and I just thought this maybe you'll maybe you'll like these but we really do want to say thank you so folks as Peter leaves how about a rousing Socrates in sitting [Applause]

Channel: socratesinthecity

Views: 226,613

Rating: 4.8254094 out of 5

Keywords: EricMetaxasSocrates, Socrates in the City, Eric Metaxas, Peter Thiel, Thiel, Metaxas, Metaxis, Metaxas Thiel, Eric Metaxas Peter Thiel, apollo 11, Entrepreneur, leadership, silicon valley, zero to one, thiel zero to one, peter thiel zero to one, innovation, woodstock, peter thiel and communion, peter thiel christianity, peter thiel christian, peter thiel on Jesus

Id: SO_00POR-Po

Length: 77min 9sec (4629 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/mathis_01_08]

Thanks for sharing !