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Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

nytimes.com

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Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#231

Post by clairity »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #223
clairity wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wasn't claiming thiel was dumb, just that in his case, luck overwhelmed, and that he's not as smart and talented as he'd want the world to believe (that everything he's achieved is solely due to his own brilliance only). trump is, in a way, a good analogue. he also claims rare intelligence, but it's pretty clear he's not smart at all. he happened to be propelled by daddy's wealth, and translated that into infamy vi…

You think he could bully his way into becoming president and dominating the republican party by sheer luck? Even if I wanted to I couldn't do it what he did and I doubt you could do it either.

you're right, the universe has deemed you and me to not be as extraordinarily lucky as trump.

i get that our primal belief in our own agency creates strong cognitive dissonance against the centrality of chance in our lives. it's almost as if evolutionarily, it doesn't matter to our egos that we often get the causality exactly backwards. esteem rises either way, even under false premises.

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#232

Post by tomcam »

clairity wrote: post #193
tomcam wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound pretty brilliant yourself . Mind sharing your achievements that would illustrate how much more talented and smart you are than Thiel?

thanks random internet person! in my infinite modesty however, i'll decline to boast about my many amazing and wonderful achievements. but y'know, just between you and me, i did once receive a canned award from my state senator AND my state congresscritter! with fake-signed certificate and everything! *puffed-chest* notice that i'd made no reflexive or comparative claims. but comparatively speaking, thiel on a daily…

> thiel on a daily basis most assuredly looks at musk with full-on green-faced envy

How do you know?

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#233

Post by telotortium »

zls wrote: post #117
hotpotamus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he eligible? Looking at his bio it doesn't appear so. Also he seems like he'd be happier pulling the strings of a President JD Vance anyway.

In the one law class I took, presidential eligibility was the example used to introduce our discussion of "standing". He framed the discussion specifically around a hypothetical Schwarzenegger run. The professor said that although it shouldn't be allowed, if Schwarzenegger actually ran, no one would have standing to sue him, so he would be allowed after all. The prof spoke in a way that implied this is an accepted tr…

There would definitely be people who could argue standing, however. You could start with their opponents in the general election. More likely I think would be their primary opponents (probably initially at the state level). The Supreme Court could attempt to evade this by calling it a political question outside of the court's jurisdiction (they've done this in denying challenges to gerrymandered maps, although those are different in being acts of the states, rather than contesting an irregular election), or they could in theory deny cert and let a lower court's decision stand, although I think that's unlikely.

(IANAL)

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#234

Post by jcadam »

TearsInTheRain wrote: post #218
totesraunch wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have multiple game running isn't the trick just to play the move your opponent plays from the previous board? Do in reality you're only playing one game and everyone else is playing each other.

Thats a good way to lose half your games

But you win half your games.

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#235

Post by CaptainZapp »

FredPret wrote: post #192
UncleMeat wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helping a little old lady cross the road is improving the world in some manner. Acquiring bigger numbers in a bank account... not so much.

If you subscribe to the pre-modern idea that there is a limited overall amount of wealth, right. But if you fast forward to the modern age, you’ll find that almost all work creates new wealth.

> you’ll find that almost all work creates new wealth.

Not necessarily for the person doing the work, though.

Personally I find it scandalous how we treated "essential workers" during the pandemic. But I'm afraid I'm digressing here.

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#236

Post by CaptainZapp »

clairity wrote: post #123
user249 wrote: post #14

This podcast "The Peter Thiel Paradox" [1] explained a lot about the mystery of Peter Thiel to me. Turns out that there is less than meets the eye but he does have a specific talent for manipulating the political systems and government coffers to enrich himself, much like Richard Branson, or so the British podcast claims. [1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-p... One nitpick; Theil said "We…

thiel isn't that talented or smart, but he did get hella lucky, and that's a sore point for him. so he's used his paypal riches on an extended PR campaign to make everyone believe he's something more than he is. literally every quote and quip i've heard from him is recycled directly from elsewhere, rather than being even a semi-original notion, but he passes it off as wisdom from on high. he wants more than just resp…

His Sea steading ideas are actually pretty idiotic in my book.

Proof: Everybody who tried it just to find out how extremely expensive it is to maintain structures in the middle of an ocean.

But it's not only that. They also find out in a very painful way that the high seas are just about the most regulated entity apart from aviation and possibly medicine.[0]

It seems that very smart people are totally able to maintain very dumb ideas.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voya...

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#237

Post by piva00 »

okaramian wrote: post #83
gameswithgo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is game with millions of human lives being destroyed as a consequence at times.

If you don't like the game, you should probably vote for politicians that change the rules. There isn't a real bound on wealth within the system we're in, until that changes this is reality and expecting people who play it to be inherently moral is naive. Note that Im not stating a judgement either way, just pointing out how the system currently works.

This system is all encompassing, politicians are in it as well.

The only real system change is through revolution, and revolutions are never pretty.

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#238

Post by piva00 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #103
gameswithgo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is game with millions of human lives being destroyed as a consequence at times.

Humanity, the game. In the original version, conquest, you got points for taking other people’s stuff, which almost always required injuring or killing them. With the addition of the extended economic growth (capitalism) expansion pack you could gain points by making things or providing services people wanted more than what they already had.

The economic growth expansion also brings a whole lot of new ways to exploit people for points. No need anymore to kill or injure them directly, you can decide to injure millions at once through a web of complex shell companies to extract some shiny rock the other people want and play the "it's all the free market" card to not get points deducted!

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#239

Post by piva00 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #176
xxpor wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to the same extent, simply because the raison d'etre of the left is to (at the extreme end) eliminate those types of people in the first place. Why isn't there a OANN of the left? Sure the MSM has a mainstream liberal bias, but there's hardly any Big Left (as in full on communist) media, at least in the English speaking world. There's a multitude of reasons, but I believe a big part of it is there simply isn't fu…

Because OANN true believers are the kind of people who watch TV, and their closest equivalents on the left do not. The preferred media can differ.

So what's an equivalent on the left in your opinion?

Re: Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

#240

Post by randomsearch »

harshreality wrote: post #141
mjfl wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read his book "Zero to One" and I felt like it did learn good things from it, for example that "competition is for losers". Before I thought capitalism was all about competition, but maybe I was a rube in not knowing that.

Buffett's "good businesses have moats" is roughly equivalent.

"Saying you like “moats” is just a nice way of saying you like oligopolies" - Musk
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