Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#21

Post by pinkyand » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 1:27 AM UTC

StandardFuture wrote: post #14

acgourley wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?" In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists…

Manhattan project, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. The Apollo program, over half a million people working in cooperation to meet one end goal. How many people do Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle employ? Combined ? A single individual with a computer can be more productive than 100 individuals from any of those past projects. We walk around with more computer power in our pocket…

You are definitely right,we have less of that spirit.

But we do have such projects that organize huge amounts of people(although the details of this organization differ - because it appears that networks of companies works better).

Curing cancer,green energy and keeping moore's law can be seen as such projects.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#22

Post by MaysonL » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 1:31 AM UTC

api wrote: post #9

rqebmm wrote: post #4

This is a very good crystallization of my thoughts when I first heard Thiel's argument. At the end of the day, it's always been about incremental steps, we just look back and see the leaps and bounds that they enabled.

I fundamentally disagree -- there is a difference between incremental and revolutionary advances. They are qualitatively different types of steps. http://adamierymenko.com/c/ Nevertheless this Bloomberg article makes a good concrete counterpoint to Thiel and Stephenson. Part of the problem is that these things are horribly difficult to quantify. How do you measure "fundamental advance?" I'm not aware of any good metr…

Of course, if you make enough incremental steps, the result is revolutionary. See for example, the series of small incremental steps from the the first transistor to the current 2 billion transistor integrated circuits.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#23

Post by zecho » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 1:39 AM UTC

MaysonL wrote: post #22

api wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally disagree -- there is a difference between incremental and revolutionary advances. They are qualitatively different types of steps. http://adamierymenko.com/c/ Nevertheless this Bloomberg article makes a good concrete counterpoint to Thiel and Stephenson. Part of the problem is that these things are horribly difficult to quantify. How do you measure "fundamental advance?" I'm not aware of any good metr…

Of course, if you make enough incremental steps, the result is revolutionary. See for example, the series of small incremental steps from the the first transistor to the current 2 billion transistor integrated circuits.

Or the series of small steps between primordial sludge and a man on the moon.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#24

Post by AndrewKemendo » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 1:51 AM UTC

acgourley wrote: post #5

rqebmm wrote: post #4

This is a very good crystallization of my thoughts when I first heard Thiel's argument. At the end of the day, it's always been about incremental steps, we just look back and see the leaps and bounds that they enabled.

The manhattan project wasn't incremental. Nor was the apollo program nor the hoover dam. It does seem like we (America) have moved into a mode of thinking where instead of asking, "what do we want to build?" we ask, "based on the advances at the edge of iterative academic or technical progress, what is now possible to build?" In short, Thiel's argument that America has mostly transitioned from optimistic determinists…

All of those were government projects. And two were either completely or largely secret at that, because they were intended to address an "existential threat" on the horizon.

Good luck getting the government behind anything like that anymore. Unless we have some otherworldly threat or something that MIGHT challenge US dominance in short order I don't see any big projects coming out of the U.S. government.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#25

Post by whitehat2k9 » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 2:01 AM UTC

Peter Thiel isn't exactly known for his good judgment. Just look at one of his Thiel fellows: http://blog.kevinzhang.me/posts/tracking-down-the-person-who...

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#26

Post by hkmurakami » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 2:18 AM UTC

whitehat2k9 wrote: post #25

Peter Thiel isn't exactly known for his good judgment. Just look at one of his Thiel fellows: http://blog.kevinzhang.me/posts/tracking-down-the-person-who...

Just read through all 3 posts in the history of this incident, and I am dumbfounded.

It reminds me of how I was friends with a con-artist in college and had no idea about it (though I did think he had compulsive lying disorder).

I genuinely wonder what sort of heuristics Thiel used, and why his presumably quite reasonable approach failed to catch this anomaly.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#27

Post by tlear » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 2:21 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #19

foobarqux wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everyone else does?

Really? I thought the people like Moravec and Kurzweil were predicting 2030 to 2040? I have not seen any analysis from anyone that would push it off past 2100.

You might as well say that we gona create a Warp drive by 2100. Jump necessary for AI advancement makes settlement on Mars an easy problem. We are so far from that we really have no idea how far it is. Human level AI when it happens and it probably will will most likely be at a stage where current tech would seem something out of Ancient Greeks time if not Stone age.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#28

Post by api » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 2:21 AM UTC

MaysonL wrote: post #22

api wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fundamentally disagree -- there is a difference between incremental and revolutionary advances. They are qualitatively different types of steps. http://adamierymenko.com/c/ Nevertheless this Bloomberg article makes a good concrete counterpoint to Thiel and Stephenson. Part of the problem is that these things are horribly difficult to quantify. How do you measure "fundamental advance?" I'm not aware of any good metr…

Of course, if you make enough incremental steps, the result is revolutionary. See for example, the series of small incremental steps from the the first transistor to the current 2 billion transistor integrated circuits.

TL;DR on the blog article I posted: in any complex fitness landscape there are points unreachable by simple gradient ascent. Innovation simply cannot be 100% incremental. Leaps must occur, and these are qualitatively different from hill climbing.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#29

Post by foobarqux » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 2:23 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #19

foobarqux wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because everyone else does?

Really? I thought the people like Moravec and Kurzweil were predicting 2030 to 2040? I have not seen any analysis from anyone that would push it off past 2100.

Kurzweil is not respected in the AI community. I have never heard of Moravec.

I thought Scott Aaronson had a survey of AI researchers where they were asked how long they though AGI would take but I can't find it now.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#30

Post by seanflyon » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 2:26 AM UTC

api wrote: post #9

rqebmm wrote: post #4

This is a very good crystallization of my thoughts when I first heard Thiel's argument. At the end of the day, it's always been about incremental steps, we just look back and see the leaps and bounds that they enabled.

I fundamentally disagree -- there is a difference between incremental and revolutionary advances. They are qualitatively different types of steps. http://adamierymenko.com/c/ Nevertheless this Bloomberg article makes a good concrete counterpoint to Thiel and Stephenson. Part of the problem is that these things are horribly difficult to quantify. How do you measure "fundamental advance?" I'm not aware of any good metr…

> I wonder though if the real problem isn't the decline in wage parity since ~1970. It's not that innovation's stopped, but the rate at which people can afford new innovation has slowed since more and more people can't afford anything but basic necessities.

Parity is not purchasing power. Inflation adjusted wages for the bottom quintile are up 20% from 1970. The poor/middle-class getting poorer has only happened since 1999-2000 so I don't think that is responsible for a lack of innovation.

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-...