Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future • Hacker News Board

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#61

Post by Animats » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 4:53 AM UTC

oculus42 wrote: post #58

goodgoblin wrote: post #57

Did anyone else see the headline at the bottom of the page claiming that 'Amazon Workers are Today's Coal Miners'? I haven't read the article, but given the amount of death and human suffering coal miners overcame, I can only assume it is consciously sensationalist. It is almost as if certain villainous categories are built into our collective minds and we are looking for actors to play the parts.

There are some very disturbing stories about extreme conditions in the warehouse. There's a good NYT article about it ( http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/inside-amazons-very... ) This is the piece I heard about: So many ambulances responded to medical assistance calls at the warehouse during a heat wave in May, the paper said, that the retailer paid Cetronia Ambulance Corps to have paramedics and ambulances st…

That's from 2011. Amazon bought Kiva Systems to install robots in their warehouses. No more walking around in Amazon's newer warehouses; the pickers stand in one place as shelving units of products are brought to them by hundreds of mobile robots.

Picking from bins is still manual, but Bezos has Rethink Robotics, which he owns personally, working on that.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#62

Post by scottlocklin » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:00 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…

"In other words, we would need to imagine what a project, that could be accomplished with half-a-million (or more) people working in cooperation toward a single end goal, would look like today. I can guarantee you that would look something along the lines of a partial terraforming of Mars."

A vastly more realistic projection of what "a half million or more people working in cooperation towards a single end goal" could accomplish, based on the AR(1) model, would be the rip roaring success the US has had in bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, and keeping the world safe from terrorists and evil doers.

Face it; you live in a declining civilization. The moon program was the last great accomplishment of the West: the end. Enjoy looking at HN on your iphone: that's about as much future as you're likely to get any time soon.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#63

Post by gone35 » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:02 AM UTC

eruditely wrote: post #38

Why is Virginia Postrel writing an article to posture with no substance? Author of "The Substance of Style", she writes an article representing the over-inflation of stupidly half-aggressive titles filled with not much at all, and to top it all off she threw in commercials at the end. Yes, half an article to refute not a real point Thiel has made so that "Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future". Does Virginia Postrel…

This. Worryingly enough, I confess I've read the article back-to-back several times but I still don't see the author's actual argument. Maybe there is one, but I'm just too dumb.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#64

Post by michaelkeenan » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:07 AM UTC

goodgoblin wrote: post #57

Did anyone else see the headline at the bottom of the page claiming that 'Amazon Workers are Today's Coal Miners'? I haven't read the article, but given the amount of death and human suffering coal miners overcame, I can only assume it is consciously sensationalist. It is almost as if certain villainous categories are built into our collective minds and we are looking for actors to play the parts.

There are two essays about awful work that I like to contrast. One is George Orwell writing about 1930s coal miners: http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html

The other is "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" by Mac McLelland in Mother Jones magazine, writing about working in a fulfillment center in 2012: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...

It seems to me that mining was vastly more physically demanding and dangerous, to the extent that when McLelland complains about physical hardship at the fulfillment center I'm unsympathetic; and that fulfillment center work is vastly more dehumanizing, in contrast to the miners who, for all their toil, had pride in what they do.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#65

Post by seanflyon » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:07 AM UTC

foobarqux wrote: post #53

refurb wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source? It's true that household income has been flat since the 1970's, but the nature of households has changed, there are a lot more single parents where there used to be two income earners. If you look at income on a per person basis, we're much higher (in inflation adjusted terms) than we were in the 1970s.

The reverse is true: there a more two income earners now but household income hasn't increased as much. Per person is flat. http://youtu.be/akVL7QY0S8A?t=9m2s

> Per person is flat.

Median income for fully employed males is flat.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#66

Post by 001sky » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:09 AM UTC

forthefuture wrote: post #51

thathonkey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the argument is that monopolies are ok so long as they are won fair and square? Umm... ok.

The irony is that any company that is legitimately better than their competitors has no choice but to become a monopoly.

Yes, it's a classic false dichotomy. The options are not (monopoly, competition). A "the neverending competition that cannot be won" is best avoided--there is nothing redeemable about this "pure antithesis" to monoploy to make it more desirable.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#67

Post by Animats » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:12 AM UTC

Thiel has some good points about the lack of progress. Rocketry is only slightly better than it was 45 years ago. We've hit the limit of chemical fuels, and weight reduction can only go so far. In comparison, 45 years took us from the Wright Flyer to the first jet aircraft.

Fission power isn't much further along than it was 45 years ago, either. Nor is fusion power. Nor is power transmission. At the high-power end of things, there hasn't been all that much progress. Most of the action is at the low-power end.

Biology is nowhere near hitting a wall. Commercially, though, bio isn't generating huge new businesses. Nanotechnology has devolved from micromachines to surface treatments for materials such as Rust-Oleum NeverWet.

The robot revolution may happen, but robot manipulation in unstructured situations still sucks. Watch these two videos:

Robot assembling water pump using visual guidance and force feedback, 1974: https://archive.org/details/sailfilm_pump

Robot picking up flashlight and putting key in lock using visual guicance and force feedback, 2014: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPD5tUlKGMM

Not much difference there.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#68

Post by michaelkeenan » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:22 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...

What is a good procedure for determining whether someone has good judgment? Is it never making an investment in a person or company that turns out wrong? Then those who never invest at all have the best judgment. But that can't be right.

I think good judgment is shown by those whose investments (of money, time, trust, reputation, or anything) turn out to be better than those in their class. By this measure, Thiel has shown good judgment - his investments of money, time and trust have turned out unusually positively overall. It's been...colorful, at times, but unusually positive overall.

To show someone has poor judgment, one would need to point to a pattern of poor decisions, preferably some hard metric (like investment returns). A single instance of misplaced trust seems inadequate. Does Thiel trusting Elon Musk cancel out his (probably delegated) trust in that Thiel Fellow? I think it does and much more.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#69

Post by adventured » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:33 AM UTC

scottlocklin wrote: post #62

StandardFuture wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"In other words, we would need to imagine what a project, that could be accomplished with half-a-million (or more) people working in cooperation toward a single end goal, would look like today. I can guarantee you that would look something along the lines of a partial terraforming of Mars." A vastly more realistic projection of what "a half million or more people working in cooperation towards a single end goal" coul…

If the West was in decline, it wouldn't still be the engine of science and innovation, which is exactly what it still is. In fact, the West dominates both categories to an extreme, despite the rise of China, India and Japan since the moon landing.

The West still possesses by far and away the best universities and school systems. The US in particular, so dominates the top college rankings, others have a hard time getting a single school into the top ten list.

There's no aspect that we can consider regarding other competitors, that outshine the West. Manufacturing? The US and Germany are both better at it, cleaner at it, and more efficient at it than China. Science? Not even a real competition. Energy? The US and Europe have led and created a huge portion of the technology around pretty much every form of energy production. Information technology? The West leads, easily, again; with countries like China always copying and running five or ten years behind. Nobel laureates? The West wins again. Space? The West dominates again, with no sign of suddenly being bested by China or Japan or India. Quality of life? The West is doing extremely well overall, with Japan and South Korea being the sole countries in the East that are competitive - and it's worth pointing out, Japan is in a 30 year stagnation, and China is the world's fastest accumulator of debt. Medical / pharma / biotech? Again not even a real competition, with the US and Europe dominating in most every regard, from the science of it to the products and drugs.

I'd struggle to come up with any positive categories the West isn't still leading in. Your claim appears to have zero basis in reality.

Re: Peter Thiel Is Wrong About the Future

#70

Post by stillsut » Thu, Oct 09, 2014, 5:39 AM UTC

If you want Grand Engineering, why not get behind the Soviets? Their progress to space outclasses any other non-US country. So why is Russia a second world country, with world-class math, science, and comp-sci talent?

Further: the 'softer' half of any Tech-accelerator - consumer apps or anything ad-based - would be a non-starter for venture capital if it were based in Russia. But Russians do have the ambition and skill to execute these concepts. The reason for this disparity is worth considering if we want to make Thiel's techno-vision our first principles for economic growth.

I'd propose: it was not the big projects in rocket science but the crass day-to-day business of ordinary people to meet ordinary peoples' needs that led the US to develop into the wealthiest country.

The idea that having a bunch of users that never pay you money is a symptom of an affluent society like ours, and although it seems kind of disgusting when you thing about it, is probably more essential to our economy than whatever DARPA and NASA are cooking up right now.