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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

#141

Post by harshreality »

mjfl wrote: post #136
clairity wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#143

Post by clairity »

mjfl wrote: post #136
clairity wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

sure, information has many channels and routes into our brains, so that's not unusual or a criticism of how you learned that bit of information. but the idea that you try to avoid competition is straight from a first-year strategy course at any business school, in which this has been taught for at least the last 5 decades, if not much longer.

capitalism, the ideal, puts competition on a pedestal, as a broad mechanism to ensure profit margins gets squeezed out of markets as they mature (that is, as risk stabilizes, the risk premium does as well). capitalists don't want their profit margins minimized, so they employ as many mechanisms as they can get their greedy hands on to minimize competition. capitalists are literally anti-competitive. capitalism is not.

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

#144

Post by arvinsim »

pirate787 wrote: post #104
stuaxo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"number go up", they are obsessed with a high score and having more than others playing the same game. It would be sad if it were just that, but the fallout effects so many. I like the idea someone had that beyond a certain point you get a big party to say you won capitalism then the rest of the money you earn goes back into society.

It is a worthy feature of the system that the winners get to direct the resources. Musk used his winnings to found SpaceX and Tesla and other moonshot companies. The alternative is to redistribute everything to people who have proven only that they mismanage resources.

Trickle down economics doesn't work.

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

#145

Post by nbardy »

waffle_maniac wrote: post #44
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…

There was a comment in a thread on HN a while ago by someone that interviewed with Thiel's hedge fund. Apparently the fund lost a lot of money and Thiel was directing the trading decisions. Other investors pulled their money and it was mostly Thiel's money in the fund going forward.

My understanding is that Thiel's public fund often takes loss because he is hedging other financial risk he is taking.(e.g. holding palantir after IPO, large VC investments in industries that may turn out to be based on immature research)

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

#146

Post by JaimeThompson »

ComradePhil wrote: post #108
beebmam wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people with this much wealth want even more wealth for themselves? I've never understood this.

I don't think Peter Thiel is in it for the money, not anymore anyway. He is fairly straightforward and has talked about his motivations in various long-form interviews over the years. In my observation, his actions are aligned with his motivations that he has expressed. Partisan media assigns fabricated evil motivations to explain his actions, like they do with everyone who they view as not on their side. People who…

I would consider it evil to say that women shouldn't vote.

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

#147

Post by JaimeThompson »

pirate787 wrote: post #104
stuaxo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"number go up", they are obsessed with a high score and having more than others playing the same game. It would be sad if it were just that, but the fallout effects so many. I like the idea someone had that beyond a certain point you get a big party to say you won capitalism then the rest of the money you earn goes back into society.

It is a worthy feature of the system that the winners get to direct the resources. Musk used his winnings to found SpaceX and Tesla and other moonshot companies. The alternative is to redistribute everything to people who have proven only that they mismanage resources.

Musk also got a considerable amount of government assistance, assistance that he now says others shouldn't get.

I consider such a position to be rather strange.

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

#148

Post by throwaway1777 »

jvp wrote: post #120
paxys wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is being the 50th best basketball player on the planet good enough? Why do athletes continue to dedicate their lives in the hopes of being #1? Once your basic needs are met and you have a comfortable standard of living, everything else is a game, and people like to win. Why does anyone need a fancy car? Why does anyone need to compete with their neighbors and coworkers? Why does a billionaire need a superyacht when a…

Honestly, no one has ever put it this way. I like the reference to sports! I'd still be happy as a backup QB for 10 years making bank though. Cushy!

Backup qbs don’t make much more then software engineers… just saying. The league minimum is like 700k.

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

#149

Post by ALittleLight »

MiscIdeaMaker99 wrote: post #113
morelish wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Gawker published intimate photos of someone without their permission. What Gawker did was very wrong. I don't get why people defend Gawker.

One doesn't have to defend Gawker to think that what Peter Theil did was atrocious.

So... you think what Gawker did was bad, but Thiel was wrong to stop it?

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

#150

Post by skrtskrt »

swamp40 wrote: post #115
rahulgoel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- DAUs decreased -0.05% from 1,930m in Q3 22 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("sequentially") - DAUs increased +4.5% from 1,845m in Q4 21 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("year over year") - See pp18: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4... DAUs are those using FB app only. Metric for those using all apps (Insta, Whatsapp, etc) increased. Btw - there are ~4.66B internet users - and FB has 77% of those log into one of…

FB pushes you to Insta via its Reels preview videos right on top when you open the FB app. Instagram Reels is more addicting - full screen videos that just show you more of what you watch most intently, doesn't care that you "liked" a page 5 years ago. Zuck is depreciating FB.

Reels is probably >90% recycled from TikTok, with the TikTok video waterwark still on it.

The original content that is there has nothing on TikTok, and the Reels recommendation algorithm is crap - feels like a bunch of if-then statements and you have to make a massive effort to get yourself out of having a particular category in your feed (constantly swipe away as fast as possible if a video of that category comes up; but watch a single video all the way through in that category and it becomes half of your feed)

I joined TikTok recently after watching Reels for a few months (I figured it's probably just as good, right and why have yet another app tracking me), and I was blown away by how much better TikTok content & algorithm is.

Part of it is the user base. TikTok has truly some cool content for every niche you could imagine, and by and large comments are positive and funny.

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