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Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

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Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#71

Post by samtp »

kiba wrote: post #58
_delirium wrote: post #11

I'd be somewhat more interested in a program like this if it were being run by someone I believed actually wanted in good faith to improve education/business, rather than having ulterior political motives. Thiel is quite open that his main motivation is that he thinks universities promote politics he dislikes, so he'd like to destroy them for that reason. He also claims that in doing so he'd improve education, but it…

He's dedicated to the cause of eliminating death and aging. That's good enough for me. In order to eliminate aging and death, you must have an educated and ambitious populace who can mobilize resources to wage war on mortality. Yes, he's a techno-libertarian, but like all great techno-libertarians he's interested in killing what kill human beings and crystallizing human potential. Aubrey de Grey even mention libertar…

>eliminating death

This is a pointless exercise that is doomed to failure. Sure, we may be able to extend a person's life to 200 or 300 years. But will we be able to cure all future diseases (for the next million years), eliminate accidents, natural disasters, and sudden body failure? What about when the sun burns out in a few billion years? Will we be able to successfully colonize another planet while keeping the same safety precautions for human life?

Death is as much a part of life as birth. It will not be eliminated unless you eliminate life. To think otherwise is a denial of reality.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#72

Post by nerfhammer »

archgoon wrote: post #69
_delirium wrote: post #11

I'd be somewhat more interested in a program like this if it were being run by someone I believed actually wanted in good faith to improve education/business, rather than having ulterior political motives. Thiel is quite open that his main motivation is that he thinks universities promote politics he dislikes, so he'd like to destroy them for that reason. He also claims that in doing so he'd improve education, but it…

Hi, I'm always a bit confused whenever people talk about how the Khan Academy is revolutionary. How is it significantly different than the MIT Open Courseware? Is it just felt that the quality of the lectures is so much better?

Khan Academy is designed entirely for singular at-home study, where OCW is sharing course materials meant for MIT classes which are often difficult to follow if you don't have access to the labs, recitation, textbooks, readings, etc. that are meant to go along with the lectures.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#73

Post by alexsb92 »

hugh3 wrote: post #48
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #13

Doesn't seem like that much money to quit college over. You could just go get a job I guess and make that in a couple years or less, if these are really the "whiz kids." Also, I'm sure these kids are very smart but some of those ideas look extremely lofty. Are these kids really at that level in their education and is 100K really even close to enough money to fund a 1-man research lab? I'm just a bit skeptical.

It'll be interesting to see what does happen. Some of these kids do seem rather smart but incredibly naive (hey, reminds me of me at the age of 19) -- what does happen when Asteroid Mining Kid runs up against cold hard reality? Let me just clag in his whole description: John Burnham believes that the search for new resources has driven exploration, expansion, and innovation—from the discovery of the Americas to the C…

But it's because of those lofty ideas that we have so many great things now. Just because someone does not posses the knowledge of his/her peers regarding a certain field, does not necessarily make them unqualified to work in that field. On the contrary, they are not as bound by all the previous work done in the field, and they may very well come up with something ingenious.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#74

Post by ryanisinallofus »

veyron wrote: post #65
Apocryphon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But kids from low income families are more likely to suffer from student loans.

This is the middle-class trap. In reality, kids from middle-class families are squeezed, because they are ineligible for most financial aid / scholarships and dont have enough money to go to college on their own.

I was part of that trap. My parents wouldn't or couldn't help me and they made too much for me to get financial financial aid.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#75

Post by puredemo »

samtp wrote: post #71
kiba wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's dedicated to the cause of eliminating death and aging. That's good enough for me. In order to eliminate aging and death, you must have an educated and ambitious populace who can mobilize resources to wage war on mortality. Yes, he's a techno-libertarian, but like all great techno-libertarians he's interested in killing what kill human beings and crystallizing human potential. Aubrey de Grey even mention libertar…

>eliminating death This is a pointless exercise that is doomed to failure. Sure, we may be able to extend a person's life to 200 or 300 years. But will we be able to cure all future diseases (for the next million years), eliminate accidents, natural disasters, and sudden body failure? What about when the sun burns out in a few billion years? Will we be able to successfully colonize another planet while keeping the sa…

>Death is as much a part of life as birth. It will not be eliminated unless you eliminate life. To think otherwise is a denial of reality.

The immortal Turritopsis nutricula jellyfish would beg to differ.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#76

Post by mwsherman »

kenjackson wrote: post #66
wheels wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it really disingenuous to paint someone as intelligent and quirky as Thiel with the "bah, republican" brush. In terms of where he's putting his money, bear in mind that he's a multi-billionaire; donating a quarter million for him is not a substantial capital commitment. I wouldn't even call Thiel's goals fundamentally political; he's trying to shape society and throws money at things that he believes will bend…

donating a quarter million for him is not a substantial capital commitment. Most of his donations were the maximum allowed by US law. I wouldn't even call Thiel's goals fundamentally political You don't work with the National Review, the Cato Institute, and consistently donate (and to only one political party) if its not fundamentally political. he's trying to shape society and throws money at things that he believes…

90+% of Google's political donations go to a single party. Is their business fundamentally political?

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/14/technology/google_democrats/

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#77

Post by kenjackson »

mwsherman wrote: post #76
kenjackson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

donating a quarter million for him is not a substantial capital commitment. Most of his donations were the maximum allowed by US law. I wouldn't even call Thiel's goals fundamentally political You don't work with the National Review, the Cato Institute, and consistently donate (and to only one political party) if its not fundamentally political. he's trying to shape society and throws money at things that he believes…

90+% of Google's political donations go to a single party. Is their business fundamentally political? [1] http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/14/technology/google_democrats/

Do they also provide a disproportionate amount of airtime to Mother Jones and the American Prospect? Are they also aggressively pursuing an agenda that people have explicitly described as "liberal".

It's not one thing, but its the combination of his apparent agenda coupled with his background.

With that said, if Google decided to promote planned parenthood links and hid southern baptist links, then I'd probably believe that politics might have something to do with it.

Everyone has a bias. But its important that you be able to see through their front to see what might be their actual end goal that's consistent with their bias.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#78

Post by kiba »

samtp wrote: post #71
kiba wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's dedicated to the cause of eliminating death and aging. That's good enough for me. In order to eliminate aging and death, you must have an educated and ambitious populace who can mobilize resources to wage war on mortality. Yes, he's a techno-libertarian, but like all great techno-libertarians he's interested in killing what kill human beings and crystallizing human potential. Aubrey de Grey even mention libertar…

>eliminating death This is a pointless exercise that is doomed to failure. Sure, we may be able to extend a person's life to 200 or 300 years. But will we be able to cure all future diseases (for the next million years), eliminate accidents, natural disasters, and sudden body failure? What about when the sun burns out in a few billion years? Will we be able to successfully colonize another planet while keeping the sa…

There will always be people who murders other, doesn't mean we should never try to lower the possibility of murder.

Same thing with death. We should lower the possibility that you will die within in the next 5, 25, 100, and thousand of years, or even million.

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#79

Post by jbellis »

hugh3 wrote: post #41
szany wrote: post #31

There seems to be a common misconception about the purpose of the Thiel Fellowship. Two things the Fellowship is not claiming to do: 1) Testing the hypothesis that university is bad 2) Testing the hypothesis that university is not worth the cost for the vast majority of people What the Fellowship might plausibly be doing: 1) Testing the hypothesis that university is not worth the cost for people like the Thiel fellow…

The actual motivation of the Fellowship, which is all over the press and has been related to me by Thiel Foundation workers, is that students with great potential accumulate tons of student loan debt in college and subsequently, instead of taking on projects that might actually help the world, are financially pressured into working at hedge funds and the like Surely kids as brilliant as these ones sound are getting f…

> Surely kids as brilliant as these ones sound are getting full scholarships to college?

I see it's been a while since you went to college. Let me introduce you to a concept called "need-based aid:" it's virtually impossible to get a full-tuition scholarship at a top school based on academic achievement.

See also, market segmentation -- http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...

Re: Peter Thiel Gives Whiz Kids $100K To Quit College, Start Businesses

#80

Post by wallflower »

shareme wrote: post #68

Some facts you may not be aware of: USA public university education costs have risen to 300% to 400% over a 20 year period with most of that costs made up of these trends: -US states cutting education funding -us public colleges increasing enrollment of non state citizens both US and World to replace funding -US fed government increasing loan limits that students can borrow under -US public universities increasing th…

Numbers from NYMag article:

"In the past 30 years, private-­college tuition and fees have increased, in constant 2010 dollars, from $9,500 a year to more than $27,000. Public-college tuition has increased from $2,100 to $7,600. Fifteen years ago, the average student debt at graduation was around $12,700; in 2009, it was $24,000. Over the past quarter-century, the total cost of higher education has grown by 440 percent."

"The cost of college in the past 30 years has gone up tenfold. Health care has only gone up sixfold, and inflation has only gone up threefold. Not only is it a scam, but the college presidents know it. That’s why they keep raising tuition." -James Altucher

http://nymag.com/news/features/college-education-2011-5/

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