Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel in China [video] | Hacker News Reader

Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel in China [video]

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I am underwhelmed by this presentation. It feels pretty shallow and spontaneous. The advice on how to spot a promising team seemed fair, whereas the run down of Japan's economy was cringy to say the least. Question #1 was simply great though:

    ...you cannot go and just copy stuff."

    Q: Are you not just copying LinkedIn here in China?

Perhaps this will quench your thirst, A Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen debate from a different forum, the Milken Institute.[1] Some profound insights in there.

[1] Copy of In Tech We Trust? A Debate with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtZbWnIALeE

edit: Appended

Yeah, the pmarca/thiel one was dramatically more interesting.

Over and over Thiel cites wages, mean wages, stagnating during the period while Andreessen counters with GDP growing. Both are true. Women entered the broader workforce en masse. Wages were down because of oversupply of labor, nearly doubling the workforce without doubling consumption.

Thiel really comes off dishonest, trying to make a big deal that it wasn't just median wages, mean wages stagnated--as if that proves it wasn't just a change in wealth distribution.

In actuality, there was a change in wealth distribution and median wages fell and mean wages stagnated, and the economy still grew because "wages" ignores people who aren't employed (or seeking employment?), and a hell of a lot more people became employeed during the time period. Really one of the most frustrating talks I've watched.

Meh, try the Thiel vs Graeber debate: http://thebaffler.com/videos/graeber-thiel#.VdnQA7O37tQ

...you cannot go and just copy stuff.

And not to mention thats pretty much the growth model of China's entire economy

Ironically being on Youtube this is a pain in the ass to view from here in China. Could someone issue a summary?

https://www.techinasia.com/thiel-hoffman-china-talk/

The actually China-focused portion seems fairly small and self-evident.

I think the title of the post gives an impression that the talk is about China but it's infact about entrepreneurism.

  Does China need to do anything new or is it good enough for
  china to simply copy things that have already worked. ~ Thiel

Wow, that was quite blunt and critical! I think what defines individuals and societies is how they react to it.

If you're late to the party of course you are going to "copy" others, that's what all the big SV companies did to get started. They go on and on about how innovative they are, but in reality the secret of SV is rather commercialization. Which is exactly what China is doing. Chinese companies are already beating SV on some fronts, like drones. He's just upset because China is challenging the exceptionalism of SV.

Agreed. Classic examples: airbnb, docker, uber, etc.

This comment sounds interesting at first, but on closer reading just makes grand claims without backing them up.

The tell is at the end: "He's just upset because China is challenging the exceptionalism of SV." You couldn't possibly know such a thing, therefore you've made it up, and that boomerangs on the rest of the comment as wishful thinking. That's not what we're looking for in HN comments. We want solid critique, not cheap shots.

It's an opinion. It would be very tedious to preface everything with "I think". It seem very common here to ask that everything be backed up if you don't agree with it, but don't ask the same thing if you do. Instead of dismissing comments, it would be better to ask for clarification or state why you are disagreeing. Especially as a moderator.

The accusation that my comment is "made up" is unfair, not only because it's only as made up as any opinion, but because you make that conclusion based on your disagreement with one of my statements. That is a fallacy if anything.

My opinions both about copying and commercialization in SV is well founded on texts like "A General History of Silicon Valley" [0]. That China is doing the same thing SV did in the beginning, is based on my experiences in Shenzhen. The example of drones is based on the great interests in drones in the US[1] and the success of DJI[2]. My last opinion is based on conversations I've had with people from SV, who quite often judge China by very different standards than the US. "ageek123" made a fair argument opposing this.

If there's anything that is frustrating on HN, it's not accepting that people have a difference of opinion, background and experiences. Things aren't given the benefit of the doubt to the extent they should, but instead downvoted, flagged, spammed into "controversy" or moderated. This creates an environment where discussions end up being about the "lowest common denominator".

I also find it somewhat strange that after more than five years on HN with essentially no interaction with moderation, a couple of days after I e-mail about moderation you make this comment which seems more "aggressive" than usual. Instead of things like "makes grand claims without backing them up", "couldn't possibly know such a thing", "you've made it up", "wishful thinking", "not what we're looking for" and "cheap shots" how about you either disagree[3] if you disagree or do moderation on point if you're doing moderation. "Please substantiate your critic so people have a chance to reply on something other than opinion" seems quite apt. Not that this is a common standard on HN, but at least it would be making HN better.

[0] http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/sv.html [1] https://hackaday.com/tag/drone/ [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/05/06/dji-drones-fr... [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Opinions aren't a problem. The problem is the combination of dismissiveness ("go on and on", "he's just upset because") and lack of substance. Perhaps you have a solid case that SV's early history is analogous to China today. That would be very interesting [1]. And there's nothing wrong with just summarizing; not every comment needs to be a treatise. But you expressed it in the form of what pg calls a middlebrow dismissal. That's what I objected to, not your opinions.

Taking potshots is easy and feels good, but degrades the discourse. This is a tragedy of the commons and we all need to consciously work on reducing it, not least me. This would also be excellent for the diversity of opinion you mention, so I don't see any conflict here.

I didn't mean to pick on you personally. I'm not really following your more general complaints about HN, but if you want to explain them further you're welcome to email us.

[1] Out of curiosity, I took a look at the SV history website you linked to. It gives rather an opposite impression to what you say. For example it says that SV was involved in Farnsworth's invention of television in 1927 (I found that quite surprising), that Stanford was a "major center of innovation" in the 1930s, and so on.

If you read his book ("Zero to One") you'll see that he levels this same criticism against most SV companies, too. He's not just picking on China.

paraphrased: "If you hear someone describe their startup with trendy buzzwords (big data, SaaS, social, mobile, cloud), you should think fraud and run away. The fact you're using trendy buzzwords is an indication you aren't differentiated. You're a buzzword, so many other people are doing the exact same thing. Why are you special? Stop coping others."

If China were to start routinely cranking out highly valuable startups, you know reporters would call them Dragoncorns or Unidragons or something.

Well, there are a lot of highly valuable tech companies coming out of China. They're just not doing new things (0-1), but copying (mostly US) companies, often making them better.

Baidu, Alibaba, WeChat, Qihoo360, etc.

Although, tbh, Alibaba is pretty unique, and a lot of the video companies in China were dramatically different from stuff I've seen elsewhere. I think "China just copies" is overblown.

The China cheap-hw-production ecosystem is kind of a novel thing just by virtue of scale, too.

I was under the impression that WeChat falls under the 0-1 at this point.[0] Although to be fair, marketplaces have existed for centuries. I suppose sometimes it's hard to tell where the line is. They're certainly innovating though.

[0] http://a16z.com/2015/08/06/wechat-china-mobile-first/

I've been wondering more and more lately why tall, rich, white guys in suits have so many "insights". What exactly has Thiel done lately that warrants treating his opinions any differently than some other tall, rich, white guy's opinion? Other than just investing in companies is he really building anything?

Given that he is so far removed from the actual making of things maybe we should stop paying so much attention to him and folks like him in general. Having money and investing is nice but as far as insight is concerned I'd look elsewhere. In fact many of the points he makes just sound hollow, e.g. Microsoft Windows is the last OS, Facebook is the last social network, Google is the last search engine, Japan is not innovating, being contrarian is a sound business strategy, short term iteration + long term vision is a good thing, etc.

And the same goes for Hoffman. He's partly responsible for LinkedIn, which is in my opinion one of the most disgusting (in terms of their data collection, creepy analysis, and overall recruiter-heavy membership) companies that has ever been created, I don't understand why anyone (apart from the type of people who join get-rich-quick pyramid schemes in Las Vegas conference rooms) would want his advice.

Yup, linkedin from the perspective of a software developer is a pretty horrendous product both in terms of usability (dark UI patterns) and recruiter spam. I'm sure there is some value in having an account but I was not able to find any value.

I think most recruiters rightfully assume that if you have an account then you secretly want to be contacted and I'm sure most programmers feel like rockstars for being wanted so badly and being spammed with "opportunities". I closed my account a while ago for philosophical and practical reasons. I have yet to find a good professional network for programmers but given the state of the programmer job market I'm not feeling left out for not having a linkedin account.

I'm just going to make it a policy to flag pointless posts like this. They add nothing to the discussion here. This is not "content" by any reasonable definition.

I thought it was great content.

Peter Thiel's explanation on whether China can copy and survive for long time was great explanation and a valid point for any developing economy.

That is a sure way to lose your flagging privileges. Assuming we're talking about the same video, it's plain as day that this is relevant content for HN. You may not like it; that's not an acceptable reason to flag it. Flagging is for stories that don't belong on HN in the first place.

I'll give you that the title "The Secret of Unicorns" was asinine, but that's just the usual linkbait and fixing it just the usual moderation.

No, it's my opinion that it doesn't add any intellectual content of any kind. You can disagree, of course, but flagging is supposed to be for that purpose, just as you say. You think your opinion is plain as day, but others disagree and very few upvoted this. Yes, the title is what set me off initially, but you seriously need to put effort into ensuring the discourse here does not degrade into a spiral of fluff. Just read the other comments in the thread. I wasn't alone.

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