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Comment by Aqueous | Hacker News Reader

Assuming all of this is accurate, Thiel's thinking and actions are so full of contradictions and irrationality it's hard to understand how he became a billionaire. Just two that stick out right away:

"- Thiel is passionately against all forms of political correctness, just like Trump." - unless he determines that the political incorrectness in question happens to affect him in some adverse way. See: Gawker.

And yes, I think outing someone without their express consent is a form of political incorrectness, in addition to a personal violation. I also don't think that financial bankruptcy is an appropriate punishment for doing so.

"- Thiel wants to restrict immigration to highly educated people. Just like Trump." - But also believes higher education is not so worthwhile that it should be required or even considered important for all Americans. See: Thiel Fellows

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I'll play devils advocate here and unify both those points with Thiel's apparent views:

Striking back at Gawker wasn't about political correctness, it was about the boundaries of public/private life. He doesn't care if people hate him / judge him for his sexuality, but he believes it's nobody else's business and the press should be kept from revealing similar private info in the future. This reconciles well both with the specific case he chose to attack them through (Hogan's sex tape) and with a vague 'yearning for the past.' Past presidents had extramarital affairs as sort of public secrets with the press corps, because exactly this sort of thing was considered immaterial.

The second one is even easier to reconcile. Thiel believes there's a significant variance in the fundamental capabilities of different humans. The Thiel Fellowships are for exceptionally capable people, but he could still think the 'middle of the pack' needs higher education to maximize their contribution to society. He wants to make startup kings, not pull everyone out of school to start co-ops.

This public/private dichotomy reminds me sharply of a novel I read at one of those late teen-age formative periods, For Us, the Living[1], by Heinlein. In that story, it was a norm that you could declare "private sphere", and journalists et al would have to ignore the ensuing events until going "public" again. In that world, it had basically put the papparatzi out of work. There are some other gems in there, like a future law where if a country was to go to war, it was put to a popular vote, and if the measure passed, those who voted for war were moved to the head of the draft list.

I'm not sure whether everyone should be banned or required to read Heinlein in high school...

[1] http://amzn.to/2eemScq

I'd be inclined to suppose that Thiel might say that he wants to restrict immigration to highly educated people because education correlates with intelligence. If you've already identified intelligence, you don't need to use education as a proxy rule-of-thumb.

If being rational would correlate with getting rich, one would live in a rather interesting place.

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