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I dislike his views, but one thing Thiel is most certainly not is misinformed. His interpretations may be completely wrong, but he is not misinformed. I recall an interview of Marc Andreessen where Marc said he had to do a ton of preparation just to stand toe to toe in a debate with Thiel.

If you believe that, then look for other explanations for his oddball statements. The contrarian angle seems like the right one - Thiel has lamented in the past that you can't say certain things anymore. He might be saying these things just to provoke a reaction.

This is what surprises me about the interview. I was under the impression that, given his interest in politics, he was pretty well-informed. But his answers here are consistent with someone who knows very little about the topics he's being asked about, but has a bit of experience arguing with other people ("I'm going to answer your question with another question").

edit: And I'd love to believe the contrarian thing, but when I've seen it done by well-informed people, it's immediately substantive and really thought-provoking, instead of... well, whatever this is.

I'd be very interested in reading the interview you mentioned, if you find it at any point!

Being informed isn't a passive state, but an active one. One of the dangers of getting a reputation for being knowledgeable is that it creates the risk of buying into your own mythology and slacking on the activity on which the reputation was built.

Coupled with the fact that knowledge is often much narrower and more domain-specific than the reputation for knowledge that it produces, and it's quite easy for someone who has, due to time and energy invested in one domain (plus generally-applicable rhetorical skill), built a well-justified reputation for knowledge to end up turning out to be quite ill-informed (if still rhetorically skilled) in other domains in which they have an interest and choose to be an active pontificator.

Expertise is generally pretty narrow. For instance, I heard him speak about bio and pharma about half a year ago and he made several statements that were categorically incorrect and poorly reasoned through.

This sounds like evidence that his knowledge is wide, not narrow

No, making statements outside of his primary domain that are categorically incorrect isn't a sign of broad knowledge. It may be a sign that he thinks his knowledge is broad when it isn't, but there are other explanations.

It's evidence that he's willing to talk about a wide range of topics, not that he has great knowledge in those areas.

That may just means he's a good debater not that he is well informed.

The second point translates as

- if trump believes X, and you believe X is wrong, how would you change that.

One of the ways is by being in the inner circle.

The issue this misses is that influence is held By many people, and it's not mutually exclusive. To exert influence on trump, you too will end up being influence and modifying your own stances so that it's possible you can apply force.

But if your position is to extreme (too far out on an axis) in the end the influence you can exert reduces to naught.

For a live example : There's some Chap who has invested large amount of money to explain to republicans what climate change/pollution mean. His position has now Morphed to supporting clean coal, in order to adapt to the environment he is in.

No ethical shadiness? Domestic spying, civilian casualties through the drone program, IRS interference in an election against political opponents...

Oh, I wasn't aware that I was implying that the current administration is without problems. I'm just really surprised at Thiel's answers in this interview.

No worries - i didn't think so. I was focusing on the quote

"IRS interference in an election against political opponents"

That was a misrepresentation of what happened. And not due to Obama.

So I'm sure that you would agree that the current alleged russian interference is a misrepresentation and not due to putin

The Russian interference has nothing to do with the misrepresentation of IRS activities.

Not to mention staying silent on the Dakota Access pipeline and continuing the drug war unabated.

I doubt that qualifies as shady behavior. You might disagree with Obama on that, but it's not an ethical lapse.

Also mass deportation that earned him the DIC(K) title - Deportation-in-Chief:

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21595902-expelling-rec...

Is that really shady behavior?

he's a contrarian. you're never going to get anything that makes sense. it's a way of life.

Yes but being contrary for the sake of contrarianism is anarchy. I got the impression he wanted no information to be given out there. I still have no idea what he wants. His reasoning and method of thought, though, lead me to suspect he may want some technological innovations at any cost. Or, he may be incredibly shortsighted about Trump. Or just out for chaos.

The contrarian thing may have been a rhetorical tactic to say nothing in an interview, too.

He can be entirely and uniformly contrarian throughout his entire life without being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. We have no idea beyond wild guesses why he is contrarian.

Being contrarian is being contrary for the sake of being contrary.

Not according to the dictionary (maybe some, but it's clearly not a consensus): http://www.dictionary.com/browse/contrarian

Sure we do. Judge the man by his actions. He had this interview and stated contrary views to everything under the sun. Seems like he wants to be mysterious by answering with contradictions.

Both those quotes are opinions. You disagreeing with them doesn't make them uninformed.

Not to mention that most of the quotes are clearly taken out of context. Making any kind of judgment based on them is a shot in the dark.

Can you explain which quotes are taken out of context, and in what context they are best interpreted? I'd love to understand.

Those quotes were preceded by, and intended to emphasize this statement: -- "Mr. Thiel shows, again and again, how he likes to “flip around” issues to see if conventional wisdom is wrong, a technique he calls Pyrrhonian skepticism.

“Maybe I do always have this background program running where I’m trying to think of, ‘O.K., what’s the opposite of what you’re saying?’ and then I’ll try that,” he says. “It works surprisingly often.” " -- That clearly provides more context in that Theil was trying to demonstrate his contrarian mindset.

Ah, yeah -- I debated putting these two paragraphs into the quote, but figured my post was getting a bit long in the tooth :)

How does this mindset influence your interpretation of his statement that a nonzero amount of corruption is good because otherwise things are "too boring"? To me, the preceding paragraphs seem to only confuse his intent -- it makes it sound like he could either be not taking the conversation seriously, or saying that he really does think that some corruption is a good thing.

I can't read Thiel's mind, but his point reminded me of Mancur Olson's description of roving bandits vs stationary bandits [1].

a "roving bandit" only has the incentive to steal and destroy, whilst a "stationary bandit"—a tyrant—has an incentive to encourage some degree of economic success

The same point could be made for having no interest vs having a conflict of interest.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson

This is a stretch. The more likely explanation is that either he misspoke or has very strange priorities. Peter Thiel is someone who has done some pretty impressive stuff. But all his recent moves in politics have been pretty zany. After enough zany behaviors, it might be time to start wondering whether the impressive stuff was the fluke, or whether his skill in that pursuit doesn't translate to other domains.

You're right, it is a stretch. I think Thiel was saying something a bit less strong: that in the pursuit of a boring administration with no conflict-of-interest scandals, you can be too conservative. You risk having no-one who actually knows what they are doing.

By the way, if you think becoming a close advisor to a new president is unimpressive then I'd like to know what would impress you!

“But there’s a point where no corruption can be a bad thing. It can mean that things are too boring.”

No journalist would just change topic after hearing this. It's a very controversial and ambiguous statement, and Thiel must have elaborated a great deal on it. But there is no further mention of any of that in the article.

Definitely an amen to wanting the full transcript of the interview. It does appear that they did a brief rapid-fire response segment and published it in a separate article, though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13378168

So I think it's contextually possible that they just moved on after Thiel's response.

Opinions can be wrong. These are statements that cannot be wrong, but that's because they are expressions of preference.

Odd preferences, though, to be sure. The preference for some corruption over none, especially, strikes me as one that most do not share.