Comment by erwan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by erwan | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to be unpleasant and venture a guess.

A lot of Silicon Valley, and its global sphere of influence, loves consuming pseudo-contrarian content because they are themselves incapable of producing the tiniest bit of contrarian thought. Either because it's an intellectually too consuming task or simply because they are too scared to break rank with what is socially acceptable, even in the intimacy of their own minds. It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet, a few domain specific publications, and "crank" hot-spots.

The cheap worship of contrarian thinking has taken off when Thiel popularized the idea of "secrets" in From Zero To One as well as with F8 and their analogous notion of "unfair advantage". Of course that is a much older idea, but they are the ones who synthesized it clearly in addition to consciously leverage it aggressively in business contexts.

It's odd, as usual, and an old phenomenon. There is a a bit of mimesis (craving for the the object of high-status Peter Thiel's desire: contrarian insights), a bit of laziness (taking the path of least resistance: consuming content instead of producing original thought), and a bit of messianism and vanity. I am not casting a moral judgment on the latter. The issue is that it comes at no cost: you never deploy efforts to challenge the tenets of your world and you never have to feel uncomfortable contemplating forbidden ideas. So you allow yourself to feel vain for a most obedient opinion.

If I were to draw an "ecology of contrarian ideas", I would say that there are about two types: the ones that will spark outrage and the ones that will spark indifference. The former are more abundant, easier to come up with, and probably more destructive too. The latter consists of all the positions that you can take in public without them having repercussions on your career, network, and status - since no one cares or understand. So, when you hear someone lauded for their "contrarian takes", chances are that they are either high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark.

That's not exclusive to the tech world at all and maybe it will improve.

I think this is a really good answer. I think his works are just edgy enough to really flatter the Valley Identity, one of the core aspects of which is to see yourself as a contrarian / outsider / challenger / disruptor, etc.

Although, I think the Valley can also be very faddish with it's thinking and techno-criticism is really in right now. Had his books been published 10 years earlier, they would have not been noticed at all.

Every era has its third-rail speech codes. It wasn't that long ago that saying certain things would literally get you burned at the stake. We consider ourselves enlightened today because nobody cares if you say those things.

The irony, though, is we've just adopted a different speech code (political correctness) where expressing a taboo notion will get you metaphorically burned at the stake.

I wonder what people a century from now will think of our modern speech codes. If past speech codes are any guide, they won't think positively about it.

Dr. Pepper ran a TV ad in the 70's where the pitch was essentially "join us, the non-conformists!"

I've often wondered if they were aware of the irony in that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVygqjyS4CA

I hate this line of reasoning that not accepting "contrarian" ideas is narrow minded, because while it's not wrong, 90% of the time it's used to justify believing the earth is flat, vaccines cause autism, and climate change is untrue. What's that, you don't like my ignorance? Ah well, then you're part of the narrow minded blind elite for not accepting contrarian thought!

Ultimately, the point is the pursuit of the truth.

The postulates are that we are blind, fallible, and prone to "cargo-culting". So, in that setting, the preliminary step for any inquisitive mind should be to make space for the truth to emerge.

Hopefully, if you labor the intellectual land, ruthlessly digging deep, much deeper than you would normally do, then you might find important truths trapped beneath concepts and ideas which no one questions. As it turns out, it seem that important truth hide behind simple but devastating lies. More generally, Thiel calls these truths secrets, I much prefer the term treasures, or even things that were hidden since the foundation of the world if I'm in a biblical or Girardian mood.

In the context of technology and entrepreneurship, the postulate is that business leverage these secrets are the best kind. That is the whole argument that Thiel very eloquently lays out in his book From Zero To One.

But because critical inquiry is not something that comes naturally to most people, you need to train yourself and condition your brain to be effective at it. That is, control the mind's natural inclination to reject what goes against the doxa. The first step toward this is of course to be generous with odd ideas, and then grooming yourself to put your own beliefs in danger. It is an exercise in self-deconstruction and discipline. What belief makes you uncomfortable? Why? Keep pushing until your mind collapse under its own contradiction, until you have toppled every single of the foundations which hold up the larger edifice - if you are familiar with Cartesian doubt, that is exactly what I am talking about, only more violent.

When people discuss about contrarian thinking, they immediately think of controversial ideologies and political stances. In fact, I think these are some of the least interesting spaces to explore. I am much more excited about critical inquiries that lead to insights that people are, at first, indifferent to. They grow very deep and are most fruitful.

Sure, I understand the argument. Critical thinking, questioning everything that is around us, is important. I'm just saying that it's also important that this argument doesn't provide ground for holding ideas that are objectively false, as proven by science.

>So, when you hear someone lauded for their "contrarian takes", chances are that they are either high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark.

That reminds me of the old joke that the radicals in Soviet Russia were the ones that thought there should be not one but two Stalins.

yup, Silicon Valley is a hivemind of people patting themselves on the backs as being intellectual contrarians. If you want to see what happens when someone with actual contrarian thought voices their opinion, see James Damore or Peter thiel and how fast they were excommunicated for their heresy.

While Damore was ostracized relatively quickly, I don't think you can say the same of Thiel. He's had his views since his days at the Stanford Review, yet that hasn't stopped him from being almost idolized (indeed, he's referenced in the parent comment as a source of this thinking). If anyone's patted themselves on the back for being a contrarian and been rewarded for it, it's Thiel.

The difference is that most people weren't aware or didn't care until he announced his support of Trump. Nothing objectively changed, but like a bunch of robots everyone immediately started calling for him to be removed from the Facebook board of directors and the relationship with YC to be ended.

>It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet

Are you referring to 4chan?

edit: dear downvoter, this is an honest question

I didn't downvote you and I wasn't referring to 4chan at all.

What were you referring to?

The problem with a comment like this is that it comes off just as smug as what it criticizes.

Your beginning points seem arbitrary too. Thiel didn't begin any of that and the idea of unfair advantage long predates Facebook.

If you read my comment again, you will see that I am not criticizing anyone for being smug. In fact, I say that I don't mind vanity when it is deserved. Elaborate and we could have a discussion, as it stands there isn't much for me to reply.

If you use language like "they are themselves incapable of producing the tiniest bit of contrarian thought", "they are too scared to break rank with what is socially acceptable", etc. then of course you are judging others, whether you say you are or not. What I don't like about comments like that one (nothing personal mind you) is that they don't actually say anything. It's all just pejorative language, putting down others, and thus implicitly taking a superior position yourself.

Unless I'm missing something, the only sentence in the comment that doesn't fit that description is It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet, a few domain specific publications, and "crank" hot-spots. That, at least, isn't putting down other people. But why assume that the people you're talking about don't know this?

That's because you take my criticism of the overall laziness as the ultimate end of my comment. It's not. It serves as context to answer the question that the article prompts: Why are techies enamored with Pr. Hariri, their "doomsayer"?

And the answer is directly related to the fact that there is a search for contrarian-ness, a quest that is not introspective at all because that would actually require some effort rather than passive content consumption.

You choose to describe my criticism as "putting people down" as if my goal was to be mean, but I suspect you are more annoyed at what you interpret as arrogance rather than anyone's feelings. I don't mind you thinking that but I don't think that's the case.

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