The famous Peter Thiel interview question

> The Thiel question is a great one because it reveals that most people hold conventional opinions and call them “heretical.”

Selecting a response that sounds "heretical" but is actually fairly mainstream sounds like exactly the sort of response you'd try to come up with in a job interview.

In other news, the famous interview question "what would you say is your greatest weakness" reveals that most people's greatest weakness is actually not very bad, and could even be spun as a positive.

I wonder if many of these "think differently" questions are less about finding a brilliant theorist and more about finding people who can cope with social condemnation that comes with operating the gears of capital and have the capacity to produce rationales that create enough space to operate without being shut down.

After all, few big innovations come from business, most come from research. Thiel is looking for capable managers of capital.

This after all explains Theil's own career of holding opinions that are not brilliant, but are socially destructive while simultaneously making him rich. He think the female vote was a mistake, he founded a deep state company that assists in intelligence gathering for the military-industrial complex and the NSA. He killed a newspaper.... and so on. He has been called a neo-feudalist.

Is this really a good predictor?

This seems like practically it would be used to not hire people on the basis of 'culture fit'. I can think of many answers to this question that could disclose a protected status, political or religious ideology, or some other belief that now you have to consider in the candidate. (What if someone says, "Software engineers should fight for unionization.")

Do you really get a good signal on the three things the question is intended to find? (Whether people fear judgement, aren't introspective, etc.)

It’s somewhat impressive the degree to which an industry that thinks of itself as being so enlightened falls prey to cults of personality so often.

This is just "what's you're biggest weakness" for people who think they're interesting.

A comment on the format rather than the content: it’s weird how this article includes what look like pull-quotes, but are actually embedded tweets by the author saying the same stuff that’s in the article.

I’ve seen that style used when quoting other people’s tweets, but exclusively quoting yourself that way just seems strange!

> If someone answers the question with a mainstream view, it’s possible that they just aren’t self-aware enough to know a view is well-held. To be self-aware means you ask questions of yourself, such as “how many other people also have this view that I think I alone hold?”

Is this really a characteristic of self awareness? Seems more like awareness of thoughts, trends, and opinions of others/society.

It's almost like the ability to answer this question perfectly, requires intimate knowledge of widely held beliefs/trends which may in turn have the opposite effect of selecting for people hyper aware of trends and others' ideas rather than those more deeply immersed in their own individual work, ideas and experience.

My own answer: "Most traditional graphics programmers are wasting their time. AI renderers will replace all the techniques we use today, not merely augment the techniques. A graphics engine in 20 years will look nothing like current codebases."

I'm referring to cutting-edge engines. There will always be space for stylized renderers. But photorealism? All your BRDF knowledge might as well be raindrops in the wind.

It's unfortunate that the most interesting ideas can't be voiced publicly. It's a good question. I don't think it's good for interviews, but it's a good way to meet interesting people.

No one who wants the job and isn't an idiot would answer this truthfully as most answers would be misunderstood and in many cases would lead one to not get the job. It's one of the stupidest interview questions in a sea of stupid interview questions, one that reveals absolutely nothing about whether a candidate would be good for the job. It reveals a lot of information unrelated to how the candidate will perform that can be used to discriminate against and not hire the candidate: aka a "cultural fit" reason to discriminate and not hire.

Having an unpopular opinion that's also backed up well is rare in the information age. If a view has evidence to support it, that evidence is available to everyone and there will undoubtedly be communities that support it.

Folks with heretical views tend to either have rare knowledge or to be wrong.

The general idea behind the question is brilliant, but I doubt its usefulness as an interview question.

When I read that in his book, my first thought was how I would answer it in an interview, and I think the unstated subtext to the question is:

"What important truth do very few people agree with you on that is big enough to feel important, but I will not feel threatened or offended by?”

"What heretical views you have?" is a great question to ask a friend over a beer, but as an interview question, it's the liberal arts version of those horrid interview puzzles.

Is it just me or is this post riddled with grammatical or spelling errors? Or just omission of words or backwards logic:

> One learns quickly in life that it is never fun to be unpopular. Everyone has felt it at some point in their life. Most people never want to feel it again and so they go against the grain.

Why would most people go against the grain if they never wanted to feel unpopular again?

First of all, is there any evidence that this question is predictive? Secondly, the article is celebrating this question (which certainly is creative and somewhat intriguing) in a way that seems to be weirdly inconsistent: you ask me about a heretical view I have. In favor of the question, let's assume that it's a view related to the industry/product/whatever I am supposed to work with. Now, if most people disagree with my view, how likely is it that you will agree? This assumes both you and I possess a secret truth. You, supposedly an influential business leader, want to keep this truth a secret, or fail to convince others of the truth. This just seems bogus. If I succeed at answering this question in a way you like, isn't it more likely that I make something up to cater to your inflated ego? If there's no evidence that this question works, my line of reasoning is just as good as the one provided in the article.

Ehhhh the responses given by this question, in my opinion, would be heavily driven by the interviewee answering in a way they think the interviewer wants to hear. Most people are self aware enough that they are not going to be spewing out their _truly_ controversial views on politics/religion/whatever to this person they barely know. You cannot say that nobody holds controversial views when the views discussed come from job interviews, of all places...

I generally like a lot of what Thiel says, but people need to be very careful about being heretical for the sake of being heretical. I find a lot of people (myself included) have a tendency to pretend some mainstream way of doing something is wrong for the sake of having some insight that everyone else missed. However, there is generally, at a minimum, some wisdom of the crowds.

If I answer "That's a really dumb question!" am I being heretical or conventional?

It’s a dumb question, because heretical is a meaningless term in the context of the tech industry.

To the extent that it ‘works’ it’s probably going to screen for self-important assholes. Which, given that it’s a peter Thiel question...

This is blog spam. He even quotes himself. Please flag this blog spam.

This post assumes that this question is predictive, which is something I'd much rather see established first...

> “what is a heretical view you have?”

This is a better question to ask oneself with an open mind that to pose to a job candidate.

No heretic is an island. The heretical idea stands in opposition to some convention or norm. Unless the interviewer is intimately familiar with the norm (and self-aware enough to know the difference between convention and heresy), s/he won't be capable of judging whether the response is indeed heretical.

When asked to oneself, the question forces exploration of the idea itself and the norms you believe you stand in opposition to. You might even need to ask around to gauge how heretical your view really is. Maybe you'll give a talk or write an essay - or just post a response in a discussion thread in HN.

However you explore the question, the answer might be surprising. At least I've been sometimes very surprised by ideas I thought were very odd not getting the reaction I thought they would.

"What important truth do very few people agree with you on?"

It's very hard to come up with a right answer, since if it's ostensibly unpopular, you won't know how many agree with you.

(I have not read the article.)

If Thiel asked me these I'd answer, but some rando recruiter or HR person, I'd just answer how much I admired Nelson Mandela, because that's the answer to every HR question anyway.

Here's my truth very few people agree with me on:

A mass of 1kg of lead actually weighs -in standard conditions- more than a mass of 1kg of feathers.

So far, it has been 6 times I've had an argument with people over it.

>It’s a great question because almost everyone cannot come up with an answer that most people they know do not agree with.

I would argue it might be the case that people can't come up with an opinion they're willing to share with the interviewer. If you believe something truly taboo, like that children should be sexually active or a certain race or religion or nationality deserves to be exterminated you're not going to just tell someone because they asked.

Actually I was thinking about this recently (an unpopular opinion). I keep "fighting" with friends over "alternative medicine". I'm surprised at how many educated people (even with a scientific background) believe in alternative medicine and aren't aware of the many biases that mislead them...

Either... Kiwi fruit is best savoured with the skin on, after having thoroughly washed it. ...or... Time is actually speeding up, which is why everyone feels like time speeds up as they get older.

The only reason this is better than “what is your biggest weakness?” is that there is slightly more scope for creativity.

As an undergraduate in political science I declared that the United States invaded Iraq because of Iran. My foreign policy professor told me I was misguided and blinded by war no gering rhetoric. Eight years later I got my PhD on that same thesis.

I have no problem speaking up when I think something needs to be said (if anything, I have the opposite problem), but I would not be comfortable answering this question in an interview.

Perfect use case for Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit.

Interesting that, almost by definition, most of the top HN comments on this article are very critical of the idea. As if proving what the article claims: most people do not push the intellectual boundaries of their social environment.

Not to say that some of the comments are completely unfounded -- for example, this question requires a special interviewer, too, who must be able to contain their biases against the potentially very unique (supposedly good) responses they will receive, which may be diametrically opposed to their own views.

I guess it is not a coincidence that this is a perfect interview question: By construction people cannot cram 'right answers' from some preparation website because the answer would become repetitive. Applicants have to reveal their own original thought or at least prepare by talking to somebody with original ideas. At worst you get somebody who cannot come up with good ideas on his own but who at least can recognize good ideas.

I would rather ask, "What do you know that nobody else seems to know?"

on a related note, I find very few things more predictive in how much I'm going to like a person than the side they take in thiel v gawker.

Ehhhhhhhh. Auren ran one of the shadiest companies in recent history (Rapleaf) and he's discussing Thiel, who in my opinion was completely in the wrong w/r/t Gawker and is incredibly thin skinned and petty for someone who talks about the things that he does.

The core point is correct: you want (for lack of better phrasing) "out of the box" thinkers in your leadership roles, particularly in the early stages. But I would take either of those two as a model with the biggest grain of salt possible; you can be courageous and out of the box without being insanely unethical or a vampire-like dick, respectively.

A lot of my peers are brilliant people and they know more than I do about a wide range of topics. I want to copy their beliefs a lot of the time when I don’t have special evidence to have my own view.

This post’s advice is extremely bad because it forces some level of optimizing for uniqueness (very ironic this is related to Thiel’s question too, since it plays right into Girard-style mimetic fighting to differentiate one’s self from otherwise highly similar peers).

But uniqueness is not valuable in a vacuum. You actually need the unusual views to be correct and valuable in some way. Merely creating some spark of uniqueness is pretty useless and often harmful.

If someone said to me that inside their field of experience (life, or professional or otherwise), they have sufficient reason to have an unusual belief, but for everything else they either copy another expert they trust or else default to conventional wisdom, that would impress me.

If someone goes out of their way to hold unusual beliefs in areas where there is no reason to believe their judgement, that’s a sign of reckless beliefs and immature virtue signaling.

Another benefit is that the interviewer has a chance to learn a new uncommon truth. Perhaps something that can be invested in. I think Soros said he loved to find mistakes in his own thinking, especially if it was a mistake others were making, since he could then use that knowledge to invest.