Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board | Hacker News Reader

Peter Thiel to step down from Meta’s board

nytimes.com

268 pointscoloneltcb242 comments

Referring to Palantir I once asked him if he ever had a Robert Oppenheimer moment - he did not answer. No more words were needed.

LOL, i would pay money to watch this in real time. another suggestive Thiel anecdote: after PayPal IPO'd the team threw a party to celebrate and he was said to have run a 10 game simultaneous (Thiel would play ten different games, moving through each board one move at a time, down the line) and was only beat by one person (David Sacks). after losing, he flipped the board and apparently responded to being called a sore loser with "show me a great loser and i'll show you a loser." [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSUM1mvw17w

Sacks telling (a version of?) this story: https://twitter.com/davidsacks/status/1248028580245692417

> Show me a founder who thinks it’s ok to fail fast and I’ll show you a failure.

That's an interesting take. I've experienced both sides of it multiple times: failing over several years with the same strategy, and giving up too soon on ideas/products that were starting to gain traction, slowly--that later became clear market needs.

When you have multiple game running isn't the trick just to play the move your opponent plays from the previous board? Do in reality you're only playing one game and everyone else is playing each other.

Thats a good way to lose half your games

But you win half your games.

Only in cheap cons and fiction.

In real life, chess audience can immediately tell if you try that.

Lots of good losers who are winners. How about Tom Brady?

Did he act like he made up that old quote, attributed to Vince Lombardy for decades? https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/vince_lombardi_161268

I believe there are good losers who are winners, but Brady is not a good loser.

His Roth IRA certainly doesn’t regret it.

Was that before or after January 6, 2021 ;-)

You asked him whether he ever reflected on database visualization and query tools (that's what Palantir is) and considered that he had brought a previously unimaginable capability for destruction into this world?

Non-answer seems about right -- how do you treat nonsensical questions?

You're speaking of a company named after the device that Sauron used to control the Middle Earth equivalent of the Internet. A user with sufficient will power could decide what the palantirs would show (and hide) to other users. The "Database Torturer" would inspire more trust.

This is a bad critique for two reasons:

1. Linking the name of a company to people and places that don't exist doesn't demonstrate anything.

2. You don't even know enough to know that the Palantiri were originally created and used by the elves, not Sauron.

> 2. You don't even know enough to know that the Palantiri were originally created and used by the elves, not Sauron.

I take offense to that. I know the Palantiri were originally made by the elves, with good intentions. Sauron just took hold of one and poisoned the network.

Sorry to have assumed ignorance on your part, but you see then, it's totally possible that the company name refers to their original positive nature.

After his political underdog bets 6-8 years ago got him into the white house briefly, I bet he feels emboldened to double down on this strategy.

He took those bets with asymmetric returns at the risk of complete social ostracizing in the Bay Area tech community, only to come out on top and retaining his access and control everywhere including at Facebook, all the way till now!

Thats pretty impressive, regardless of the topic or regime being discussed!

These are our role models, so don't be surprised to see more of this as others accumulate power and access.

I’ve personally found it fascinating how low the bar for access becomes when entrenched special interests leave the center all the way to far edges of the parties for causes that will never reach consensus. Its an amazing opportunity for new entrants. That’s personally how I look at the game and this has been largely successful over the last couple Congressional sessions.

Thiel recently hired former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who resigned from that position after a bunch of corruption scandals came to light. That should make it quite clear what direction he wants to take.

He wants to become chancellor of Austria? Or just parlay that relationship into another citizenship for his collection?

"High-level corruption as a service" is likely to be his main value proposition, basically.

That's the takeaway to get from his partnering with Kurz.

>"High-level corruption as a service" is likely to be his main value proposition, basically.

He could have gotten that from almost anybody in Washington or Wall Street...

Ah, but there's a certain cachet that comes from partnering with major figures who've been caught with their hands as explicitly in the cookie jar as were Kurz's. And on camera, no less.

Is there? Because the cachet usually comes from the opposite, to do it with figures who managed not to be caught.

Right -- and that is precisely his intended message:

To be openly court corruption of this sort, as a way of rejecting the accepted norms of Western democracy. In its current effete, collectivist form.

"Burn it down, burn it down!", in other words.

Until the world is ready to accept his profoundly more enlightened norms -- of evolved, "capitalist" democracy.

The nature of the scandal is interesting is well. His governing coalition partner (head of a far-right party, unsurprisingly named "Freedom Party") was videotaped in conversation with an intermediary of a Russian oligarch. In that video, the intermediary offered to acquire an Austrian newspaper and change their editorial tone to pro-FP. In return, the party head would offer the Russian's company Austrian state contracts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/world/europe/austrian-cha...

There was a whole other Newspaper/TV polling fraud scandal since that one, this time relating to Fellner's 'Österreich' / 'OE24', as well as several other scandals (search for "Pflegemilliarde", "Hure der Reichen", etc). There was so much that even a few months later it's easy to forget half of it.

Unfortunately the ÖVP knew of all the warrants on their offices ahead of time, so devices were wiped and documents shredded. Most of the recent scandals came from the files from a single Apple Time Capsule that someone forgot to get rid of. As fascinating as that is, I'm sure there's a bunch of additional corruption and fraud that we will never know about.

This podcast "The Peter Thiel Paradox" [1] explained a lot about the mystery of Peter Thiel to me. Turns out that there is less than meets the eye but he does have a specific talent for manipulating the political systems and government coffers to enrich himself, much like Richard Branson, or so the British podcast claims.

[1] https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-p...

One nitpick; Theil said "We were promised flying cars and call we got was 140 characters" not "We were promised bases on the moon and all we got was Facebook"

Link claims Buzz Aldrin said "You Promised Me Mars Colonies. Instead, I Got Facebook."

http://files.technologyreview.com/magazine-archive/2012/MIT-...

Why do people with this much wealth want even more wealth for themselves? I've never understood this.

Perhaps part of getting 'this much wealth' is a desire for more, more, more that doesn't seem to be something they can turn off?

I have enjoyed seeing PG just sort of fade into the background of YC and enjoy his kids (his twitter feed). He seems to have done well by doing well and seems fairly satisfied with all of it.

It's not about wealth once you reach a certain level. That's a simple and incorrect way of thinking about it. It's about legacy. Wealth is freedom and power to make change in society, politics, and the world that governments frankly are to ineffective, don't have the stomach, or intentionally choose not to change.

You don't become Peter Thiel rich if money is a means to an end rather than an end in itself for you.

I imagine its fun for them. I personally cannot relate to this either, but you could apply this question to so many things. Like why would a world record sprinter want to run faster? I imagine with that reframing makes it more relatable.

It's power. A guy who thinks that the 19th Amendment was a mistake doesn't care about more money, he cares about winding back the clock.

At some point net worth becomes self worth for these people.

hoarder mentality

Is being the 50th best basketball player on the planet good enough? Why do athletes continue to dedicate their lives in the hopes of being #1?

Once your basic needs are met and you have a comfortable standard of living, everything else is a game, and people like to win. Why does anyone need a fancy car? Why does anyone need to compete with their neighbors and coworkers? Why does a billionaire need a superyacht when an adequately sized one will do? This is simply how some (or maybe even most) people are wired.

It is game with millions of human lives being destroyed as a consequence at times.

If you don't like the game, you should probably vote for politicians that change the rules. There isn't a real bound on wealth within the system we're in, until that changes this is reality and expecting people who play it to be inherently moral is naive.

Note that Im not stating a judgement either way, just pointing out how the system currently works.

as pointed out in the parent comment that started this chain, politicians are captured by the same assholes who benefit from the system, as structured. if you change the politicians, they either buy or destroy their replacements. so if the system must change, what is to be done?

On a practical level, this may or may not be true depending on the politician.

I haven't seen an actual push for "taxing the super rich" go through. Sanders ran on that and lost. Reality at the moment is that at the moment if what you said is true it wouldn't matter because Americans don't care.

Except it doesn't work since politicians themselves that benefit from the system.

Think incentives, not ideals.

This system is all encompassing, politicians are in it as well.

The only real system change is through revolution, and revolutions are never pretty.

Why would it have to be pretty?

Change needs sacrifice.

Are you ready to sacrifice yours and your family and friends convenience and comfort for system change? Because everyone will suffer in some degree until a new system takes root.

That's the hard part, I'm all up for overthrowing this shit but the consequences are always the biggest deterrent.

Humanity, the game. In the original version, conquest, you got points for taking other people’s stuff, which almost always required injuring or killing them. With the addition of the extended economic growth (capitalism) expansion pack you could gain points by making things or providing services people wanted more than what they already had.

The economic growth expansion also brings a whole lot of new ways to exploit people for points. No need anymore to kill or injure them directly, you can decide to injure millions at once through a web of complex shell companies to extract some shiny rock the other people want and play the "it's all the free market" card to not get points deducted!

> people like to win

True, but there are a host of other things that people like. The idea that "winning" is the ultimate goal in life is more socially induced than immanent.

If as a society we decide to foster different attitudes and goals we will obtain different outcomes and different kinds of people (to a certain extent, of course).

> The idea that "winning" is the ultimate goal in life is more socially induced than immanent.

That idea will be a lot more prevalent among people who end up being the winners than among those who don’t, at every scale. Effort doesn’t get everything but it gets a lot.

Honestly, no one has ever put it this way. I like the reference to sports! I'd still be happy as a backup QB for 10 years making bank though. Cushy!

Backup qbs don’t make much more then software engineers… just saying. The league minimum is like 700k.

A third stringer might make the minimum, but the backup is very likely to start at least a game or two during the season, and is often clearing a couple million dollars in annual salary.

https://boardroom.tv/nfl-backup-qb-salaries/

The league minimum for a rookie is something like 700k. It goes up with experience/longevity.

Same thing that makes people grind eternally in MMORPGs to max out a character.

Ok well I'm not there really so I have no idea what I'm talking about but I'm guessing, probably by the time you get "this much wealth", this is the only game you can play, and it's fun, so you continue playing.

Maybe people who have everything at the top are afflicted with chronic boredom and playing the "game" is the only way to assuage it.

People with this much wealth start competing to up their position in the world's richest ranking. And, when you're #1 in the ranking you work hard to keep that ranking .. and so on and on ..

Me, I would just retire if I had a fraction of that, or so I think since I'm nowhere there ..

"number go up", they are obsessed with a high score and having more than others playing the same game.

It would be sad if it were just that, but the fallout effects so many.

I like the idea someone had that beyond a certain point you get a big party to say you won capitalism then the rest of the money you earn goes back into society.

It is a worthy feature of the system that the winners get to direct the resources. Musk used his winnings to found SpaceX and Tesla and other moonshot companies. The alternative is to redistribute everything to people who have proven only that they mismanage resources.

Trickle down economics doesn't work.

Musk also got a considerable amount of government assistance, assistance that he now says others shouldn't get.

I consider such a position to be rather strange.

The two companies you named exist and are profitable entirely because Musk was able to drive government spending in his direction (launch contracts and subsidies, respectively).

Points. It’s just about bragging rights. There’s nothing to it more than that. It’s literally just hoarding like dragon.

If you're poor it tends to look like "How many houses could a person want?"

If you're rich, it looks like "Everyone else, especially governments, sucks at allocating resources. I will do a better job."

And here's the kicker, being extremely wealthy is the result of being good at the skill of resource allocation.

> And here's the kicker, being extremely wealthy is the result of being good at the skill of resource allocation.

If you add skills such as 'externalizing costs', and 'diverting resources', sure, I'll buy what you're selling.

I don't think Peter Thiel is in it for the money, not anymore anyway. He is fairly straightforward and has talked about his motivations in various long-form interviews over the years. In my observation, his actions are aligned with his motivations that he has expressed.

Partisan media assigns fabricated evil motivations to explain his actions, like they do with everyone who they view as not on their side. People who get their idea of him from these sources have distorted view of him.

IIRC he sold most of his stake in 2012 after the IPO. He would be far richer today if he had just let his investment in Meta ride, even with the recent fall. It seems clear he's not in it for the money.

> He would be far richer today if he had just let his investment in Meta ride

You mean if he had had a crystal ball, which absolutely nobody on the planet possesses.

Hyper concentrating your wealth in a highly risky investment, is not a good investment strategy. In the absence of a crystal ball, he made a very reasonable choice to cash the Facebook position out given his exposure to numerous other high-risk tech-related positions.

Bill Gates would be richer if he had never sold a share of Microsoft, and it would have similarly been a really bad approach to personal wealth management. That doesn't mean Gates wasn't interested in the money (for his goals, the more money the better), it means he was acting rationally, prudent, in diversifying.

> You mean if he had had a crystal ball

Amusingly isn't that what a Palantir actually is?

I would consider it evil to say that women shouldn't vote.

I consider it evil to manufacture a false statement to slander someone you disagree with. He never said women shouldn't vote.

What he actually said:

The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

It is rather obvious that he thinks women shouldn't vote given he blames them, in part, for the decline of "capitalist democracy".

I could have also mentioned his work to make sure the general public has much less privacy while fighting with lots of money to make sure his privacy is respected. I have little use for those who wish to have separate rules for themselves than they want others to follow.

It isn't at all obvious you know what Thiel thinks, but it is obvious you don't like him. You can't go around making up quotes based on what you imagine people you don't like think.

He didn't say what you claimed, why not just edit your post and retract it. By not doing backing down it makes it look like you knew it was untrue, but just wanted to take the cheap shot.

I have read a great many things he has written actually. Thiel is a big believer that people like him should be able to make most / all the decision in government because he is so successful and that most who think differently then him are just flat out wrong.

He uses his money to support people who would make marriage be hetrosexual only because he has enough money to work around the issues bothers me. His doesn't think those who aren't as rich as he is are worthy of having all the rights and privileges he has.

> the extension of the franchise to women […] ha[s] rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron

It’s quite clear he believes women voting and “capitalist democracy” are fundamentally incompatible.

Strip away the frilly language and the message is "democracy went down the toilet when women and poors started voting because they don't swing libertarian".

From what I know, he doesn't think anyone should vote... because he understands that democracy is a tool used by the establishment to give people the illusion of freedom. This view is not unique to him. He shares it with several other libertarians, historical and contemporary.

From what I know, he doesn't think anyone should vote

How about you cite a source instead of jumping on the false accusation bandwagon.

It's not an accusation, it's high praise.

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/05/01/peter-thiel/suffrage...

In the case of Peter Thiel, the Koch family, and Robert Mercer, it is quite clear that the end goal is no longer wealth, but reshaping politics, geo-political power, and thought for multiple generations.

Wow. No one on the left does that?

here are some names that do more than just donate cash. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/most-influential-dem...

I really doubt you could call any of these billionaires "left".

Not to the same extent, simply because the raison d'etre of the left is to (at the extreme end) eliminate those types of people in the first place.

Why isn't there a OANN of the left? Sure the MSM has a mainstream liberal bias, but there's hardly any Big Left (as in full on communist) media, at least in the English speaking world. There's a multitude of reasons, but I believe a big part of it is there simply isn't funding for that sort of thing.

Because OANN true believers are the kind of people who watch TV, and their closest equivalents on the left do not. The preferred media can differ.

So what's an equivalent on the left in your opinion?

Soros?

"When you've helped 100 little old ladies cross the road, why bother with number 101?"

"When you've done so much useful work, why would you ever want to do any more?"

"If you have so many friends, why would you ever be nice to somebody new?"

"You love your family so much, why not stop now?"

"Michael Phelps already has a gold medal, why does he keep swimming?"

Helping a little old lady cross the road is improving the world in some manner. Acquiring bigger numbers in a bank account... not so much.

If you subscribe to the pre-modern idea that there is a limited overall amount of wealth, right.

But if you fast forward to the modern age, you’ll find that almost all work creates new wealth.

Even if building your wealth didn't take it from somebody else, it still hadn't improved society.

True. Tabacco companies exist. But generally for someone to hand over money it strictly has to improve their life in a disproportionate way.

Two of the largest companies in the world are advertising companies. I don’t see such a strong correlation between improving the world and making money. To me, tobacco companies aren’t the exception.

There is vast value add in good advertising. You’re essentially matching products and consumers. Without ads, it would be very much harder for consumers to find the same quality and variety of products.

I, for one, have made many purchases from ads that I’m very happy with. Some were even life-changing. I would not have known that I wanted these things without the ad, and I’m better off now than before.

> you’ll find that almost all work creates new wealth.

Not necessarily for the person doing the work, though.

Personally I find it scandalous how we treated "essential workers" during the pandemic. But I'm afraid I'm digressing here.

It could be he feels passionate about his ventures and just wants them to be as successful as possible. The money is just a consequence.

Personally it is harder to understand that upper middle manager who works on something they aren't passionate about, who isn't a co-founder, and yet keeps committing more and more of their life and ambition to the company.

I mean usually throughout history at some level of wealth people want some kind of political type of glory.

If not that then some kind of patronage of the arts.

The problem with leisure is pretty constant really once you don't have to work.

You can only party all the time for so long before your addictions catch up with you. It is like the delusional of retiring to the beach to drink wine all day. Maybe fun for a few weeks but 6 months? You will be in bad shape rather quick.

You could say that when you have that much wealth, you can retire and live the good life.

But it's true that these people keep going. Like Elon could have retired at any stage when he sold a company, but instead invested it in a new one. You know, spend time with family and friends. Instead he's running multiple companies.

My theory is that this is exactly the reason why they are so wealthy, and the rest of us are not.

The poor and the aspirational class works for the wealth.

The wealthy work for power and control.

There was a comment in a thread on HN a while ago by someone that interviewed with Thiel's hedge fund. Apparently the fund lost a lot of money and Thiel was directing the trading decisions. Other investors pulled their money and it was mostly Thiel's money in the fund going forward.

Wasn't Eric Weinstein also involved with that hedge fund? Or am I mixing things up?

Possibly. Thiel has Clarium, “Thiel Capital” and “Thiel Macro” associated with his name. Weinstein was a managing director at Thiel Capital.

I interviewed with Thiel Macro years ago when I got the story of the investors pulling out and the fund being primarily Thiel’s money from my interviewer. Not sure which if any of these are the same corporate entity.

That was maybe me? If not someone else had the exact same experience. Was an odd interview, took place at a mostly empty office building in the presidio. Afterwards I was wandering around in the fog trying to get a cell signal to call an Uber which added to the ghost town feeling.

My understanding is that Thiel's public fund often takes loss because he is hedging other financial risk he is taking.(e.g. holding palantir after IPO, large VC investments in industries that may turn out to be based on immature research)

Hahaha you don't believe that, do you?

If that's true, it's more evil than just being bad at investing. Leveraging other people's money to make contrarian bets as a hedge to the investments you believe in enough to put your money in, when the reason those people are giving you money is to align their money with yours, is ethically if not legally fraud.

> he does have a specific talent for manipulating the political systems and government coffers to enrich himself

That gave me Epstein-verse vibes.

Only that Epstein was probably more a tool of the political systems and governments than they were tools of his. Symbiotic, I guess, but only one person got suicided in a prison cell while the cameras happened to be offline the guards inattentive.

thiel isn't that talented or smart, but he did get hella lucky, and that's a sore point for him. so he's used his paypal riches on an extended PR campaign to make everyone believe he's something more than he is. literally every quote and quip i've heard from him is recycled directly from elsewhere, rather than being even a semi-original notion, but he passes it off as wisdom from on high. he wants more than just respect; he wants to be worshipped. if i ever met him, i'd tell him to just go the scientology route and found another fake religion already. he could even fashion himself up as the new new jesus.

He’s actually very Christian and I’m told attends services every week. I’m not sure what denomination though.

i suspect a number of narcissistic christians secretly wonder if they're actually the second coming. it wouldn't surprise me if thiel were in that group.

Now I'm curious: do the scriptures say when Jesus became self-aware, that he was (the son of) God?

from what (little) i remember, he was pretty self-aware in all of the bible that i read growing up. i'd guess a supreme being who wasn't really "born" would always have had self-awareness.

He's also human, and most of us do have to develop self-identity as children. That part of his life is mostly omitted from scripture though, as I recall.

edit: Googled and remembered there's the episode where he goes wandering off from his parents, they find him in the temple, and he asks why they'd think he would be anywhere else but in his Father's (God's) house. So, well aware at least as a twelve year old. Luke 2:41-59

it's not expressed exactly when he realizes, but awareness of identity is demonstrated in John 8:58 and John 17:5.

it’s been a while since i read anything biblical, but i think he convinced himself of this pretty early on.

he told people to worship him pretty much right away.

Being a Christian usually doesn’t have much impact on how people behave. You can be super greedy, super generous, never cheat on your spouse, cheat all the time and so on. Somehow people find a justification for their behavior within their faith no matter what it is.

I read his book "Zero to One" and I felt like it did learn good things from it, for example that "competition is for losers". Before I thought capitalism was all about competition, but maybe I was a rube in not knowing that.

Buffett's "good businesses have moats" is roughly equivalent.

"Saying you like “moats” is just a nice way of saying you like oligopolies" - Musk

sure, information has many channels and routes into our brains, so that's not unusual or a criticism of how you learned that bit of information. but the idea that you try to avoid competition is straight from a first-year strategy course at any business school, in which this has been taught for at least the last 5 decades, if not much longer.

capitalism, the ideal, puts competition on a pedestal, as a broad mechanism to ensure profit margins gets squeezed out of markets as they mature (that is, as risk stabilizes, the risk premium does as well). capitalists don't want their profit margins minimized, so they employ as many mechanisms as they can get their greedy hands on to minimize competition. capitalists are literally anti-competitive. capitalism is not.

You weren't a rube at all, that view of capitalism as being characterized by competitive markets is popular and the result of Milton Friedman style ideas being almost propagandized from the 80s onward.

His points in the book however do basically go back to Schumpeter who argued the same thing. That oligopolistic markets in which outsized firms earn excess profits, are significantly more dynamic than overly competitive market economies.

The economic definition of competition, beyond its simplest variety, allows for natural "moats" and differentiated firms. Looking for a "moat" is just engaging in competition on a larger scale than that of a single product - and the "excess" returns involved are ultimately a reward for good positioning. (Of course artificially-created 'moats' are a form of rent seeking and should be eliminated via antitrust regulation, but this can take some time.)

You sound pretty brilliant yourself . Mind sharing your achievements that would illustrate how much more talented and smart you are than Thiel?

thanks random internet person! in my infinite modesty however, i'll decline to boast about my many amazing and wonderful achievements. but y'know, just between you and me, i did once receive a canned award from my state senator AND my state congresscritter! with fake-signed certificate and everything! *puffed-chest*

notice that i'd made no reflexive or comparative claims. but comparatively speaking, thiel on a daily basis most assuredly looks at musk with full-on green-faced envy.

> thiel on a daily basis most assuredly looks at musk with full-on green-faced envy

How do you know?

> thiel isn't that talented or smart, but he did get hella lucky,

This is true for more than 99% of extremely successful people. It is only worth mentioning when one does not like any particular successful person.

99% of internet posts make claims without sources.

76% of all statistics are made up.

He has a whole chapter in his book about this nonsense viewpoint that is quite thought provoking.

"Everything is just stochastic process bro" is such a dumb view of the world masquerading as an intelligent thought.

Jeez. I hate to burst your bubble, but Peter is more talented and intelligent than most of the readers/writers on this website. It's easy to make your claim when your perception of the guy is based solely on news articles and hit pieces. I don't agree with him on everything, but there is no denying that he's gotten where he is through maneuvering and foresight.

A lot of people think intelligence means people behave according to their ethics. In reality intelligence doesn’t mean that you are a good guy. A lot of “bad” guys are very intelligent. Not many people could pull off what Pablo Escobar or El Chapo did. Elizabeth Holmes from Theranos is pretty smart.

Elizabeth Holmes is facing 20 years in prison. Pretty smart.

A lot of smart people do dumb things. The Enron guys were pretty smart and went to jail. The people who blew up the financial markets in 2008 were very intelligent. Actually they were the smartest: made the public believe the world would go under if they couldn't keep their bonuses and receive a bailout.

I consider myself pretty intelligent and I have done plenty of dumb things although with some thinking I could have known they are dumb.

Also he is a ~2200 ELO-rated chess player. That alone would make the baseline IQ and ability to think through logic, analytical thinking, calculation skills and stratetic planning beyond most HN users, even though in a small domain of Chess; I'd wager more broadly.

https://ratings.fide.com/profile/2022389

Personally, I find his thinking savagely brutally straight to the point and cuts through cultural rust we've built up in our thinking process. It is fascinating, I don't agree with him on a lot of things but I admit, he is interesting.

I don’t understand how this rating is calculated? The fide profile doesn’t have any recorded matches or statistics on him, just the rank number that I can see.

Got any links to reading on this? You piqued my interest.

> Personally, I find his thinking savagely brutally straight to the point and cuts through cultural rust we've built up in our thinking process.

I agree with both of you

“ thiel isn't that talented or smart, but he did get hella lucky,”

To get and stay where he is you have to be pretty smart. Maybe not in the way you define it but most people wouldn’t be able to do what he did. This will get me in trouble but I think the same can be said about Trump. The way he pushed himself into the presidency against resistance from the media and the established parties was pretty phenomenal. You have to be very capable to pull that off and not many people would be able to do the same.

Being intelligent doesn’t mean that you do things people view as ethical.

i wasn't claiming thiel was dumb, just that in his case, luck overwhelmed, and that he's not as smart and talented as he'd want the world to believe (that everything he's achieved is solely due to his own brilliance only).

trump is, in a way, a good analogue. he also claims rare intelligence, but it's pretty clear he's not smart at all. he happened to be propelled by daddy's wealth, and translated that into infamy via a second-tier reality show that saved him just as he was floundering in real estate, another stroke of luck. along the way, he was bailed out time and again for billions of dollars, something almost no american has the luck to have access to. trump is decidedly not smart, just extremely lucky. sheer statistics say we're bound to have a few trumps; people with extraordinarily dumb luck but little talent otherwise.

You think he could bully his way into becoming president and dominating the republican party by sheer luck? Even if I wanted to I couldn't do it what he did and I doubt you could do it either.

you're right, the universe has deemed you and me to not be as extraordinarily lucky as trump.

i get that our primal belief in our own agency creates strong cognitive dissonance against the centrality of chance in our lives. it's almost as if evolutionarily, it doesn't matter to our egos that we often get the causality exactly backwards. esteem rises either way, even under false premises.

His Sea steading ideas are actually pretty idiotic in my book.

Proof: Everybody who tried it just to find out how extremely expensive it is to maintain structures in the middle of an ocean.

But it's not only that. They also find out in a very painful way that the high seas are just about the most regulated entity apart from aviation and possibly medicine.[0]

It seems that very smart people are totally able to maintain very dumb ideas.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/sep/07/disastrous-voya...

While I see your point, a lot of invention happened when someone ignored conventional wisdom and others’ failures.

Whatever happened to facebook in the span of 1 month that is so different than what was happening the past ~10 years? devaluation in multiple dimensions

Their pivot to Meta deeply reinforced the writing on the wall. And then their first ever report of a declining user count was the coup de grace.

Come to think of it I need to verify that the user count did decline. I only heard that anecdotally.

- DAUs decreased -0.05% from 1,930m in Q3 22 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("sequentially") - DAUs increased +4.5% from 1,845m in Q4 21 to 1,929m in Q4 22. ("year over year") - See pp18: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4...

DAUs are those using FB app only. Metric for those using all apps (Insta, Whatsapp, etc) increased.

Btw - there are ~4.66B internet users - and FB has 77% of those log into one of their apps a month (MAPs = 3.59b, pp11).

> FB has 77% of those log into one of their apps a month

I would suspect some of those are bots or sockpuppet accounts.

FB pushes you to Insta via its Reels preview videos right on top when you open the FB app.

Instagram Reels is more addicting - full screen videos that just show you more of what you watch most intently, doesn't care that you "liked" a page 5 years ago.

Zuck is depreciating FB.

Reels is probably >90% recycled from TikTok, with the TikTok video waterwark still on it.

The original content that is there has nothing on TikTok, and the Reels recommendation algorithm is crap - feels like a bunch of if-then statements and you have to make a massive effort to get yourself out of having a particular category in your feed (constantly swipe away as fast as possible if a video of that category comes up; but watch a single video all the way through in that category and it becomes half of your feed)

I joined TikTok recently after watching Reels for a few months (I figured it's probably just as good, right and why have yet another app tracking me), and I was blown away by how much better TikTok content & algorithm is.

Part of it is the user base. TikTok has truly some cool content for every niche you could imagine, and by and large comments are positive and funny.

The obvious Zuckerbergian next vertical to exploit when you've run out of people on the planet to addict is to funnel those DAUs toward a dating service to birth future demand.

thank god for the 23% of us who have some good sense!

Slight aside, but DAU is such a BS metric.

It's relatively easy to boost such numbers - just keep bugging people with a notification here or a sudden important event. And a user is not the same as a person.

I've noticed previously I've suddenly been spammed via email by Facebook at the end of the month, presumably to boost their MAU.

Much more meaningful would be a distribution of the number of minutes spent by individuals on the mobile app, and details of the click-through rate of adverts.

Summary statistics - if chosen properly - of both could avoid abuse.

I think at some point Wall St will be called out as having been very naive to pay attention to such stats.

I think it's entirely possible and really not even that hard to "fix" Facebook. Zuckerberg seems more intent on pivoting to nonsense like Portal and Metaverse with no actual foundations. It's Zuck getting bored and letting his ego ruin a cash cow that can easily be a force for good in the world if they just tried. I think the only way this ends is with Zuck losing his job as CEO. He tripped up the stairs for 15 years and now thinks he is a visionary.

I think the cause and effect here is backwards, the writing was already on the wall. The pivot to Meta was a response to that.

Just enough built up negativity that caused a transition in public (and market) sentiment.

The markets aren't all that efficient or things like this wouldn't happen. Markets underestimated obvious risks and those risks reached high enough levels that there's a bit of a run to be the first out the door.

Markets also don't play the company, they play the other participants: even if you thought Facebook was overvalued, you're still incentivised to wait till everyone else has figured this out.

Did it get bad enough that they actually had to finally tell the truth to investors?

Tax optimizations by top shareholders

Facebook's earlier valuation was reasonable only with an assumption that it will reasonably rapidly grow much, much larger than it is now. The market now started to believe that its long-term growth is going to be slower and more limited (i.e. disbelieving the Meta assertion that they're going to unlock humongous growth through metaverse), so that brings a huge adjustment down, closer to numbers justified by their current revenue.

I echo OPs coup de grace statements.

The underpinning failure of FB is indicated by

- ad-revenue (97% of FB's revenue) has an uncertain growth-perspective (as seen with the iOS privacy updates)

- Metaverse and VR in general (highlight Zuck's desperate, decade-long search for a new tech-moat) is a fad that is not going mainstream anytime soon

- inability to lead libra into success

All of these failures may seem unconnected but what ties them together is a deep underlying distrust of the company itself by the public

I was hoping Theil is being opportunistic when he pandered to the previous guy, but looks like he fully believes in that form of governance and really likes everything the guy stands for. So much so that Theil is heavily supporting candidates that are aligned with the previous guy. Very disappointing. I would really like to know what he stands for and what his political motivations are, but I guess its obvious.

he's made numerous comments about the US needing to be more competitive with china for many years, so it may just be as simple as that.

Nah, if you follow his actions you can tell that is most definitely not it.

This is a good move for both Thiel and Facebook.

This helps Facebook with advertisers, the DC machinery still reeling from the Trump fallout, shareholders and almost all their staff. They can wash their hands of what looks - to many - a toxic situation.

This helps Thiel, because he's no longer going to have to explain himself - his writing game me the impression that he is somebody who despises having to explain himself to people who think he might be wrong - and allows him to carry on with his Trump project, unquestioned, unencumbered.

From a certain perspective and distance this is all deeply depressing, though. They walk away from each other knowing all sides face fewer consequences for their terrible decisions, many of which have caused significant - perhaps irreparable - damage to the standing of United States politics and industry in the wider World.

People don't think he's merely wrong, people think he's outright evil.

Oh come on, he only drank a little blood, just a tiny amount.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/08/peter-thiel-wants-to...

Hiring a Blood Boy[1] on the free market for a fair price is pro-capitalist,and can't be evil, unlike vampires who take without paying the service provider, so to speak.

1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6267506/

Is he stepping down to spend more time with our families?

Fun fact, Peter Thiel gave Vitalik Buterin a Thiel Fellowship to work on Ethereum. Let's count the wins Peter Thiel has had:

  - Paypal
  - Facebook
  - Palantir
  - Etherum
  - Took on deplorable Gawker

The guys behind Figma, Upstart, and Ocean Cleanup were also Thiel Fellowship recipients.

- Zero to One, arguably a must read book

- Popularized memetic theory

His attack on gawker are anything but commendable. They may have been a trashy gossip site, but attacking press like that is not good for society.

Wait, are you really calling gawker press? I assume TMZ is right up there with the Walls Street Journal as well. Yikes that is scary.

They were the press. They can be trashy tabloid, as opposed to a respected international publication, but they're still press. Gawker was also a series of publications, not just one (eg. Gizmodo the tech site, LifeHacker, etc).

Really? Gawker published intimate photos of someone without their permission. What Gawker did was very wrong. I don't get why people defend Gawker.

One doesn't have to defend Gawker to think that what Peter Theil did was atrocious.

So... you think what Gawker did was bad, but Thiel was wrong to stop it?

Gawker did a bad thing, and Thiel funded a massive lawsuit to bury them. Thiel did it because he wanted to silence press that had wronged him. He didn't do it because he wanted to be a savior.

I’ve never understood the perspective that what Thiel did too Gawker was anything but good. Love or hate the guy, he just funded a lawsuit that Gawker assumed they would beat using the classic tactics of bankrupting their opponent. I despise those tactics, it was (rightly IMO) determined that Gawker acted illegally and caused massive damage, and if the Hulk Hogan had been funded by literally any other billionaire I think they would have been applauded.

Corporations use “run the meter” tactics to win lawsuits all the time. It’s nice to see that fail for once.

You seem to be confused as to which party used which tactics?

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/the-thiel-gawker-sag... https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thi...

Gawker was not a major corp at all, it was a tiny publication. I don't think they thought they would beat him via bankrupting him at all.

Thiel approached a ton of people who Gawker wrote about, and volunteered to fund suits until he found a winner. Thiel was not the rich hero, he was trying to a chip in the armor for a long time to seek revenge on a petty grudge.

> Gawker was not a major corp at all, it was a tiny publication.

Lol, in 2014 Gawker had $45m in revenue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gawker_Media#cite_note-BI-18), and it had hundreds of employees. Sure, it wasn't quite the NYT, but it wasn't a newsletter or a local paper by any means.

"wins"

You forgot Stripe.

Figma is also Thiel Fellowship born …

>He has also been seen as the contrarian who has Mr. Zuckerberg’s ear, championing unfettered speech across digital platforms. His conservative views also gave Facebook’s board ideological diversity.

What a fawning, iconoclastic corruption of "diversity." The New York Times is blatantly courting Thiel's fascist endeavor.

This journalistic abortion glosses over exactly what kind of speech Thiel's cohort seeks not just to "unfetter" but to blast loudly across all mediums:

Xenophobic, genocidal conspiracy theories to the very front of the line.

nytimes staying on brand, courting lil' wannabe fascists

I would take "unfettered speech" over alternatives any day of the week.

The sub headline is a better summary of what is happening:

> Peter Thiel to Exit Meta’s Board to Support Trump-Aligned Candidates

He just wants to be free to involve himself in politics but not get Meta involved. Maybe he also has additional motivation for leaving, but that's speculation and this right here is a solid reason.

From the article:

> In October, the two Senate candidates argued in an opinion piece in The New York Post that Mr. Zuckerberg’s $400 million in donations to local election offices in 2020 amounted to “election meddling” that should be investigated.

To avoid any such issues for the company leaving the board looks like a logical precaution to me.

I don't know could also be this.. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2022/02/01/billi...

I think this could mean he wants to involve himself in a competing social network.

How soon do people think we will see his candidacy for President? 2028 is my guess.

Like Elon Musk, he wasn't born in the US and is therefore ineligible. (edit: "natural-born citizen" is not as well-defined as I thought, and Ted Cruz qualifies on account of having a US citizen parent at the time of his birth. But it's clear that Thiel doesn't.)

That requirement seems pretty bizarre to myself as a non-US person. Haven't heard of being natural born as a requirement for president before, but seems like another aspect that the US shares with a small list of other countries.

It seems pretty on-brand to be honest though, I wonder why that rule exists and what benefit it provides. The first couple presidents couldn't have met it, so I wonder when it was introduced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidential_qualifica...

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President"

The first few presidents were citizens of the US when the Constitution was adopted (previously, the US had been governed by the Articles of Confederation.)

This rule was enacted to prevent Alexander Hamilton from becoming president. He also wasn't born in the US. The term "naturalized" wasn't yet well defined.

The first American born president (born after the revolution) was Van Buren, the first 7 were born British citizens!

This is a common belief, but it is false. The eligibility provision has an oft-forgotten second clause:

> No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;

Hamilton was a citizen at the time of the Constitution’s adoption and was therefore eligible to run for president should he have been so inclined.

> The first American born president (born after the revolution) was Van Buren, the first 7 were born British citizens!

Van Buren was born in NY, in the US, but was the only president that used English as a second language. Both of his parents were of Dutch descent.

> I wonder why that rule exists and what benefit it provides. The first couple presidents couldn't have met it, so I wonder when it was introduced.

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President" from section 1, Article 2 of the US Constitution (adopted 1789).

There is some legal debate about what "natural born Citizen" means now, but that has not fully been testing in court IIUC.

I think it only really comes up for debate when someone wants to question the eligibility of Presidential candidates for political reasons. I recall a rather minor kerfuffle around McCain’s eligibility (born in the Panama Canal Zone when it was under US Jurisdiction) back in the ‘08 election that was basically meaningless and I think then Senator Obama sponsored a bill that basically clarified this.

There’s two sources of law for determining citizenship though: 1. The Constitution and 2. Laws that Congress passes. If you’re born a citizen according to either of these sources, congrats, you’re a natural born citizen.

It's interesting because the US also has unconditional jus soli citizenship (if you are born on American soil, no matter what your circumstances, you are granted citizenship). Nearly all major countries in the Americas have jus soli citizenship, but very few countries outside the Americas do.

It’s an 18th century solution to the problem of foreign kings.

It was to prevent foreign influence. The first couple presidents all met it, having been born in territory that became the U.S.. Mexico also did similar things with property rights surrounding the end of the Spanish mission era, in effort to remove Spanish influence.

Yep, it seems like a bizarre relic of a bygone era. This actually made me wonder if there's any place else in the government with this requirement. As far as I know, it only applies to the president. But what about the Vice President? He or she could be promoted if the president leaves. Then what about the Speaker of the House (3rd in line and I believe there is literally no requirement for the job; they're not even required to be a member of the house). I'm sure someone's thought through this already and there's a plan in place, but I never had.

“Natural born citizen” is the technical qualifier. Many natural born citizens aren’t born in the US.

Being born outside the US doesn't have much to do with it. The requirement is to be a "natural born citizen", and anyone born to a US citizen will qualify, regardless of where in the world that was. It's the same reason why Ted Cruz and John McCain were eligible for the office despite not being born in the US.

I have no idea about Thiel's specific case, and it doesn't seem like there's any info about it online.

Is he eligible? Looking at his bio it doesn't appear so. Also he seems like he'd be happier pulling the strings of a President JD Vance anyway.

He is eligible if he was born in the US (doesn't look like it) or if either of his parents was a US citizen at the time of his birth. There doesn't seem to be any info online confirming or denying that.

In the one law class I took, presidential eligibility was the example used to introduce our discussion of "standing". He framed the discussion specifically around a hypothetical Schwarzenegger run. The professor said that although it shouldn't be allowed, if Schwarzenegger actually ran, no one would have standing to sue him, so he would be allowed after all.

The prof spoke in a way that implied this is an accepted truth in the legal community, rather than just his own opinion. But IANAL for a reason, I got a D in that class and maybe he bamboozled me :)

This is a surprisingly illustrative anecdote.

America is incredible at "doing the right thing" when push comes to shove - regardless of policy, procedure, or legalese. In so many ways, going through life in the US means people figure out how to help you, unblock you, or ignore hurdles.

Allowing Arnold to become president if he was interested is clearly such thing - no sensible person would think it should be prevented - so it won't.

But unfortunately the whole procedure is not documented, relies heavily on systemic and entrenched privilege, and as the Trump administration revealed, and how the culture has evolved since then, can absolutely be mercilessly abused and taken advantage of by bad actors. The fact that the President could violate dozens of straight up laws, and not be charged with any crime is a mockery of the justice system. It really is "rules for thee, not for me".

As a white male, I find America (and to some degree Canada, which straddles the middleground) very convenient. As opposed to when I lived in Western Europe, and found myself facing an emotionless bureaucrat telling me "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do."

But I also know a system with unwritten rules is never going to be equal, never mind equitable.

Unwritten rules are everything in America

> Unwritten rules are everything in America

Show me where it says that.

>The prof spoke in a way that implied this is an accepted truth in the legal community

So the law professor talked like a lawyer? :)

There would definitely be people who could argue standing, however. You could start with their opponents in the general election. More likely I think would be their primary opponents (probably initially at the state level). The Supreme Court could attempt to evade this by calling it a political question outside of the court's jurisdiction (they've done this in denying challenges to gerrymandered maps, although those are different in being acts of the states, rather than contesting an irregular election), or they could in theory deny cert and let a lower court's decision stand, although I think that's unlikely.

(IANAL)

He’s not stupid enough to run for president, but he will certainly support any authoritarian candidate he thinks he can manipulate.

he knows no one will vote for him, he might be smart but he is not charismatic at all.

I realize this is a petty and inconsequential question, but does anyone else think that the Forbes estimate of $2.6bn is a little low for a guy that was a key early investor in Facebook and has multiple other holdings like Palantir?

Is there a bunch of money Forbes isn’t counting or something?

Not to mention his investments in Tesla and space x...

I thought his roth ira was worth $5b alone? https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec...

Like Thiel's famous "$5B Roth IRA" loophole that was making the rounds here a few months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27616090

All net worth lists are just finance porn for plebs.

There is no way of knowing. There are only some public transactions, and they are fixed in time that assume it was never lost.

Additionally you would have no idea if he's holding a bunch of Dogecoin from the lows or an investor in extremely high performing PE/VC/Hedge funds.

People's balance sheets are all nuanced.

Those lists are not really worth anyone's time.

Those are just wild guesses. You can often find actors commenting "yeah, I wish!" when somebody asks them about their net worth.

Really rich people want to hide their wealth from the public as much as possible.

Slightly rich people want to exaggerate their wealth as much as possible.

Ultimately magazines like Forbes have very little real data to go off of, and so these lists all need to be taken with a huge grain of salt. If they were forced to put error bars on their projections people would see how worthless they really are.

Bloomberg has Thiel at $8.2 billion. They list $4.x billion in 'cash.' Seems a lot more accurate than the Forbes number. I'm curious where the supposed PayPal IRA money fits into that $8b, and or if it even exists at this point (who knows).

"Thiel owns about 8% of Palantir Technologies, according to an analysis of its April 2021 proxy filing. He's credited with shares held directly as well as those held by Thiel Capital, PLTR Holdings, PT Ventures, STS Holdings II, FF4 Investment, Rivendell 7 and Rivendell 25 because he's the beneficial owner of these entities."

"The billionaire indirectly owns stakes in various companies through his interest in venture capital firm, Founders Fund. His stake in the firm is calculated to be 42.5% based on information in the company's 2021 Form ADV filing. It's valuation assumes insiders own 22% of the $24.5 billion in assets managed across its funds. "

"The value of his cash investments is valued based on proceeds from share sales, carried interest and reported data from Thiel's federal tax returns. It includes the value of his hedge funds."

https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/peter-a-thie...

One of the ones who gets it.

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