[tsunamifury]

I have had drinks with Peter Thiel. If you force him to answer more than one question about his theories it totally falls apart. Mostly the logic actually goes like this: oh if it doesn’t work I have the money to survive it and you don’t so I still win and claim I was right.

I wish more people understood this.

[Over2Chars]

His lack of depth is obvious even from his speeches. He jumps from topic to topic and doesn't develop his ideas or show much internal organization. He has a pithy insight and then bounces to the next topic.

That said, if a 60 minute talk can provide even one useful insight that's useful, I'd say it's a win. And I think his "zero to one" talk had at least two or three.

Honestly, I concluded GOOG was an advertising company pretending to be a "tech" company some time ago, but if I say it I'm a "troll", if Thiel says it, well it might be true, right?

[tsunamifury]

Advertising is the highest tech problem you can tackle. It literally is about using compute to bend the will of humans. How do you not get that?

[Over2Chars]

If Advertising is the "highest tech problem" that can be tackled, I guess we're in for a rough ride.

I'd assume at least a dozen things are more important than advertising inexpensive Chinese made socks to Americans. But I could be wrong.

If by highest you mean, "most lucrative" then yes, I agree.

[alephnerd]

+1 on this.

Ime he's a walking personification of "jack of all trades, master of none".

That's the perfect trait for a VC (broad knowledge is critical to identify market trends), but it has its flaws such as extreme simplification of complex topics.

That said, you can rightfully argue that this is why you are investing in egghead founders - so they can deal with solving those problems and logic gaps.

[crashabr]

In the essay, _"The Silicon Valley Canon: On the Paideía of the American Tech Elite essays"_ the author writes

> If the Washington intellectual aims for authority and expertise, the Silicon Valley intellectual seeks novel or counter-intuitive insights. He claims to judge ideas on their utility; in practice I find he cares mostly for how interesting an idea first seems. He likes concepts that force him to puzzle and ponder. > This is fertile soil for the dabbler, the heretic, and the philosopher from first principles.