Peter Thiel Believes the Future Belongs to College Dropouts(theatlanticwire.com)
theatlanticwire.com
Peter Thiel Believes the Future Belongs to College Dropouts
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/04/peter-thiel-believes-future-belongs-college-dropouts/36561/
34 comments
First, welcome to HN! As a quick aside, it's generally taboo to sign comments with things like your Twitter handle or personal URL -- feel free to throw them in your profile :).
Re: your comment, you're absolutely right that entrepreneurship is not for everyone, and that many people will benefit more from college than without. However, Thiel doesn't argue that everyone should dropout of college. Rather, he claims that the best and brightest don't necessarily need it, and would be better served with "freedom" from education.
Should we burn down Harvard? Definitely not. But you don't need it to be successful!
Re: your comment, you're absolutely right that entrepreneurship is not for everyone, and that many people will benefit more from college than without. However, Thiel doesn't argue that everyone should dropout of college. Rather, he claims that the best and brightest don't necessarily need it, and would be better served with "freedom" from education.
Should we burn down Harvard? Definitely not. But you don't need it to be successful!
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Peter Thiel also wishes women couldn't vote.
http://gawker.com/#!5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-cou...
http://gawker.com/#!5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-cou...
Some context is extremely helpful.
Peter Thiel only believes democracy is instrumentally valuable. I.e., it is valuable only insofar as people vote for more freedom, and harmful when they don't [1]. He believes women vote against freedom. Thus, he believes women voting is harmful.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-educa...
[1] The belief that democracy is valuable only when people vote for your preferred policies is not that uncommon. Witness, e.g., hostility by gay marriage proponents towards voters who oppose gay marriage.
Peter Thiel only believes democracy is instrumentally valuable. I.e., it is valuable only insofar as people vote for more freedom, and harmful when they don't [1]. He believes women vote against freedom. Thus, he believes women voting is harmful.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/the-educa...
[1] The belief that democracy is valuable only when people vote for your preferred policies is not that uncommon. Witness, e.g., hostility by gay marriage proponents towards voters who oppose gay marriage.
*Peter Thiel's definition of freedom.
It's important to note that a lot of libertarians' ideas about freedom and pretty much everything else is comically out of step with how most people think. They think it is because they have stumbled on the magical answer to everything (the response to any problem facing society is a trivial "no government") and that everyone else is a blind idiot, when in fact they are an odd fringe that is unlike most other people.
It's important to note that a lot of libertarians' ideas about freedom and pretty much everything else is comically out of step with how most people think. They think it is because they have stumbled on the magical answer to everything (the response to any problem facing society is a trivial "no government") and that everyone else is a blind idiot, when in fact they are an odd fringe that is unlike most other people.
Of course Peter Thiel's opinion of politics will be informed of Peter Thiel's definition of freedom. The fact that it is out of step with how most people think (in particular, women and welfare beneficiaries) is precisely why Peter Thiel is pessimistic about democracy. This is explained in the short essay of his that I linked to.
Apart from attempts to lower Thiel's status, what value do you believe your comment adds?
Apart from attempts to lower Thiel's status, what value do you believe your comment adds?
This guy is pushing an idea that, on the surface, I disagree with. Confronted with it, I then wonder if it is worth taking more time to understand the guy's arguments, to see if there is something of worth there.
Evidence that this guy has other ideas that are more clearly bullshit keys me in that, no, I don't.
Evidence that this guy has other ideas that are more clearly bullshit keys me in that, no, I don't.
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It's important to note that a lot of libertarians' ideas about freedom and pretty much everything else is comically out of step with how most people think.
This is equally true for the stereotypical west coast HN liberal.
This is equally true for the stereotypical west coast HN liberal.
If that was jab at my direction, you got wrong coast :p
You know the "Mom Test" for software? Is your software easy enough to use for you mom? If not, then you probably have work to do.
Try the same with your ideology, whatever it is. I know libertarianism (especially Thiel's brand) fails pretty spectacularly.
You know the "Mom Test" for software? Is your software easy enough to use for you mom? If not, then you probably have work to do.
Try the same with your ideology, whatever it is. I know libertarianism (especially Thiel's brand) fails pretty spectacularly.
Ideology != consumer software.
Tribalism/racism, cash for votes or "everyone gets a pony" are all pretty easy to sell. Does that make them right? Maybe, if you define "success" as "inflicted on the greatest number of people". In that case, contemporary Chinese fascism is the most successful ideology in the world, and yes, Thiel's brand of libertarianism fails.
Tribalism/racism, cash for votes or "everyone gets a pony" are all pretty easy to sell. Does that make them right? Maybe, if you define "success" as "inflicted on the greatest number of people". In that case, contemporary Chinese fascism is the most successful ideology in the world, and yes, Thiel's brand of libertarianism fails.
> they are an odd fringe that is unlike most other people.
Not to mention that if government actually did evaporate they likely wouldn't be so happy with the end result.
Not to mention that if government actually did evaporate they likely wouldn't be so happy with the end result.
That's not really context, just another assertion that allowing women to vote is a "bad thing", just restated in different phrasing, which obviously provides nothing in the way of an argument.
> "Why doesn't Thiel make it possible for anyone who wants to go to Harvard to be able to do it?" Maneker wonders.
What makes Harvard Harvard is that not anyone can go there. If everyone could, it would just be a good state school, and that certainly wouldn't pay the bills.
What universities don't realize, is that the same force which drove more and more people to attend college at the beginning of the information age, is also tearing down the requirement for college. There is really very little that you can't learn or even experience on your own these days to give yourself a brilliant education.
That said, a good college is still far and away the best way to learn classical knowledge quickly. I am very thankful for my CS degree, because there's no way I would have gotten that breadth of exposure to the most interesting parts of CS with 4 years in industry, but with the way tuition is increasing, the cost is squeezing out the benefit for more and more people, masked only by the availability of government loans, and throwing people into a life of indentured servitude.
I don't know if Thiel is doing these kids a favor, but it's certainly no worse than the deal they'll get from the establishment. I'm glad he's throwing a wrench in the works regardless of how misguided he may be.
What makes Harvard Harvard is that not anyone can go there. If everyone could, it would just be a good state school, and that certainly wouldn't pay the bills.
What universities don't realize, is that the same force which drove more and more people to attend college at the beginning of the information age, is also tearing down the requirement for college. There is really very little that you can't learn or even experience on your own these days to give yourself a brilliant education.
That said, a good college is still far and away the best way to learn classical knowledge quickly. I am very thankful for my CS degree, because there's no way I would have gotten that breadth of exposure to the most interesting parts of CS with 4 years in industry, but with the way tuition is increasing, the cost is squeezing out the benefit for more and more people, masked only by the availability of government loans, and throwing people into a life of indentured servitude.
I don't know if Thiel is doing these kids a favor, but it's certainly no worse than the deal they'll get from the establishment. I'm glad he's throwing a wrench in the works regardless of how misguided he may be.
> What makes Harvard Harvard is that not anyone can go there.
That's part of it, but it's not the main thing. What makes Harvard Harvard are the resources, professors, environment, culture, history, reputation, and other students.
That not everyone can get in is largely a consequence of the school's limited resources. It's also a consequence of high admission standards, and those can't be replaced however it's already the case that Harvard cannot accept all qualified applicants.
That's part of it, but it's not the main thing. What makes Harvard Harvard are the resources, professors, environment, culture, history, reputation, and other students.
That not everyone can get in is largely a consequence of the school's limited resources. It's also a consequence of high admission standards, and those can't be replaced however it's already the case that Harvard cannot accept all qualified applicants.
Actually, being a current undergrad at Harvard as well as one of the Thiel 20u20 finalists, I have to pitch in my two cents and say that in immense part, what makes Harvard Harvard is the fact that not everyone can go there.
The individual validation that a student gets upon attending Harvard is predicated on the unparalleled difficulty of getting in. In my class (2014), for example, admissions were at an all time low - ~7% admission rate, with ~30,000 applicants. Possibly a majority of those applicants could have attended Harvard and graduated with respectable success, but had Harvard chosen to open its doors to all of those applicants (just assuming for the moment that its resources would have allowed it to do that), the respect a Harvard admission garners would plummet - because it proves very little.
It no longer demonstrates that you're any better than your peers, and there's the problem. I'll shoot up a counterexample - when I was choosing between schools, Harvard was actually far from my first choice. UChicago was hands down the college I wanted to go to, and I had my heart set on it. In all honesty, the academic rigor at UChicago is lightyears above that at Harvard (saying that after now having taken courses at both institutions), yet the prestige of UChicago is nowhere close to that of Harvard. That's due to a number of factors, but as a correlation (can't quite say causation in either direction) the acceptance rate at UChicago used to be immensely higher - it plummeted down to the teens in 2010, but it was roughly ~30%+ for all preceding years. Hence, while the education you might receive upon admission might be comparable to or even arguably better in certain ways than an education at Harvard, admission itself demonstrated very little. And that's the problem - for applying to the Thiel Fellowship, for instance, being an undergrad at Harvard undoubtedly helped me far more than would have being an undergrad at UChicago. Like Thiel said, most of the finalists came from Ivy League and prestigious name institutions - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford...not a single one from UChicago.
The exclusivity is, quite honestly, the main thing.
Addendum - though admittedly, the real awesomeness that lies in going to Harvard manifests itself in the peer environment. Contrary to popular belief, pretty much everyone who goes here is social, super chill, extremely nice, and radically tolerant - on top of being insanely intelligent and supremely accomplished. It just inspires you to do things...like drop out and move to California to make it big.
The individual validation that a student gets upon attending Harvard is predicated on the unparalleled difficulty of getting in. In my class (2014), for example, admissions were at an all time low - ~7% admission rate, with ~30,000 applicants. Possibly a majority of those applicants could have attended Harvard and graduated with respectable success, but had Harvard chosen to open its doors to all of those applicants (just assuming for the moment that its resources would have allowed it to do that), the respect a Harvard admission garners would plummet - because it proves very little.
It no longer demonstrates that you're any better than your peers, and there's the problem. I'll shoot up a counterexample - when I was choosing between schools, Harvard was actually far from my first choice. UChicago was hands down the college I wanted to go to, and I had my heart set on it. In all honesty, the academic rigor at UChicago is lightyears above that at Harvard (saying that after now having taken courses at both institutions), yet the prestige of UChicago is nowhere close to that of Harvard. That's due to a number of factors, but as a correlation (can't quite say causation in either direction) the acceptance rate at UChicago used to be immensely higher - it plummeted down to the teens in 2010, but it was roughly ~30%+ for all preceding years. Hence, while the education you might receive upon admission might be comparable to or even arguably better in certain ways than an education at Harvard, admission itself demonstrated very little. And that's the problem - for applying to the Thiel Fellowship, for instance, being an undergrad at Harvard undoubtedly helped me far more than would have being an undergrad at UChicago. Like Thiel said, most of the finalists came from Ivy League and prestigious name institutions - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford...not a single one from UChicago.
The exclusivity is, quite honestly, the main thing.
Addendum - though admittedly, the real awesomeness that lies in going to Harvard manifests itself in the peer environment. Contrary to popular belief, pretty much everyone who goes here is social, super chill, extremely nice, and radically tolerant - on top of being insanely intelligent and supremely accomplished. It just inspires you to do things...like drop out and move to California to make it big.
The individual validation that a student gets upon attending Harvard is predicated on the unparalleled difficulty of getting in.
Acceptance rate and difficulty of getting in aren't the same thing, that's my point. "Not everyone can get in" can mean several different things. Most people who don't meet the standards for admission don't even bother applying, so even that 7% admission rate is likely higher than ratio of high school grads who meet the standards vs those who don't.
It stops being difficulty when it's just a matter of dumb luck. If there were 5,000 qualified candidates and only 2000 slots, and those other 3,000 wind up going to Yale or MIT or Stanford, does it really matter? So it doesn't make sense to emphasize Harvard's exclusivity without also admitting where that exclusivity comes from: reputation and high standards for admission. Exclusivity is a consequence of that, it's not the reason for it.
It no longer demonstrates that you're any better than your peers, and there's the problem.
I would say that if you are better than your peers then you aren't really peers in that sense.
though admittedly, the real awesomeness that lies in going to Harvard manifests itself in the peer environment. Contrary to popular belief, pretty much everyone who goes here is social, super chill, extremely nice, and radically tolerant - on top of being insanely intelligent and supremely accomplished. It just inspires you to do things...like drop out and move to California to make it big.
This is exactly my point. The students, faculty, and overall culture at Harvard make it a superb environment for an ambitious student. Exclusivity alone isn't responsible for that.
Acceptance rate and difficulty of getting in aren't the same thing, that's my point. "Not everyone can get in" can mean several different things. Most people who don't meet the standards for admission don't even bother applying, so even that 7% admission rate is likely higher than ratio of high school grads who meet the standards vs those who don't.
It stops being difficulty when it's just a matter of dumb luck. If there were 5,000 qualified candidates and only 2000 slots, and those other 3,000 wind up going to Yale or MIT or Stanford, does it really matter? So it doesn't make sense to emphasize Harvard's exclusivity without also admitting where that exclusivity comes from: reputation and high standards for admission. Exclusivity is a consequence of that, it's not the reason for it.
It no longer demonstrates that you're any better than your peers, and there's the problem.
I would say that if you are better than your peers then you aren't really peers in that sense.
though admittedly, the real awesomeness that lies in going to Harvard manifests itself in the peer environment. Contrary to popular belief, pretty much everyone who goes here is social, super chill, extremely nice, and radically tolerant - on top of being insanely intelligent and supremely accomplished. It just inspires you to do things...like drop out and move to California to make it big.
This is exactly my point. The students, faculty, and overall culture at Harvard make it a superb environment for an ambitious student. Exclusivity alone isn't responsible for that.
A person under 20 has a far better chance of making $100,000 in professional sports than getting it from the Thiel Foundation. I suspect that for a person under twenty, the odds of getting $100,000 from Thiel are even lower than the odds of winning the same amount in Texas Hold'em.
Not to mention that they also have a far better chance of getting an academic scholarship to an elite institution.
Not to mention that they also have a far better chance of getting an academic scholarship to an elite institution.
> A person under 20 has a far better chance of making $100,000 in professional sports than getting it from the Thiel Foundation.
Statistically, not individually :)
Statistically, not individually :)
How many in total applied? I would expect the 20 Under 20 Fellowship to be much more self-selecting in terms of those who applied or those who even know it exists.
That's a strawman. Nobody is saying that the only way to be an entrepreneur is through Thiel's program. And once you remove that implicit assumption from your snark, there's nothing left.
That's not a strawman at all. If the argument is that any given high school graduate would be better off starting a company than going to college, using 20 hand-picked or self-selected candidates isn't very good support. Pointing out that fact is important context.
The post I replied to has been edited since I made my comment. It previous had a much stronger false dichotomy where the only entrepreneurs were those in Thiel's selected group. I still think the false dichotomy offered is too strong, but it's less pronounced than it was.
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The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap, which contradicts Thiel's pet libertarian anti-educational theories or dependence on luck. There is patent absurdity in considering Thiel's approach as a viable alternative to education at any sort of scale comparable even to Ivy League admissions never mind offering such an alternative to the millions of college students under 20 or the 20,000,000+ residents between 15-19 (that works out to $2 trillion at $100,000 apiece with approximately $500,000,000,000 additional per year).
"The primary alternatives to handing someone $100,000 is to teach them how to bootstrap,"
What? Just, what? I have no idea where you get this limited universe of options from. You are aware of the enormous industry dedicated to funding entrepreneurs that aren't this program, right? And how you leap from that to straight-out linear projection of funding all high school students I have no idea, since I do not see anywhere where this is presented as the only possible path (or even the only desirable path), a further strawman you seem to have simply added to the pile. You seem to be just making things up wholesale, then getting upset with those things.
What? Just, what? I have no idea where you get this limited universe of options from. You are aware of the enormous industry dedicated to funding entrepreneurs that aren't this program, right? And how you leap from that to straight-out linear projection of funding all high school students I have no idea, since I do not see anywhere where this is presented as the only possible path (or even the only desirable path), a further strawman you seem to have simply added to the pile. You seem to be just making things up wholesale, then getting upset with those things.
Is it necessary to fund all persons 15-19 - be they high school students or "precocious" young people (following Thiel's "logic") who dropped out before they were eligible for college? Of course not, but there is a five order of magnitude gap between Thiel's $2,000,000 and the $400,000,000,000 it would take to apply it to the four million college students under the age of 20. [http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98]
The industry you mention relies on an educational process - i.e. the method employed by higher education. Your criticism is bereft of examples of such programs which have demonstrated results - never mind examples which scale.
With the Von Mises Institute a front nine away. I run into libertarian theories quite frequently. Usually it is more intellectually rigorous.
The industry you mention relies on an educational process - i.e. the method employed by higher education. Your criticism is bereft of examples of such programs which have demonstrated results - never mind examples which scale.
With the Von Mises Institute a front nine away. I run into libertarian theories quite frequently. Usually it is more intellectually rigorous.
I was not aware of Peter Thiel's other opinions when I read this piece, but his arguments that we're in an education bubble seem to me to be very solid.
Indeed, there's a lot of evidence he left "on the table". E.g. grade inflation is analogous to the kinds of things we saw surrounding the housing bubble and the internet bubble -- people want the metrics to meet certain criteria and don't care about the underlying fundamentals, so everyone is above average.
Indeed, there's a lot of evidence he left "on the table". E.g. grade inflation is analogous to the kinds of things we saw surrounding the housing bubble and the internet bubble -- people want the metrics to meet certain criteria and don't care about the underlying fundamentals, so everyone is above average.
As a high school dropout, I'm just going to go ahead and extrapolate.
I satisfy the following three conditions:
* I dropped out of college.
* I got kicked out of college.
* I graduated college.
Why stop at dropping out when you can have it all?
* I dropped out of college.
* I got kicked out of college.
* I graduated college.
Why stop at dropping out when you can have it all?
how did you get kicked out?
Let me weight in on what I think are the pros and cons to higher education. (I go to a Canadian University so this is related to my experience in Canada)
Pros:
Life goals/direction - Growing up, going to university has definitely given me a direction and goal to peruse. How dangerous would it be if the younger generation had no direction, but simply just aspired to be an "entrepreneur"
Networks - University has given me access to a huge network of professors, established industry professionals (through events/networking sessions etc), role models and up-and-coming talents
Exposure - Exposure in terms of being exposed to different types fields, career options, co-op program is a +
Career Opportunity - Whether we like it or not, going to higher education and advertising that you go to a reputable school is a criteria for HR to weed out good candidates from the bad. Just showing that you can get into a better university says something about you.
Fundamental thinking/critical thinking skills - While uni has not taught me what I needed to know for my career it definitely has built the foundation.
Fun + social experiences
Cons:
Cost - ridiculous, in a recent convo with my friend he describe it to be a $40,000 party
Career learning - not there, I learned more from on-job training, reading blogs and interviewing industry professionals
Like-mindedness - esp with the management program, I find that the teaching is based on measuring units, quantifying experiences and not giving people the room to grow as artists. In the marketing field, you can't quantify everything, we are training too many scientist and not enough artists
Overall, I can't generalize that without higher education the younger generation will be lost for directions. There is definitely a lot of young talents who are already well developed into the senior years of their high school or even prior. But remember this is a confusing time and chaotic time for us. teens now days have so much more to worry about. Not everyone is made to be an entrepreneur, you have to give the opportunity to the right people. For the rest, it is just like giving wings to Icarus, he will fly too close to the sun and be burned.
Your thoughts?
Lichi