Peter Thiel: The Stagnation of Science and the AI Revolution
Peter Thiel is one of the greatest entrepreneurs and investors of his generation. #peterthiel #AI #vc #diversitymyth #zerotoone …
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January 29, 2026
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"Harmony in Every Heartbeat
Peter Thiel is one of the greatest entrepreneurs and investors of his generation. #peterthiel #AI #vc #diversitymyth #zerotoone …
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this is my favorite World of DaaS episode. jam-packed learnings.
even if i don't agree with peter all the time, i never fail to see his reasoning and intelligence.
Peteys lowkey pretty funny… Good sense of humor
Great interview
World government… Worst then human chaos
I’m pretty sure Peter Thiel is funding fraudulent science communicators that undermine academic science.
Compare 15% taxes for one hundred thousand to one million to one billion. Who pays the most?
He’s a loser and the puppet monster of the orange monster Trump. Thiel thinks he lives in the Middle Earth book , along with other science fiction books and he wants to take over the government. He’s gay yet is against the LGBTQ movement and he looks terrible all white and pasty, greasy, like a vampire. He thinks he’s going to live forever but news flash he will not. He talks like Musk, stuttering rambling on in circles saying lots of nothing. His great planatir company is helping the government spy on us for Trump. His woke shit makes me sick. I have not seen his buddy Musk or him invent anything the steal ideas from everyone else. He thinks he should be above the middle class and workers. He needs to be regulated and he’s a racist just like Musk and evil.
This is hard to listen to. Obviously the delivery is awful, with the incessant “ummms” and “ahhhs” and “ya knows?” But even if you can endure the painfully choppy delivery, the content is detached from reality. To claim science has been stagnant is to reveal an ignorance of science. I shall explain. First, i will easily destroy Thiel’s patently absurd claim that science has been stagnant. Then, i will reveal Thiel’s bias/agenda.
To easily destroy Thiel’s absurd claim that science has been stagnant, I will give three clear and obvious examples, starting with a field Thiel himself mentions; nuclear engineering. As many people are aware, nuclear engineers first achieved fusion ignition in December 2022. It was a hard fought and glorious achievement. As a result, today there exists the very real possibility that we will someday have commercially available electricity produced by controlled nuclear fusion. A wonderfully exciting possibility. Any person claiming nuclear engineering has been stagnant has their head in the sand. Obviously.
Next we can talk about amazing advances in the field of biology, specifically microbiology and molecular and cell biology. Here we encounter large amounts of ignorance and paranoia, but we shall move forward anyways. As we all know, the Covid pandemic made mRNA vaccine technology highly visible. If you think mRNA technology did more damage than good, please keep that ignorant belief to yourself, because mRNA vaccines are a wonderful achievement. In other words, biology is a science and it has been literally the opposite of stagnant.
Lastly, i will give you an example which marries computers and the science of quantum mechanics. Obviously that example is quantum computing, something the viewer has surely heard about. It has already been shown that quantum computing is possible, utilizing something called quantum bits or qubits. This is very exciting because the potential computing power of quantum computers is enormous. Whether you consider quantum mechanics physics or chemistry, it is a science, a science that has been making magnificent breakthroughs. So yet again, we can see science has been the opposite of stagnant.
These examples are so obvious, one is forced to wonder why Mr. Thiel is overlooking them. To answer the question we need to address Thiel’s bias/agenda.
At 6:01 Thiel says there has been “limited innovation in the world of atoms.” How can Thiel make that claim when quantum computers are a thing? Furthermore, at 13:20 he gives an explanation to his supposed limited innovation in the world of atoms, when he says “There probably is some effect where (in) certain fields the easy things have been found and it is hard to find new things. It is probably very hard to find a new element on the periodic table.”
Thiel surely knows it isn’t “probably very hard” to find a new element, it is of course perfectly hard. Currently the largest known element is Oganesson with an atomic number of 118. Every element from Neptunium and beyond was discovered after being synthesized by scientists, usually using particle accelerators. Neptunium has an atomic number of 93, and no substantial surprises have been discovered with the subsequent 25 elements. So, since operating particle accelerators is very expensive, searching for new elements probably shouldn't be a priority.
Yet in spite of his own explanation, at 13:46 Thiel says “But on the whole I am more inclined to cultural explanations.” Here we encounter many problems, none the least of which is the fact that the study of culture can surely be made into a scientific endeavor. In fact, i would argue it should be made into a scientific endeavor.
Surely Thiel is aware of the advice Edwin Land gave Steve Jobs, that you want to stand at the intersection of the sciences and the humanities. A slightly different, but analogous, piece of advice comes from Peter Drucker, who said we need to be capable of operating simultaneously in the world of the intellectual and the manager. So, any claim that value cannot be created by the study of culture (aka people) is sophomoric at best.
But, Thiel does’t appear interested in the study of culture and he clearly tells us why. At 9:45 he explicitly reveals his bias when he says “Diversity is a diversion from more important things, and the more important things can be questions of economics.” Remarkably the example he gives is studying how we might build more affordable housing. The reason it is remarkable is because the building of more affordable housing isn’t really a question of economics. It is a question of human values and will. And, of course, the study of values is the purview of the humanities. Humans have known how to easily build houses for a longggggg time. So, the question isn’t can we? The question is will we?
At 12:37 Thiel says “(Academia) is a stagnant, Malthusian, sociopathic institution, and to the extent the humanities are distracting us from the sciences we are not even paying attention to, ya know, i would be fine with a little bit of wokeness, if we were finding a cure for dementia.” Putting aside the absurd suggestion that work isn’t being done on the cause of dementia, this comment further reveals his biases because it is entirely possible the cause of dementia isn’t biological or chemical. In fact, it is entirely possible the main driver of dementia is cultural. So while i agree the humanities would not yet qualify as a science, that doesn’t make the humanities useless, nevermind Malthusian or sociopathic.
But let us return to economics, which is apparently Thiel’s preferred “science.” Today the big question in economics is obvious, because the theorems of traditional economics have always revolved around the reality of scarcity, and that reality has fundamentally changed. When economic theory was first created, the main resources were land, labor and money. Those resources are necessarily scarce, which is to say limited. But today the main resource is knowledge, and knowledge doesn’t operate under the principle of scarcity. In fact it is the opposite, because knowledge becomes more valuable the more people possess it. This reality thoroughly upends traditional economic theory. We need a new economics which places knowledge at the center. Compared to that challenge, things like building more affordable housing are easy.
For almost 100 years it has been clear that human values are at least as important as economics. Way back in 1939 Peter Drucker wrote a book titled “The End of Economic Man,” and everybody should read it. In the interim, i shall provide something of a spoiler. One clear lesson for the Nazis and the Third Reich is that economics isn’t the solution to the human condition. Both communism in Russia, and socialism in 1930s Germany, were attempts to create an economic solution to the human condition. And as we all know, it didn't work. So whether it is capitalism, socialism or communism, one clear lesson from history is that economics doesn’t solve the problem. But, of course, the main thing we learn from history is people don’t learn from history.
We need the humanities now more than ever. And, along with building an economic theory of knowledge, we need to make a science of the humanities.
Clearly Thiel is either being ignorant or disingenuous.
Today is Saturday April 5, 2025
I praise the men that answer these questions. Cuz they never answer any questions 😂😂😂😂
Our stagnation by design is truly caused by the National Secrets Act, classifying all advanced technology in abundant clean energy, transportation, medical treatments. Simply release classified technology and watch the ultimate paradigm shift.
Peter Thiel is so WEALTHY & very Dangerous…. WAKE UP AMERICA 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Okay. You know health care is expensive and difficult to find without money.
Then take care of yourself.
Change oil so the engine doesn't blow.
Research and development cost too much for many advancements.
We are getting to the fringe of what we can learn and manipulate.
Peter Thiel is a fascist stinking pile of fecal matter
I always rely on Thiel for reality. The EXACT OPPOSITE of what he says is the truth.
Johnson Dorothy Garcia Karen Young Helen
Eric Weinstein and Curt Jimungal both have clearly explained why innovation in science has stagnated. The explanation in this video lacks coherence.
Great interview! I agree with Peter about biomed stagnation. Its to the point that i read about 1 paper per year to stay current because there are no new discoveries since about 2010.
Corresponded with liberal modern values which have completely destroyed the desire that anyone would even have to contribute to a society that offers nothing in return
@12:50 "I would be OK with a little wokeness if they were coming up with a cure for dementia". Within a year: FDA Approves Kisunla. We will see now if he suddenly becomes "Ok with a little wokeness" (my money is on Thiel denying he said anything) Folks, look at a farking graph of science funding vs GDP over the last 71 years,(nsf23339) government funding for science (corporations do not do basic science research, they do 99% development and 1% (applied) research) collapsed from 1965-1986, then collapsed again from 1986 till now.. It takes 10-20 years for basic. research to become applied research then get into a product. Basic reasearch went from 1.9% of GDP to .6%, less than 1/3. Thiel is well enough informed that it is clear that he's lying to protect an agenda. Here is the NOT secret, billionaires don't like scientific research because it threatens their existing businesses (through Schumpeterian creative destruction). Read 0 to 1, Thiel is all about creating sustainable advantage, research works against that.
Now businessmen feel entitled to talk about reasons behind speed of scientific progress? Give me a break dude
Never have I heard so much crap spoken by so few people. If you think some billionaire with a god complex will do anything to improve the lives of ordinary people you are insane. All the current problems of the world today have been caused by people like Peter Thiel.
The last mistake is made at the board room. AI will provision in unlimited measure.
There is unlimited things to do here, rights, access, and imagination are major limitation.
There is unlimited things to do here, rights, access, and imagination are major limitation.