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What Do You Believe That No One Else Here Does?
Peter Thiel is well-known for asking this question in interviews:
PETER THIEL: The intellectual question that I ask at the start of my book is, “Tell me something that’s true that very few people agree with you on.” This is a terrific interview question. Even when people can read on the Internet that you’re going to ask this question to everybody you interview, they still find it really hard to answer. And it’s hard to answer not because people don’t have any ideas. Everyone has ideas. Everyone has things they believe to be true that other people won’t agree with you on. But they’re not things you want to say.
He himself was unforthcoming when asked the question, though:
TYLER COWEN: Peter, tell me something that’s true that everyone agrees with you on.
PETER THIEL: Well there are lots of things that are true that everyone agrees with me on. I think for example even this idea that the university system is somewhat screwed up and somewhat broken at this point. This is not even a heterodox or a very controversial idea anymore. There was an article in TechCrunch where the writer starts with “this is going to be super controversial” and then you look through the comments — there were about 350 comments — they were about 70 percent in my favor. So the idea that the education system is badly broken is not even controversial. You know, the ideas that are really controversial are the ones I don’t even want to tell you. I want to be more careful than that.
So what do you believe that puts you at odds with everyone else? What do you believe that puts you at odds with Ricochet, in particular?
Published in General
I think that Benjamin Sisko was the best Star Trek captain.
Great thread, it has helped me kill 40 minutes while waiting on hold for a “customer service representative.”
My unpopular opinion is that the isolationists were right, America never should have taken on the burdens of empire after WWII [at least if we weren’t going to reap any benefits of empire] and should have avoided entangling alliances like NATO.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of positions in sports that are already tailored to fairly narrow tasks. It’s exceedingly rare for guys in the NFL to play both sides of the ball these days (J.J. Watt does it every now and again just to prove he can), and you don’t get more specialized than kickers or punters. In hockey, the goalie is limited to a purely defensive role.
Don’t get me wrong, the vast majority of cases where we ask players to do more are worth preserving. Apart from the pitchers, I wouldn’t favor any further segregation of offensive and defensive roles in baseball. In basketball and hockey it’s obviously not even practical. Part of the magic of putting together rosters in those sports is deciding which trade-offs you’re willing to make in terms of offensive vs. defensive skills. But when one position is so consistently terrible at one task as pitchers tend to be at hitting, I’d rather utilize people who can actually do the job.
I’m sympathetic to this rationale, but we probably differ on priorities. The quality of the product on the field is more important to me than the complexities of managerial decision-making. I’d rather have a batter that’s a potential threat every time he’s at the plate than a manager who gets over a barrel once or twice in the course of a game.
Plus, in an era when pitching is dominating and there are complaints of not enough action, I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world to find a place for sluggers who’ve still got some juice but can’t hold their own in the field. It’s more intriguing to me to see if David Ortiz can lumber his way to third base in less than four hours than to see John Farrell sweat over whether he has to go to the bullpen.
There’s a fair amount of conservative hand-wringing over the fact that people are getting married later and having fewer kids. To the extent this is a function of people devaluing family life, I’m sympathetic. To the extent that it reflects people — many of them children of divorce themselves — holding off because they take marriage seriously enough that they want to get it right, however, I think it’s actually a good thing. I’d rather have fewer, more robust marriages than have a larger overall number but see a higher percentage terminate in divorce.
I assume you mean a complete FDR fourth term? I think it’s true that there’s a better case for term limiting executives than legislators simply because of the fact that there’s more power consolidated in the executive branch (how about we trade off term limits for a controlled demolition of the administrative state?). That said, I basically agree with Hamilton’s argument against term limiting presidents from Federalist 72:
I’d argue that at least some of the blame for the modern curse of the second term owes to the passage of the 22nd Amendment, which term-limited presidents. I’m more fearful of an executive who gets to exercise power for four years knowing that he’ll never be held accountable by the electorate than one who might be angling for a third term.
I’ve come to believe that the American capitalist, constitutional republican system is unsustainable, mostly due to secularism being wedded to prosperity and a sense of complete self-reliance. Once society loses an external yardstick (the Judeo-Christian conception of God) by which to measure ethics and justice, all is chaos and dissolution. It’s only held together by big, strong government.
Capitalism is just a way for socialists to fund their start-up. Or, in other words, Marx was a prophet.
Blecccch!
On recommendation from Arizona Patriot et. al I read The Conservatarian Manifesto, and Cooke has a good explanation for why we’re stuck with the burdens of empire—helped a lot.
Hummus is a bland, unpleasantly grainy paste which should only be served to criminals.
Animal House is mostly boring and only occasionally funny.
110 lb. women walking 95 lb. dogs are more dangerous to the public than smokers.
There was no significant bloc of Conservatives that failed to vote in either the 2008 or 2012 elections.
Cooking with gas is overrated unless you’re broiling.
We’re stuck with the 17th Amendment. There is no chance that a supermajority of American voters will be convinced they will be more free because they aren’t allowed to vote for their own Senators.
I believe lard is a healthy alternative to low fat cooking oil.
Just the opposite for me. Also, there are a lot more ways to be held accountable by the electorate than through elections. Even Joseph Stalin was held accountable by the Russian people to some extent, and he didn’t even run for any election that mattered. Herr Putin is very sensitive to what the Russian people think now, even though he can pretty much rig the elections.
C’mon now. This thread is serious!
It’s butter or nothin’.
Kate thanks for the suggestion I will read it, I like Mr. Cooke a lot. I agree we are now stuck with the burdens of empire, once you go up in the lifeguard’s chair you have to sit there till the job is done. I just disagree that we should have done it in the first place.
Agreed all grainy hummus is disgusting spackle unfit for human consumption. Fortunately, creamy, creamy Sabra to the rescue!
I thought of a new one: we should have emoticons on Ricochet. ;-)
Eating isn’t worth it.
I was gonna proclaim Jordan the victor for: “free trade is bad.”
But y’all just re-opened the competition.
Canned pineapple is better than fresh. There I said it.
Kate, there have been many changes in her life, the sex change being only one of them. I would say they all contributed to her contentment. When we met he was unemployed and just out of alcohol/drug rehab. Many years later, she has a job that she loves, and has been clean and sober all that time.
Love ya, Midge. Don’t care for Sabra. That stuff is ubiquitous amongst my family/friends. We’ve had this discussion previously.
To me, Sabra is creamy in roughly the same way that organic peanut butter one has to stir every five seconds to keep the oil from separating is creamy.
Perhaps that is my personal bias wrt “creamy.”
Anywho, I didn’t write it because I expected folks to agree with me.
As I see it, this thread is a “silly, meaningless trolling is fun once in a while” thread. Though I’ll admit that I want to see it that way.
In juice, syrup, or both?
Careful Fred, one indicates you are a visionary, another guarantees that you are a Commie, and yet another proves you are a RINO.
We’re waiting…
For a real treat: one cup lard and one cup butter (salted: who eats unsalted? Only a pinko). It’s best to have a cardiologist on speed dial.
“Any sufficiently advanced troll is indistinguishable from a genuine kook.”
-Alan Morgan
Juice, obviously. Syrup is disgusting.
Eating canned pineapple packed in syrup is like eating tuna fish packed in oil.
You are a brave soul going public with this one.
I don’t like chocolate
But, you sort of lazily approached your response. It’s rather late.
I believe that Jesus was God’s last word to us, and that he no longer takes an active role in temporal affairs. Jesus’s ministry was the equivalent of the speech a parent gives to his child when the child reaches adulthood and must take responsibility for his own fate.
That’s good. I’ve a relative who has a similar story, though he used to be a she… much better now. I met a man who used to be a woman who didn’t have all those other problems, though—possibly because he is young, rather than my age (50-ish) and maybe was able to name and figure out what his problem was and fix it? He lives with a woman, as does my relative (who used to be a lesbian.) (God, life is complicated!)