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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
No, you’re not. I think that’s the ideal, but unfortunately that ship has sailed.
I believe that Hell is not a place, but a state of being separated from God. There is no torture other than that which the damned inflict on themselves. I also believe that the only unpardonable sin is to tell God that he is wrong.
Relatedly: Too many Christians conflate the Church with God; a failure to swear loyalty to the former does not equate to a rejection of the latter.
I also believe that Sola Fide amounts to salvation exclusively through butt kissing.
The first Captain America movie with Chris Evans was brilliant and the best treatment the character could have received. The scene where pre-super-soldier Steve Rogers throws himself on the (dummy) grenade while all the buff-and-tuff recruits are running away is the best cinematic summary of heroism in a superhero film ever.
Buycott Israel ;)
Barkha: “Not unique thought among Hindus, but I believe that world is an illusion.”
You’re in good company. In his take down of trickle down, Sowell quotes Schumpter saying close to the same thing.
“We fight for and against not men and things as they are, but for and against the caricatures we make of them.”
All any of us this side of God or his angels can actually see is illusion and caricature. If that we’re not true, we wouldn’t all be seeing something different than what others see.
Ughh! I know. WAY too serious for this thread. I return it to those better equipped to keep it on track, and will return myself to enjoying their contributions.
Eeeew!
Oh and Peter Thiel’s answer to this question is that monopolies are good, and if you’re competing you’re doing it wrong. Frictional costs of competition remove all the value from the space, like marketing costs or the like.
His example is usually “Starting a restaurant in San Francisco” as a space of perfect competition. You will most likely fail, and if you do succeed you”ll struggle to keep up.
He might not have said it in that interview, but I’ve heard him talk a few times and that’s his unpopular opinion. I think the guy has a point, especially from a business standpoint.
That Jindal definitely and probably Cruz and Rubio are not eligible to be President and no patriotic American should vote for them.
Umbra Fractus, I’m with you on Jesus being the final say from God. I don’t see micromanagement but do pray. Ironic unless one does it to please God.
Sure, but should you have?
Whoa there, cowboy. You lost me. Please explain.
I believe we should adopt two new numbers, to go in after 9. Call them maybe “Dec” and “Jan”. One two three four five six seven eight nine dec jan ten.
This way we can combine the decimal system with the idea stated above. We would still have “10” of something, it would just be the amount we now and have usefully for centuries called a “dozen”. What we have always called a “gross” – 144 – would now be 100, a decimal number.
Having “ten” be as many as it currently is doesn’t have to be set in stone; is it just because that’s how many fingers we have, so we can count easier? Well, why not count your finger sections of one hand (there are twelve), using your thumb as a pointer? (Turn your palm up. Now touch each section of each finger with your thumb in order as you count.) You can count to 12, and only use one hand!
The Mayans used Base 60 and everybody wonders why. Is it possible that they used this technique with one hand to count to 12, then used the 5 fingers on the other hand as the “tens place”, abacus-style?
There are few things in nature that are ten – what we currently call ten, in number. Our digits. Umm… Well, I’m sure there’s something else, but it’s late. There are lots of things that are 3, and 4, and 6, and 12.
If we did this, we could finally integrate our counting system with:
clocks
months
compasses
“dozen”
Mayans
many other things I’m sure anonymous will know (did I mention that it’s late?)
Also, if we add the new nos. dec and jan, we could start our New Year on March 1st, which seems a LOT more like the start of something new than our current date. Then the Sept, Oct, Nov, Dec would finally actually correspond with 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th. (“Jan” would just have to be “11th” – sorry Janus.)
On a tangentially related note: anybody who claims an arbitrary, top-down, centrally planned system (hint: the Metric System) that proposes “increased clarity – less confusion” and then names one tiny thing a millimeter and a huge thing a kilometer, has two completely different things called a “liter” and a “meter”, a “decameter” and a “decimeter”, is out of his mind! Who was it, the French?? Oh, wait, it was.
For all practical purposes, the Sun goes around the Earth. Practical purposes. And for all practical, human scale, everyday measurements, lengths and quantities base on a human reference – the typical human body – are tons more useful than a length which refers to a tiny fraction of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole (where they got the Meter, or “Metre”, I suppose).
Inch = 1 finger joint
Foot = 1 foot
Yard = 1 arm stretched out, fingertip to chest
Bushel = amount of apples it’s convienient to carry
Peck = amount to carry down out of a tree
Acre = amount a team could plow in a day (also now roughly a “football field”)
Fathom = one body lenghth of depth
Hand = one hand width (4 inches)
etc. etc.
The stupidest thing about the whole Metric plot was that their units came out to be essentially the same size as what we already had . . . except not quite. The meter is basically a yard, except a bit more. The liter is a quart, but a bit less. The centimeter is like a half an inch, but off by a little. The kilometer is half a mile, but a bit more.
This is how the devil finally wins, by driving us crazy just a little at a time.
BTW: When did we go back to a 250-word limit??? God this is tedious.
I think the Mayans worked in base 20.
Claire,
…hmmm..and what kind of game is this…over 300 comments..I guess I’ll play too.
1) Sigmund Freud is Charles Darwin smoking Bertrand Russell’s pipe. The three of them are the most overrated intellects in Western Civilization. We are still largely cleaning up the mess they left us.
2) The Saudis don’t have mass rallies on a weekly basis in which they scream “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. To even discuss our values in the same sentence as excusing a Jihadist State is schizophrenic (with Freud or without).
3) Ever since we stopped just hunting & gathering and planted something, farming is the application of technology and specialized labor to increase food production. Nothing has changed but the romantic fantasies about rural life so prevalent in today’s decadent elite.
4) As long as Solar Energy is presumed to be the technology of the future without proving itself in the market place less all subsidy, it will never be viable.
Regards,
Jim
I’ll go along with that, even though I’d say he was the best Star Trek officer. You have to be running a big ship out in the hinterlands to be a captain in ST sense, no? The Defiant was a marvelous vessel, but it’s not the same as running a Constitution class ship.
It was a difficult role – he wasn’t a glorified HR manager like Janeway, a civilized diplomat like Picard, or a making-it-up-as-we-go-along character like Kirk or Archer. His character was written to be all those things, but Avery Brooks underplayed everything with an unknowable reserve that made you believe he was all those things, even though he could be taciturn to the point of dramatic consternation. It was one of the hallmarks of DS9 that you never really warmed to Cisco, but you admired the hell out of him.
I’ll amplify your observation and assert that DS9 was the best Trek series of them all, with a sentimental carve-out for the last fan-service season of Enterprise.
The microwave is the greatest cooking invention since the discovery of fire.
Louie C.K. will turn out to be one of the most brilliant writer / directors of our era.
The “Back to the Future” sequels are horrible.
The 2016 GOP ticket will be Perry / Fiorina.
…and you believe you’re the only one here that thinks so?
That’s totally insane John. I would not have thought a person of your intelligence would even entertain the thought.
As for me, I think it’s more like a 40/60 split against.
I was expecting you to say something like you believe that Turkey is not in a death spiral into becoming a totalitarian and/or Islamist basket-case of a failed nation.
I, for one, agree with Dr. Tim Furnish (who’s not, last I checked, a Ricoteer) that, while Iran does clearly want nukes and does want Israel to disappear, and does spout rhetoric about death to Israel while parading the largest missiles that will roll on a wagon down main street Tehran, they do not have any intention to nuke the Zionist entity — that is not what they want those nukes for. I imagine that’s a wee bit of an unpopular view here.
There is so much here to amuse!
So calling people irrational & unaware of it is not criticism in your mind?
Further, calling people irrational does not involve, in your mind, a serious attempt to understand what it would mean for people to be rational?
That makes it seem like when you say ‘I reject natural law’ you mean, I want to make fun of people’s irrationality but am too lazy to think about rationality. That is not even thinking, it’s a bit of self-satisfied contempt mixed in with a lot of lazy taking over what other people have thought through–like what it means to be rational, whence we derive irrational.
These weird phrases about no objective good refuse to meet the issue honestly & seriously. All human beings, like all similar animals have the same natural needs. Those goods are beyond even your dodging & avoiding are they not?
Further, if you think rationality is something of which human beings are capable, it really does matter whether it is natural or not. It is worse than dishonest to bring rationality into a discussion of human nature & of natural law–but then to refuse to explain where rationality stands to human nature.
Confession: I started this because I was plumb out of strong opinions of my own, and I felt like a total boring loser for doing it.
I guess it’s proof beyond any reasonable doubt of the Ricochet Conversational First Principle: It’s always more interesting to ask what other people think than to drone on about what you think!
I, for one, agree with Dr. Tim Furnish (who’s not, last I checked, a Ricoteer) that, while Iran does clearly want nukes and does want Israel to disappear, and does spout rhetoric about death to Israel while parading the largest missiles that will roll on a wagon down main street Tehran, they do not have any intention to nuke the Zionist entity — that is not what they want those nukes for. I imagine that’s a wee bit of an unpopular view here.
Unpopular, yes, but you are not alone in it.
I think this is quite possible. However, I also think that Mark Steyn’s warning that (I’m paraphrasing from memory here) “History has taught us that when people say they’re going to wipe out the Jews, we should take them seriously” is also true.
Pineapple on pizza is an abomination.
Most teachers are hard workers who really do care about the children and try their best to help them learn and grow. While I don’t think teachers should be a treated as a group of workers that are more noble than others (and I also think that public education in the U.S. needs a major overhaul), I also don’t like the strong anti-public-school-teacher sentiment I see on a lot on conservative sites. And full-disclosure: I am a public school teacher.
The remake of Sabrina with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond is considerably better than the Humphrey Bogart-Audrey Hepburn original.
The Lord of the Rings movies did not get better as they went along. The Fellowship of the Ring is the best. From that film forward, Peter Jackson’s indulgences and “improvements” on the books got dumber and dumber (and we see that trend continue with The Hobbit films).
Russel Crowe’s singing in Les Miserables was fine- I actually quite enjoyed his performance.
John Lennon was a pretentious jerk (okay, I’m not an expert on him, but it seems the more I’ve learned about him the less I like the guy. Did write some great songs, though), the least likeable of The Beatles.
Guys can make it out of the friend zone (not saying it happens a lot, but it does happen; I did it).
Well, something there is that does not care for your opinion. There are hard truths to face about what childlessness does to a society. There is also something to be said for the age difference between mothers & children, the distance between generations.
There’s an associated psychological problem. There is something about the experience of youth, to do with possibility–consider how much of the poetry of the last couple of centuries is a mounted attack on scientific rationalized living on behalf of this youthful sense of what’s possible.
Well, if conservatism were Jane Austen conservatism… Yeah, that’s all sensible talk. People should learn a few things about life before they marry & they should be reasonable about marriage. But I fear what price this reasonable view of marriage would exact. Maybe society require more marriages than there are good marriages available.
I agree, too. I think Tocqueville was against them as well. But I fear the combination of the administrative/regulatory state with national parties.
I admit I have no cure for this affliction just yet. But the return of an FDR may be even worse. Do you think that people would not have doubled down on Mr. Obama without term limits? Would they then not also triple down?
There’s a lot we can learn from the French…