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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
To rephrase: most of the people who lament the loss of “good factory jobs” never worked in a factory.
(4) Oswald shot Kennedy. Lone gunman. No Grassy Knoll shooter. The Single Bullet Theory is correct. But it is still an open question of whether he was part of a conspiracy.
Modern-day Kansas is the cautionary tale of what happens when ideological, doctrinaire conservatism is allowed full flower. The Democrats own the vortex of suck in places like Detroit, Chicago, and California. The Republicans have Kansas, with its vortex of budget deficits, school cutbacks, and a new concealed-carry law that, even as a shooter (I occasionally to a gun range in Tallinn, Estonia), I think ranks up there with the worst ideas I’ve heard all year.
The first Avengers movie was horrible.
By birth and nature, the human being is 100% selfish for himself and immediate family, and his first resort to settle conflict is with violence, unless conflict doesn’t affect him directly. Then he does nothing.
He must be TAUGHT to think and behave in civilized way. If he does not dedicate self to morality from outside of his violent selfishness, he (or she) is just talking monkey who kills.
If my kids dinosaur encyclopedia can be believed with regard to its recitation of the unbelievably low number of complete or partial skeletons upon with we make judgments about the behavioral characteristics of various types of dinosaurs, paleontologists are the biggest BS artists on earth.
I don’t have the example in front of me, but in one case they’ve found something like a single partial skeleton, but the write-up of the dinosaur in question includes information about the herding and family-group characteristics of the specific species.
It doesn’t matter how many hits or errors there were. All that matters are runs.
Ad 2.: Please define ‘factory farming’.
I’m the only one that I know of on Ricochet that still thinks civil unions for gay couples is the way to go.
I know it was fiction and not a documentary, but it must have rung true to the people watching it at the time: Go catch a couple episodes of the TV show “The Fugitive” from the 1960s. David Jansen’s character would wander into a town, go the local store and offer to work for the owner for a few days. No paperwork. No tax forms. Then he’d leave.
You’re not alone in these beliefs.
You don’t like fun. Got it.
And I say there is a such thing as Hell, but it may not be the point of no return it’s assumed to be. If we are to pray for the repentance of all, that includes those in Hell, so perhaps repentance is possible even in Hell.
Thanks Arizona Patriot. I believe demonic possession is a phenomenon. It doesn’t matter to me if the “possessor” is a real entity or a psychological construct. There does seem to be enough historical precedent that exorcism works.
I also believe in ufos and aliens, but I don’t believe that they are necessarily extraterrestrial. The similarity (to me) between those phenomena and the “fair folk” stories from before technology seem to suggest they are the same phenomena interpreted differently by the subjects in their own world views.
The “Ancient Astronaut Theorists” are a hoot!
I may not believe in the Biblical definition of Hell, but I do believe that it exists right here on Earth.
(Having an impressively bad day with a current home renovation.)
I believe human beings are the only intelligent life in the universe. I would be surprised, though not disappointed, if even bacteria were discovered elsewhere.
The rest of the universe is not thereby wasted space. It is an awe-inspiring testament to God’s grandeur and to His love for us. He has given us more than we could ever know, thereby assuring us of endless oppotunities for learning and action. It is the barest hint at the life of an immortal soul.
I read the term “genocide” in its common sense of the eradication of a race of human beings. I haven’t really thought about the deer tick so much, but I feel sure it would trouble me less.
My belief is an offshoot of Troy’s heresy: managing under the DH is more difficult because it emphasizes accountability in managing one’s pitching staff.
NL managers have an out when they change pitchers: they can appeal to the need to score as cover for a decision to take out an effective pitcher. The so-called strategy of double-switching is a simple heuristic that doesn’t flummox AL managers during interleague play.
An AL manager’s pitching-change decision must focus on pitching-related criteria: the starter has become relatively less effective, there’s a particular matchup that a starter/reliever is better able to exploit, the starter has to stay in to save the bullpen, etc. They can’t rationalize a bad result by saying: “well, I needed to change pitchers to try to score.”
Agreed. It’s definitely the most eclectic. :)
Soto, are you baiting me?
You want me to put the hammer down?
You are not alone. Civil unions are well ahead of marriage around here, though they are a distant second after “go back in the closet.”
I believe there is other life in the universe. Lots of it.
I believe there is other intelligent life in the universe. Lots of it.
I believe the latter is almost certainly too far away to ever meet, and the former quite probably is.
I believe human-humanoid (alien) romances in sci-fi stories are more similar to beastiality than to inter-racial couples.
But I wouldn’t be disappointed to discover asari in our galaxy.
You are NOT alone. Anecdote: gay friends in UK have no desire to be “married.” Civil union gives them everything they want, and they tell me most everyone they know feels the same way. I believe them, as I do not ever see or hear any demands for recognition of gay marriage there.
Also, I believe that a desire to change one’s sex is a mental illness. It is complete denial of reality. I say this as the dear friend of a person who has completed the transition from man to woman.
And PS to whomever made the crack about Reagan and Thatcher members: I am a Reagan member because I had the money last year and want to keep Ricochet going. I will have to drop down to Thatcher this year, as we are in a bit of a financial pinch. I do not see myself as someone who has overpaid; I see myself as a supporter.
Yikes, apparently I missed that one! The Editors should have deleted the comment purely for financial reasons.
Also, I believe that a desire to change one’s sex is a mental illness. It is complete denial of reality. I say this as the dear friend of a person who has completed the transition from man to woman.
That’s interesting—is she happier than she was before?
I have no interest in political themed cruises. As much as I adore the like minded and intellectually challenging, there is a deck lounger over there undisturbed.
What I am actually doing is rejecting the premise of natural law, or an objective good.
Of course I do not make that claim. I do not believe it.
You see criticism because you think the world ought to be understood a certain way. I reject natural law and I reject an objective measure of the good.
We really are talking past each other. I am not criticizing people for being bad or defective. I merely claim that they are not aware of how irrational they are.
Nope. I have argued for this for years.
The first Avengers movie is a classic for Captain America’s best line, which was right before the fight pictured above: “There’s only one God, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”
This even topped Captain Kirk’s line — in the Apollo episode — “Mankind has no need for gods. We find the One quite adequate.”