Peter Thiel: You Are Not a Lottery Ticket | Interactive 2013 | SXSW

YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKET - Notes A big question. How much of what we do is chalked up to luck? This is true in life, start ups, and somewhat philosophical too, so it’s important. So he breaks it down into 4 topics - The question of luck - Determinate vs indeterminate futures - Is indeterminate optimism possible? - The return of Design - Overview Thesis - The question of luck is very hard to answer because you only have a sample size of 1 to go on - We live in a society that’s incredibly biased to thinking that things are dominated by luck - Finally, he takes a look at some alternative ways to think about the future to explore To start, when you think about how the 21st century will unfold, there are 2 axis: a technology axis and a globalization axis. So what do these things even mean? What are technological advances and globalization advances? - Globalization: copying things that already work. - It’s the story of China and the emerging world. - They mainly just have to copy things that already work & avoid copying bad ideas from developed nations - A lot of it is horizontal extensive progress. Going from 1 to N. - Technological Advances: This is being creative, innovating, being the artist or entrepreneur doing something that’s never been done before. Going 0 to 1. There’s something very different about the 2. With innovation, there’s something singular and non repeatable about it. So if we go back to the question and ask, was a given accomplishment just luck, a fluke, or was there more at play? With a sample size of one, variance becomes infinite. Mathematical models are useless. It’s completely unclear if it’s luck or not, especially if you go from 0 to 1. There is some evidence of repeatability. Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. But you could still say they just had one big break and used that to leverage their other big breaks, so it’s still hard to say. If you go back in time, the classical way of thinking was that luck was something to be overcome. - “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” - Thomas Jefferson - “The harder I work, the luckier I get” - Samuel Goldwyn Today, there’s a much different view: The lucky sperm club, you’re lucky where you’re born; and that’s what drives everything. And that applies to startups, the successful ones were accidental. And this worldview stems off of today's worldview of luck; so let’s challenge how much of this is or isn’t true. There’s 2 ways to look at the orientation of this question which is the past, how did I get here? And the future, where can I go next, where do I go from here? Is the future something dominated by chance or is thinking about it in terms of chance the wrong or incomplete way of looking at it? Now, the structure of the future, and you can think about it in terms of being determinate or indeterminate and optimistic or pessimistic. If you believe that the future is determinate, you’ll act with some level of conviction, you’ll have ideas, and you’ll have confidence to work to those ideas. If it’s indeterminate, the no. 1 rule is to diversify because you have no idea if it’s going to work and you should just try lots of different things and take some sort of portfolio approach to the future. Both of these ideas become self fulfilling. If you think it’s determinate and you focus on doing one thing extremely well, that leads to conviction, and then it becomes self fulfilling. If you think it’s fundamentally indeterminate, you have the portfolio approach and it becomes self fulfilling and more indeterminate. If you look at it in history, you can break it down in chunks of time. In the 1950s, we had determinate optimism, imaginations of flying cars, Star Trek tech. China has pessimistic determinism. If you have a definite determinism rate, you’ll know what to invest in. If it’s indeterminate, you won’t know what to invest in. The strange thing about indeterminate optimism is that it is the quadrant that has both low savings and low investment, and the big question is if that is a stable quadrant to be in at all? Is it possible for the future to be better when no one saves and no one invests because no one is thinking and everyone is outsourcing the thinking to other people. One other way you could describe this difference of this shift from determinate to indeterminate ways of the future is that the mathematical version is that the dominant form of math used to be calculus (determinate) and now it’s probability and statistics (indeterminate) The structural way is that in a determinate world you’re focused on substance, in an indeterminate world, all you focus on are processes, like, what’s the process for doing something. In practice, this translates to jobs. Optimistic determinism is engineering and art, where people have dreams about the future that no one else shares that they plan to turn into reality. Optimistic indeterminism is finance and law. Pessimistic determinism is wartime rationing, pessimistic in-determinism is insurance.

Anyone else enjoying every word of this presentation?

More relevant than ever in late 2020. Truly timeless wisdom.

Thiel’s grid basically covered a major question on my mind for a while now. Somehow he’s able to structure the question, provide a simple framework to explain the observed phenomenon, and extrapolate on the underlying reasons. That’s when I realize how far away I am from genius level intelligence.

Holy crap. I knew Thiel was a great mind, but this is the best one yet. Really fascinating, practical and ingenious view of society.

Just simply fantastic speech. Bravo.

How is this 8 years old and I'm just now hearing this? I'm only a few minutes in and this is already seeming like an incredibly important talk

people say majoring in philosophy is a waste of time, yet here you have arguably the best investor, and one of the best minds of our time using it as a clear foundation for everything he does in both metaphysical and utilitarian terms. of course, him being a genius helps as well.

How is anyone this intelligent! Man! Thanks for this! I loooooved it!

WOW! Peter thiel is the ultimate philosophical thinker!

For more information please read his book "Zero to One" especially if you are working in core technologies, could be mobile apps or AI or anything more specific. It will change your mindset and open you to a new world of possibilities.

I love that he talks about infrastructure! We can’t even maintain what was built 70 years ago let alone build with the passion of that time!

Wow... i always heard that Thiel was a brilliant guy....I can't believe I never heard him speak until now. Amazing talk.

Everytime I hear Peter talking it enlights me. He is just so freaking right... It's just so sad how well he describes the world. This shift from determinate optimism to indeterminate optimism, and, after all, to pessimism.

This guy is genius, his ideas are breathtaking.

He is one of a kind thinker. The main point of the book was that you should not rely on luck but it is good if you do get lucky. The title is " you are not a lottery ticket" meaning that you just don't get random chance. You have to make preparations and plans regardless of you are lucky or not. It would help to be lucky but relying on luck is bad.

Excellent presentation by Mr. Thiel. Thank you.

I didnt expect to, but oh my word, did I resonate with this! New found respect for Peter Thiel!

Love his ideas a lot..Speaks like a true visionary with tons of lessons and case studies from the past (from all geographies) and all structures- capitalist or socialist and comes up with non partisan analysis of the world. Amazing speaker to listen to. Thanks for the upload.

- when people have ideas for a better future, money is a means to an end, there are specific things people want to do with the money. When people have no idea how to build a better future, money becomes an end in itself, people accumulate money and don't know what to do with it. - monotonic and potentially never-ending improvement