I’ve listened to the episode a few days back (this is an excellent post and transcript btw).
Even though they pin-point varies issues in society such as radical leftism, stagnation in the Scientific community, the student debt, etc; In my opinion, most of the episode was “meh” (Ignoring also that they are two outsiders of academia criticizing it so much and that Weinstein claims that he has a unifying theory of Physics!).
The thing which interested me the most was the bit about Mimetic Theory. I’m surprised at how evident it’s what he is saying.
How the theories of Rene Girard are an antidote to strong libertarian impulses.
So, I think there’s so much more to Rene Girard than an antidote to “libertarian impulses”. For me, this was the biggest takeaway of the entire podcast and shed a new light on Thiel’s book: Zero To One and his investment philosophy (e.g. Facebook).
We are so worried about the desires of our neighbors that we do not realize the web of opportunities that hides on what we’re not seeing. Re-contextualizing our desires and analyzing them is key in creative and innovative work and much of these ideas I take from Thiel and Rene Girard.
How the theories of Rene Girard are an antidote to strong libertarian impulses.
Agree; I was not trying to write a full summary, just point to some of the interesting / surprising claims, and that framing was one of the more surprising ones that is an accurate description of a thing discussed.
On the post where they discuss his stuff (the last one, Stories About Progress) I’d be interested to hear more on Girard and what new thoughts you’ve had since hearing his ideas.
Added: Though I think Thiel uses this frame intentionally, to highlight the most not-what-you’d-expect-him-to-say point so it’ll stick in your mind more clearly. I think the framing substantially helped me get what Thiel thought was important about the theories, relating to how people copy each other.
Quite the contrary; my point being, since I do not care for that being on the episode I classified it as “meh”, thus I do not care for that in LessWrong. If there’s one thing which I agree strongly with the sequences is that Politics is the Mind-Killer.
I’ve listened to the episode a few days back (this is an excellent post and transcript btw).
Even though they pin-point varies issues in society such as radical leftism, stagnation in the Scientific community, the student debt, etc; In my opinion, most of the episode was “meh” (Ignoring also that they are two outsiders of academia criticizing it so much and that Weinstein claims that he has a unifying theory of Physics!).
The thing which interested me the most was the bit about Mimetic Theory. I’m surprised at how evident it’s what he is saying.
So, I think there’s so much more to Rene Girard than an antidote to “libertarian impulses”. For me, this was the biggest takeaway of the entire podcast and shed a new light on Thiel’s book: Zero To One and his investment philosophy (e.g. Facebook).
We are so worried about the desires of our neighbors that we do not realize the web of opportunities that hides on what we’re not seeing. Re-contextualizing our desires and analyzing them is key in creative and innovative work and much of these ideas I take from Thiel and Rene Girard.
Agree; I was not trying to write a full summary, just point to some of the interesting / surprising claims, and that framing was one of the more surprising ones that is an accurate description of a thing discussed.
On the post where they discuss his stuff (the last one, Stories About Progress) I’d be interested to hear more on Girard and what new thoughts you’ve had since hearing his ideas.
Added: Though I think Thiel uses this frame intentionally, to highlight the most not-what-you’d-expect-him-to-say point so it’ll stick in your mind more clearly. I think the framing substantially helped me get what Thiel thought was important about the theories, relating to how people copy each other.
Oh, no, is LessWrong becoming one of those places?
Quite the contrary; my point being, since I do not care for that being on the episode I classified it as “meh”, thus I do not care for that in LessWrong. If there’s one thing which I agree strongly with the sequences is that Politics is the Mind-Killer.
+1, see my commenting guidelines on the OP. Please no more further discussion on this subthread, am not interested.