Peter Thiel

is probably in a lot of ways not even doing as well as their baby boomer parents. It's the first time we've had this sort of economic stagnation or even outright decline. And again, the naive view would be that all this progress somehow translates into a more successful economy. It's not the only way to measure things, but it's sort of a straightforward way to measure things.

is probably in a lot of ways not even doing as well as their baby boomer parents. It's the first time we've had this sort of economic stagnation or even outright decline. And again, the naive view would be that all this progress somehow translates into a more successful economy. It's not the only way to measure things, but it's sort of a straightforward way to measure things.

And then when it doesn't translate, my conclusion is maybe it hasn't added up to as much. One of the reasons it's very hard, by the way,

And then when it doesn't translate, my conclusion is maybe it hasn't added up to as much. One of the reasons it's very hard, by the way,

And then when it doesn't translate, my conclusion is maybe it hasn't added up to as much. One of the reasons it's very hard, by the way,

to have this debate and even figure out what's going on is because one of the features of late modernity unlike early modernity is hyper specialization and we have ever narrower group of experts who are experts in their field so the cancer specialists tell us they will cure cancer in five years they've been telling us that for the last 50 um and um and then the string theorists tell us they're the smartest people in the world and it's very hard to you know evaluate these fields on their own terms which is

to have this debate and even figure out what's going on is because one of the features of late modernity unlike early modernity is hyper specialization and we have ever narrower group of experts who are experts in their field so the cancer specialists tell us they will cure cancer in five years they've been telling us that for the last 50 um and um and then the string theorists tell us they're the smartest people in the world and it's very hard to you know evaluate these fields on their own terms which is

to have this debate and even figure out what's going on is because one of the features of late modernity unlike early modernity is hyper specialization and we have ever narrower group of experts who are experts in their field so the cancer specialists tell us they will cure cancer in five years they've been telling us that for the last 50 um and um and then the string theorists tell us they're the smartest people in the world and it's very hard to you know evaluate these fields on their own terms which is

It's like Adam Smith had this concept of the pin factory, where you had 100 different people working in a pin factory. You can think of late modernity as the pin factory on steroids. We're so hyper-specialized, it's extremely hard to have a picture of the whole. And so this question of, you know, is there really progress? Is there not? It's kind of a hard one to get at.

It's like Adam Smith had this concept of the pin factory, where you had 100 different people working in a pin factory. You can think of late modernity as the pin factory on steroids. We're so hyper-specialized, it's extremely hard to have a picture of the whole. And so this question of, you know, is there really progress? Is there not? It's kind of a hard one to get at.

It's like Adam Smith had this concept of the pin factory, where you had 100 different people working in a pin factory. You can think of late modernity as the pin factory on steroids. We're so hyper-specialized, it's extremely hard to have a picture of the whole. And so this question of, you know, is there really progress? Is there not? It's kind of a hard one to get at.

But I think if you measure it in economic terms, There's a slowed sense. If you measure it in this sort of intuitive thing, where, okay, we'll just look at a bunch of different fields, like cancer, supersonic aviation, you know, just all these different ways we used to move faster.

But I think if you measure it in economic terms, There's a slowed sense. If you measure it in this sort of intuitive thing, where, okay, we'll just look at a bunch of different fields, like cancer, supersonic aviation, you know, just all these different ways we used to move faster.

But I think if you measure it in economic terms, There's a slowed sense. If you measure it in this sort of intuitive thing, where, okay, we'll just look at a bunch of different fields, like cancer, supersonic aviation, you know, just all these different ways we used to move faster.

We moved faster every decade from, you know, 1500 on, it was faster sailing boats and faster railroads, faster cars, faster planes. We've stopped moving faster physically the last 50 years. So, you know, that's one dimension. And so there sort of is a common sense way that we have stagnation. There is a, There's an economic way to measure it.

We moved faster every decade from, you know, 1500 on, it was faster sailing boats and faster railroads, faster cars, faster planes. We've stopped moving faster physically the last 50 years. So, you know, that's one dimension. And so there sort of is a common sense way that we have stagnation. There is a, There's an economic way to measure it.

We moved faster every decade from, you know, 1500 on, it was faster sailing boats and faster railroads, faster cars, faster planes. We've stopped moving faster physically the last 50 years. So, you know, that's one dimension. And so there sort of is a common sense way that we have stagnation. There is a, There's an economic way to measure it.

And then there's probably always a political intuition I have on this too, which is that perhaps if you have ideas that are taboo, that you're not allowed to discuss, my shortcut is to suspect they're simply correct. And so the example I always give is Professor Bob Laughlin, who's a Stanford physics professor, I think around 1998, he gets a Nobel Prize in physics.

And then there's probably always a political intuition I have on this too, which is that perhaps if you have ideas that are taboo, that you're not allowed to discuss, my shortcut is to suspect they're simply correct. And so the example I always give is Professor Bob Laughlin, who's a Stanford physics professor, I think around 1998, he gets a Nobel Prize in physics.

And then there's probably always a political intuition I have on this too, which is that perhaps if you have ideas that are taboo, that you're not allowed to discuss, my shortcut is to suspect they're simply correct. And so the example I always give is Professor Bob Laughlin, who's a Stanford physics professor, I think around 1998, he gets a Nobel Prize in physics.