You may not owe "textbook pseudo-intellectuals" better, but you owe this community much better if you're posting here. Similarly for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740473 - there's no content there, just a celebrity boo.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740119.
You can see that clearly in software engineering. There’s tons of people who consider themselves super smart and experts on world problems, just because someone is paying them $200k per year to move around buttons in css.
But as anyone who’s worked with tech people knows, this intellectual background can also lead to arrogance.
People who excel at software design become convinced that they have a unique ability to understand any kind of system at all, from first principles, without prior training, thanks to their superior powers of analysis. Success in the artificially constructed world of software design promotes a dangerous confidence."
-- idlewords, emphasis mine
understanding thiel requires understanding that he decidedly comes at issues with self-interest and ego first (and a bit paranoia) rather than priciples, despite the contrary image he tries to project.
I watched the entire thing (I think close to 3 hours), and about halfway through I came to the realization that both Peter and Eric were using a lot of words... to say basically nothing.
The entire thing was full of truisms and platitudes and overall grievances about the state of science and technology and the slowing down of innovation, with some politics and economics thrown in. Neither of them knew the underlying subjects well, if at all, but had read or heard other people's various takes on them, packaged it up using lots of jargon, and were now spouting it as "wisdom."
It left a very sour taste in my mouth, because I also read Zero to One, and Peter (probably thanks to a very good editor) came across as much more cogent there.