ExactoKnight

Without knowing the law, it seems like Uber could construct a viable legal defence around admitting that they inappropriately got access to these files, while simultaneously arguing that they should not face an injunction blocking work on self-driving technology, because the current technology they're developing differs significantly enough from the proprietary tech Google is trying to claim ownership over.

We need more judges outside of the D.C. circuit. Technology knowledge is SORELY lacking among the current crop, for that reason alone we need a voice like his.

I find there tends to be a tension between going above and beyond, and striving to keep a culture of work life balance.

In fact I know some companies hate hiring from people who worked at places like Amazon, because they try to bring such a brutal overwork ethic that can ruin the balance other people are striving to achieve.

What do you define as a "growing" phase? 10 people? 30 people? 100-200 people? Uber 1000+?

When you need something done right, you pay for it.

When you do unpaid work, it means that it's work that doesn't matter, which means it isn't providing you with much in terms of valuable skills.

There's also the factor that some people are chronic workaholics who can't separate work from real life.

When you're learning to code early on the push to become a "stronger" developer makes it easy to pursue this.

I actually think distraction from our IT devices is a major reason why things are slowing down.

Without our smartphones, spending hours tinkering would be how most people ended up spending their time. It sets one up much more so for a maker mindset over a consumer mindset.

That's the problem. Globalization is merely the copying of existing technology, but many in the west have mistaken it for real progress.

This is one reason why economic growth in the west is stagnant. Technological progress is what fuelled our strong growth half a century ago. Without it, politics becomes a zero sum game.

Again, that's information technology. That's one area where the past still moved fast like we are now, while the rest of us I am arguing hasn't (in terms of speed).

Very fair points. Peter Thiel actually argues the slowdown began in 1970, which would capture nearly every technology mentioned.

The period of comparison is really the start of the industrial revolution until the 1970's. This 100 year period was dramatic, and arguably, we are not matching it right now with our rate of progress outside of information technology.

Efficiency is something you begin to care about when the original technology itself is no longer providing the wow factor it used to bring.

For efficiency to be considered a huge leap in progress, it needs to be a change on the order of magnitudes....

Exactly. Peter Thiel's book Zero to One is actually named after this.

Refinement is taking existing tech and moving it up (e.g. 10 to 30).

Thiel argues real game changer tech emerges when it brings us from 0 to 1. From nothing to something huge.

What needs to happen is for VC and other sources of investment to stop chasing easy wins and realize huge money can be made by moving more out into the world of atoms.

1. The important point to emphasize here is deceleration does not mean that progress isn't happening. It simply means that the groundbreaking progress we witnessed in the first half of the 20th century is not being replicated as quickly anymore.

2. Technological progress is based on the outcomes they bring with them. Easy or hard to achieve -- doesn't matter in terms of this measurement. Insane advancements in physics is not technological progress unless it enables us to vastly improve our existing capabilities to do things as humans.

Thiel argues this by pointing to a tech were all excited about: self-driving cars.

Thiel argues the original invention of the car was still a bigger innovation.

electricity -> cars -> airplanes -> rockets -> space travel

radio -> tv

laundry machines -> dishwashers

antibiotics -> vaccines

^^^All first 3/4 of 20th century. Self-driving cars would be merely a close match to any one of them. For the next 50 years to match what we saw in the start of the 20th century, we are going to need at least 4 or 5 other technological revolutions in the world of atoms for the comparison to be even similar.

Actually it isn't. As Peter Thiel would say, globalization is the copying of existing technology, it is not the manufacture of new ones.

One reason we have stagnated can be revealed in the bias of our new language. Where we once used the terms "1st World" and "3rd World" we now use "Developed" and "Developing" -- language that is excessively bullish about globalization while implicitly pessimistic about technology.

Actually the point has been made that we have actually lost a lot of the knowledge and expertise that existed back then, and that it would take considerable time and money to accumulate that knowledge together to do it again.

Peter Thiel has made some other interesting observations:

- that our language about the ‘developed' vs ‘developing' world is excessively bullish about globalization while implicitly pessimistic about technology.

- that government has changed from thinking that progress can be achieved via planning, into thinking that it's more just there to watch random forces & statistics evolve the world. This change in mindset away from planning for innovation has made it impossible to achieve grandiose mission like the Apollo space missions. As a result if there is going to be a government role in getting innovation started, people have to philosophically believe again that it’s possible to plan.

- that environmentalism has induced a deep skepticism about anything involving the manipulation of nature or material objects in the real world. This skepticism explains why computer tech has been able to advance so much but not physical technology like transportation.

- that peer review and grant approval processes are too political, science has suffered because it is hard to find scientists who excel at both science and politics.

- that a shift from manufacturing to non-tradeable services has led to a political class (such as lawyers) that is weirdly immune to globalization and mostly oblivious to it.

Almost everything you listed there already started becoming common by the 1960's.

Step back and forget about informational technology. Look at the world of atoms, not at the world of bits.

Since the decommissioning of the Concorde, our fastest commercial means of transportation has actually been getting slower, not faster. Man hasn't reached farther out in space than the moon missions of the 1960s. The first half the of the 20th century brought us: antibiotics, electricity, automobiles, air travel, rockets, space travel, satellites, radio, reliable clean drinking water, indoor heating, laundry machines, diswashers, widespread indoor plumbing, and massive improvements in sanitation / literacy.

The second half of the 20th can't even come close to this level of technological growth.

Yeah it's not like Ben Sanders almost beat Hillary Clinton, and did better with millennials than she did...

I saw a professor demolish one of these devices by simply instructing his students using it to "think" without moving their eyes or eyebrows. At that point the device stopped working, because not surprisingly the action potential in our faces muscle movements far exceed anything the brain produces in terms of EEG signals when measured from our skin.

Trying to read brain signals from a skin-based EEG device is like trying to listen in on a conversation being had inside a packed sports stadium while you fly over it in a helicopter.

How did it not go over well?! When you hear other researchers attack the work this guy is doing, you begin to suspect more of them are politicians looking to protect their own grants than actual scientists looking to make bold advancements themselves.

There are so many fundamental philosophy of the brain type questions that need to be answered first before we can assume there will be a workable way to get this tech to enhance our thinking or brain power.

How much damage to surrounding brain cells would (could) occur from injecting this into someone's brain?

Check out A Theory of Justice by John Rawls. Best challenge to Utilitarian thinking I know of. (E.g. slavery is wrong not because bad outweighs good, but rather because it is inherently wrong when seen from the perspective of the original position)

The AI and Singularity hype irks me, because I'm genuinely in agreement with Peter Thiel's argument that technological progress is actually decelerating relative to how it was moving 60 years ago once you look beyond the advancements we have experienced in information technology and finance.

Interesting, but I thought the best LIDAR sensors were being built primarily by 3rd party vendors? These vendors are working very hard to make a powerful under thousand dollar LIDAR sensor possible, so I wouldn't say that LIDAR sensor pricing is Uber's achilles heel.

Naked Capitalism made a good argument that Uber cannot experience economies of scale with its costs the way Amazon could when it scaled. Why? Because Amazon's fixed costs were... well.. fixed.

Unlike Amazon, Uber faces massive variable costs in driver recruitment/onboarding, legal regulations and local advertising.

Seriously. The rules needed to onboard a driver in Alberta, Canada are completely different from New South Wales, Australia. You can't automate driver recruitment/onboarding in either of these cities because these markets have passed actual legal regulations to allow ridesharing that require unique, but idfferent things (e.g. like market-specific commercial drivers licenses, background checks... or filling out registration forms made by the jurisdiction).

What you are saying is right about Uber's current business. But that is not true for self-driving cars.

The infrastructure costs of deploying a fleet of cars to compete with Uber if they gain market share will be massive, all but assuring they will hold a monopoly position for years unless a decentralized competitor could actually become reliable quickly (I doubt it).

eCab in Vancouver is getting pretty close. The app's technology is all but reliable, but where the problems still exist are when demand is high and taxis (by the very nature of being limited) are unable to meet it.

It's actually pretty widespread. If you think they're bad here, taxis are even more entrenched in Europe.