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Peter Thiel on working with people who have different political views
Eric Weinstein was a Managing Director at Thiel Capital. Thiel is asked why he would hire someone so vocal about political ideas he doesn’t agree with (e.g. supporting Bernie Sanders). Thiel responds:
“Well, I’m interested in ideas always… I think we need to find new ideas and new ways of approaching the world, and Eric is an absolutely first-rate heterodox thinker.”
Thiel continues:
“I think all of our politics are somewhat eclectic and complex. Eric is more on the left; I’m more on the right. But we’re both interested in ideas and figuring out how to make sense of our world. And that unites us.”
Thiel is surprised at how unusual this is:
“Most of my peers in Silicon Valley think the ideas are more set — we know all the right answers, and it’s inefficient or a waste of time to be exploring outside of that. But the substantive question you have to ask is, ‘Are the ideas right or should we have more explorations?’”
He gives climate change as an example:
“There’s the view that we know it’s happening and it’s a runaway problem. We can’t even pause to think about it because we know all these things, and we just have to focus all of our energy on solving it. If those things are true, then that might be reasonable. If they’re not entirely true — maybe it’s more methane than carbon dioxide, in which case eating steak is worse than driving a car — then we need to have much more of a debate.”
Theil concludes:
“The kind of question that’s very hard and that you have to make a judgement on is: ‘Do we more or less have the truth about everything?’ My view is that we’re really far off. But a lot of my peers think that we’re kind of at the end of history and have figured everything out. They think that weird and interesting ideas are just wrong and a waste of time. That’s their bias. Mine’s the opposite.”