What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Originally asked
Peter Thiel, to job candidates, Zero to One, chapter 1, 2014
Peter Thiel, Zero to One, chapter 1, where it is introduced as his job-interview question. Thiel supplies his own standard: a good answer takes the form "most people believe x, but the truth is the opposite of x."
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Recorded
Peter Thiel
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said elsewhere, not written here
My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more. Without technological change, if China doubles its energy production over the next two decades, it will also double its air pollution. If every one of India's hundreds of millions of households were to live the way Americans already do — using only today's tools — the result would be environmentally catastrophic. Spreading old ways to create wealth around the world will result in devastation, not riches. In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.
Excerpt from Zero to One (2014), reproduced by Quartz, Quartz (quoting Zero to One), 2018
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Pix is probably the most successful payment infrastructure run by a government in history. I think Pix has been what has allowed a country like Brazil to leapfrog developed economies like the U.S. and in Europe, and has positioned Brazil today probably five years ahead of the U.S. I don't think anybody understands that, and probably in the U.S. they didn't really expect that.
Recorded
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez, interview, Fortune, 9 October 2023
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Most people, these days, they don’t even believe in reincarnation. They’d say, you only go around once.
Recorded
Etan Ilfeld, The Etan Ilfeld Podcast / Watkins Magazine, Watkins MIND BODY SPIRIT Magazine, 28 January 2025
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You now have to address the fact that we might live in so-called wealthy countries at the expense of people who live in poor countries. Our wealth is maybe dependent on somebody else from the poverty side of the equation, suffering on our behalf.
Recorded
The Talks, The Talks, 18 October 2012
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I just don't really see the dialectic between inside and outside, and corporate and revolutionary, as being as cut and dry as I used to.
Recorded
Metal Magazine
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