Peter Thiel on "The Portal", Episode #001: "An Era of Stagnation & Universal Institutional Failure."

[Apollo]

Big brained podcast.

 

[The alchemist]

The specialization in academia has created rigid boundaries, no one crosses. It has made a clear discouragement for people who are experts in unrelated fields (and later formulated itself to a taboo), but this also helps create the lack of awareness that there is a clear stagnation in the system as a whole. You can see in the past when the institutions had far less control on individuals and student/academic culture; some polymaths pushed knowledge due to a lot more heterogeneous thinking.

I don't think there's an agenda behind this, but sort of a natural process when you grow to that extent, and use systems as a navigational tool and prioritize legitimacy. Just like how small businesses become corporations, culture changes rapidly due to the complex infrastructure. So when the culture changes, it becomes more about socializing individuals to respect the process and the institution more than what the process is really is about in its essence. It limits potential groundbreaking ideas/innovation, but the system works so the infrastructure won't change.

It's interesting when they mentioned how American exceptionalism and political correctness are tools used to distract from stagnation. And how that stagnation could lead to something apocalyptic. I think political correctness is an overplayed meme but agree with the American exceptionalism part. It's used to fool the lower-middle-class people to support policies which only the ones above them truly reap.

 

[Ras]

The specialization in academia has created rigid boundaries, no one crosses. It has made a clear discouragement for people who are experts in unrelated fields (and later formulated itself to a taboo), but this also helps create the lack of awareness that there is a clear stagnation in the system as a whole. You can see in the past when the institutions had far less control on individuals and student/academic culture; some polymaths pushed knowledge due to a lot more heterogeneous thinking.

I don't think there's an agenda behind this, but sort of a natural process when you grow to that extent, and use systems as a navigational tool and prioritize legitimacy. Just like how small businesses become corporations, culture changes rapidly due to the complex infrastructure. So when the culture changes, it becomes more about socializing individuals to respect the process and the institution more than what the process is really is about in its essence. It limits potential groundbreaking ideas/innovation, but the system works so the infrastructure won't change.

It's interesting when they mentioned how American exceptionalism and political correctness are tools used to distract from stagnation. And how that stagnation could lead to something apocalyptic. I think political correctness is an overplayed meme but agree with the American exceptionalism part. It's used to fool the lower-middle-class people to support policies which only the ones above them truly reap.

Common issue with institutions; seeking stability usually leads to stagnation.

However that doesn't mean that they're inevitably doomed since that stability could hold out long enough for someone to come and breath life into it again.

I'm not in academics so I'm just talking out of my ass but I'm sure there are some self correcting mechanisms in place but you'll need to be someone more accomplished than Weinstein to trigger them...

 

[VixR]

Horrible podcast. If this is indicative of how Eric Weinstein is going to roll, it’s not a good sign.

They took 3 hrs to have a conversation that could’ve been had in half that time, and this without providing concrete examples of the stagnation “from since the 70’s” beyond college debt, specialization, and the high stakes for tenure.

IMO, the guy doesn’t know know how to steer a conversation, or speak articulately without creating a word salad, or drawing out his sentences to the point you become annoyed at the way he pussyfoots around what he’s trying to say.