Emily Nabnian

Let the flame of Definite Optimism burn away the Mimetic virus. Use the Internet to curate your environment, so you can be hyper-mimetic towards the rare few who are anti-mimetic. Copy the people who don’t copy people. Take risks. Build a differentiated skillset. Pursue timeless wisdom, not intellectual fashions. Be skeptical of convention, and don... See more

We all form our identity by looking towards others. Since everybody copies, we can improve society by encouraging people to copy the right people.

According to Girard, the more differentiated a society, the more stable it is. But on the internet, everybody feels like an undifferentiated peer. Social media decreases the distance between people and their role models, so the pull to idolize false gods is greater than ever. Pair that with the blank slate theory that anybody can do whatever they w... See more

Thiel encourages people to ask themselves: “How do I become less competitive in order that I can become more successful?”

“It has all the advantages of private communication without having its greatest disadvantage—that it reaches only the writer’s acquaintances. It has all the advantages of public communication without having its greatest disadvantage—capital punishment for the author… Their literature is addressed, not to all readers, but to trustworthy and intellig... See more

Strauss did not believe in transparency. He believed that even in the most open-minded societies, many truths were too problematic to be shouted. His contemporary disciples, like Thiel, conceal their words. They hide controversial ideas in esoteric language.

“The big secret is that there are many secrets left to uncover. There are still many large white spaces on the map of human knowledge. You can go discover them. So do it. Get out there and fill in the blank spaces. Every single moment is a possibility to go to these new places and explore them.”

Thiel can identify heterodox thinkers who aren’t blinded by Mimetic dogmas or intellectual fashions. He insists that there are still secrets left to uncover. Some are small and incremental. But the most valuable secrets are big enough to shake the world.

In job interviews, Thiel famously asks: “What very important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

He doesn’t see the world as a mere distribution of luck-based outcomes. Instead, he praises conviction, bets on transcendent founders, and invests in the kind of companies he’d want to work for.