Why Peter Thiel Searches for Reality-Bending 'Secrets'

window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('con" />

The Profile

SubscribeSign in

Why Peter Thiel Searches for Reality-Bending 'Secrets'<br>Thiel defines secrets as important truths about the world that other people don’t yet realize.

Polina Pompliano<br>Dec 17, 2021

29

Share

David Perell is a sharp writer whose words will absorb you. He writes, hosts a podcast, and runs a writing school called Write of Passage. In this guest column, David recounts how a recent dinner with Peter Thiel got him thinking about Thiel’s obsession with ‘secrets.’ I hope you enjoy.

Why Peter Thiel Searches for Reality-Bending 'Secrets'

By: David Perell

I recently had dinner with Peter Thiel, arguably the world’s most influential technology investor. We met at a restaurant in Los Angeles, where he sat at the head of the table in a plain black T-Shirt. At some level, I knew what to expect: A dinner with Peter is an intellectual dinner. There’s no nonsense. Instead of talking about the hot new Netflix show, you debate ideas and how the future will unfold.<br>Though the contents of our conversation will remain private, I can talk about big-picture learnings. Everything here is public information that I now place a heavier emphasis on when trying to learn from Thiel.<br>Never before was I so prepared for a first meeting. I’ve read all his public essays, listened to more than 100 hours of his speeches and interviews, and published a 15,000-word essay about how Christianity shaped his worldview. And yet, something about the dinner surprised me: I under-estimated Thiel’s obsession with looking for secrets.<br>His definition of secrets isn’t the one you grew up with. He’s not talking about spreading gossip or talking behind people’s backs. Rather, Thiel defines secrets as important truths about the world that other people don’t yet realize. They are keys into hidden chambers of knowledge, free from the distortions of lies and propaganda.<br>His obsession with secrets is evident in his famous interview question: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”<br>But where does his obsession with secrets come from?<br>Why Thiel Looks for Secrets<br>Thiel’s interest in secrets was inspired by one of his Stanford professors, a social theorist named Rene Girard who believed the world is filled with important but undiscovered truths.<br>Like Thiel, Girard was a Christian. Both of their fascination with secrets thus originates with the New Testament. Jesus Christ famously spoke in parables to undermine the orthodoxy of the time. In scripture, Proverbs 25:2 says: "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”<br>That search is defined by the quest for secrets. I like to imagine that every person has their own map of the way the world works. Everybody’s map is incomplete, either because they lack information or are blinded by dogma. The world is always changing faster than our ability to map its developments — just think of your family members who still don’t understand Bitcoin.<br>Sometimes, our sense-making machinery has a glitch too. Many years ago, a McKinsey study concluded that nobody in the developing world would buy smartphones because they were too expensive. Based on that study, they held off on launching a smartphone for another three years. Around that time, an anthropologist who had recently returned from Chinese refugee camps saw how people would sacrifice half their disposable income just to own an iPhone. Though Nokia had an internet-enabled phone with a color touchscreen display and a high-resolution camera in 2004, the executives held off on launching a smartphone for another three years. Between the peak of their mobile dominance and their sale of the mobile division in 2013, Nokia’s value fell by almost $250 billion.<br>Though it’s easy to laugh at Nokia, their decision aligned with common knowledge at the time. Most people didn’t expect smartphones to become so popular. These society-wide distortions create opportunities though.<br>Just as Apple capitalized on the smartphone secret, Thiel capitalizes on secrets by investing in startups. Praising those elusive secrets, he writes: "Every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.”<br>Finding those secrets begins with a skepticism of consensus.<br>— —<br>Beware of Consensus<br>In the Bible, every time people unanimously agree on something, they are wrong. For example, the Tower of Babel story from the Book of Genesis outlines a united humanity where everybody speaks the same language. When they aim to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven, God confounds their speech so they can no longer comprehend one another. Then, he scatters them around the world.<br>Ancient Jewish law heeded a...