But a running theme has been how many men have said something along the lines of, “Wow, I was so surprised I loved your book, because I’m a man.” These men mean no harm—I don’t take those comments personally—and yet the fact that they were surprised that they loved a book by and about a woman is an indication of the sexism women writers are up against every time they write.
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.
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez, interview, Fortune, 9 October 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 10 →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.
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.
There is an awful lot of pious theatre at the moment, where you go to have what you already believed reinforced.
More from David Vélez
View profile →Vicky, qué pregunta más difícil (risas). Voy a hablarle de los casos que nos han inspirado, como Charles Feeney, cofundador de los Duty Free Shop en los aeropuertos. Él hizo eso en los años ochenta. Se volvió uno de los hombres más ricos del mundo cuando vendió su compañía e inmediatamente se dedicó a la filantropía y gastó todo su dinero en metas sociales.
Un constructor.
Apenas me despierto, a las 5:00 a. m., cuando voy a hacer deporte. Es lo primero que cojo cuando me despierto. No es la mejor práctica, pero sí desde tempranito.
Me gustaría que la gente se viera empoderada a construir, a resolver problemas. Que salgamos muchas veces de esa visión de víctimas en la que dependemos de muchas fuerzas. Que veamos problemas como grandes oportunidades para ayudar a resolver. Por ejemplo, frente a esa mala experiencia con los bancos, como me pasó en Brasil, mucha gente se hubiera sentado y quejado del banco. Pero vi una oportunidad gigantesca de ir y competir contra él.
The simplicity and yet profoundness of the above logic leads us to conclude that for us the most natural and truthful path is to invest this wealth until "our last check bounces", as one of our personal heroes, Chuck Feeney, likes to say.
I wish I knew more about Clojure, which is the programming language we use most at Nubank. If I did, I could better understand some of the more complex problems we're trying to solve, and I think I could ask better questions when we're setting priorities. I'd like to be able to communicate at that level with the technical side of our team, and I think they would appreciate it, too.
More on values & belief
- Which living person do you most admire, and why? 408 answers
- What is the trait you most deplore in others? 199 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 80 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 33 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 18 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 13 answers
Also answered this
Peter Thiel, Leon Panetta, Ephraim Asili, Cheryl Strayed, Blake Masters, François Ozon
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All values & belief questions
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject