The question

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.

Others on this question

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Ephraim Asili Filmmaker, Educator, and DJ
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 source ↗
David Vélez Co-founder and chief executive of Nubank
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 source ↗
Ahmed Zewail Chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1999
Today I was reading the latest issue of Nature, and somebody had written an editorial that said scientists should be basically directing their work to the service of society by making the discoveries that are relevant. The problem is I don’t know what’s relevant!
Recorded Heidi Aspaturian, Caltech Oral History Project, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, 2015 source ↗
Peter Thiel Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir; venture capitalist
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.
Recorded Excerpt from Zero to One (2014), reproduced by Quartz, Quartz (quoting Zero to One), 2018 source ↗

More from Barry Scheck

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Question What are you most proud of? Identity & self
I take great pride in the fact that we have a whole movement of people that are working on these cases, obviously, to get innocent people out of prison, and identify those who really committed the crime. But most importantly, it is a movement of criminal justice reform. And that we have made a big difference, I hope, in the system. We have prosecutors forming what we call “conviction integrity” units to try to look at miscarriages of justice and work cooperatively with defense lawyers to change the results. We are really trying to make some fundamental changes in the way the criminal justice system operates.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Napa Valley, California, 14 September 2014 source ↗

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