Tech C.E.O.s Are in Love with Their Principal Doomsayer
I&#x27;m going to be unpleasant and venture a guess.<p>A lot of Silicon Valley, and its global sphere of influence, loves <i>consuming</i> pseudo-contrarian content because they are themselves incapable of <i>producing</i> the tiniest bit of contrarian thought. Either because it&#x27;s an intellectually too consuming task or simply because they are too scared to break rank with what is socially acceptable, even in the intimacy of their own minds. It is very hard to find anything subversive outside of anonymous clubs living on the fringe of the internet, a <i>few</i> domain specific publications, and &quot;crank&quot; hot-spots.<p>The <i>cheap</i> worship of contrarian thinking has taken off when Thiel popularized the idea of &quot;secrets&quot; in <i>From Zero To One</i> as well as with F8 and their analogous notion of &quot;unfair advantage&quot;. Of course that is a much older idea, but they are the ones who synthesized it clearly in addition to consciously leverage it aggressively in business contexts.<p>It&#x27;s odd, as usual, and an old phenomenon. There is a a bit of mimesis (craving for the the object of high-status Peter Thiel&#x27;s desire: contrarian insights), a bit of laziness (taking the path of least resistance: consuming content instead of producing original thought), and a bit of messianism and vanity. I am not casting a moral judgment on the latter. The issue is that it comes at no cost: you never deploy efforts to challenge the tenets of your world and you never have to feel uncomfortable contemplating forbidden ideas. So you allow yourself to feel vain for a most obedient opinion.<p>If I were to draw an &quot;ecology of contrarian ideas&quot;, I would say that there are about two types: the ones that will spark outrage and the ones that will spark indifference. The former are more abundant, easier to come up with, and probably more destructive too. The latter consists of all the positions that you can take in public without them having  repercussions on your career, network, and status - since no one cares or understand. So, when you hear someone lauded for their &quot;contrarian takes&quot;, chances are that they are either high-status, not taking any risks, or off-the-mark.<p>That&#x27;s not exclusive to the tech world at all and maybe it will improve.