A short monologue by Peter Thiel (uploaded by David Jenyns) reflecting on personal life choices and advising to "value substance over status." Thiel says he might still attend Stanford and law school but would question the motives—criticizing choices driven by prestige over genuine interest and urging pursuit of intrinsically interesting work.
On an individual level, it's always really good if there's something that you're incredibly passionate about and find to be intrinsically interesting. One of the resolutions I came up with was to always value substance over status. If I was giving my younger self advice on how to think about one's life, I probably would still go to Stanford, might still go to law school. But I'd ask a lot more questions why I was doing these things. And I think if I was honest about it, too much of it was driven by prestige and status, and not quite enough about really the substance of trying to learn things. But people's identities get so wrapped up in the things they compete for that it was inconceivable for people to actually do that. And then the question was, how had I ended up there? Why had I not thought about that more? And I think it was that I had taken too many of these shortcuts of valuing what was prestigious, what was conventional, over what I really wanted to do. So I think always substance over status.
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