22h ago

Max Novendstern connects Peter Thiel’s view of indefinite optimism as the weakest strategic quadrant to Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum virtual machine and OpenAI’s early transformer scaling bets

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The thread examines open-ended technical decisions in major systems that advanced without predetermined guarantees, drawing reposts from Roon and Beff.

Original post
roon#59@TSZZLOPMax NovendsternMax Novendstern@MNOVENDSTERN

Thiel apparently liked to say that “indefinite optimism” was the worse of all quadrants. But that surely was the spirit Vitalik was in when he said, “maybe we stick a Virtual Machine onchain,” or OpenAI was in when they said, “maybe we crank transformers to the max.” Demanding determinateness was the midwit trap that exited you from the timeline.

2:39 PM · May 17, 2026 View on X
Reposted by
roon#59@TSZZL
QUOTE POSTBeff (e/acc)#839Beff (e/acc)@BEFFJEZOS

"maybe we could use the stochastic physics of hardware to run probabilistic algorithms" indefinite optimism behind @extropic

Max NovendsternMax Novendstern@mnovendstern

Thiel apparently liked to say that “indefinite optimism” was the worse of all quadrants. But that surely was the spirit Vitalik was in when he said, “maybe we stick a Virtual Machine onchain,” or OpenAI was in when they said, “maybe we crank transformers to the max.” Demanding determinateness was the midwit trap that exited you from the timeline.

9:39 PM · May 17, 2026 · 133.6K Views
2:25 AM · May 18, 2026 · 4.5K Views
Max Novendstern connects Peter Thiel’s view of indefinite optimism as the weakest strategic quadrant to Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum virtual machine and OpenAI’s early transformer scaling bets · Digg