Thiel Interview Question

The Single Best Interview Question You Can Ask In Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future there is a great section on the single best interview question you can ask someone. When Peter Thiel interviews someone he likes to ask the following question: What important truth do very few people agree with you on?

The most common answers, according to Thiel, are “Our educational system is broken and urgently needs to be fixed.” “America is exceptional.” “There is no God.”
These are bad answers.

Here is Thiel’s answer to his own question:
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.