This post is about why the famous entrepreneur Peter Thiel is ENTJ in the popular MBTI personality system. If you are curious about what type you are, you can take a free MBTI test here.

Peter Thiel likes to zap around “the big picture” (a little bit about the agricultural revolution, a little bit about the cold war, a little bit about the Arab spring, and so on – this would suggest NT rather than STJs who tend to either (a) stick with what they’re good at or (b) apply one standard to everything e.g. “I ran my business this way, therefore the whole world should be run this way”).

So he zaps around the big picture, but he only uses a few weighty data points for each association (cold war, Arab spring etc.) – so this suggests Ni-Se rather than Si-Ne data splatter – by contrast, look at Niall Ferguson who can’t construct a sentence without splattering everything with facts.

Thiel also moves from facts to problems. His cognition does not enjoy entertaining facts for long before he wants to move to an objective problem that he can solve. Opposed to this, when confronted with problems, STJs fall back on facts. Thiel is against Keynesianism, so he goes against dominant economic theory. Thiel is also a universalist. He says that the US, Europe and Japan are all in the same boat. He looks at levels of development and wealth and doesn’t get lost in specific cultural differences between them.

In his quest to reform education, Thiel identifies with the objective situation and determines “what needs to be done” in a pretty humorless way. He showcases an impressive flexing of Te in his efforts to rank and box education and appears rather blind to the cultural/traditional aspects of education – he’s focusing 100 % on utility.

By observing that his predominant cognitive fixation is with outwards objects, we see that they do not pertain more to an inner system of perceptions which are not immediately accessible to a listener. I.e. he is feeding directly off outer objects and not merely using outer objects as ‘triggers’ for an inner storehouse of concepts (Ni) or facts (Si).

Observe where the Te is going. Is it steering directly towards the objective situation, trying to extrapolate from factual givens? Thiel wants to steer the objective situation towards a goal that was conceived on the basis of concepts or facts that have previously been absorbed and have become familiar to the person prior to the objective challenge he is facing. His Te is the vehicle and driver and not just the vehicle.