If you read Thiel’s internal emails with Mark Zuckerberg, it’s clear he thinks a lot about public perception and how to frame tech to the masses.
The antichrist stuff strikes me as a debate tactic. Public sentiment has been trending toward, “maybe tech is kinda bad” so to shift the frame, Thiel says something extreme he knows will get headlines like, “if you regulate tech you might be the antichrist.” He also sprinkles in “or maybe there’s a 1% chance tech kills everyone” to deflate tech criticism from the other angle.
My 2c is that most tech is actually good and 90% of public disdain comes from social media and phone addiction (Thiel apparently limits his kid to one hour of screen time per week) and that because social media’s downsides caught nearly everyone by surprise we’re overcorrecting with AI safety stuff.
> My 2c is that most tech is actually good and 90% of public disdain comes from social media and phone addiction
That's a huge part of it but not only. Tech is being used to remove humans from the loop of interactions, people feel disdain to have to answer a robot when trying to call somewhere to get support (banks, telcos, etc.), they also disdain being surveilled all the time, online or offline, it's enabled by "tech"; there's disdain for applications to jobs, grants (scientific or cultural) being triaged by robots, one just feel swallowed by a system they have no power to appeal, the robots decided and there's no one to talk to about it.
There's a lot of tech that is useful, I don't disagree with that, but I don't think the disdain comes only from social media/phone addiction, those are just the more visible, talked about parts of it. In my immediate circle of the non-tech people they just constantly feel the encroaching of tech mediating real humans, we're being herded by a multitude of systems working on their own programming, and people just defer to those systems.
A prime example of such systems going haywire was the British Horizon Post Office scandal, a system to automate detection of fraud was trusted more than any human, causing untold suffering to postmasters flagged as criminals, pushing some to the point of suicide.
The trend for now is for this to only increase, more automated systems taking over decision-making roles, people who would be making decisions just blindly deferring to the system, with no recourse or way out for anyone affected.
It's bleak, it's understandable that people don't like this. I've been working in the tech industry for 20+ years and I don't like what it is now.
There is no antichrist in Revelation, despite it being commonly believed. Instead, Revelation speaks of the Beast from the sea, the image of the Beast, and the Beast from the Earth (aka. the False Prophet).
The term 'antichrist' is only used in 1st and 2nd John and doesn't refer to a specific person at a particular time, but to anyone who denies Christ came in the flesh and came from God. 2nd John says there are many deceivers who deny Christ came in the flesh and are antichrist.
Based on word usage, grammar and sentence structure, it is commonly believed that Revelation was not written by the same author as the Gospel of John or 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, so linking the antichrist of 1st and 2nd John to characters in Revelation doesn't make sense.
I get it. It's mockery but I think I can extract the ideas here from it.
tl;dr Peter Thiel believes that we will be presented with a large number of potential world-enders: climate change, AI, something else. We will be told that a united force under some person or small group will be able to forestall this end of the world. However, this is a power grab technique and in truth this consolidation of power itself will be the apocalypse.
Okay, so everyone who argues for collective action will be an agent of the antichrist. I mean, I get it. Basic collective action is about creating the safe free society we all rely on. Past a point it turns extractive, with the majority Omelasing the gifted few in order to preserve the status quo. That's the thing he's scared of.
Cool. To be honest, one of the things I really appreciate the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for this: you get the guest's best shot at telling you what he's about. Not someone else's mockery of it. Just the thing the guest himself thinks is the best form of what he's about rather than some game of telephone.
Looks like there's a Thiel episode. Let's hope it's good because I'm going to have to find a good drive to listen to it on.
I see it more like a flagrant attack on collective action. If you are part of the billionaire class, this is very attractive, because your biggest threat are the pitchforks. The powerful will like this message.
Ah appreciate the link. It appears to be mostly commentary and paraphrasing so I'll skip it. I get the John Oliver esque appeal of the Guardian's mocking style but it's not what I'm looking for on this occasion.
I managed Part I but if I'm being honest it feels like conspiracy theory slop. The guy is ridiculously successful, so the closest I can imagine is that I'm reading intermediate layers in his neural network and so they make no sense but somehow influence his worldview to make him make effective decisions.
Thiel is part of a class of people who are materially insulated from financial failure to the point of absurdity, so there isn't anything particularly ridiculous about his 'success'. It's hard to say whether he genuinely believes this horseshit, but it's certainly in his interest to convince others to.
Will be presented? We currently have a large number of people shouting that climate change is a world ender, that AI will become one, and that the next pandemic likely will be one.
Which makes it easy for the wanna-be world dominators. They don't have to manufacture the belief in the crisis; that's already here. They just have to exploit it.
(Or maybe they did have to manufacture belief in the crisis, but we're past that point now...)
> So who or what is the antichrist? Thiel is admirably and uncharacteristically specific on this matter in a scattershot sort of way. The antichrist wants to erect a one-world state, which largely seems to mean any kind of global regulatory regime. Longtime Thiel watchers will recall his preoccupation with sovereignty and seasteading. The antichrist appears to be any force opposing that. The antichrist also is people who are against AI, especially those who seek to regulate it.
Antichrist will need a monopoly on AI to fend off competitors. It's likely he'll also need a rather unusual brain that can be fused with AI in some way. Certainly, no man living today meets the bar.
I'm puzzled by Thiel's role in all this. If he supports this sort of technocratic tyranny, why he's talking about it at all? If he's against it, why is he trying to whitewash AI?
The biblical antichrist/world government thing has been linked to so many things. People were against the UN in the 1940/50s because they thought it was part of the apocalypse and anti-christ.
I quoth Common Sense 1952-04-01:
"The United Nations, which had its birth in the San Francisco conference—set up by a group of which Alger Hiss was secretary, is no doubt a forerunner of the coming “one world” dictatorship by “one man”—the anti-Christ The UN has ruled out Christ entirely and its headquarters are a convenient spy nest for the Reds."
This is just the same fanatical brainmelt that imagines wild conspiracies in every generation. Before the UN it was The League of Nations (Which the US didn't join) and before that "catholic imperialism".
Just because Theil has money doesn't mean we should take him seriously. The same nonsense just gets re-contextualized for every generation.
"Jesus' second-coming in your lifetime!" I mean true believers don't want to think they're going to miss out I guess...
The concept of the Antichrist and the cryptic symbolism in the Book of Revelations seem to be true cognitohazards. The Mark of the Beast has been attributed to everything from social security numbers to license plates to RFID chips. Republicans said Obama was the Antichrist because of his charisma. When I was younger, and a churchgoer, I was taught that the locusts in the Book of Revelations were really Apache helicopters, and this was evidence of the Bible's prophetic truth.
And chances are the whole thing was a coded rant about Nero Caesar meant to be read within a specific cultural context that no longer exists. But I guess that isn't as satisfying as numerology and cryptograms and Satanic supervillains and the promise that the future can be known if only you're clever enough.
There have been many attempts to create a one-world tyranny: Nero's empire, the Inquisition, Hitler's reich, Stalin's communism and so on. All of those tyrants were antichrist wannabes: they wanted to live and rule forever. However none of them understood that they were too small for the role, and that they didn't have the means to keep the entire planet under control, even if they conquered it once. Many of the dictators today want the role too, and they all believe it's almost within their reach: all it takes is to create AI first, use it to strengthen their body with technology so others cannot slay them, remove competitors and rule forever. This idea is certainly in the air, and once this idea captures the mind of some powerful man, we get another antichrist wannabe. Whether it will come true is another question. Hitler had elaborate plans too, but his empire fell apart in a few years.
> This suggests, I think, that in Thiel’s mind there are two cosmic forces warring over creation itself, and they both consist of Peter and his friends.
Can someone who actually likes Thiel explain his allure? I find just about everything that comes out of his mouth vile, but apparently people listen to him.
Just be careful, there was an Austrian painter in the past who also had very unique takes and even wrote a book, but it didn't end well for him or for anyone who started thinking that way.
I am not the OG commentator, but it’s not a mental illness to believe something that has been presented from authority to you for all your life. That’s a pretty normal human response.
I’d bet money that everyone on this site believes deeply in something that others would fine unusual, mainly because it’s been culturally or religiously significant to them.
While it's impossible to completely avoid beliefs that are effectively from authority, we do have systems such as science (scientific peer review), capitalism (economic freedom) that give credibility to certain ideas or patterns. Not moral credibility, but effective consensus that is relatively stable. Sure there are disruptions -- scientific revolutions, economic creative destruction -- but those are typically viewed as having been good things after the fact.
Moral authority (elders, traditions, cultural norms) can be helpful in some ways, but they are much more crude and error prone. Respected elders can prey on children, long-held traditions can be oppressive and even harmful (genital mutilation, circumcision). Cultural norms can create significant social costs (women keeping house rather than starting companies or curing diseases, men spending weekends bored out of the social pressure to pretend to like various sports, ec.)
When the average person flips on a light switch they believe they know why the light turned on -- electricity! wire! -- but few could explain it much more specifically than that and could not ELI5 it. So in a sense they are expressing a faith-based belief. But most people can tell you who does understand it and know how to find more detailed explanations if they care to learn. This is quite unlike religious faith/tradition which demands that people profess beliefs that are impossible. When you think about it, the word faith means nearly the same thing as the word doubt only with a different connotation.
I am trying to understand your comment in context with the thread. Are you saying that if people continue to hold cultural or religious beliefs via faith in this day and age that they are mentally ill? You don’t outright say this, but in context that’s the message I took from it.
Perhaps you just used it as a springboard to point out contradiction of certain beliefs with modern knowledge or perhaps it’s a bias against religion that you hold. If so, noted.
Not at all. I respect that people accept religious authority, the authority of trusted elders., etc., as part of their decision making function. But in my view it should be considered largely an aesthetic preference, much like a favorite color or favorite rock and roll band or preferred pizza toppings.
Such authority has an important societal role, and traditions are important for a lot of people.
Thiel is smart. He is not from the US, so you can be sure he is not really religious. This is a ruse to prevent him and his ilk being regulated and his power being diminished.
Anybody who threatens regulation or upsetting the current order is, by his definition, the anti-christ. He doesn't need everybody to believe him. Just enough useful idiots.
I suspect that it's people who are absolutely unable to "put themselves in other's shoes"(c) so to speak. They can't think abstract enough to imagine themselves a different person in different circumstances. So from this starting point they threat every external/outside restriction on them as an attack. They are worse off after such restriction hence it is completely bad. People who try to attack him personally (via laws, regulation, activism etc.) the most are the worst and he predicts that there will be some ultimate devil who will attack poor Thiel the most in a near future. Thus he complains about common humanity problems like climate change, because he couldn't care less about climate change, his funds allow him to never experience it until his death. While regulation coming from that topic is abhorrent, because he sees it as an attack on himself. Same with taxes, urban development, education (elite already have enough 100k/year schools no more required, helthcare and so on)
People who like his speeches or similar thoughts, think the same way. They think it's a global attack on themselves, so they tend to look out for the new leaders to defend against it.
> But let me return to Thiel’s list of possible apocalypses: artificial intelligence, climate change, bioweapons, nuclear war, fertility collapse. The list is unintentionally revealing. Thiel is probably not wrong to say that people are pretty worried about the climate crisis. But the examples of AI, bioweapons and fertility collapse in particular suggest that Thiel has confused the world’s worries for those of a very recherché set of aging tech entrepreneurs he hobnobs with. And the antichrist, too, seems very Silicon Valley-coded. This suggests, I think, that in Thiel’s mind there are two cosmic forces warring over creation itself, and they both consist of Peter and his friends.
If all the problems are caused by unregulated technology, the solution is obvious, isn't it?
Sadly, the whole culture around SV is based on libertarianism, so regulation isn't even considered.
> artificial intelligence, climate change, bioweapons, nuclear war, fertility collapse. The list is unintentionally revealing.
Those are big concerns for the next 20-30 years. At any one time, they rarely hit the headlines. But their effects accumulate.
We may be in the runup to WWIII in Europe. Read up on the runup to WWII, the "phony war". The Chancellor of Germany said recently "We are not at war, but we are not at peace either".
> Sadly, the whole culture around SV is based on libertarianism, so regulation isn't even considered.
Thiel actively supported one of the least libertarian candidates in US history. Whatever reputation he has for having libertarian views is nonsense.
No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
In my view, what happened to Thiel and Musk is that they succeed in business and everyone starts respecting them and treating them like deities. They want to believe it is justified rather than simply people trying to manipulate them, which leads to a reinvention of self where they perceive themself to be a bit superhuman or important to the world. They act, they explore new areas, they act more. They usually do not experience as much reward from additional success in business, they are typically poorly socialized and fail to create a solid support network of people who know them and care about them. They realize money doesn't really help, fine food doesn't help, expensive possessions doesn't help. Even positions where they occupy a top hierarchical role end up feeling lacking.
What's left is the allure of tradition, religion, blood, war, progeny, and the trajectory of civilizations. They admire the brutality and decisiveness of medieval kings and the idea of theirs being destiny rather than luck. They then try to figure out how to believe they are deserving and suitable for the unique kind of destiny they realize can be theirs.
Most of us do not have to worry about hearing the voices they hear calling them to this destiny. One can see it on Elon's face. He's quick to sweat, quick to contemplate how his every decision will be more significant to the world than the entire lives of thousands.
Day after day of waiters, concierges, personal assistants, aides, advisors, trainers, masseuses, chefs, SVPs, etc. all at their absolute service. They must ask themselves again and again endlessly "what do I want? What do I really want?" Ultimately they realize that all they really want is to shape the world like so many kings or prime ministers or philosophers have. But theirs is a different skill-set. In spite of their desire they are not philosophers, not kings, not literati, not demagogues.
So they struggle to become that which they are not so they can do more than order a delicious lunch and pay for everyone else's and listen to everyone's flattery.
They want to shape the world with who they are, but part of them realizes it was luck and the are not as unique as they hoped. So they find ways to feel special like cultural supremacy, authoritarianism, buying favor with politicians or religious leaders, etc.
Reading your comment made me think of the Roman generals returning to a triumph and someone constantly following them saying "memento mori", reminding them they are not a god. Now, instead of humility it would just be seen as a challenge.
> No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
Have you been on libertarian Internet recently? I don't see a lot of hand-wringing about people's civil liberties being under attack.
in my experience only the comments section which is full of the same whackos as it has been for the past decade. I'm a regular reader at reason, lots of the articles are good and present traditional libertarian points of view.
Those guys are just embarrassed republicans trying to pass themselves off as more intellectual, when they're just as close minded as ever and want to end civil rights and political speech. I've watched the Mises branches and they are not traditional libertarians at all. they welcome in the bigots and other white supremacists for the numbers it adds to their roll calls.
Wrong. The problems come from regulation itself. From bureaucracies that freeze innovation, protect incumbents, and smother experimentation under compliance costs, etc.
The problems also come from improperly regulated businesses, operating in the 3rd stage of encrapification where they stifle innovation that threaten their *opoly and the choke-hold they have on their captured regulators.
Every ideology and system is fundamentally flawed.
Worse, zealots (of said I/S) compulsively refuse to recognize that their own house needs cleaning. And they not only don't clean, they'll savagely attack anyone who attempts to do the needed cleaning (improve the ideology by addressing it's flaws).
No One Anywhere Will Clean Their Own House is an absolute human constant, right between death and taxes.
Regulation is the result of politics, and politics is the result (in democracies) of the inputs of every person in society. Dismissing regulation, or in Thiel's formulation, conflating regulators with the antichrist is therefore anti-democratic and anti-people. The anti-regulation side of SV, which comes from the libertarian / Randian utopia, is one of its least appealing and most ignorant aspects.
> Here’s a man who, together with a couple of fellow Silicon Valley freaks, helped return a sundowning caudillo to a presidency he is obviously unsuited for, and who uses the awesome might of the US government to remake society and the world.
This sentence is such an acronym to taste and the English language that it may be hard to get through. Thought I do appreciate the offhand comparisons to Peron. I guess I’ll struggle through it.
I agree it's unkind. And I am not here to defend the abuse Thiel received over his sexuality or before that the overt bullying I read he underwent at university. But, how exactly do you characterise the super rich, anti unionist, hard right Christian, or some of the other more out there sub cultures in the modern day tech scene? The food-as-fuel soylent eaters, the people trying to live forever, the believers in the singularity.. calling people "freaks" is trashy, but is that the worst objection you've got?
> I'd rather read the guardian; at least they'll be informed. Thiel is speaking from absolute ignorance.
The antichrist as a figure is an evangelical creation that's about 150 years old, for example
You, my friend, are ill-informed. The idea of the antichrist has deep and complex origins that developed over centuries, blending Jewish apocalyptic expectations, early Christian theology, and later medieval interpretation.
It wasn't a "secret meeting". It was a meeting of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, which anyone can join for about $90. I used to have a membership. Here's the event.[1] There is a recording. Here is the MP3 file.[2] Transcription of the first 30 minutes (of 67) via free web site. [3]
Notes:
On being a VC:
When you invest other people's money, you're trying to always do two things.
Number one, get good returns.
Number two, look like you're going to get good returns.
And there's a surprisingly large disconnect between those two things.
So I like long term because again, that's less competitive.
It can't be super long term.
This was always the disconnect between, say, Japanese and US approaches to business.
US businesses we always critique for being on this quarterly earnings cycle.
Japan argued in the 80s that it had much longer time horizons.
And there's a point where long term can be just a euphemism for procrastination or for avoiding accountability.
But yeah, I think in its best form there are definitely things that take five or ten years to build and we should be building more of those.
On education:
My claim has been that over the last 40 years there's generally been less innovation in the world of atoms.
It's not been a good idea to go into all the engineering disciplines that had to do with atoms.
It was not a good idea to become a nuclear engineer, a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an aeroastro engineer.
And so we had less innovation in areas like energy or transportation.
Not seeing the "antichrist lectures". Sounds like standard VC speak. Am I missing something here?
Was there some other talk, also held at the Commonwealth Club, at which Thiel spoke?
This man is clearly delusional, and knowing that he uses his fortune to sway things one way or another based on his twisted perception of the world is scary.
Jobless and drowning in cash is rough.. it takes a toll on the strongest of minds.. meandering through the day, aimless, chasing the next high. Realizing that being handed a mic wherever you go is now your life. Cursed to be incapable of achievement because what else remains to be achieved. Minimizing your taxes?
Perhaps because they didn't have literal police states guard and defend their wealth. If the town mob showed up at their house they knew the game was over. Trillionaires or social cohesion.. choose 1.
Thiel contributes to a wide range of organizations, primarily through his private foundation, the Thiel Foundation. His giving focuses on scientific research, technology, and projects that explore new political or social ideas.
Prominent recipients have included: SENS Research Foundation, Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), The Seasteading Institute, The Committee to Protect Journalists,
Human Rights Foundation, etc.
You bring up politics? That’s like saying western state depts helps others with politics in the Middle East. His political stuff is the same as western state depts.
Western chauvinism knows no bounds.
That seems uncharitable. Since your lead-in is about politics, I suspect you have a particular political ideology or maybe process in mind that you feel "Western" countries should not advocate for?
I get this sense often when the "famous" tech CEOs talk, they sorta come across like that uncle that you humor at Thanksgiving dinner. My best guess is there's a selection bias in that the more grounded ones are less likely to speak publicly and be in the news.
One of the many sad consequences of inequality is that people like Peter Thiel have a platform to spout nonsense that belongs in a street-corner rant from a crazed-looking guy clutching a sign that says "THE END IS NEAR!!!"
I was almost willing to accept that Rene Girard had some academic value until I read more about him. It's hilarious to me that he writes an entire book arguing that scapegoating people is wrong and Christianity has single-handedly prevented scapegoating by relating to Jesus Christ, but then says political correctness is the Antichrist. If Christianity prevented scapegoating by telling the story of Jesus Christ, then shouldn't political correctness prevent scapegoating using the exact same tactics as Christianity? The whole point of political correctness is repenting the for the evils of the past. Isn't that exactly what you say works to prevent scapegoating Mr. Girard?
Thanks for unilaterally deciding what I should read, Hunter! So nice of you.
Sometimes people deserve to be hit. Say something bad about my kids, get hit (by me physically for being dumb)... Call someone the antichrist, get hit (by the news, metaphorically, for sounding like you've lost the plot)
The author clearly hates Thiel and spends most of the essay mocking Thiel and his ideas without actually engaging with the ideas. The author’s essay is itself meandering, dense with digressions and snide parentheticals. He faults Thiel for grandstanding and over-referencing but indulges in the same. Waste of time.
When you start with the antichrist as a real person and contemporary threat everything that comes after is gonna fall apart. I agree with RFK on ultraprocessed foods and weightlifting, the health benefits of which are well-established by science; but I'm not going to agree with him on dismantling the FDA, ending vaccinations for everything, and that germ theory is a scientific conspiracy.
> Thiel is clearly out of his depth, unless we're going to pretend he's an informed Bible scholar now. And he's clearly not, since the Antichrist as a figure is an evangelical creation about 150 years old and is not in the Bible at all.
You, my friend, are ill-informed. The idea of the antichrist has deep and complex origins that developed over centuries, blending Jewish apocalyptic expectations, early Christian theology, and later medieval interpretation.
John 2:18 — “Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.”
1 John 4:3 — “This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.”
It's a later addition, does not refer to one individual only and is said to
... may have been generated by the frustration of Jews subject to often-capricious Seleucid or Roman rule, who found the nebulous Jewish idea of a Satan who is more of an opposing angel of God in the heavenly court insufficiently humanised and personalised to be a satisfactory incarnation of evil and threat same source.
If you want scholarly, informed, resources that aren't an ignorant billionaire talking out of his ass, I can provide those. If you aren't interested, kindly stop replying to this thread.
GGP didn’t say “Antichrist” wasn’t in the bible. They said that antichrist “as a figure” wasn’t in the bible. Even the Wikipedia article on Antichrist will give you a rich overview of this discussion and general scholarly agreement that that word as used in the bible does not reference a specific figure.
There is quite a lot of nuance here. You can’t just keyword search.
> The masses don't deserve to hear what he has to say.
That's a very strange thing to say, unless the sarcasm meter was missing. If Thiel's views are only for the cognoscenti, then I think we have bigger problems to talk about.
The antichrist stuff strikes me as a debate tactic. Public sentiment has been trending toward, “maybe tech is kinda bad” so to shift the frame, Thiel says something extreme he knows will get headlines like, “if you regulate tech you might be the antichrist.” He also sprinkles in “or maybe there’s a 1% chance tech kills everyone” to deflate tech criticism from the other angle.
My 2c is that most tech is actually good and 90% of public disdain comes from social media and phone addiction (Thiel apparently limits his kid to one hour of screen time per week) and that because social media’s downsides caught nearly everyone by surprise we’re overcorrecting with AI safety stuff.
https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-mil...