He sucks, a thin-skinned, petty hypocrite. The best thing you could say about him is that his proteges (Vance, Grenell, etc.) are even worse. It's a stain YC ever worked with him.
"If that is the case, it would probably involve continued pillorying of big-tech firms, especially Google, which Mr Thiel has long accused of being a monopoly."
He accuses it of being a monopoly but AFAIK he's not for anti-trust and he views these monopolies somewhat positively.
His view of capitalism is as a machine that, through competition, picks its monopolies. Ironically he s against regulation , but it is through regulations that those monopolies entrench their dominance forever. in any case he hasn't invented any new form of capitalism, he makes some blunt conclusions that make people uncomfortable.
Even more ironically, his book was a major success in communist China. It seems the chinese took it seriously, learned to instrumentalize capitalism to build their own monopolies, but then disenfranchised the capitalists.
Sure, but like Trump, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Thiel deploys rhetoric mostly just to get attention and not to make a consistent argument. He and the people like him live for the moment, always trying to exert influence but ultimately having no other goal than simply to win.
Within their context, that's all that exists. As such, what other goal could there possibly be?
If they can kill you, to them that counts as an existence proof of their ethic… and a failure-to-exist-proof of both you and whatever competing ethic you had.
I'm reminded of Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments, and times when TitForTat tended to win out over much more hostile and ruthless strategies. In situations like this I like to look to modeling and experimentation for axioms: like the easily demonstrated proof that discontinuities in simple exchange produce inequities that are not in any way representative of merit: the natural state is not for things to average out, given some simple and natural conditions the natural state is for some unfit competitors to become vastly over-rewarded relative to their merit. Thus disproving certain assumptions that wealth in any way signals merit in any sense.
Great example of an article which, I hope, invokes the Gell-Mann amnesia effect for most of its tech-educated readers. Its fascinating to read such articles being written with so little irony.
The Economist is a great exemplar of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Their subpar coverage of wars, Iraq WMDs, Syria, Afghanistan, Middle East, Asia, Latin America (they couldn't even call a coup in Bolivia a coup), Tech, Business all prove the Gell-Man amnesia effect. I don't have enough knowledge about their coverage of Finance though.
They seem to fail upwards like most of mainstream media acting as mouthpieces of the DC/London establishement, stenagrophers of the national security establishment and PR agency of many VC funded tech bros.
There is a place in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where someone is momentarily legally dead for tax purposes, but I think Thiel would rather pay some taxes and stay alive without a pause :)
People said the same thing about the recent Elon Musk book by Tim Higgins. They trot out the Musk Tim Cook example. I don't know why both denied ever meeting but I do know that a lot of the stories correlate to what I saw on the anti-Tesla subreddits. In fact it helped complete some unanswered questions about how things were running at Tesla during their Model 3 struggles.
So while this guy may or ay not be getting his sources from unreliable third party places, he has enough of a personal credibility to at least consider the stores in the book. At least thats what I learned after seeing how quickly the Tesla community turned against the Higgins book.
through Zero to One, his other writings, and by developing his own personal history, Thiel has created an alternate will-to-power mythos for those who feel alienated by whatever they believe the prevailing Silicon Valley technology & startup culture is
"do no evil" might have been the contrarian counterpoint in the nascent early to mid 2000's, but now Thiel, and those with similar cultural, social, and political ideals, has chosen "we have chosen sides" — Thiel wants to position himself as someone who is for and against something, anything, where most technology companies have a bland, homogenous corporate neutrality
I don't think his end goal is trying to get his favored political candidates back to office or something — Thiel is cultivating a larger story and seeding his ideas about the act of choosing sides, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that
I don't disagree, but I think there is a lot of nuance to it. Thiel is an ardent disciple of Rene Girard. If people want insight into how Thiel sees the world, I would strongly recommend reading The Straussian Moment. There is a Peter Robinson interview about the essay that can serve as a good primer[1].
absolutely — my few sentences is just a rough summary of a small part of Thiel's thinking and ideology
summing his life as a Silicon Valley bad guy is a gross oversimplification — his actions and work is the product of decades of his study and thought, and has evolved in a number of ways over time if you follow his writings and interviews
it's clear that he holds the ideas he's arrived at with conviction, and has been in the process of enacting them through financial or political or intellectual means
As the rosy promises of Silicon Valley flounder and the naked reality of techno-capitalism becomes apparent (hello serfdom, err, gig economy, we've missed ya), it is imperative to find a scapegoat. What better scapegoat than a disciple of Girard?
IMO his intellectualism provides active cover for an autocratic-minded zero-sum sociopathy, which when married to his accumulated wealth represents an existential threat.
This is not irrelevant to the conception of and market of Palantir.
He is the Erik Prince of "tech" and like Prince, is a literal merchant of death.
If true that distinguishes him from nobody, including people without power. However, a serious investigation of Thiel's work dismisses any serious accusation of "Intellectualism" it is well thought out and philosophically rigorous.
Is he completely correct? Probably not. But then, who is?
If one person is an existential threat to humanity (which is what I assume you mean) then, frankly, we probably "deserve" it (in the evolutionary sense). Thiel is useful here to countermand this point. One of his most useful ideas is that the so called "powerful" and "elite" have much less power than we think they do and can can be easily circumvented if ignored (of course there are marginal cases).
Girard and thus Thiel hold that "If there is a normal order in societies, it must be the fruit of an anterior crisis."
They're not wrong that this is A source of order, but they overlook the human tendency to form community and cooperate: this vision of theirs is about how to form societies when they are by definition all against all, a brutal struggle of nihilism and despair.
That's only one way humans can be, and it's a way that competes with the more leftist tendency to make everything about the community and cooperation.
Seems like a meta-narrative is needed that incorporates both of these positions that are held by their supporters as the ONLY position that can exist.
You need to read Girard more closely (I recommend reading Things Hidden...)
Girard does not embrace a Hobbesian view of the world, he is trying to explain the origin of human cooperation and society. The scapegoat narrative is not a nihilistic war of all-against-all it is a narrative of all-against-one to create order. Human cooperation can exist when violence is pared-down to one person (the scapegoat).
Where Girard admits that nihilism can come into play is when the scapegoat narrative becomes openly acknowledged. Which is what he argues Christianity effectively did (opened up the scapegoat mechanism for all to see, thus rendering it ineffective). Girard predicts that our lack of a scapegoat mechanism will likely lead to apocalyptic violence.
Frankly, I think the leftist view that humans can cooperate out-of-the-head-of-Zeus is naive and needs no account, because it has never happened.
Right, except very frequently, the scapegoat isn't a single figure, but rather a group.
The Bourgeoise, the Jews, the QAnons, the Blacks, the Whites, the Immigrants, the Rich, the Anti-Vaxxers, the Catholics, the Muslims, the Kulaks, the <insert group here>
If humanity could unite and create order under the periodic ritual sacrifice of a single King, we'd be much better off than the way it actually happens, which is scapegoating and sacrificing millions of people at once.
Sorry, but all this stuff about the “scapegoat narrative” and so forth is clearly the sort of syncretic pseudo-spiritual voodoo that crops up from time to time.
What is generally known as ethics acts as a safeguard against random individuals running rampant and inflicting tremendous damage on society for personal gain.
In a broad context, Thiel acts like someone who has no such safeguards. The future he's pushing the world towards is the caricatural dystopia from Back To The Future (which was originally meant to lampoon Trump-like characters). Fortunately, he will probably fail.
If you don't see this at all, it's probably time to ask yourself just how similar to Thiel you actually are.
what kind of future do you think Thiel is pushing the world towards?
a lot of his writing involving Girard and other political philosophers reads as studying mimetic desire as a means of avoiding absolute total war in society and maintaining the hegemony of what he believes to be "enlightenment values" — destruction and unnecessary suffering is generally the antithesis of those beliefs
again, I don't even personally have to agree with all his ideas and writings to want to have a discussion about it
Dark Enlightenment thinking isn't far off that Holy Roman Empire. It's essentially an embracing of monarchy and caste, with rule belonging to the Peter Thiels of the world, based on various ways they can demonstrate their ability to claim that throne.
I personally found 0 to 1 illuminating, but it is harder for me to comment on whether it is part of a larger consciously chosen narrative or some interesting byproduct.
I do find it odd lately that we are experiencing a weird anti-cult of personality writings lately ( anti-Musk, anti-Thiel, anti-Zuckerberg ). Odd because I would normally expect articles and other propaganda glorifying their achievements ala Gates. I am not sure what to attribute this to.
How about the fact that we currently have a global pandemic and most of the rich did ...
Absolutely nothing.
The fact that Dolly Parton actually threw money around is part of the spotlight that demonstrates that these are not good people in spite of their positive PR.
People are just finally realizing that emperor has no clothes.
For the last few years one has seen articles about the good stuff Dolly does, and AFAICR most of it goes back much further in time than when the writings about it began to become common. Seems she, as opposed to most billionaires who look ever more the congenital arseholes, is good people for real.
On Gates, I suppose the jury will be out until well after his death? Personally, I'm totally split on him: Yes, he seems to be doing a real lot of actual good shit with his billions nowadays. But he did amass them by being perhaps the biggest robber baron of the 20th century. (And certainly the biggest -- so far! -- in the IT / "tech" [whatever that means] industry; I guess we'll have to wait until Thiel, Musk, Zuck & al are gone too, before we can assess if any of them surpassed him.)
I'm pretty sure Thiel is a key Dark Enlightenment guy, which means some specific things. 'will to power' is an adequate description for that larger story, which might involve working through others but might also mean any number of things.
The common thread is a concept of overpeople and UNDERpeople, and an ethos that's completely fine with ruling or even consuming/destroying the underpeople, without guilt or any reservations.
This is an ethos, it's just not western civilization anymore :)
I liked Zero to One, read it twice. I am also a Libertarian (I consider myself to be a very liberal Libertarian, for what’s that is worth).
My complaint about Thiel is that I found it difficult to find much charitable giving on his part. He funds Thiel College, but what else? It is his right to do what he wants, if it is legal, but who wouldn’t feed hundreds of thousands of starving people or many more, etc. if they had lots of surplus cash. Besides being the only political “peace party” of any size in the US, my take on Libertarianism is to respect personal freedom, respect all people who work to support themselves and their families, and to have a strong social consciousness to support making the world as good a place to live in as possible.
I like to think of myself as a "pragmatic libertarian". My problem with true Libertarianism can be summarized by the idea of fully private roads. There would be no public land - it's all privatized and therefore every road is a toll road. That's a hellscape I can't imagine ever working smoothly. Some collective society problems are best solved via government - as messy as that is. I think America's response to this current pandemic is not exactly a ringing endorsement of libertarianism. Now if you want to quibble and say, "well lots of folks aren't practicing the true responsibility that libertarianism requires" - I agree! And until our society can show that they can exhibit true personal responsibility than I don't want to see what true libertarianism would bring. I once read someone summarizing modern day libertarianism as "anarchy for the rich" - and that's how I've come to see it.
So I say that because while I somewhat understand and respect Thiel's idea's. His vision of America is not one I care to live in at this time. And I wonder if in 100 years will we look back and say, "Thiel was a net positive influence on the human condition and society?" At this rate I'd say no.
Interesting take on how the future might judge Thiel. Definitely there is a place for government, so as you say there is a sort-of Buddhist middle path that mixes personal responsibility and the need for some government services.
> who wouldn’t feed hundreds of thousands of starving people or many more, etc. if they had lots of surplus cash[?]
There are downsides to donating food. One of them is that it damages local farming; another is that it brings more dependent people into the world, duplicating the problem.
My wife and my favorite charity is the Heffer Project that sets families up with, for example, a breeding group of chickens to make money selling eggs and a protein source for their families. Similar projects with larger animals.
A friend and his wife used to (my friend died in a traffic accident) collect money and once a year make a huge buy of practical farming tools, appropriate types of seeds, etc., charter a cargo flight, and deliver to somewhere where their research showed a need and where they were able to make local contacts.
So, I totally understand your point but there are options.
I found your phrase “will to power” very fitting. I see Thiel as a modern day descendant of Nietzsche: Re-evaluation of values. Seeking solitude away from the herd. Not competing with the “barkers of the marketplace”. Not succumbing to mimetic impulses. Daring to create the future.
(“Will to Power” got a bad rap. It was published posthumously by Nietzsche’s sister who had ties with the Nazis. But Nietzsche’s concept of “power” has little to do with power over others. What he’s talking about is the power of the maker. Of the one who’s capable not of stealing value from others, but of creating value where none existed before.)
If he wrote so un-clearly that pretty much everyone ever since has interpreted his writings as supporting the Nazis (or rather, I suppose, authoritarian political ideologies in general), he only has himself to blame, hasn't he? I mean, he made his living from writing stuff; he can be expected to be good enough at it to at least get his frigging point across to a majority (or even a plurality) of his readers.
You will understand, if you read him. Those who misunderstand just don’t do that. They read a few paragraphs, or a title, or, better yet, someone else’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s work. And then they “know” what it’s about.
Your definition of a good writer: Someone who gets his point across to a majority of his readers. Well. Isn’t that what we’re seeing today? Clickbait and all of that. It’s all designed to get the point across to the majority of people. If that is your goal, you have to compromise.
Antibiotics, steam engines, cars, airplanes... none of those things would have been understood by the majority of people. The majority of people declared them absurd. In those cases, the ideas succeeded in pulling up the people. In the case of marketing and politics, it’s the majority that succeeds in pulling down the ideas.
> You will understand, if you read him. Those who misunderstand just don’t do that. They read a few paragraphs, or a title, or, better yet, someone else’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s work. And then they “know” what it’s about.
So... all those "someone else’s" whose interpretations everyone else reads got it wrong? And that's because, while Nietzsche was great at writing clearly, they're all just too stupid to get it? William of Ockham disagrees.
> Your definition of a good writer: Someone who gets his point across to a majority of his readers.
Thank you for teaching me what I think, but no: That's certainly not my whole definition of a good writer. But, are you saying it's not a pretty big part of it?
> Well. Isn’t that what we’re seeing today? Clickbait and all of that. It’s all designed to get the point across to the majority of people. If that is your goal, you have to compromise.
What on Earth are you talking about? As in, A) WTF does "clickbait and all of that" have to do with anything?; and B) No, there is no evidence that clickbait is "designed to get the point across to the majority" -- are you claiming clickbait even has a point to get across?
> Antibiotics, steam engines, cars, airplanes... none of those things would have been understood by the majority of people. The majority of people declared them absurd. In those cases, the ideas succeeded in pulling up the people. In the case of marketing and politics, it’s the majority that succeeds in pulling down the ideas.
I can only assume you were rather tired and quite emotional when you wrote this, because it makes no sense and has nothing to do with anything we were talking about.
I don't know anything about Thiel, but I remember seeing a talk of his where he basically described that:
1) all companies are on a spectrum between being a complete monopoly and having intense competition
2) their goal is always to be as far to the monopoly side as possible
3) and regardless of where they are on the spectrum, they have to do everything in their power to convince everyone that they are on the other end
(Slightly complicated by the fact that you can hold a monopoly in one market, but have lots of competition in a closely related market. On the one hand you have competition, on the other hand it may just be a facade to help sell your case for #3)
So I don't know the extent of why "leftists hate him", but IMO this is the best logical argument for why late stage capitalism is as unsustainable as leftists say it is.
Being honest doesn’t make him wrong. If Thiel is known for something is for being insightful early.
A lot of people in the startup world still value “first mover advantage” as something that gives them an edge, when evidence says it’s hardly the case. “It’s not about being the first X, is about being the last one” is a brilliant way to put it.
The irony of calling Theil a "nihilist," for taking stances on issues based on his principles and beliefs whether one agrees with them or not is a bit rich. The most nihilistic thing anyone believes in tech and other establishments is that truth is personal and subjective, or whatever lacks conseqeunces, as in, there is no truth - the sufficient and necessary condition for the definition of nihilism.
I can see why they're projecting it though, people are catching on. A head full of jargon and thought terminating cliches, and an utter lack of durable convictions is what nihilism is. Theil and other billionaires need no defense from me or anyone, but journalistic integrity needs every ally it can find.
Is "taking a stand on issues based on principles" not nihilistic if the principle on which he is taking a stand is that nothing particularly matters and therefore he should pursue personal wealth at the expense of the rest of humanity?
I'm asking this as a question by the way, I found your take really interesting.
I don't know that he's ever offered a position on life philosophy or nihilism.
I've read Zero to One and listened to multiple talks from him on YouTube. My impression is that he thinks we need to create new things and that innovation is slowing, partly due to regulation and partly due to people not believing they can create innovations that society needs to progress.
Thiel tells a story about how he got a job at a law firm and soon decided to leave and a colleague says "Wow, I didn't know anyone could leave Alcatraz". The point, to me, comes across as something like "Society tells you what the track to success is, e.g. become a lawyer at a fancy law firm, and because you believe this you are trapped in a prison of other people's expectations, but you are always completely free to walk out the door and follow your own path, you just have to be willing to do it.
On YouTube he has a talk called "You are not a lottery ticket" that covers his world view a bit. He also has a debate with Eric Schmidt from a few years back where he argues that Google isn't a tech company and investing in Google is a bet against innovation in search. In the debate he also talks about his ideas relating to innovation.
I see. Using that logic wouldn’t any investment on large established entities be anti-innovation. That applies to Palantir, right?
Is the most libertarian act to fund as many unique thus potentially innovative teams, people, or companies as possible? What do you do when one of those people or companies stagnate in their research or become another established entity?
I read Zero to One upon its release. It was short after the start of my career in tech. I think now as I did then, there is always room for improvement and the need for critical inquiry (critique) applied evenly to all things. I didn’t fully grasp the momentum of life. That includes governing bodies, corporations, markets, relationships, your own body. The concept of disruption and innovation to improve oneself or the world or a job or a tool is addicting. Where I get stuck is thinking through the consequences from innovation or large scale disruption. Back in 2014, FB was a good societal thing and now in 2021 not so much. Was it worth it? I lost my train of thought here.
When talking about Google Thiel contrasts it with Amazon. Amazon takes all of their money every year and tries to build new stuff with it or invests in improving their stuff. Google, by contrast, just has a large and growing pile of money.
In this sense, Google isn't innovating, they are just cashing in on their search/ads monopoly. This is why Thiel says investing in Google is a bet against search innovation. True search innovation would come from some startup that destroys Google. If you invest in Google you think that's not going to happen, hence you're being against it so you can keep extracting your rent.
I think Thiel is a very interesting guy and is maligned unfairly, although I haven't read the book this article is about.
Regarding Facebook, to me it seems pretty similar to how it's been for a while. It has pros and cons but I don't think the balance has changed in the last five or ten years.
> "A head full of jargon and thought terminating cliches, and an utter lack of durable convictions is what nihilism is."
doesn't seem to be a incorrect description of thiel. he's single-mindedly self-serving, trying to lay claim to often mundane ideas, in search of personal esteem, wealth and power. had he not been so lucky with paypal, he'd probably be as obscure as the rest of us.
>> there is no truth - the sufficient and necessary condition for the definition of nihilism...
nihilism isn't about there not being truth, it's about there not being meaning, or more specifically long-term relevance. XXX may be true, but to a nihilist that's OK we're all going to die anyway and the universe will wind down to its heat death. In that sense the truth isn't relevant long term.
TLDR: Another piece on the hit piece book coming out by Chafkin. This one it least acknowledges it "fails to find an explanation that ties the threads together"
I don’t think it is that complicated. Thiel is at heart a libertarian and always has been. But if you listen to him speak, he is constantly lamenting the lack of hard tech development. “We wanted flying cars but all we got is 40 characters.”
It seems obvious to me that he has calculated the best way to get this hard tech and science development: from government investment. Much of the actual scientific and technological advancement circa 1940-1980 came out of military investment.
Thus he has continually tried to involve himself in government spaces where he has an opportunity to make an impact. Sometimes that works (Palantir) sometimes it doesn’t (his involvement with Trump.)
HN will criticize FB’s algorithm but defend Thiel and his creation of Palantir. I don’t follow. I would like to understand the nuances in tracking people for private vs government interests.
I was going to add that as my second sentence, but decided to keep it short and sweet. It seems to me that Democrats are desperately trying to show that it still works while the other party is coming up with creative ways to show that it doesn't.
> the other party is coming up with creative ways to show that it doesn't.
Chief among them, making it so that it doesn't. In a way, just a variation of their age-old way of justifying their "Governement is the problem, it never works!" stance by fucking up government whenever they're in power.
> The new ideology would be anti-China, a country Mr Thiel portrays as using artificial intelligence (ai) to centralise control over the economy.
So what? So does he. To anyone who is neither Peter Thiel nor the Chinese state, it doesn't much matter if too much power is concentrated in the hands of the Chinese state or the hands of Peter Thiel. The problem is the same.
> As he once told a friend: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.”
Not to worry, Mr Thiel, you're at least halfway there.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] thread"The case for war—revisited"
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2003/07/17/the-case-for-wa...
I know it's going to get flagged, but whatever.
He accuses it of being a monopoly but AFAIK he's not for anti-trust and he views these monopolies somewhat positively.
Even more ironically, his book was a major success in communist China. It seems the chinese took it seriously, learned to instrumentalize capitalism to build their own monopolies, but then disenfranchised the capitalists.
If they can kill you, to them that counts as an existence proof of their ethic… and a failure-to-exist-proof of both you and whatever competing ethic you had.
I'm reminded of Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments, and times when TitForTat tended to win out over much more hostile and ruthless strategies. In situations like this I like to look to modeling and experimentation for axioms: like the easily demonstrated proof that discontinuities in simple exchange produce inequities that are not in any way representative of merit: the natural state is not for things to average out, given some simple and natural conditions the natural state is for some unfit competitors to become vastly over-rewarded relative to their merit. Thus disproving certain assumptions that wealth in any way signals merit in any sense.
Journalism really is dead now.
They seem to fail upwards like most of mainstream media acting as mouthpieces of the DC/London establishement, stenagrophers of the national security establishment and PR agency of many VC funded tech bros.
Typo in the first sentence. s/for ever/forever/
I guess no one has editors any longer...
See this review: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/peter-t...
So while this guy may or ay not be getting his sources from unreliable third party places, he has enough of a personal credibility to at least consider the stores in the book. At least thats what I learned after seeing how quickly the Tesla community turned against the Higgins book.
"do no evil" might have been the contrarian counterpoint in the nascent early to mid 2000's, but now Thiel, and those with similar cultural, social, and political ideals, has chosen "we have chosen sides" — Thiel wants to position himself as someone who is for and against something, anything, where most technology companies have a bland, homogenous corporate neutrality
I don't think his end goal is trying to get his favored political candidates back to office or something — Thiel is cultivating a larger story and seeding his ideas about the act of choosing sides, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRleB034EC8
summing his life as a Silicon Valley bad guy is a gross oversimplification — his actions and work is the product of decades of his study and thought, and has evolved in a number of ways over time if you follow his writings and interviews
it's clear that he holds the ideas he's arrived at with conviction, and has been in the process of enacting them through financial or political or intellectual means
This is not irrelevant to the conception of and market of Palantir.
He is the Erik Prince of "tech" and like Prince, is a literal merchant of death.
Where is the evidence of this?
Is he completely correct? Probably not. But then, who is?
If one person is an existential threat to humanity (which is what I assume you mean) then, frankly, we probably "deserve" it (in the evolutionary sense). Thiel is useful here to countermand this point. One of his most useful ideas is that the so called "powerful" and "elite" have much less power than we think they do and can can be easily circumvented if ignored (of course there are marginal cases).
They're not wrong that this is A source of order, but they overlook the human tendency to form community and cooperate: this vision of theirs is about how to form societies when they are by definition all against all, a brutal struggle of nihilism and despair.
That's only one way humans can be, and it's a way that competes with the more leftist tendency to make everything about the community and cooperation.
Seems like a meta-narrative is needed that incorporates both of these positions that are held by their supporters as the ONLY position that can exist.
Girard does not embrace a Hobbesian view of the world, he is trying to explain the origin of human cooperation and society. The scapegoat narrative is not a nihilistic war of all-against-all it is a narrative of all-against-one to create order. Human cooperation can exist when violence is pared-down to one person (the scapegoat).
Where Girard admits that nihilism can come into play is when the scapegoat narrative becomes openly acknowledged. Which is what he argues Christianity effectively did (opened up the scapegoat mechanism for all to see, thus rendering it ineffective). Girard predicts that our lack of a scapegoat mechanism will likely lead to apocalyptic violence.
Frankly, I think the leftist view that humans can cooperate out-of-the-head-of-Zeus is naive and needs no account, because it has never happened.
I see folks cooperating all the time. Best part of the job. Granted, we are 'leaving money on the table', but this is better.
The Bourgeoise, the Jews, the QAnons, the Blacks, the Whites, the Immigrants, the Rich, the Anti-Vaxxers, the Catholics, the Muslims, the Kulaks, the <insert group here>
If humanity could unite and create order under the periodic ritual sacrifice of a single King, we'd be much better off than the way it actually happens, which is scapegoating and sacrificing millions of people at once.
In a broad context, Thiel acts like someone who has no such safeguards. The future he's pushing the world towards is the caricatural dystopia from Back To The Future (which was originally meant to lampoon Trump-like characters). Fortunately, he will probably fail.
If you don't see this at all, it's probably time to ask yourself just how similar to Thiel you actually are.
a lot of his writing involving Girard and other political philosophers reads as studying mimetic desire as a means of avoiding absolute total war in society and maintaining the hegemony of what he believes to be "enlightenment values" — destruction and unnecessary suffering is generally the antithesis of those beliefs
again, I don't even personally have to agree with all his ideas and writings to want to have a discussion about it
That's the moment when reality-based folks stop listening to what you're saying.
I do find it odd lately that we are experiencing a weird anti-cult of personality writings lately ( anti-Musk, anti-Thiel, anti-Zuckerberg ). Odd because I would normally expect articles and other propaganda glorifying their achievements ala Gates. I am not sure what to attribute this to.
Absolutely nothing.
The fact that Dolly Parton actually threw money around is part of the spotlight that demonstrates that these are not good people in spite of their positive PR.
People are just finally realizing that emperor has no clothes.
On Gates, I suppose the jury will be out until well after his death? Personally, I'm totally split on him: Yes, he seems to be doing a real lot of actual good shit with his billions nowadays. But he did amass them by being perhaps the biggest robber baron of the 20th century. (And certainly the biggest -- so far! -- in the IT / "tech" [whatever that means] industry; I guess we'll have to wait until Thiel, Musk, Zuck & al are gone too, before we can assess if any of them surpassed him.)
The common thread is a concept of overpeople and UNDERpeople, and an ethos that's completely fine with ruling or even consuming/destroying the underpeople, without guilt or any reservations.
This is an ethos, it's just not western civilization anymore :)
My complaint about Thiel is that I found it difficult to find much charitable giving on his part. He funds Thiel College, but what else? It is his right to do what he wants, if it is legal, but who wouldn’t feed hundreds of thousands of starving people or many more, etc. if they had lots of surplus cash. Besides being the only political “peace party” of any size in the US, my take on Libertarianism is to respect personal freedom, respect all people who work to support themselves and their families, and to have a strong social consciousness to support making the world as good a place to live in as possible.
So I say that because while I somewhat understand and respect Thiel's idea's. His vision of America is not one I care to live in at this time. And I wonder if in 100 years will we look back and say, "Thiel was a net positive influence on the human condition and society?" At this rate I'd say no.
There are downsides to donating food. One of them is that it damages local farming; another is that it brings more dependent people into the world, duplicating the problem.
A friend and his wife used to (my friend died in a traffic accident) collect money and once a year make a huge buy of practical farming tools, appropriate types of seeds, etc., charter a cargo flight, and deliver to somewhere where their research showed a need and where they were able to make local contacts.
So, I totally understand your point but there are options.
How do you guarantee such systems don't fall into disuse?
It's not impossible to donate foodstuffs that the donor buys from local farmers, is it?
Huh? I've never heard of this. Searching doesn't give any good results. Could you direct me to somewhere to read more about this?
(“Will to Power” got a bad rap. It was published posthumously by Nietzsche’s sister who had ties with the Nazis. But Nietzsche’s concept of “power” has little to do with power over others. What he’s talking about is the power of the maker. Of the one who’s capable not of stealing value from others, but of creating value where none existed before.)
Your definition of a good writer: Someone who gets his point across to a majority of his readers. Well. Isn’t that what we’re seeing today? Clickbait and all of that. It’s all designed to get the point across to the majority of people. If that is your goal, you have to compromise.
Antibiotics, steam engines, cars, airplanes... none of those things would have been understood by the majority of people. The majority of people declared them absurd. In those cases, the ideas succeeded in pulling up the people. In the case of marketing and politics, it’s the majority that succeeds in pulling down the ideas.
So... all those "someone else’s" whose interpretations everyone else reads got it wrong? And that's because, while Nietzsche was great at writing clearly, they're all just too stupid to get it? William of Ockham disagrees.
> Your definition of a good writer: Someone who gets his point across to a majority of his readers.
Thank you for teaching me what I think, but no: That's certainly not my whole definition of a good writer. But, are you saying it's not a pretty big part of it?
> Well. Isn’t that what we’re seeing today? Clickbait and all of that. It’s all designed to get the point across to the majority of people. If that is your goal, you have to compromise.
What on Earth are you talking about? As in, A) WTF does "clickbait and all of that" have to do with anything?; and B) No, there is no evidence that clickbait is "designed to get the point across to the majority" -- are you claiming clickbait even has a point to get across?
> Antibiotics, steam engines, cars, airplanes... none of those things would have been understood by the majority of people. The majority of people declared them absurd. In those cases, the ideas succeeded in pulling up the people. In the case of marketing and politics, it’s the majority that succeeds in pulling down the ideas.
I can only assume you were rather tired and quite emotional when you wrote this, because it makes no sense and has nothing to do with anything we were talking about.
1) all companies are on a spectrum between being a complete monopoly and having intense competition
2) their goal is always to be as far to the monopoly side as possible
3) and regardless of where they are on the spectrum, they have to do everything in their power to convince everyone that they are on the other end
(Slightly complicated by the fact that you can hold a monopoly in one market, but have lots of competition in a closely related market. On the one hand you have competition, on the other hand it may just be a facade to help sell your case for #3)
So I don't know the extent of why "leftists hate him", but IMO this is the best logical argument for why late stage capitalism is as unsustainable as leftists say it is.
A lot of people in the startup world still value “first mover advantage” as something that gives them an edge, when evidence says it’s hardly the case. “It’s not about being the first X, is about being the last one” is a brilliant way to put it.
I can see why they're projecting it though, people are catching on. A head full of jargon and thought terminating cliches, and an utter lack of durable convictions is what nihilism is. Theil and other billionaires need no defense from me or anyone, but journalistic integrity needs every ally it can find.
I'm asking this as a question by the way, I found your take really interesting.
I've read Zero to One and listened to multiple talks from him on YouTube. My impression is that he thinks we need to create new things and that innovation is slowing, partly due to regulation and partly due to people not believing they can create innovations that society needs to progress.
Thiel tells a story about how he got a job at a law firm and soon decided to leave and a colleague says "Wow, I didn't know anyone could leave Alcatraz". The point, to me, comes across as something like "Society tells you what the track to success is, e.g. become a lawyer at a fancy law firm, and because you believe this you are trapped in a prison of other people's expectations, but you are always completely free to walk out the door and follow your own path, you just have to be willing to do it.
On YouTube he has a talk called "You are not a lottery ticket" that covers his world view a bit. He also has a debate with Eric Schmidt from a few years back where he argues that Google isn't a tech company and investing in Google is a bet against innovation in search. In the debate he also talks about his ideas relating to innovation.
Is the most libertarian act to fund as many unique thus potentially innovative teams, people, or companies as possible? What do you do when one of those people or companies stagnate in their research or become another established entity?
I read Zero to One upon its release. It was short after the start of my career in tech. I think now as I did then, there is always room for improvement and the need for critical inquiry (critique) applied evenly to all things. I didn’t fully grasp the momentum of life. That includes governing bodies, corporations, markets, relationships, your own body. The concept of disruption and innovation to improve oneself or the world or a job or a tool is addicting. Where I get stuck is thinking through the consequences from innovation or large scale disruption. Back in 2014, FB was a good societal thing and now in 2021 not so much. Was it worth it? I lost my train of thought here.
In this sense, Google isn't innovating, they are just cashing in on their search/ads monopoly. This is why Thiel says investing in Google is a bet against search innovation. True search innovation would come from some startup that destroys Google. If you invest in Google you think that's not going to happen, hence you're being against it so you can keep extracting your rent.
I think Thiel is a very interesting guy and is maligned unfairly, although I haven't read the book this article is about.
Regarding Facebook, to me it seems pretty similar to how it's been for a while. It has pros and cons but I don't think the balance has changed in the last five or ten years.
https://perell.com/essay/peter-thiel/
I remember I needed a few hours to read it, as he is quite a deep thinker and there are references to philosophy and religion.
A wrong way to summarize it would be to build heaven on earth through capitalism.
But not sure what the author meant, just guessing here.
doesn't seem to be a incorrect description of thiel. he's single-mindedly self-serving, trying to lay claim to often mundane ideas, in search of personal esteem, wealth and power. had he not been so lucky with paypal, he'd probably be as obscure as the rest of us.
nihilism isn't about there not being truth, it's about there not being meaning, or more specifically long-term relevance. XXX may be true, but to a nihilist that's OK we're all going to die anyway and the universe will wind down to its heat death. In that sense the truth isn't relevant long term.
Typically Count Dracula posts get the hammer rather quickly.
It seems obvious to me that he has calculated the best way to get this hard tech and science development: from government investment. Much of the actual scientific and technological advancement circa 1940-1980 came out of military investment.
Thus he has continually tried to involve himself in government spaces where he has an opportunity to make an impact. Sometimes that works (Palantir) sometimes it doesn’t (his involvement with Trump.)
> the other party is coming up with creative ways to show that it doesn't.
Chief among them, making it so that it doesn't. In a way, just a variation of their age-old way of justifying their "Governement is the problem, it never works!" stance by fucking up government whenever they're in power.
TIL: "blitzscaling".
So what? So does he. To anyone who is neither Peter Thiel nor the Chinese state, it doesn't much matter if too much power is concentrated in the hands of the Chinese state or the hands of Peter Thiel. The problem is the same.
> As he once told a friend: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.”
Not to worry, Mr Thiel, you're at least halfway there.