I’m realizing that if I tried to talk to someone about who he is I would just make him sound like a rich business guy that’s on the other side of the culture war than me that funds some tech stuff. I don’t think that really conveys exactly how bad some of his positions are or how concerning his level of influence is though if that makes sense.
Peter Thiel is one founder of PayPal, of a mass surveillance company called Palantir and he is pretty much a fascist. Less well-known than Musk but much more malignant.
The man who wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” is spending tens of millions of dollars to elect Congressmen who agree with him.
[deleted]
Just call him a vampire and explain the transfusion situation, and segue from that into “you know how ancap libertarianism is basically feudalism with extra steps? Thiel is the guy who wants to make that official and maybe get rid of the extra steps.”
And now you’ve got a conversation going.
You could also mention that he runs Palantir
“Bond villain who’s read way too much Heinlein”
Regarding his ideas:
Regarding his influence:
what are some of his positions? i don’t know much about them except one i am rather sympathetic to even if it appears bit freaky deeky: research in fighting aging. i am talking about legit regenerative medical therapies done by people in the field of legit gerontology, not opinions and daydreamings of self-taught geniuses… My main point of contention to what i presume is his “take” on how to make it happen : the ultra-rich investing to be early adopter of any breakthroughs at that level then a trickle down to general population whereas i think healthcare should be socialized. Also i wouldn’t be surprised if “biological immortality” is only closed to be achieved only in (who knows) a thousand years or more and any waves done about it is just some passionate cheerleading, a noise and smoke show that is not really serious. but yea , progress in legit regenerative medical therapies is not really ick or anything .would be some sort of a bias to presume it would be imposed on everyone … that would be getting into NWO territory of quack thinking. anyway Thiel don’t have the monopoly when it comes at thinking about this topic.
tbh i don’t know about the general political orientation of this sub other than it’s anti fascist at least , but regarding technological progress if y’all are more anarcho-primitivists or a form of liberal conservativism… i guess regarding that i could be labelled to be into participatory democracy where technology is democratized and used to deepen democracy.
He seems like an isolated billionaire like the pillow guy but he’s a useful bogeyman for the establishment parties that are funded by far more powerful and well-connected moneyed interests like the Pritzkers.
I was reading through his “zero-to-one theory” book and I saw what he said about John Rawls. Just about as pathetic as Ayn Rand’s comments about Immanuel Kant, and that Thiel singles Rawls out as the guy whose stuff has to be thrown out of philosophy departments is the icing on the cake. Rawls made one of the greatest efforts in the history of ethical philosophy to acknowledge and, when possible, jointly apply a wide range of considerations, including fairly precise mathematics (beyond the kind of naive summation used in aggregationism, say) so that A Theory of Justice has a level of evidence/credibility in its field akin to either of Darwin’s most famous texts in evolutionary biology, say.
And Rawls is quite modest and reserved, rarely insisting strongly on the acceptance of most any of his premises, inference rules, or conclusions. By contrast, Thiel is beyond megalomaniacal. IDK if this subreddit is the right place to vent but I love Rawls, I went into A Theory of Justice with a good deal of doubt and borderline hostility (because I’d heard that Rawls was a moral intuitionist, which I conflated with being like G. E. Moore) and came out impressed on a level I rarely had been at that point in my life. And this &%0ing snake blaspheming Tolkien’s writings while pouring all his malice into his will to dominate all life on Earth (ha! the irony) just mouths off about someone lightyears ahead of him in understanding and…