>the randomness that I think of as the evil part of nature. This is a perfect example of why Thiel's thinking is so unappealing to me. First of all, nature is

>the randomness that I think of as the evil part of nature. This is a perfect example of why Thiel's thinking is so unappealing to me. First of all, nature is not random, but there is a lack of understanding of the true implications of cause and effect of what goes on at a biological (and ecological) level that it may appear that way to people so captivated by the binary control of the programming world. But, even if it were random, I don't think that's evil in the least. It's unpredictable, yes, but so are the implications of many of the technologies that Thiel embraces. That does not make those technologies inherently evil, just as "randomness" is not an evil part of nature. I am afraid of the sterile world that Thiel seems to want. Additionally, I'd like to point out this bit from a below comment where the poster responded to several article excerpts, including: "I think of aging and maybe just mortality as random things that go wrong. The older you get, the more random things happen, the more breaks. If it’s not cancer, you could get hit by an asteroid. So on some level, technology is trying to overcome the randomness that is nature. That is a question on the level of a company. Can you get rid of randomness in building a company? But the philosophical version of the question is whether we can get rid of randomness in its entirety and overcome the randomness that I think of as the evil part of nature." Nature isn't random! Nature is complex, cryptic, self-referential, and chaotic, but it's deterministic at the level of biology. "Random things happening" is not a proper understanding of age-related decline; aging is the long-term compounding interest of metabolic byproducts. It really stuns me that Thiel's understanding of these things is so apathetic to reality.