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This is good news, I think? Thiel has some extremish views, but I generally regard him as intelligent and thoughtful. And he's in close contact with other smart
by darawk 10y ago
This is good news, I think? Thiel has some extremish views, but I generally regard him as intelligent and thoughtful. And he's in close contact with other smart, influential people (e.g. Musk, Sam Altman, etc.), which gives them some indirect influence.
Not that this makes things substantially better. But maybe a little bit? Hopefully?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoIf nominated to the post of Surgeon General, do you think they'd let him have direct access to a blood supply.
- throwaway4job 10y agoThiel is also spiteful, hateful, selfish, hypocritical, and deeply bigoted. The only thing we now know, for sure, is that Palantir investors are likely to get a better return.
- TAForObvReasons 10y agoOddly, both the title and the article skip over the fact that Thiel was a founder of Palantir Technologies (which has plenty of government contracts). Conflicts of interest be damned
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- internaut 10y agoNot this again. This just so wrong. Palantir worked for the Clinton Foundation. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/45010 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/45010 For at least several years and definitely before Trump was on the map politically. The Podesta Emails literally have Alex Karp, the CEO, paying 100k to talk to Bill Clinton. http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/05/02/3A142FF400000578-3907562-image-m-29_1478314456152.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/05/02/3A142FF40000057...
- Hydraulix989 10y agoSo he plays both sides then. You haven't invalidated any argument.
- internaut 10y agoI think Alex Karp, much like Thiel's friend Sam Altman, is very much his own man. If they were automatons they wouldn't be in the position they're in. 99% of Silicon Valley disagrees with Thiel, the simplest explanation is that Karp is from that group also. The alternative explanation appears to be Karp and Thiel conspired to make Trump US President in 2012. I mean wow. Just wow.
- capkutay 10y agoMost powerful, wealthy interests support both sides. The only thing truely frightening for the status quo is probably someone like Bernie Sanders being in the white house. Dow Jones would not be popping up if that was the case.
- droopyEyelids 10y agoI always post this but if anyone wants to know why this is remarkable news, Mr Thiel wrote his “manifesto” and made it public. It’s short and to the point. https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
- runako 10y ago"The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics." I wonder if he doesn't know or if he doesn't care how that might sound to people who were legally denied basic citizenship rights in the 1920s, or the descendants of those people. The 1920s were politically bleak for quite a few Americans.
- ArkyBeagle 10y ago"A member of the Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan, Jackson became involved in several political scandals...." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_L._Jackson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_L._Jackson
- oldmanjay 10y agoIt's understandable that people would like everything to be connotation managed so their sensibilities are never offended, but it's also a very valuable skill to be able to turn off the ability to be offended and just try to comprehend the intended meaning of something. It makes communication so much more viable.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoSomebody who has "some extremish views" is advising Trump, who has some extremish views of his own. That's good news? Not from where I sit, it isn't.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kafkaesq 10y agoThiel has some extremish views, but I generally regard him as intelligent and thoughtful. "He seems intelligent and thoughtful, but has scarily extremist views" might be a better angle to take.
- jbpetersen 10y agoAny specific highlights?
- bpicolo 10y agoHe's a climate change denier, it would appear.
- lxmorj 10y agoAn outright denier, or a fuck-it-lets-solve-it-with-cool-shit-like-venentian-blind-satellite-swarms sort of guy?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pjscott 10y agoThe kind who hasn't stated a confident opinion on the matter, but is suspicious about how politicized the discussion is.
- borramakot 10y agoThe most clear statement from him I'm aware of is "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." 1:15 PM - 6 Nov 2012.
- pjscott 10y agoTo be clear, that's a quote from Donald Trump -- not Peter Thiel.
- btian 10y agoHe's probably going to be the propaganda tsar since he's known for suing the press.
- rajathagasthya 10y ago> I generally regard him as intelligent and thoughtful Based on a YouTube video mentioned in another comment thread (https://youtu.be/CoxxGhLFbw4?t=2m30s https://youtu.be/CoxxGhLFbw4?t=2m30s), I wouldn't regard him as intelligent by any means.
- chmullig 10y agoAfter seeing him speak, I agree. He seems dumb, assholish, and lucky.
- oldmanjay 10y agoWhat luck that his publicly well-reasoned move supporting trump played out as he detailed, the dumb asshole.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- fastball 10y agoYeah, he went to Stanford for undergrad and law school - he's obviously a dunce.
- rajathagasthya 10y agoWhat's with mentioning that he went to Stanford law school? This is the second such comment (the other commenter deleted it for some reason). Is someone incapable of having illogical thoughts because they went to "Stanford law school"? He says this in the video: > Whenever you hear someone use the word science it's like a tell that they're bluffing Try to make sense of it.
- fastball 10y agoYou said "I wouldn't regard him as intelligent by any means" (emphasis mine). If you don't want people to question your statements, try not to make them so sweeping. Someone that graduated from Stanford twice is definitely intelligent by some means.
- knucklesandwich 10y agoYes, the guy who had to be shamed out of attending a libertarian meetup with a heavy white nationalist presence has some extreme views.
- defgeneric 10y agoTheil is very interesting from a Marxist point of view. https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio... A few summary points: - Did a BA in philosophy at Stanford--an analytic department--in the late 80s. - As Reaganism was reaching its apex, he became a libertarian. - The 90s were a period of pessimism. As the Reagan revolution was in retreat, and as conservatives retreated with it, the "smartest" libertarians sought to move beyond it. So he registered the crisis of libertarianism acutely, and went looking for the solution outside politics altogether--hence the rhetoric from early Paypal about creating a "new world currency" that would bring about the "end of monetary sovereignty". The point was to create new forms of being which would be free simply by virtue of being new. (Nothing wrong with that, and Marxists have a term for it: reification.) - While the crisis of 2009 further confirmed the bankruptcy of the political project of libertarianism, he thought its understanding of the world was still fundamentally true: "Exhibit A is a financial crisis caused by too much debt and leverage, facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts of moral hazards — and we know that the response to this crisis involves way more debt and leverage, and way more government." But here the answer is the same as it was in the 90s: retreat from politics and build "new worlds." What's remarkable about Theil is that he fully grasps the crisis of bourgeois society, to the point where he says, "Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron." This was widely denounced as both misogynistic and racist, but it wasn't: he is saying that the 1920s was the last time the crisis of bourgeois democracy might be have been resolved. This is pure Reaganite ideology, but like all ideology has a measure of truth. (It's worth noting that the Left agrees in a sense, but sees the failure of the German revolution, which also meant the failure of the October revolution, as the decisive moment.) He recognizes the fatal contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society. Clearly. For him libertarianism is the answer that bourgeois society forbids itself because it holds itself to the promise of democracy. Each time the capitalist crisis emerges, Theil becomes anti-political, looks for a "new space for freedom," new avenues for the accumulation of capital. Cyberspace, outerspace, seasteading. Post-2009 we saw Theil flirt with the Reactionary- or Dark-enlightenment, which while more reactionary than he's ever been nonetheless suggested a renewed desire for politics in the depths of the recession. Theil remains revolutionary in the sense that he can claim to be in the tradition of Rousseau in the same sense Lenin, for example, could. That may be hard to recognize but it's there. What is most interesting about Theil and Trump is that if you think of Theil as expressing intellectually the bourgeois ideology of the Reagan period (and he's pure late-80s vintage, no doubt), he has just signed on to work in the administration of the man who single-handedly ended the Reagan Coalition.
- napperjabber 10y agoDefinitely interesting, but still to early to tell.