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Key quote: ``` Yarvin told Yiannopoulos that he had been “coaching Thiel.” “Peter needs guidance on politics for sure,” Yiannopoulos responded. “Less than y

by s_kilk 9y ago

Key quote: ``` Yarvin told Yiannopoulos that he had been “coaching Thiel.” “Peter needs guidance on politics for sure,” Yiannopoulos responded. “Less than you might think!” Yarvin wrote back. “I watched the election at his house, I think my hangover lasted into Tuesday. He’s fully enlightened, just plays it very carefully.” ``` It seems Thiel is very much in the pocket of the Valley's Neo-Fascist movement.

api 9y ago
It's sad that the person who co-wrote Zero to One would fall into this orbit. It remains one of my favorite business books in spite of the fact that its co-author has gone off and hopped on the crazy train politically. Of course many of the original Italian Futurists became Fascists too. There seems to be some tendency for unbridled futurist thinkers to fall for fascism and similar ideologies. Some futurists also go for left-leaning forms of totalitarianism too. I know several really smart authoritarian Marxists. I see it as a pathology of futurists who have gotten themselves too far from the coal face; of futurists who are not actually Doing The Work (or aren't anymore). There's a temptation to think that politics is the thing holding us back from progress and that progress can be accelerated politically. If we could just get rid of all that slow painful democratic consensus and replace it with some kind of dictatorship of know-it-all smart people all that magic futurist technology would just materialize out of thin air. There's also this tendency to think regulation is holding us back. That can happen, but it typically happens after things are invented. Regulation is not preventing us from achieving immortality or true AI or free energy because we have no idea how to do those things regardless of whether or not there are laws against them. Edit: Thiel's case is honestly more mysterious though. Here's a guy who's spent years ranting against the fact that our culture is controlled by know-nothing windbags who don't actually do anything and are hostile to progress and what does he do? He gets behind Donald Trump, a total know-nothing windbag who has absolutely no skills, abilities, or understanding beyond the ability to promote himself and manipulate people. Trump is the emptiest of empty suits. There is literally nothing there except primate dominance gestures. I have no idea what Thiel thought was going to happen, but it's not happening whatever it was.
- s_kilk 9y ago
  I'm not even so sure that it's Futurism with Thiel so much as just unbridled avarice. If it looks like a greedy scumbag, and quacks like a greedy scumbag, well...
  - api 9y ago
    Read Zero to One. Assuming that is in any way representative of what he thinks, he's a Futurist. Then again it's also possible that he's massively inconsistent and full of contradictions. Humans are not perfectly philosophically consistent robots. Contradiction is more normal than not. Peoples' beliefs often come more from emotional affinities and cultural bias than reason.
    - postramus 9y ago
      Or, you know, a utility-maximizing actor found it utility-increasing to place certain words into certain sequences in certain contexts due to the expected effect said arrangement would have upon the expected audience? It's not terribly complicated.
      - elsurudo 9y ago
        I get your point and I in fact agree. I just wanted to say that that is a sentence structure that only a programmer could find beautiful :)
        kwhitefoot 9y ago
        The sentence flows perfectly well. Not sure anyone would find it beautiful but it is certainly succinct and expressive.
serhei 9y ago
Seems like Peter Thiel just has a policy to keep a finger in a lot of pies. Reminds me of the time Yarvin wrote a criticism of Sam Altman: > Sam Altman (whom I don't know, but SF is a small town and I probably know someone who knows him) ... [1] It's amusing that the missing link between them would be Peter Thiel. ([1]: If you really want to read the full post you can easily find it using Google.)

by s_kilk 9y ago

api 9y ago

It's sad that the person who co-wrote Zero to One would fall into this orbit. It remains one of my favorite business books in spite of the fact that its co-author has gone off and hopped on the crazy train politically. Of course many of the original Italian Futurists became Fascists too. There seems to be some tendency for unbridled futurist thinkers to fall for fascism and similar ideologies. Some futurists also go for left-leaning forms of totalitarianism too. I know several really smart authoritarian Marxists. I see it as a pathology of futurists who have gotten themselves too far from the coal face; of futurists who are not actually Doing The Work (or aren't anymore). There's a temptation to think that politics is the thing holding us back from progress and that progress can be accelerated politically. If we could just get rid of all that slow painful democratic consensus and replace it with some kind of dictatorship of know-it-all smart people all that magic futurist technology would just materialize out of thin air. There's also this tendency to think regulation is holding us back. That can happen, but it typically happens after things are invented. Regulation is not preventing us from achieving immortality or true AI or free energy because we have no idea how to do those things regardless of whether or not there are laws against them. Edit: Thiel's case is honestly more mysterious though. Here's a guy who's spent years ranting against the fact that our culture is controlled by know-nothing windbags who don't actually do anything and are hostile to progress and what does he do? He gets behind Donald Trump, a total know-nothing windbag who has absolutely no skills, abilities, or understanding beyond the ability to promote himself and manipulate people. Trump is the emptiest of empty suits. There is literally nothing there except primate dominance gestures. I have no idea what Thiel thought was going to happen, but it's not happening whatever it was.

s_kilk 9y ago
I'm not even so sure that it's Futurism with Thiel so much as just unbridled avarice. If it looks like a greedy scumbag, and quacks like a greedy scumbag, well...
- api 9y ago
  Read Zero to One. Assuming that is in any way representative of what he thinks, he's a Futurist. Then again it's also possible that he's massively inconsistent and full of contradictions. Humans are not perfectly philosophically consistent robots. Contradiction is more normal than not. Peoples' beliefs often come more from emotional affinities and cultural bias than reason.
  - postramus 9y ago
    Or, you know, a utility-maximizing actor found it utility-increasing to place certain words into certain sequences in certain contexts due to the expected effect said arrangement would have upon the expected audience? It's not terribly complicated.
    - elsurudo 9y ago
      I get your point and I in fact agree. I just wanted to say that that is a sentence structure that only a programmer could find beautiful :)
      - kwhitefoot 9y ago
        The sentence flows perfectly well. Not sure anyone would find it beautiful but it is certainly succinct and expressive.

serhei 9y ago

Seems like Peter Thiel just has a policy to keep a finger in a lot of pies. Reminds me of the time Yarvin wrote a criticism of Sam Altman: > Sam Altman (whom I don't know, but SF is a small town and I probably know someone who knows him) ... [1] It's amusing that the missing link between them would be Peter Thiel. ([1]: If you really want to read the full post you can easily find it using Google.)