4 ms·

This is a very good interview. The click bait title doesn't do it justice. I find myself agreeing with a huge fraction of what Thiel says, but I also find myse

by api 8y ago

This is a very good interview. The click bait title doesn't do it justice. I find myself agreeing with a huge fraction of what Thiel says, but I also find myself unable to actually agree with him. The block for me is admittedly his politics. It's not that his political views may be different from mine. That's fine. I have friends who are Marxists, democratic socialists, Christian conservatives, moderate libertarians, and admirers of Ayn Rand. But I have an Overton window just like everyone else and some things just don't fit into it. I have no friends who are fascists and I've dropped people because they start espousing those ideas. I also have no friends who are totalitarian Soviet-style communists, and there is at least one case where I've backed away from someone for seriously espousing the idea that the USSR had it right all along. Advocacy of totalitarian ideologies with demonstrated histories of massive bloodshed is outside my Overton window. I've also backed away from people for espousing racism, misogyny, and other kinds of intellectualized assholery. To me these are ideologies that go beyond just disagreement about how best to structure a society, how powerful government should be, or what its priorities should be. I think the thing they have in common is that they explicitly advocate hurting people and more importantly believe that you can actually make the world a better place by hurting certain people. You can make the world a better place by inflicting pain. So back to Thiel and his politics. Nowhere in his writing have I ever heard him explicitly advocate any of those things, but the company he keeps is another story. He seems to hang around with a fair number of explicit doctrinaire fascists. I could also say the same thing about Trump. Trump does not necessarily explicitly espouse fascism (though there are some debatable statements), but his most ardent and enthusiastic supporters are fascists. So here we go. I admire and agree with so much of what Thiel says about business, technology, and the state of the world, but how is it possible that these apparently very clear and good ideas can coexist with explicit advocacy of genocide? Or if he doesn't believe that maybe he should reconsider the company he keeps.

sillysaurus3 8y ago
I have no friends who are fascists and I've dropped people because they start espousing those ideas. To me these are ideologies that go beyond just disagreement about how best to structure a society, how powerful government should be, or what its priorities should be. I think the thing they have in common is that they explicitly advocate hurting people and more importantly believe that you can actually make the world a better place by hurting certain people. You can make the world a better place by inflicting pain. I think the defeat of Germany in WW2 has proved that's true. So back to Thiel and his politics. Nowhere in his writing have I ever heard him explicitly advocate any of those things, but the company he keeps is another story. He seems to hang around with a fair number of explicit doctrinaire fascists. explicit advocacy of genocide Since this article's off the front page, it probably won't hurt to delve into politics for a bit here. So I have to ask: What specifically are you talking about?
- api 8y ago
  I'm referring to his association with a certain milieu of people who are important figures in the development and promotion of what is today termed the alt-right. Association with movements like that (or the others I mentioned) is sort of special. Movements like the alt-right are different from (for example) mainstream Christian conservatism or Randian Objectivism or democratic socialism. Totalitarian movements whose goals would be considered insane or evil by a large number of people adopt the structure of a manipulative cult. When you encounter the Scientology guy on campus he offers to give you a weird kind of personality test. You have to be pretty deep in before you find out about galactic emperor Xenu. The outermost surface of the alt-right (termed the alt-light in its own terminology) are people who superficially advocate nationalism, question political correctness, and so on. A layer below that you have a more hard-core layer that introduces racism, explicit anti-democratic strong-man politics, and misogyny. A layer below that you have the hard core of the movement where you find explicit advocacy of absolute totalitarianism, terrorism, and genocide. Maybe I'm wrong but what I see is an onion that looks like: Peter Thiel -> Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopolis -> Richard Spencer -> Andrew Auernheimer, 4chan /pol The people on the right hand side represent the true beliefs and goals of the entire onion. You see it revealed in things like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville where the layers mix. Compare this to for example Randian objectivism or democratic socialism. Everyone in those movements more or less espouses the same ideas. There's no onion because there's not much to hide. In general when I see a movement with this kind of structure where the innermost people seem to espouse different ideas than the outermost I see it as a huge red flag. What are they hiding? The other thing about movements like these is that if you associate seriously and persistently with the outer layers of the onion I assume you probably know about and accept the inner layers too. I was deeply saddened and frustrated when I saw evidence of Thiel's backing of that movement. Zero to One is still by far the best book about business I've ever read, and I found myself agreeing with I'd say about 90% of it. Thiel is also one of the few people who has seen what I've seen for years, namely that core technological development (what I call fundamental innovation) has slowed since the early 1970s. I rationalize it by acknowledging the human capacity for compartmentalization. It's possible for someone to have very rational views in one area and be completely nuts in others.
  - deleted 8y ago

by api 8y ago

sillysaurus3 8y ago

I have no friends who are fascists and I've dropped people because they start espousing those ideas. To me these are ideologies that go beyond just disagreement about how best to structure a society, how powerful government should be, or what its priorities should be. I think the thing they have in common is that they explicitly advocate hurting people and more importantly believe that you can actually make the world a better place by hurting certain people. You can make the world a better place by inflicting pain. I think the defeat of Germany in WW2 has proved that's true. So back to Thiel and his politics. Nowhere in his writing have I ever heard him explicitly advocate any of those things, but the company he keeps is another story. He seems to hang around with a fair number of explicit doctrinaire fascists. explicit advocacy of genocide Since this article's off the front page, it probably won't hurt to delve into politics for a bit here. So I have to ask: What specifically are you talking about?

api 8y ago
I'm referring to his association with a certain milieu of people who are important figures in the development and promotion of what is today termed the alt-right. Association with movements like that (or the others I mentioned) is sort of special. Movements like the alt-right are different from (for example) mainstream Christian conservatism or Randian Objectivism or democratic socialism. Totalitarian movements whose goals would be considered insane or evil by a large number of people adopt the structure of a manipulative cult. When you encounter the Scientology guy on campus he offers to give you a weird kind of personality test. You have to be pretty deep in before you find out about galactic emperor Xenu. The outermost surface of the alt-right (termed the alt-light in its own terminology) are people who superficially advocate nationalism, question political correctness, and so on. A layer below that you have a more hard-core layer that introduces racism, explicit anti-democratic strong-man politics, and misogyny. A layer below that you have the hard core of the movement where you find explicit advocacy of absolute totalitarianism, terrorism, and genocide. Maybe I'm wrong but what I see is an onion that looks like: Peter Thiel -> Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopolis -> Richard Spencer -> Andrew Auernheimer, 4chan /pol The people on the right hand side represent the true beliefs and goals of the entire onion. You see it revealed in things like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville where the layers mix. Compare this to for example Randian objectivism or democratic socialism. Everyone in those movements more or less espouses the same ideas. There's no onion because there's not much to hide. In general when I see a movement with this kind of structure where the innermost people seem to espouse different ideas than the outermost I see it as a huge red flag. What are they hiding? The other thing about movements like these is that if you associate seriously and persistently with the outer layers of the onion I assume you probably know about and accept the inner layers too. I was deeply saddened and frustrated when I saw evidence of Thiel's backing of that movement. Zero to One is still by far the best book about business I've ever read, and I found myself agreeing with I'd say about 90% of it. Thiel is also one of the few people who has seen what I've seen for years, namely that core technological development (what I call fundamental innovation) has slowed since the early 1970s. I rationalize it by acknowledging the human capacity for compartmentalization. It's possible for someone to have very rational views in one area and be completely nuts in others.
- deleted 8y ago