6 ms·
Peter Thiel's antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon
- hunterpayne 1y agoJust a hit piece...nothing to see here, move along...
- freejazz 1y agoHit piece? Thiel does it to himself
- soganess 1y agoThanks for unilaterally deciding what I should read, Hunter! So nice of you. Sometimes people deserve to be hit. Say something bad about my kids, get hit (by me physically for being dumb)... Call someone the antichrist, get hit (by the news, metaphorically, for sounding like you've lost the plot)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ch4s3 1y agoThe only thing less appealing to me than reading thiel’s crazed millenarian ramblings is reading the guardian’s hot takes about thiel’s ramblings.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ggm 1y ago[flagged]
- systemstops 1y agoCalling people "Silicon Valley freaks" is really trashy.
- ggm 1y agoI agree it's unkind. And I am not here to defend the abuse Thiel received over his sexuality or before that the overt bullying I read he underwent at university. But, how exactly do you characterise the super rich, anti unionist, hard right Christian, or some of the other more out there sub cultures in the modern day tech scene? The food-as-fuel soylent eaters, the people trying to live forever, the believers in the singularity.. calling people "freaks" is trashy, but is that the worst objection you've got?
- systemstops 1y agoIt's fine it this was some blog, but this is supposed to be "serious" journalism. It comes off as childish and unprofessional.
- ch4s3 1y agoRight the Guardian is pretty crappy and Thiel’s new messianic nonsense is insufferable.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- culll_kuprey 1y agoYou have to call a spade a spade. The truth is trashy to many.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Hansappreciator 1y ago[flagged]
- andsoitis 1y ago> I'd rather read the guardian; at least they'll be informed. Thiel is speaking from absolute ignorance. The antichrist as a figure is an evangelical creation that's about 150 years old, for example You, my friend, are ill-informed. The idea of the antichrist has deep and complex origins that developed over centuries, blending Jewish apocalyptic expectations, early Christian theology, and later medieval interpretation.
- Hansappreciator 1y ago[flagged]
- andsoitis 1y ago> It's not in the Bible. John 2:18 — “Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” 1 John 4:3 — “This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.”
- greyadept 1y agoSpecifically, G500 is the Strong’s Number for “antichristos”: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g500/kjv/tr/0-1/ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g500/kjv/tr/0-1/
- Hansappreciator 1y agoGuess you are not interested. Thanks Peter, brave try
- Animats 1y agoYes. It wasn't a "secret meeting". It was a meeting of the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, which anyone can join for about $90. I used to have a membership. Here's the event.[1] There is a recording. Here is the MP3 file.[2] Transcription of the first 30 minutes (of 67) via free web site. [3] Notes: On being a VC: When you invest other people's money, you're trying to always do two things. Number one, get good returns. Number two, look like you're going to get good returns. And there's a surprisingly large disconnect between those two things. So I like long term because again, that's less competitive. It can't be super long term. This was always the disconnect between, say, Japanese and US approaches to business. US businesses we always critique for being on this quarterly earnings cycle. Japan argued in the 80s that it had much longer time horizons. And there's a point where long term can be just a euphemism for procrastination or for avoiding accountability. But yeah, I think in its best form there are definitely things that take five or ten years to build and we should be building more of those. On education: My claim has been that over the last 40 years there's generally been less innovation in the world of atoms. It's not been a good idea to go into all the engineering disciplines that had to do with atoms. It was not a good idea to become a nuclear engineer, a mechanical engineer, a chemical engineer, an aeroastro engineer. And so we had less innovation in areas like energy or transportation. Not seeing the "antichrist lectures". Sounds like standard VC speak. Am I missing something here? Was there some other talk, also held at the Commonwealth Club, at which Thiel spoke? [1] https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2014-09-30/peter-thiel https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2014-09-30/peter-thi... [2] https://audio.commonwealthclub.org/audio/podcast/cc_20140930_thiel.mp3 https://audio.commonwealthclub.org/audio/podcast/cc_20140930... [3] https://audiototext.com/?order_id=e0a6efe8-c656-4746-b93c-f47cd53405ea https://audiototext.com/?order_id=e0a6efe8-c656-4746-b93c-f4...
- blast 1y agoIt's a different event: more recent, more lectures, more antichrist. Oh, and more secret. https://fortune.com/2025/09/02/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-commonwealth-club-san-francisco-acts-17-collective-rene-girard/ https://fortune.com/2025/09/02/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectur...
- 1y ago
- UncleMeat 1y agoDaub is a professor at Stanford and a has written a lot about silicon valley and its influence on broader culture. He's worth a read.
- ch4s3 1y ago> Here’s a man who, together with a couple of fellow Silicon Valley freaks, helped return a sundowning caudillo to a presidency he is obviously unsuited for, and who uses the awesome might of the US government to remake society and the world. This sentence is such an acronym to taste and the English language that it may be hard to get through. Thought I do appreciate the offhand comparisons to Peron. I guess I’ll struggle through it.
- ajuc 1y ago> But let me return to Thiel’s list of possible apocalypses: artificial intelligence, climate change, bioweapons, nuclear war, fertility collapse. The list is unintentionally revealing. Thiel is probably not wrong to say that people are pretty worried about the climate crisis. But the examples of AI, bioweapons and fertility collapse in particular suggest that Thiel has confused the world’s worries for those of a very recherché set of aging tech entrepreneurs he hobnobs with. And the antichrist, too, seems very Silicon Valley-coded. This suggests, I think, that in Thiel’s mind there are two cosmic forces warring over creation itself, and they both consist of Peter and his friends. If all the problems are caused by unregulated technology, the solution is obvious, isn't it? Sadly, the whole culture around SV is based on libertarianism, so regulation isn't even considered.
- jamiequint 1y agoWrong. The problems come from regulation itself. From bureaucracies that freeze innovation, protect incumbents, and smother experimentation under compliance costs, etc.
- ggm 1y ago... in his opinion.
- WarOnPrivacy 1y ago> The problems come from regulation itself. The problems also come from improperly regulated businesses, operating in the 3rd stage of encrapification where they stifle innovation that threaten their *opoly and the choke-hold they have on their captured regulators. Every ideology and system is fundamentally flawed. Worse, zealots (of said I/S) compulsively refuse to recognize that their own house needs cleaning. And they not only don't clean, they'll savagely attack anyone who attempts to do the needed cleaning (improve the ideology by addressing it's flaws). No One Anywhere Will Clean Their Own House is an absolute human constant, right between death and taxes.
- Hansappreciator 1y agoRegulation is the result of politics, and politics is the result (in democracies) of the inputs of every person in society. Dismissing regulation, or in Thiel's formulation, conflating regulators with the antichrist is therefore anti-democratic and anti-people. The anti-regulation side of SV, which comes from the libertarian / Randian utopia, is one of its least appealing and most ignorant aspects.
- d--b 1y agoThe whole thing is just weird. This man is clearly delusional, and knowing that he uses his fortune to sway things one way or another based on his twisted perception of the world is scary.
- twothreeone 1y agoJobless and drowning in cash is rough.. it takes a toll on the strongest of minds.. meandering through the day, aimless, chasing the next high. Realizing that being handed a mic wherever you go is now your life. Cursed to be incapable of achievement because what else remains to be achieved. Minimizing your taxes?
- freejazz 1y ago> Cursed to be incapable of achievement because what else remains to be achieved He could do some good for a change... At least the guilded-age wealthy had some sort of shame which fed into an interest in bettering society
- throwup238 1y ago> At least the guilded-age wealthy had some sort of shame which fed into an interest in bettering society No they didn’t. That’s a ridiculously romantic view of the Gilded Age that has absolutely no bearing on reality.
- twothreeone 1y agoPerhaps because they didn't have literal police states guard and defend their wealth. If the town mob showed up at their house they knew the game was over. Trillionaires or social cohesion.. choose 1.
- d--b 1y agoI thought he was well busy trying to be young forever
- btbuildem 1y ago> incapable of achievement because what else remains to be achieved What a shameful lack of imagination. There is a million ways you could help others.
- cornhose 1y agoIt's all just thinly veiled references to Golden Dome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...
- brokensegue 1y agoWhy would it have to be veiled?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jamiequint 1y agoThe author clearly hates Thiel and spends most of the essay mocking Thiel and his ideas without actually engaging with the ideas. The author’s essay is itself meandering, dense with digressions and snide parentheticals. He faults Thiel for grandstanding and over-referencing but indulges in the same. Waste of time.
- OhioMan2943 1y ago[flagged]
- jhatemyjob 1y ago[flagged]
- ggm 1y ago> The masses don't deserve to hear what he has to say. That's a very strange thing to say, unless the sarcasm meter was missing. If Thiel's views are only for the cognoscenti, then I think we have bigger problems to talk about.
- jhatemyjob 1y ago[flagged]
- ggm 1y ago[flagged]
- Hansappreciator 1y ago[flagged]
- akomtu 1y ago> So who or what is the antichrist? Thiel is admirably and uncharacteristically specific on this matter in a scattershot sort of way. The antichrist wants to erect a one-world state, which largely seems to mean any kind of global regulatory regime. Longtime Thiel watchers will recall his preoccupation with sovereignty and seasteading. The antichrist appears to be any force opposing that. The antichrist also is people who are against AI, especially those who seek to regulate it. Antichrist will need a monopoly on AI to fend off competitors. It's likely he'll also need a rather unusual brain that can be fused with AI in some way. Certainly, no man living today meets the bar. I'm puzzled by Thiel's role in all this. If he supports this sort of technocratic tyranny, why he's talking about it at all? If he's against it, why is he trying to whitewash AI?
- andsoitis 1y ago> If he supports this sort of technocratic tyranny, why he's talking about it at all? If he's against it, why is he trying to whitewash AI? Consider the possibility that the lense(s) through which you see and hear him are distorting reality.
- kristopolous 1y agoThe biblical antichrist/world government thing has been linked to so many things. People were against the UN in the 1940/50s because they thought it was part of the apocalypse and anti-christ. I quoth Common Sense 1952-04-01: "The United Nations, which had its birth in the San Francisco conference—set up by a group of which Alger Hiss was secretary, is no doubt a forerunner of the coming “one world” dictatorship by “one man”—the anti-Christ The UN has ruled out Christ entirely and its headquarters are a convenient spy nest for the Reds." https://archive.org/details/sim_common-sense_1952-04-01_159/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/sim_common-sense_1952-04-01_159/... This is just the same fanatical brainmelt that imagines wild conspiracies in every generation. Before the UN it was The League of Nations (Which the US didn't join) and before that "catholic imperialism". Just because Theil has money doesn't mean we should take him seriously. The same nonsense just gets re-contextualized for every generation. "Jesus' second-coming in your lifetime!" I mean true believers don't want to think they're going to miss out I guess...
- _delirium 1y agoInteresting to see Thiel putting forth Eliezer Yudkowsky as the possible antichrist. Hasn't Thiel himself given Yud/MIRI like $2 million?
- rhet0rica 1y agoThe article agrees: > This suggests, I think, that in Thiel’s mind there are two cosmic forces warring over creation itself, and they both consist of Peter and his friends.
- kouru225 1y agoI was almost willing to accept that Rene Girard had some academic value until I read more about him. It's hilarious to me that he writes an entire book arguing that scapegoating people is wrong and Christianity has single-handedly prevented scapegoating by relating to Jesus Christ, but then says political correctness is the Antichrist. If Christianity prevented scapegoating by telling the story of Jesus Christ, then shouldn't political correctness prevent scapegoating using the exact same tactics as Christianity? The whole point of political correctness is repenting the for the evils of the past. Isn't that exactly what you say works to prevent scapegoating Mr. Girard?
- renewiltord 1y agoI get it. It's mockery but I think I can extract the ideas here from it. tl;dr Peter Thiel believes that we will be presented with a large number of potential world-enders: climate change, AI, something else. We will be told that a united force under some person or small group will be able to forestall this end of the world. However, this is a power grab technique and in truth this consolidation of power itself will be the apocalypse. Okay, so everyone who argues for collective action will be an agent of the antichrist. I mean, I get it. Basic collective action is about creating the safe free society we all rely on. Past a point it turns extractive, with the majority Omelasing the gifted few in order to preserve the status quo. That's the thing he's scared of. Cool. To be honest, one of the things I really appreciate the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for this: you get the guest's best shot at telling you what he's about. Not someone else's mockery of it. Just the thing the guest himself thinks is the best form of what he's about rather than some game of telephone. Looks like there's a Thiel episode. Let's hope it's good because I'm going to have to find a good drive to listen to it on.
- Jtsummers 1y ago> you get the guest's best shot at telling you what he's about. Not someone else's mockery of it. If you want to his own words, you can read his recent essay on the topic: https://firstthings.com/voyages-to-the-end-of-the-world/ https://firstthings.com/voyages-to-the-end-of-the-world/
- renewiltord 1y agoOkay that's quite helpful. I'll read it tonight. Thank you.
- frm88 1y agoIf you want to read the specific lecture the linked article refers to: the Guardian published an annotated transript: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-...
- BrenBarn 1y agoOne of the many sad consequences of inequality is that people like Peter Thiel have a platform to spout nonsense that belongs in a street-corner rant from a crazed-looking guy clutching a sign that says "THE END IS NEAR!!!"
- wslh 1y agoBeyond actual power there is a big issue with attention inequality. I like that term.
- bjoli 1y agoCan someone who actually likes Thiel explain his allure? I find just about everything that comes out of his mouth vile, but apparently people listen to him.
- chaseadam17 1y agoNot sure if I “like” him but he has unique takes that help me think about things in new ways.
- Copenjin 1y agoExample please?
- EasyMark 1y agoSo someone talking about the antichrist in an non-metaphorical way doesn't make you think they have a mental illness?
- kcplate 1y agoI am not the OG commentator, but it’s not a mental illness to believe something that has been presented from authority to you for all your life. That’s a pretty normal human response. I’d bet money that everyone on this site believes deeply in something that others would fine unusual, mainly because it’s been culturally or religiously significant to them.
- resters 1y agoWhile it's impossible to completely avoid beliefs that are effectively from authority, we do have systems such as science (scientific peer review), capitalism (economic freedom) that give credibility to certain ideas or patterns. Not moral credibility, but effective consensus that is relatively stable. Sure there are disruptions -- scientific revolutions, economic creative destruction -- but those are typically viewed as having been good things after the fact. Moral authority (elders, traditions, cultural norms) can be helpful in some ways, but they are much more crude and error prone. Respected elders can prey on children, long-held traditions can be oppressive and even harmful (genital mutilation, circumcision). Cultural norms can create significant social costs (women keeping house rather than starting companies or curing diseases, men spending weekends bored out of the social pressure to pretend to like various sports, ec.) When the average person flips on a light switch they believe they know why the light turned on -- electricity! wire! -- but few could explain it much more specifically than that and could not ELI5 it. So in a sense they are expressing a faith-based belief. But most people can tell you who does understand it and know how to find more detailed explanations if they care to learn. This is quite unlike religious faith/tradition which demands that people profess beliefs that are impossible. When you think about it, the word faith means nearly the same thing as the word doubt only with a different connotation.
- chaseadam17 1y agoIf you read Thiel’s internal emails with Mark Zuckerberg, it’s clear he thinks a lot about public perception and how to frame tech to the masses. The antichrist stuff strikes me as a debate tactic. Public sentiment has been trending toward, “maybe tech is kinda bad” so to shift the frame, Thiel says something extreme he knows will get headlines like, “if you regulate tech you might be the antichrist.” He also sprinkles in “or maybe there’s a 1% chance tech kills everyone” to deflate tech criticism from the other angle. My 2c is that most tech is actually good and 90% of public disdain comes from social media and phone addiction (Thiel apparently limits his kid to one hour of screen time per week) and that because social media’s downsides caught nearly everyone by surprise we’re overcorrecting with AI safety stuff. https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-millennials https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-mil...
- piva00 1y ago> My 2c is that most tech is actually good and 90% of public disdain comes from social media and phone addiction That's a huge part of it but not only. Tech is being used to remove humans from the loop of interactions, people feel disdain to have to answer a robot when trying to call somewhere to get support (banks, telcos, etc.), they also disdain being surveilled all the time, online or offline, it's enabled by "tech"; there's disdain for applications to jobs, grants (scientific or cultural) being triaged by robots, one just feel swallowed by a system they have no power to appeal, the robots decided and there's no one to talk to about it. There's a lot of tech that is useful, I don't disagree with that, but I don't think the disdain comes only from social media/phone addiction, those are just the more visible, talked about parts of it. In my immediate circle of the non-tech people they just constantly feel the encroaching of tech mediating real humans, we're being herded by a multitude of systems working on their own programming, and people just defer to those systems. A prime example of such systems going haywire was the British Horizon Post Office scandal, a system to automate detection of fraud was trusted more than any human, causing untold suffering to postmasters flagged as criminals, pushing some to the point of suicide. The trend for now is for this to only increase, more automated systems taking over decision-making roles, people who would be making decisions just blindly deferring to the system, with no recourse or way out for anyone affected. It's bleak, it's understandable that people don't like this. I've been working in the tech industry for 20+ years and I don't like what it is now.
- stef25 1y agoHe comes across as someone who's been alone with his thoughts unchallenged for way too long. Really bad look, wasn't expecting this.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RickJWagner 1y agoWow, the second Guardian article on Thiel and the lectures. It does make for interesting reading.
- timbit42 1y agoThere is no antichrist in Revelation, despite it being commonly believed. Instead, Revelation speaks of the Beast from the sea, the image of the Beast, and the Beast from the Earth (aka. the False Prophet). The term 'antichrist' is only used in 1st and 2nd John and doesn't refer to a specific person at a particular time, but to anyone who denies Christ came in the flesh and came from God. 2nd John says there are many deceivers who deny Christ came in the flesh and are antichrist. Based on word usage, grammar and sentence structure, it is commonly believed that Revelation was not written by the same author as the Gospel of John or 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, so linking the antichrist of 1st and 2nd John to characters in Revelation doesn't make sense.
- hollerith 1y agoDude who got rich and famous from rapid tech progress harshly criticizes people for being skeptical of continued rapid tech progress.