6 ms·

I can't believe he was calling Greta a potential antichrist when there's... this

• problemch1ld 8mo ago
  Such efforts are just an SEO/media manipulation game for Thiel. Try and spread a mind virus, see if a "flock" forms behind him.
  • estearum 8mo ago
    No, some people are actually nutjobs with nutjob beliefs.
    • vintermann 8mo ago
      Sure they are, but Thiel is not one of them. Or rather, there's little reason to think the nutjob beliefs he presents to you are his sincerely held nutjob beliefs. You run into people sometimes, where you realize they're testing the waters constantly to figure out where they have you and what they can get away with.
      • estearum 8mo ago
        Nah, I've met him. He believes plenty of nutjob shit.
        • mindslight 8mo ago
          Traditional response to a non-rich person saying nutjob shit: Are you a fucking idiot? Traditional response to a rich person saying nutjob shit: That's really interesting, especially as it connects to this thing I am working on that needs funding Facebook's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: Check out this other nutjob shit ChatGPT's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: You've nailed it. You're thinking about this exactly how a professional philosopher would.
        • vintermann 8mo ago
          One thing we learned from the Epstein documents was that he was very good at controlling people's perception of him. It would be wrong, for instance, to think his derisive use of "goy" was reflective of real beliefs. He just found it useful to come across that way to some people. He took pride in "befriending" both Røed-Larsen (architect of the Oslo agreement, moderate on Israel) and Noam Chomsky (big Israel critic) at the same time he was shooting the shit with ethnic supremacists. I assume Peter Thiel, and many similar people, are basically the same. If less competent at it. That you've met him doesn't mean you know his sincere beliefs - I think a good default assumption is that he doesn't have many, since sincere beliefs get in the way of getting the kind of power he has.
          • estearum 8mo ago
            Ah yes, much better to just assert your own perception of what they believe, even in contradiction to their stated words and visible actions. Sometimes people just believe insane shit. "Standard religious orthodoxy for major religion but stated explicitly in relation to modern events" isn't even on the outer perimeter of insane. In principle, billions of people believe most of what Thiel believes. It's just unusual to hear an allegedly smart person actually say it out loud in earnest, because when you do, a smart person realizes that in fact mainstream religious views (any Abrahamic religion's apocalypse lore) are fucking insane. But that's just reason to think Thiel has some more courage, more confidence, or less to lose than your standard intelligent Christian. All of which is obviously true. It is not reason to believe he doesn't earnestly believe basic tenets of his own religion, which you have provided no evidence for. > He took pride in "befriending" both Røed-Larsen (architect of the Oslo agreement, moderate on Israel) and Noam Chomsky (big Israel critic) at the same time he was shooting the shit with ethnic supremacists. There's literally nothing even contradictory in this, so not sure what you think this demonstrates. One can simultaneously be friends with all of the above characters -- in earnest.
      • expedition32 8mo ago
        You can be a nut job with but job beliefs and be smart about it. Obviously our dear friend from Austria wasn't going to directly talk about crematoria.
      • jacquesm 8mo ago
        Strong disagree, he's one of them, and he means it. The myth that these guys are 'really smart' should die, they're good at grifting, but they're not so smart they can't have nutjob beliefs and when they say what they think and it is negative believing them will not lead to a less true picture of the individual.
        • Schmerika 8mo ago
          Nah, it's advanced SEO. He almost certainly didn't even come up with it himself; billionaires and even centimillionaires can have teams of PR people just coming up with this shit for them all the time. Boris Johnson (or his PR team) did it with the bus thing, and cheese [0]. Yes, Thiel has nutjob beliefs. Utterly insane. No, this wasn't one of them. Too calculated. Too sweaty. We're talking about one of the guys connected to Cambridge Analytica here. 0 - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/boris-johnson-google-search-results-bad-news/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/boris-johnson-google-search...
          • estearum 8mo ago
            Maybe we should be clear about which beliefs we're talking about. If your claim is that he doesn't believe Greta Thunberg specifically is the Antichrist, then sure. But that's just listening to the words that he says. He never says he believes Greta is actually the Antichrist. "In our world, [the Antichrist] is far more likely to be Greta Thunberg [than Edward Teller or other mad technologist, or implicitly weapons and surveillance tech manufacturer Peter Thiel himsef]." He does actually believe this. So yes OP is correct that Thiel said and does actually believe Greta "is potentially" the Antichrist. But that's a different claim than saying that she actually is the Antichrist. There are thousands or millions of people (most unknown to Thiel) who could fit into the Greta-Antichrist category broadly. So it's a much weaker claim than that Greta is herself singularly the Antichrist. Both claims are equal levels of insane though. If you believe the weaker claim that the Antichrist would be someone like Greta, it requires exactly zero additional insanity to believe the stronger claim that Greta is actually the Antichrist.
            • 8mo ago
  • vintermann 8mo ago
    I know a couple of other politicians as well where I say over and over again, that's not them being a blowhard, that's a trial balloon. They're testing the water for how much of a lunatic blowhard it's profitable to be. These people want to fill Trump's shoes when he's gone, that's very obvious. But I think - and hope - that Trump's fans will notice what they're doing and not be charmed by it.
    • problemch1ld 8mo ago
      [flagged]
• netsharc 8mo ago
  On the topic of projection, I wonder where the "Pizzagate!" frothing-at-the-mouth QAnon geniuses are, now that the actual sex-child-trafficking conspiracy has been revealed, just that it involves their champion fascists. Hah at one point they were saying an online furniture shop is a website for trafficking children hiding in plain sight, using coded messages to describe said children (something like "leather sofa" meaning "blonde teenager" or some insanity like that). Come on you freaking geniuses, the Epstein emails show that they don't need codes on a public website, they just talk to each other in plain speech, but over email!
  • sph 8mo ago
    A child-trafficking conspiracy was a total fabrication, meanwhile a major child-trafficking conspiracy was happening under everybody’s noses. What a coincidence, huh? Seems to me, like all legends, it started on a kernel of truth, then it evolved into something of its own. Not sure why you believe Pizzagate to be totally unrelated to Epstein.
    • ZeroGravitas 8mo ago
      But Epstein met the guy in charge of 4Chan the day before /pol got created to "contain" the fascists. And that's where QAnon started. So now we have meta-conspiracy theories about who started conspiracy theories.
    • rcxdude 8mo ago
      The issue with pizzagate (and a lot of these conspiracy theories) is not that it was directionally incorrect about 'some heinous shit is going down' (which is a good cold reading any day of the week in any age), it's that it jumped to specific and often just unhinged conclusions from basically zero evidence. The latter part tending to both create more problems and give cover to the existing ones.
      • jacquesm 8mo ago
        No, the only issue is that it was a purposeful distraction from the real heinous shit. The rest is a distraction from the fact that it was a distraction.
• vintermann 8mo ago
  Apropos Greta Thunberg, I noticed on the top of the "no stupid questions" subreddit the question "How can people like Greta Thunberg afford to be a full time activist?". The submitter was a one-month old account, one of their posts was in the whatismycqs subreddit - a sure tell for bot/farm accounts.
  • wolvesechoes 8mo ago
    Yet it is rather serious question - most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves. I think that it is pretty bad for democracy that political action is delegated to only those few that are able to gain sponsorship and don't need to work to eat. We do not need professional activists, quite the contrary.
    • ben_w 8mo ago
      > most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves Do they? Or do they get convinced by adverts that their lives won't be complete unless they spend more than they can afford on an endless stream of shiny promises? I've always found it very easy to put a huge fraction of my income to one side because all my hobbies are cheap or free. I've sometimes expressed surprise at how much other people buy, or spend regularly, and in one case the response was approximately "of course I need to spend £2500/month after my mortgage, there's the £50/month phone and same for internet, there's Netflix, I eat out twice a week, there's the car (which I like taking across the channel to France and driving around a lot), there's …" Meanwhile, I'm mostly content living off my €1k/month passive income, of which 25% is spent on mandatory social and health insurance; and the only thing I'm unsure about at this income level is visiting friends and family on the other end of a 2h flight where the airport isn't all that close to any of them.
      • subscribed 8mo ago
        Yeah, I'll tell my family we need to move to the mouldy 1 bedroom flat because a guy in the internet says so. That'll help with the mortgage bit; Also kids need to manage their expectations and instead of having active hobbies (that require some minimum hardware but lots of activities), they should try sculpting with clay instead. Especially that with the asthma they'll get from the black mould they'll be in no position to be very active anyway. I've seen clay on the field, so we'll save money here. We can also collect their art through the winter to bake them in the sun once they're ready (to save on the oven). School? Right, we need to move to the closest one, why let them have friends or aspirations. Now work, hmm, that's easy. Instead of going to the work I get paid a lot but commute cost over £5k a year, I'll take something that pays 1/6 of my original salary but we can save on the commute. Will he'll with arguing why we need to move to the smaller place and ditch their activities. Living costs a lot. And if I sound absurd so do you by suggesting your life choices are applicable to everyone or they're just convinced by adverts to spend.
• watwut 8mo ago
  He is cool with sexual abuse of teenagers and with Epstein philosophyly, connection to crime, racism, sexism ... all if that. However, Greta Thunberg stands for evrrything he despises. She should be givimg massages and shut up.