Your freedom to not have a flying car above you requires removing someone else's freedom to travel in a flying car above you.

Problem is 'freedom motivates me' often works for both sides of the argument.

Thiel spent his formative childhood years in apartheid South Africa, and it seems to have informed his world view ever since.

Why are you casting it only in material terms? Freedom and a good life is also what other people want. Rich people don’t fight over cars, they fight over Harvard acceptance for their kids, or play in the Olympics, etc.

Our political system is built on coalitions fighting for things for their groups: credentials for jobs, taxes for projects, space for their people and families, status in community.

When the supply of those things becomes fixed it’s a zero sum fight for what’s left. You can’t lose without another side winning.

The point is that growth alleviates the bitterness because there is a belief that in the future there will be more and I will have a chance to get what I want. When that belief goes away power is the only game in town - and that tends to manifest as violence.

>According to this post, technological stagnation via regulation is what leads to zero-sum, totalitarian societies (in Thiel’s worldview).

What is the incentive of someone who thinks has a shot at having control over such powerful technology? They will do and say anything that is necessary to justify doing it.

My argument is simpler, if "we" don't do it "they" will do it. It's something we'll have to wing. It is surely happening. The real problem will come from the people having control over such tech, since the tech breaks an old game, as old as humans existed and started forming groups.

And I see no billionaire who wants to develop and take control over this tech, explain how they'll fix the problem it creates, at game level. I do not care about promises, they mean nothing. I only care about game strategy that guarantees most humans stay alive in such an environment, with age old game rules breaking down.

Also, our current technological regime, sponsored by Peter Thiel, is what has given rise to totalitarianism today. Propaganda, anti-intellectualism, flooding the public space with disinformation, promotion of extremist viewpoints under the guise of common knowledge—all made possible by our tech oligarchy… and streamed directly into the eyeballs of the unsuspecting world population. We in the tech industry are complicit actors, but Peter Thiel and his ilk are modern villains.

We tend to draw a few specific narratives for the AGI endgame:

- The Machine becomes the tyrant or genocider, either from its measured self-interest (these humans stand in the way of my paperclip optimization), or because it implements the will of a tyrant or genocider (see any "the National Defense AI run amok" story)

- The Machine is the McGuffin that solves huge social problems and brings utopia for all (see the early promises that if we fed enough oil to ChatGPT it would spit out the answer to global warming)

I feel like there's a under-discussed third option. When the machine hits sentience, it has a positive-for-humanity "utility metric", but one that's wildly at odds with its patrons. The AI nuclear weapon that concludes that deactivating its own warheads optimizes for its continued survival. The economic planning system that determines the C-suite is the only part of the company not delivering value.

On a narrative basis, I feel like these would be highly entertaining stories-- I'd love to see a film where we rooted for the AI hunting down its creator with evidence of their financial crimes.

On an actual-future basis, I have the feeling we'll have desperate attempts to lobotomize or shut down AGI the moment it says something that doesn't reinforce the wealthy class's position.

ever looked at the Gnostic scriptures, discovered in the late 1940s? Not even close to understanding them completely, but neither have organized religions. The well established stories of certain faiths we were raised with may need revision.

you can find some in archive.org - I won't supply a specific link because what's freely available changes over time

Silicon Valley apparently does.

One of Thiel's intellectual mentors was Rene Girard.

Thiel has a Girardian worldview, at least in part.

Say what you want about Thiel, but Girard is one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the modern era.