I agree that it's very difficult to fully understand what his real positions are, and interestingly I think he clearly wants that to be the case. Peter Thiel is interested in and has actually written extensively about Straussianism which is an intellectual movement obsessed with analyzing esoteric meanings in philosophical literature.

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kibibu 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Reading his recent "Greta Thunberg Is The Antichrist" stuff leads me to believe the Peter Thiel:

- Is deeply unscientific, coming across as a highfalutin paranoid QAnon; and

- Has zero self-awareness

That said, he has plenty of money and connections, so moves like these are likely well justified.

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gsf_emergency_4 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Detailed perspective from someone with insight into Thiel's thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6LakOrqDL4&t=1s

That watched, imho Thiel is interested in the post-Straussian tension between "thinking in the open" (ideal science) and "focussed value creation" (which is best done behind closed doors)

AI as driven by premium mediocre Millennials combines the worst of both: lazy group-think promoted by stochastic parrots, expensive hardware weaponized by people who didn't earn that privilege

Capitalism or communism is a false dichotomy. You'd want any given pre-Jedi to access the Force, build their own lightsabers (in a cave), but not turn to the dark side.

GitHub serves Midichlorians. NVDA serves the Federation (and is one of the deadly sins to boot)

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rstuart4133 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> "focussed value creation" (which is best done behind closed doors)

And yet, it is the most open societies that do best at value creation. It's almost as if the degree of cooperation and coordination between the individuals is more important to success than the insights of any one individual, even if they are as smart as Mr Theil believes himself to be.

	▲	gsf_emergency_5 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This suggests that things might not be as simple as that (it's a strong correlation, I admit) https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/iab8r7/social_trus... (By the scale used here US is exceptionally mid)

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9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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