If 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.
> 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.
Can 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.
> 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.
One 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!!!"
> 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?
The 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."
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...
I 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.
Ah appreciate the link. It appears to be mostly commentary and paraphrasing so I'll skip it. I get the John Oliver esque appeal of the Guardian's mocking style but it's not what I'm looking for on this occasion.
I see it more like a flagrant attack on collective action. If you are part of the billionaire class, this is very attractive, because your biggest threat are the pitchforks. The powerful will like this message.
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?
I 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?
> 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.
It's not in the Bible. The antichrist as a deceiving figure, a false jesus, as part of / a requirement of the "end of days", is an evangelical creation.
I can point you to Bible scholars talking about this topic if you're interested. There are many accessible videos on youtube, for example, from informed Bible scholars - of which Thiel absolutely is not.
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.
Jobless 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?
Thiel contributes to a wide range of organizations, primarily through his private foundation, the Thiel Foundation. His giving focuses on scientific research, technology, and projects that explore new political or social ideas.
Prominent recipients have included: SENS Research Foundation, Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), The Seasteading Institute, The Committee to Protect Journalists,
Human Rights Foundation, etc.
You bring up politics? That’s like saying western state depts helps others with politics in the Middle East. His political stuff is the same as western state depts.
Western chauvinism knows no bounds.
Perhaps 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.
I get this sense often when the "famous" tech CEOs talk, they sorta come across like that uncle that you humor at Thanksgiving dinner. My best guess is there's a selection bias in that the more grounded ones are less likely to speak publicly and be in the news.
> 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.
> artificial intelligence, climate change, bioweapons, nuclear war, fertility collapse. The list is unintentionally revealing.
Those are big concerns for the next 20-30 years. At any one time, they rarely hit the headlines. But their effects accumulate.
We may be in the runup to WWIII in Europe. Read up on the runup to WWII, the "phony war". The Chancellor of Germany said recently "We are not at war, but we are not at peace either".
> Sadly, the whole culture around SV is based on libertarianism, so regulation isn't even considered.
Thiel actively supported one of the least libertarian candidates in US history. Whatever reputation he has for having libertarian views is nonsense.
No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
In my view, what happened to Thiel and Musk is that they succeed in business and everyone starts respecting them and treating them like deities. They want to believe it is justified rather than simply people trying to manipulate them, which leads to a reinvention of self where they perceive themself to be a bit superhuman or important to the world. They act, they explore new areas, they act more. They usually do not experience as much reward from additional success in business, they are typically poorly socialized and fail to create a solid support network of people who know them and care about them. They realize money doesn't really help, fine food doesn't help, expensive possessions doesn't help. Even positions where they occupy a top hierarchical role end up feeling lacking.
What's left is the allure of tradition, religion, blood, war, progeny, and the trajectory of civilizations. They admire the brutality and decisiveness of medieval kings and the idea of theirs being destiny rather than luck. They then try to figure out how to believe they are deserving and suitable for the unique kind of destiny they realize can be theirs.
Most of us do not have to worry about hearing the voices they hear calling them to this destiny. One can see it on Elon's face. He's quick to sweat, quick to contemplate how his every decision will be more significant to the world than the entire lives of thousands.
Day after day of waiters, concierges, personal assistants, aides, advisors, trainers, masseuses, chefs, SVPs, etc. all at their absolute service. They must ask themselves again and again endlessly "what do I want? What do I really want?" Ultimately they realize that all they really want is to shape the world like so many kings or prime ministers or philosophers have. But theirs is a different skill-set. In spite of their desire they are not philosophers, not kings, not literati, not demagogues.
So they struggle to become that which they are not so they can do more than order a delicious lunch and pay for everyone else's and listen to everyone's flattery.
They want to shape the world with who they are, but part of them realizes it was luck and the are not as unique as they hoped. So they find ways to feel special like cultural supremacy, authoritarianism, buying favor with politicians or religious leaders, etc.
Reading your comment made me think of the Roman generals returning to a triumph and someone constantly following them saying "memento mori", reminding them they are not a god. Now, instead of humility it would just be seen as a challenge.
> No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
Have you been on libertarian Internet recently? I don't see a lot of hand-wringing about people's civil liberties being under attack.
Wrong. The problems come from regulation itself. From bureaucracies that freeze innovation, protect incumbents, and smother experimentation under compliance costs, etc.
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.
Regulation 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.
I 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?
The 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.
There's a lot to mock here. Thiel is clearly out of his depth, unless we're going to pretend he's an informed Bible scholar now. And he's clearly not, since the Antichrist as a figure is an evangelical creation about 150 years old and is not in the Bible at all. That's without going into how Revelations, the "source" for Thiel's thinking at large, is itself simply a Jewish mystic condemnation of the Roman Empire.
The "mark of the beast", for example (666), is the result of an ancient Jewish mystic numerology game where they assigned each letter a numeric value to speak about people in code. 666 means Nero.
> Thiel is clearly out of his depth, unless we're going to pretend he's an informed Bible scholar now. And he's clearly not, since the Antichrist as a figure is an evangelical creation about 150 years old and is not in the Bible at all.
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.
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.”
It's a later addition, does not refer to one individual only and is said to
... may have been generated by the frustration of Jews subject to often-capricious Seleucid or Roman rule, who found the nebulous Jewish idea of a Satan who is more of an opposing angel of God in the heavenly court insufficiently humanised and personalised to be a satisfactory incarnation of evil and threat same source.
GGP didn’t say “Antichrist” wasn’t in the bible. They said that antichrist “as a figure” wasn’t in the bible. Even the Wikipedia article on Antichrist will give you a rich overview of this discussion and general scholarly agreement that that word as used in the bible does not reference a specific figure.
There is quite a lot of nuance here. You can’t just keyword search.
> 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.
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-mil...
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.
> 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.
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?
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/...
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...
Consider the possibility that the lense(s) through which you see and hear him are distorting reality.
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.
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/
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-thi...
[2] https://audio.commonwealthclub.org/audio/podcast/cc_20140930...
[3] https://audiototext.com/?order_id=e0a6efe8-c656-4746-b93c-f4...
https://fortune.com/2025/09/02/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectur...
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.
I can point you to Bible scholars talking about this topic if you're interested. There are many accessible videos on youtube, for example, from informed Bible scholars - of which Thiel absolutely is not.
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.”
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.
What a shameful lack of imagination. There is a million ways you could help others.
Thiel contributes to a wide range of organizations, primarily through his private foundation, the Thiel Foundation. His giving focuses on scientific research, technology, and projects that explore new political or social ideas.
Prominent recipients have included: SENS Research Foundation, Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), The Seasteading Institute, The Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Foundation, etc.
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
No they didn’t. That’s a ridiculously romantic view of the Gilded Age that has absolutely no bearing on reality.
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.
Those are big concerns for the next 20-30 years. At any one time, they rarely hit the headlines. But their effects accumulate.
We may be in the runup to WWIII in Europe. Read up on the runup to WWII, the "phony war". The Chancellor of Germany said recently "We are not at war, but we are not at peace either".
Thiel actively supported one of the least libertarian candidates in US history. Whatever reputation he has for having libertarian views is nonsense.
No libertarian would try to control others based on his/her religious beliefs, and no libertarian would be remotely comfortable with any of the heavy handed stuff in Trump's platform.
In my view, what happened to Thiel and Musk is that they succeed in business and everyone starts respecting them and treating them like deities. They want to believe it is justified rather than simply people trying to manipulate them, which leads to a reinvention of self where they perceive themself to be a bit superhuman or important to the world. They act, they explore new areas, they act more. They usually do not experience as much reward from additional success in business, they are typically poorly socialized and fail to create a solid support network of people who know them and care about them. They realize money doesn't really help, fine food doesn't help, expensive possessions doesn't help. Even positions where they occupy a top hierarchical role end up feeling lacking.
What's left is the allure of tradition, religion, blood, war, progeny, and the trajectory of civilizations. They admire the brutality and decisiveness of medieval kings and the idea of theirs being destiny rather than luck. They then try to figure out how to believe they are deserving and suitable for the unique kind of destiny they realize can be theirs.
Most of us do not have to worry about hearing the voices they hear calling them to this destiny. One can see it on Elon's face. He's quick to sweat, quick to contemplate how his every decision will be more significant to the world than the entire lives of thousands.
Day after day of waiters, concierges, personal assistants, aides, advisors, trainers, masseuses, chefs, SVPs, etc. all at their absolute service. They must ask themselves again and again endlessly "what do I want? What do I really want?" Ultimately they realize that all they really want is to shape the world like so many kings or prime ministers or philosophers have. But theirs is a different skill-set. In spite of their desire they are not philosophers, not kings, not literati, not demagogues.
So they struggle to become that which they are not so they can do more than order a delicious lunch and pay for everyone else's and listen to everyone's flattery.
They want to shape the world with who they are, but part of them realizes it was luck and the are not as unique as they hoped. So they find ways to feel special like cultural supremacy, authoritarianism, buying favor with politicians or religious leaders, etc.
Have you been on libertarian Internet recently? I don't see a lot of hand-wringing about people's civil liberties being under attack.
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.
If you let the tobacco industry self-regulate, smoking ads would still be legal, and there would be no ban on selling cigarettes to kids.
This is the situation in IT.
The "mark of the beast", for example (666), is the result of an ancient Jewish mystic numerology game where they assigned each letter a numeric value to speak about people in code. 666 means Nero.
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.
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.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antichrist
It's a later addition, does not refer to one individual only and is said to
... may have been generated by the frustration of Jews subject to often-capricious Seleucid or Roman rule, who found the nebulous Jewish idea of a Satan who is more of an opposing angel of God in the heavenly court insufficiently humanised and personalised to be a satisfactory incarnation of evil and threat same source.
There is quite a lot of nuance here. You can’t just keyword search.
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.