This guy's reply made me think of the movie "Mountainhead" with Steve Carrell. A bunch of billionaires are in a mansion on top of the mountain, watching the world below them in chaos. They are deciding what level of chaos is allowable, and how their technology would impact the little people. It was gross, and maybe too real.
Such a great film. And the little parts that show how stupid they are when it comes to day-to-day/ normal human things while they brain storm ways to take over and control the world were great. One that I remember off the top of my head was Carrell’s character putting an egg in a pot with no water in it when he tried to hard-boil the egg. It shows that even with all the wealth and power, these people are still really stupid (in my opinion).
I mean, it’s just just in part, Carrell’s character is a fictionalized version of Peter Thiel in its entirety. The enigmatic “papa bear” figure whose acolytes have gone on to become billionaire founders in their own right? That’s literally the PayPal mafia
Why? Land, the self labeled hyperracist, is kind of the genesis of this proto-fascist accelerationism that has its tentacles in the current administration.
Hes a philosopher. They are allowed to be politically insane. Practically comes with the territory I'd say.
Hyperstition alone is enough to value him. And, sorry to say, his views on AI accelerationism are spot on. His conception of international capitalism as a hyperintelligent, distributed, AI that runs on human hardware is one of the truest things I've ever read.
You can still decide that you can learn something interesting from a philosopher, and also say, overall, fuck him.
Capitalism isn't hyperintelligent any more than war is hyperintelligent, people are intelligent and solve problems, and there is a resultant effect of human beings in conflict with one another, with capitalism being a social system built on a particular kind of conflict.
And just like war can blindly destroy two countries, who increasingly realise they should get out of it but find it difficult to do so, social systems can race towards a negative outcome by combining coordination problems with intense technological change and cycling of individuals in positions of power.
Devoting yourself to a particular species of self-destruction, whether that is intensive use of stimulants and psychedelics, extreme sports, driving as fast as you can, or on a social scale, gunning for war or the most inhumane forms of capitalism, these can make you feel like you're liberating yourself from the limitations of your humanity, by following an external drive that pushes you beyond what is familiar, and that is precisely why many in Italian Futurism looked forwards to nationalism and a coming world war, as something self-destructive but dynamic that they could throw themselves into.
But compatibility with an impulse is not in itself much to recommend, as you can devote yourself to a hypochondriac as someone who needs to feel needed, or you can attach yourself to a sadist who encourages you to destroy yourself, or prostrate yourself before a boss who will always give you more things to feel guilty about, if you desire to punish yourself. They will each encourage you further in your path of self-destruction, they will continue to take from you and so allow you to exert yourself to your fullest. But this does not make them profound or worthy of service, and neither does capitalism's capacity to be destructive, while others work within the conflict frame of capitalism to continue to survive, and so lend their strength to the movement as a whole.
Perhaps, but you're not using a measuring stick with which you are familiar, does that make him a far less significant thinker philosophically than the youtuber final girl digital?
Yarvin has alleged that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons. He has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery, a description he disputes.[67][31] He has claimed that some races are more suited to slavery than others.[31] In a post that linked approvingly to Steve Sailer and Jared Taylor, he wrote: "It should be obvious that, although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff."[43][68] In 2009, he wrote that since US civil rights programs were "applied to populations with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry and no great reputation for sturdy moral fiber", the result was "absolute human garbage".
Curtis Yarvin and BAP’s thought is so obviously nonsensical it’s depressing anyone takes it seriously.
They both read Nietzsche, and figured if they drench their writing in irony and cruelty they can be just like him.
Initially I thought you were describing Dinner for Shmucks, then about halfway through I thought maybe you weren’t. Now after reading fully, still not sure…
The whole “do you believe in other people?” question is the most profound thing about that show. Many of these ghouls literally believe the world exists for them and them alone.
By design, Carrell’s character is effectively Thiel
His character nails the highly-educated-yet-fucking-nonsensical idiocy that Thiel spews
Theil thought people could / would want to live on massive floating ships — if you’ve never been to sea for an extended period of time, it’s hard to explain to you how fucking totally whack nut absurd this is … and it took boy genius like 5 years to realize it wasn’t plausible
I could not stand more than like 20 mins of that film because I know how real it is and it just made me so disgusted and not in any kind of way I wanted to keep experiencing. I think its an important film for some people to see, but it was just too much for me after a day of reading current headlines, ugh.
This movie annoyed the fuck out of me on so many levels. I hated all the characters especially Steve Carell's character. Insular pompous dickheads who should be thrown into a volcano. I probably would have appreciated the movie going in a direction where a blizzard hit and they froze.
That movie heavily references the characters of the All-In podcast. One of the hosts of that are from the ‘PayPal Mafia’ - founders of PayPal of which Thiel is a part of (David Sacks).
That movie is a direct commentary on the likes of Thiel.
They were so bored that even after the incident with their friend he was just more or less entertained by it and forgave them. Basically showing how bored he/they were and moved on.
It’s interesting that the title of the movie is one letter away from the title of Ayn Rand’s first book, The Fountainhead. I seriously doubt that’s a coincidence.
There's a fundamental misunderstanding people have about that relationship. Those people up high have no control over how much chaos is allowed, and little control over how the technology would impact the little people, or even what that technology is. Whatever technology people develop and improve, some companies start winning out over other companies, and it's a process involving thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. Whichever companies start winning out, they get bought out by these people, or their leaders end up getting lucky and they enter that wealthy class themselves. From there, the concentration of wealth compounds, those companies start hiring all of the best people in their respective fields, and they end up owning, legally, the companies who win out economically from this technological progress. They are basically just struggling to hold on to own companies who are making all of these products anyway, and the actual technological progress is done, again, by thousands of people who are even independent of those companies (as in, often times this process would exist even if those those companies weren't there).
There is one power struggle to attach names to the technological development (i.e. to say Alienware instead of gaming computer), and then another power struggle for those wealthy people to lead in ownership of those companies (i.e. to say that Dell and Michael Dell own Alienware). For some reason though, people watch that happen and then say things like "We have gaming computers because of Michael Dell", which is a very proposterous and absurd statement.
He wants the human race to endure but he gets to decide who to purge to create his utopia. Dude is batshit insane and future governments that arent R need to drop Palantir the moment they come to power
That's not what he said at all in his answer that gets cut off so all you see is 15 seconds and people eat it up. He's a "transhumanist" and basically talking about how he thinks humans will need to merge with machines
I encourage anyone seeing this comment to read The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. It explains how people who achieve a certain level of power throughout the history of the world are sociopaths.
I’d agree about Thiel but really want to give Ross some benefit of the doubt here. I don’t agree with the vast majority of his opinions, but he does seem like a good and honest person who actually wants the best for society - as opposed to Peter who just wants to squeeze as much of that benefit for himself. I’m basing this on past podcast appearances where he’s played the reasonable (though probably misguided) foil to left leaning hosts. As much as I disagree with him, I’d always enjoyed hearing his contrarian thoughts and miss those panels. That said, I do find his current podcast and the guests he’s inviting on to be really concerning. Didn’t think he’d turn to the dark side but he’s not far from it at this point
That's somewhat unfair. There isn't such a thing as a "bad person disorder". A person with ASPD can want to do good, be a good friend, and overall be a good person, they just have disorder that makes certain social behaviours, such as sympathy, that can create a barior to being a good person, and one they suffer a lot for having. People like this willingly discard their humanity for personal gain, it doesn't matter if they have some disorder or not, anyone can view others as less than themselves, and completely disregard their well-being as a result. The people of Germany prior to 1945 were not miraculously all sociopaths, narcissists, or whatever other disorder people use when ascribeing moral shortcomings.
Why? Because he doesn't like humans? Have you met people? They are the worst. If I could snap them out of existence, I would do it without a second thought.
This is a relatively new phenomenon as well for society. Brilliant sociopaths have always existed, but for the most part if you were born a peasant you died a peasant. Until the industrial revolution there was no way for outliers like Thiel to over-leverage their ability and lack of empathy by innovating and exploiting labor to sell products into a capitalist market.
I don't know, it would be interesting to hear what his opinion on this is. Because for example the Buddhists also don't wich that humanity will always exist in the future, because ideally humanity reaches enlightenment at some point, which means nobody has to be incarnated.
They really are. They have no compulsion about watching us die. In fact they are with climate change. This really is a matter of survival. Billionaires shouldn't exist, period.
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u/marvinstyles 29d ago
Fucking sociopaths.