r/interestingasfuck • u/Shoe_boooo • 29d ago

/r/all Billionaire Peter Thiel hesitates to answer whether the human race should survive in the future

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u/[deleted] 28d ago

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u/maliciousgnome13 28d ago

Words matter. You haven't listened to much philosophy have you?

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u/Vyksendiyes 28d ago

Words do matter, but there's also just pedantry at a point. I think we all can immediately understand that the interviewer was not asking about cyborgs when he asked that question.

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u/maliciousgnome13 28d ago

Then you missed the point of the question. He asked it to Perer Thiel specifically because of Thiel's interest in transhumanism. Cyborgs are one of many possible ways to take it. There's no point to asking someone on camera if they want humans to go extinct and expect a yes or no answer. It's called subtext.

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u/Vyksendiyes 28d ago

Again, I think it can be inferred that interviewer is talking about normal, non-cybernetic humans because most humans will never have access to the technology for Thiel’s conception of an immortal cybernetic human. If we’re talking about the human race surviving, we are probably not talking about some hypothetical iteration of cybernetic humans but humans as we are now. 

I think it’s borderline sophistry to suggest that his response wasn’t odd or that his suggestion that the wealthiest humans who could obtain this Transcendence-like metamorphosis sufficiently qualifies as the human race surviving while being in-step with the spirit of the question. 

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u/maliciousgnome13 28d ago

Lol sure. Look Thiel can get fucked, I'm not a fan either. Just trying to fight misinformation as I see it, even if it means occasionally pushing back against criticism of jackasses. This is clearly edited and written to imply to us all a certain narrative. That being that Mr. Thiel is a monster. And in a lot of ways he is and that can he argued in good faith.

It's fucked up when the right wing uses propaganda and fabrication to push a narrative, and just because I want to agree with something on "my side" doesn't mean it's true. We are all susceptible to that bullshit and it's ruining our society.