If anyone wants to be invited to house parties in London, UK, I'm happy to invite anyone who emails theo+hn@torchandzen.com!
Number of people ranges from 10 to 50, activities from talking and eating to picnics and dancing.
I seem to be liking Peter Thiel's ideas more and more. I found this conversation quite fascinating. It feels like he is focused, intentional, clearheaded, well-read. I disagree with a lot of his premises, but if we want to take technological progress seriously, I find Peter Thiel amongst the few sensible voices in Silicon Valley.
For example, it's quite common in a discussion for people to not really listen but just jump from one topic to another just so they can have more space to speak. I like this part where Peter subtly calls out Ross on this:
> Thiel: We’re jumping around a lot of things. So, again, the critique I was saying is: They’re not ambitious enough.
I loved the Antichrist-Armageddon analogy too:
> But I think we have an answer to this plot hole. The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate.
I've been getting Douthat confused with Perot, so I really don't know much about him. But his behavior didn't make a good impression on me and I'm curious as to what the significance behind his residency with the Times is.
This also my first time actually reading/listening to Peter Thiel. Except for the one time I read the first few pages of Zero to One (before I knew who he was) and realized that we have divergent beliefs on the nature of life.
To Douthat's credit, he did us a service by raising the contradiction behind Thiel's arguments—that his business interests belie his existential concerns in a way that suggest that what he's doing here is outlining a self-fulfilling "prophecy" that puts him alongside the Antichrist figure both men evoked.
All of this is masked by the banal historical, cultural, Biblical, and industry references that Douthat willfully leads him toward making.
Interestingly enough, to Thiel's credit, the whole "trans-" thing was interesting.
My problem with Peter Thiel is he’s too political in his speech. It’s not all consuming —- In this interview he’s not so bad, but in others he’ll outright lie and push MAGA talking points in ways that are not purely objective.
In one interview he said outright if Democrats won in 2024 it would be the end of Democracy, because of great replacement theory, while also in other interviews basically saying he doesn’t like Democracy because populous’ will never come around to his views.
Thiel (on the Antichrist): I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but one question is -- and this was a plot hole in all these Antichrist books people wrote -- how does the Antichrist take over the world? He gives these demonic, hypnotic speeches and people just fall for it. And so it’s this plot hole. ... It’s totally implausible.
In another timeline, the interviewer from the New York Times would respond, "Peter, as a Trump supporter ... seriously?"
But no, that's not our timeline. In this one, absurdities grow unquestioned until they turn into atrocities.
Funnily enough I said my native language is Greek but then it responded with an error and reset my onboarding guide. Then, I lied that my native language is English, which worked. But now it calls me Anton, rather than the name I said I have!
I disagree with the premise of this article, which is: the internet used to be so nice when it wasn't the center of humanity's activities but now everything sucks.
I read this: "I am sick and tired of having all of these costs externalized directly into my fucking face", as: "I am sick and tired of doing something for the world and the world not appreciating it because they want to do their own things".
Lack of appreciation is underrated as a problem because it's abstracted away due to the mechanics of the free market ("if you don't want it, just don't buy it"). Yet, markets are quite foundational in humanity's activities and a market is place where everybody can put a stall. Now, Drew can't have his stall and he's angry. But anger is rarely part of the solution.
His path is that of anger, unfortunately, with some hate added in too:
> "If you personally work on developing LLMs et al, know this: I will never work with you again, and I will remember which side you picked when the bubble bursts."
