interestingasfuck
Billionaire Peter Thiel hesitates to answer whether the human race should survive in the future
Discussion
Success can erroneously convince people they are smarter than they are. Success has erroneously convinced Thiel he is smarter than YOU are.
Absolutely this.
Thiel is extremely powerful and does basically only terrible things with that power, but he's also pretty stupid. Whenever he talks, he spends minutes stumbling through inane ideas that people are over-charitable toward because he's a billionaire.
When do we get the rich powerful people that only do wonderful things?
I think that's actually an important idea to push back on. We already have a rich and powerful entity that can do wonderful things, it's called government.
It's obviously slow-moving and fallible, but it's the best system for doing things for the common good. And if you don't believe me, just know that the billionaires know this. That's why they spend billions on controlling it so that it can best serve them.
This is really lost on the American electorate. They've been convinced by decades of propaganda that government is ineffective, but in reality it's voters who allow it to become ineffective by electing greedy assholes who allocate the use of OUR tax dollars on nothing but defense and subsidies to oil and gas companies. If we just elected people who understand the value of investing in citizens through social programs like headstart, SNAP, and (cannot stress this one enough) universal healthcare, then we could live in a society much closer on the spectrum to utopia instead of the current dystopian trajectory we're hurling forth on.
The way to get there is campaign finance reform (overturn citizens united) and election reform (ranked choice or anything other than FPP).
FDR is arguably the most popular President of all time. They came up with term limits because of him. He gave his speech proposing a second bill of rights at an SOTU! Can you imagine anything like this being said by either party today? Billionaires know that a competently run government could indeed produce great results for it’s citizens. That’s why they spend every moment trying to wreck government or slander it.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
I love this and had never seen or read it before. Thanks for sharing.
I wish more progressives would incorporate it into their speeches. They’ll try but harder to smear them with the Communist label reading the words of FDR.
Dude they rigged the system so that we don't get to vote for candidates that actually want real change. That's why they won't allow any 3rd parties on center stage debates. Doesn't matter what the electorate does anymore really.
I came a little when reading this. YES GOD YES YESSSSS
Welcome to my OnlyGovs.
Would totally sign up. If only bureaucracy and socialism were as sexy as a round butt
With the current system, never. It rewards sociopathy and punishes empathy if your goal is to be a billionaire.
We don't. For an individual to amass that much money and power they, necessarily, are sociopaths and not overly bright. Pro-social, intelligent people don't engage in the types of things that allow you to accrue that much money, nor use it to acquire power. It's just a false premise that there can be a benevolent elite.
The idolatry of the rich
same thing with Marc Andreessen. He speaks like a 7th grader trying to impress a 5th grader, and people all clap at the end because his bank account.
This is why it's irritating to see the media interview and get opinions from wealthy people like they know what they're talking about. It's like they want us to forget SMEs (subject matter experts) exist for different topics.
I hate seeing articles or interviews where "So and so billionaire says this because the media thinks us commoners should care about their opinions"
I just saw a few weeks ago where the Duolingo CEO said "AI is a better teacher than humans", and then a week later he wanted to retract what he said.
Yes, the first thing I thought when I saw this was why are they asking him? What does he know about it? And why is his opinion worth any more than anyone else's?
This idea that smart people get rich and that the rich somehow earned their money is as ingrained as it is wrong.
Reminds me of the studies that show billionaires tend to be around the 90th percentile in terms of intelligence. Smart enough to be confident within an average group of people but not so smart they can see their entitlement or see when they take advantage of others. Smart enough to come up with justifications for self-serving actions, but not smart enough for epistemic humility.
I suspect future research (maybe already done) will reveal there are certain personality disorders that tend to go with extreme wealth.
I really like this trend of referring to extreme wealth as "gross."
Statistically speaking, the personality trait that most accurately predicts wealth is "being born to a wealthy family"
What about narcissistically speaking?
Narcissistically speaking, there's.... there's.... there's just so many innate questions that... that... go into that you see
yeah but also being born to a wealthy family makes you smarter
better nutrition, better education, a lower stress upbringing, etc, all of these things tend to make people smarter on average
Isn't that narcissism?
Something happens above a billion dollars net worth that short circuits a lot of peoples ability to think clearly
Peter “im a fucking ghoul” Thiel.
I’m not at all religious, but if there were and antichrist, I think he’d be it
Not charismatic enough.
Exactly not enough followers who love him blindly.
Charismatic, followers who love him.... maybe a sign on their foreheads like a red hat... hmmm..
Nah, the antichrist will be known as "the little horn". Like a guy called Bugle, or something like that. When we see someone named after a little horn rise to power, that's when we should worry. Look out for a guy name bugle or cornet, or something like that.
Also, early in his reign, he will arrange a peace agreement that will bring an end to a war in the middle east, involving Israel. So look out for anything like that.
Oh, and he will very obviously and publicly embody and act in ways which are literally the antithesis of how christ would act, yet christians will somehow be enamored by him and see him as a savior
So, nothing to worry about until we see anything like that. I'm sure it will be really obvious when it happens, and we'll clear things up real quick.
Like, he would be named after an actual musical instrument, but shorter, maybe?
I don't know anyone with that name, so, move along, nothing to see here.
Have you not met that Copeland Pastor guy?
Fucking sociopaths.
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.
That was the whole point of the movie; to get attention at what’s happening right now
It's a really hilarious comment because the movie could not be more on-the-nose about what it was saying.
"We literally have the resources to take over the world."
"You know, this stuff about evil billionaires does kinda remind me of Evil Billionaires: A documentary. Funny, that."
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).
Steve carrells characters ideals were in part based on thiel
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
Imagine a co-founder of fucking PAYPAL being this unjustly powerful in our modern world.
Well, imagine no longer because life is stranger than fiction.
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
Eugenicists, all of them.
He subconsciously assumes that everyone else is as evil as himself, and thus can't justify the perpetuation of the human race.
I think this is correct. In this interview he genuinely seemed to not understand that many people have altruistic motives.
Peter Thiel would have to be human to care one way or the other.
Nah, he's just spent his entire life caring about exactly one human.
Rich people are just garbage huh?
One thing I've taken away from interviews with Thiel is that I don't think he's really all that smart. He's not dumb but I've never been really blown away by his points or his intellect.
The only billionaire I'm convinced is actually intelligent is Gates.
And even he seems like just an above average... not like a one in a lifetime intellect.
People might be shocked, but... it turns out that becoming a billionaire may be more about luck, leverage, and good fortune than actual merit...
>it turns out that becoming a billionaire may be more about luck, leverage, and good fortune than actual merit...
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book about this.
“Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky--but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”
The people who are a bit smarter then average are the dangerous ones.
Dunning-Kreuger could doom us all.
Yep
Millionaires are rich, billionaires are a next level. Also, this very rich guy, Mr. Thiel is hypocritical piece of trash. He’s gay yet he supports at anti lbgt policies and lgbt or otherwise his policies limit the rights and freedoms of others. If billionaires like Peter Thiel voice anti freedom policies, that’s all the more reason to judge them. Harshly.
People used to think I was crazy for saying there is only a class war. This and everything happening politically in the US is exactly what I meant. Now, it's just laid bare. With KGB/FSB like precision, and guys like him or agents he pays to be like him. A traitor and the real fifth column.
You really can't become that wealthy if you're not a piece of shit. That much wealth cannot be attained by your own effort alone, you have to actively take from others. You have to turn a blind eye to any damage you cause. You have to avoid accountability like the plague. People with a moral compass generally don't end up as wealthy as sociopaths.
Replace "rich people" with billionaires, and the answer is yes. There's a big difference between rich and what Thiel is.
Show the full answer instead of leaving it ambiguous. If he's really that strange he can't yes then his full answer would show that anyway.
After a pause he says "Yes, but I also would like us to radically solve these problems"
I was actually quite interested to hear what he had to say but unfortunately yeah, it's just as bad.
The presenter annoys me by interrupting but listening to him try to stumble out a half-baked "let's play God and the Christians are all for it" was painful.
Granted, I sit on the other side of the fence where I think humanity's best form is a return to nature using technology to enhance (imo the future is in biotech, but working with nature to enhance the world rather than eliminating it completely).
Thiel believes technology is a means of imposing his ideas on everyone as an alternative to democracy because he flat out says his ideas would be too impopular and would never win elections.
He's the very definition of a technofascist.
The dude out right claims that without God for people to look up to, they look to each other and become envious. He thinks without some great hierarchy we all fall into the worst versions of ourselves. Almost certainly projection backed by confirmation bias.
Hell yeah! Use our intelligence to make the world and its creatures live in harmony in the paradise we have!
It feels like some people don't understand that they are a PART of the world, not just here existing/consuming because nothing can stop them.
JFC this guy is so hard to listen to.
Jesus! It's like listening to a moderately smart person think he's super intelligent. Like a an 18 year old who read Nietzsche for the first time.
He made some smart business decisions and now he thinks he's fucking Einstein with a side of Socrates.
He thinks his technology will help people, but he is quite authoritarian. His technology Palantir, is already being used by Israel to hit "targets" and ICE is invested in the technology for it's own surveillance. It's likely his other ideas will be used for control by the rich.
Also, his answer and story reminds me of Pantheon series on Netflix. Those who know, know.
Thank you, I actually think this is a deep philosophical question, and deserves proper thought.
Should the human race survive? I’m a person, so I’m biased so I’d say yes, everybody I love and care about is human. But, I also know, one day humanity will be gone, everything we created will be gone, our planet will be gone, our solar system will be gone, and the universe will just move on. We won’t even be a blip on the radar. What made us will be part of something else, somewhere else in the solar system.
So, should humanity survive? Or should we value our existence and respect the universe to create a better world for humanity and all of the creatures that live with us, while we are here? We’re already playing with borrowed time.
Ultimately, we have to make ourselves worth preserving, not for the universe, because the universe doesn’t care, but for ourselves and for the rest of everything that lives on the tiny pebble we live on.
Billionaires become billionaires by treating other humans like crap :/
I watched the interview. He was asked multiple questions at once, possibly causing a buffer in his brain.
He said yes the human race surviving shortly after this.
He does also look like a reptilian.
I am not a fan of him. But it is obvious that the video is cut short.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/peter-thiel-billionaires-abandoning-humanity/
Douthat: I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?
Thiel: Uh——
Douthat: You’re hesitating.
Thiel: Well, I don’t know. I would—I would——
Douthat: This is a long hesitation!
Thiel: There’s so many questions implicit in this.
Douthat: Should the human race survive?
Thiel: Yes.
Douthat: OK.
Thiel: But I also would like us to radically solve these problems.
I actually think this is a huge question with loads of implications for what you think a future in maybe millions of years should look like and that not something I think about every day and have a good idea of what I want. Lets say for example evolution. In order to still be humans we would have to actively preserve "this" genome. Is that something we want? I don't think so.....
But also this is one of these typical "just cut him off before he can answer so he looks bad" kind of videos. Quite possible with context and his answer this guy is still trash, but this editing is just biased. Also the title and the content is not the same.
It’s not just that. Literally look from any other perspective other than human, and we are nothing but a pure force of destruction. Yes, we make art and music and science and all that but all that is only important to humans.
Right? From a certain perspective we're not much different from a swarm of locusts, except we have much farther reach and destroy much more than crops.
Obviously as a human I want the answer to be "yes", but should it be? That's a much harder question. I would probably hesitate too if I had to come up with an answer on the spot.
Was early PayPal the origin story for all our 2025 villains?
Watch the full video. He's trying to answer multiple questions that weren't asked in this clause, but were part of the conversation. He's thinking of what the singularity might mean, he's thinking of all the people that likely opt into non biological existence, and is clearly against most of those things. He answers a clear "yes" later on. I'm not saying he's a good dude, but this is clearly out of context and simply looks worse than it is.
Dude hates himself, so bad person to ask.
You can see the transcripts there as well. Basically, he believes in transhuminism where "humanity endures" is a loaded question to him because he hopes we will transcend our mortal/fleshy selves.
Based on our performance so far in 2025, I’d say we haven’t done much to show we’re worth saving
Just wait until our performance in 2026.
I would even say "on our performance until 2025 (included)". Plenty of horror stories in our history to show we are not worth saving as species.
Yeah kind of suprised by the reaction in here... If an asteroid comes and wipes us out, not super upset with that outcome. Just make it a big one, none of this choking and freezing to death shit.
I'm not sure the "human race surviving" matters much to the grand scheme of the universe.
Yes I'd agree. I don't think humans are really a added feature for this earth, I'd say that we are parasites.
Endure through what?
Also, I'd be more interested in his response instead of focusing on the hesitation.
I'm not a billionaire nor trying to be one and I struggle with this question. Seeing the state of the world, why should we survive besides our instinct to do so?
He also was like trying to sell Greta Thunberg as possibly being the antichrist and Ross was like “doesn’t that stuff line up with you and Palentir more?” And he did not have a good answer 😝
That's a lizard
Peter Thiel = The Reptile
Oh it’s actually an anagram, Jesus
Of fuck. There ARE lizard people in charge eating babies!
They aren't eating babies they are taking the thingy from their blood...I forgot what it was called.
Adrenochrome
Close enough man, close enough
ETA: Palindrome was what I thought. 🤦♂️
The fact that palindrome isn’t a palindrome pisses me off
But aibohphobia, the fear of palindromes, is.
Those sick fucks!
So you'd be afraid of the word that describes your fear? Brilliant!
Racecar
Race fast, safe car
Wait, let's hear him out lol.
https://i.redd.it/rrnmcsch3qbf1.gif
I’m sold.
He tells it like it is.
Yeah if this were in line with Thiel the lizard would be offering zero public anything and nearly all of you return to being illiterate indentured serfs. You're executed and turned into fertilizer on your 55th birthday if you make it that far.
I don’t know what he is, but he certainly seems to lack any humanity.
These sick fucks who prefer "wealth" to people without understanding that wealth only has the value that other people put on it. Bill Burr was absolutely right about billionaires.
Imagine a world where it's just the billionaires left and nobody else and how quickly that would devolve, especially as they all want to rivale eachother for remaining power and there can only be one.
They would all die because none of them can actually do anything for themselves
They spend all this money on bunkers that need staffing, better hope those they they keep close don't decide to help out the greater good from the inside
I wish I had a link to it, but there was an interview with a guy talking to a lot of these folk about the future and how all these billionaires were making these various doomsday bunkers and whatnot. Apparently the dude was a consultant type with helping these people with making the bunker of their dreams or whatever. And one billionaire finally asked the million dollar question that left everybody reeling. "If society gets wiped out, and our money loses value, then what keeps our guards loyal to us?"
Apparently consultant man was banking on them just not wondering about it, knowing that all these guards would just end up giving their bosses the double-tap special and saving their own families to repopulate after the man made catastrophe brought about by said billionaire's and their greed for more and more.
It's like a shitier Highlander
That's how you become a billionaire
Standard small brained sociopath. Studies show their amygdala’s are smaller, the part of the brain that processes emotion and fear.
Let's not throw everyone else with a smaller amygdala under the bus here. Sociopaths also have an under active and smaller prefrontal cortex, an abnormal corpus callosum, and muted emotional pathways leading to more high risk behaviours too.
He's one of the hands guiding the majority of politicians.
Anagram fits
r/aliens would get a kick outta this
Some New Agers say he is a Draco.
https://preview.redd.it/7fuya7ux4qbf1.png?width=1053&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca577a46dac76e5e996c7ce61a9e7e61c9114aec
Like, at least Sauron knows what he wants.
Jokes on you I WANT TO BE A DINOSAUR!
Like what part of this aren't you getting Pete
Why does he get to decide?!
He has the wealth to create the cause and let the effect play out.
We don’t have act in his play
We really do though, unless you are homeless and don't buy anything, its all tied to the same fucked up system. And they made being homeless illegal.
Luigi didnt play…
We don’t. We’re all just too cowardly to exert controls. All you’d need is a handful of countries (maybe 5-7?) to enact tax policies targeting the uber rich (read: billionaires) and we could rapidly bring things in line.
They just make too much money for the wealthy class, and politicians, just below this line. Why would they kill the goose that lays the golden eggs?
he doesn't. You see, any murican asshole that makes any significant amount goes public - flaunting wealth and opinions but they don't k know the pitchforks and guillotines. One day they maybe find out and they'll slither back into hiding. idk.
He does get to decide, he's running the government. Peter Thiel’s Palantir poses a grave threat to Americans | Robert Reich | The Guardian https://share.google/1TNLUZy3Vs28UtveQ
Correct. He's arrogant, self-assured, and malevolent. I hope all the bad things in life happen to him and that someone is there to grind his face in it when it happens.
That was before drones and automated factories to make them bud.
Things are not looking bright for the next people's uprising against the rich.
And just remember, they're only showing us the happy shiny robots that are in factories. In no way should anyone ever think that anyone would ever be developing military applications for robotic humans.....
Thankfully the battery technology just doesn't exist for there to be an army, or even a small militia of robots yet. Even if you allow for a super secret advanced battery that's 10 years ahead of what we have now, it's just not feasible. And I'm not speaking as an optimist here, just a realist. I have no doubt that if the oligarchs had an army of robots today, they'd already be rounding us up like the lizardmen that they are in their cold hearts.
It's drone swarms. Cheap little drones with unreliable facial recognition and small explosive payloads. But hundreds of them. It's already being built and advertised for a fucking subscription.
They don't need good batteries, they don't need incredibly good AI, they just need to be relentless and endless.
Making Mark Zuckerberg look human by comparison is a fucking impressive talent.
Yeah based on that video, it's hard for me to hold that viewpoint against him given we can't be sure he's part of the human race.
hes funding projects like how to transfer human conciousness, eternal life and how to grow clones and de-age.
He wants 90% to die out so he can be overlord. These people watch movies like matrix, bladerunner and altered carbon and black mirror and instead of going "Fuck thats a bleak future", they go "Fuck thats amazing! How can i benefit the most from that future!"
They'd rather be kings of a heap of toxic ash than citizens of a functional democracy.
Exactly. He doesn't want everyone in the human race to continue.
He really wants to thin the herd, have a small group of elites running things. Rich people used to have to tolerate the great unwashed masses, but now there's robots to do all the dirty work.
This guy is the same breed as Mark Zuckerberg, fairly certain at this point none of them are actually humans
They are humans, we are the worst creatures on earth, and we've elevated these soulless fucks to the top of the food chain.
Their mindset is very much that the human race is the most incredible thing on earth, but that we are squandering earth's natural resources in the vain belief that all human life is equal and worthwhile, and that the human race simply won't advance to its full potential if we continue burning through our resources at the rate we are.
So their solution is actually to reinvent the human race as just a tiny percentage of the world's brightest minds, so that they can re-do it properly.
And the way they achieve that is by speedrunning a global economic catastrophe that will lead to massive famine and ultimately death.
Just absolutely unbelievable arrogance and hubris.
yup. ‘titanic’ was on tv last night, and when i sat down to watch, it was the part where rose told her social-climbing mom to shut up and face the reality that the ship is going to sink and 50% of all passengers are going to die. overhearing this was her douchebag fiance who responds, “Not the better half.”
as you said, a few people in this world are privileged enough to be so blindly full of arrogance and hubris.
we've elevated these soulless fucks to the top of the food chain.
speedrunning a global economic catastrophe that will lead to massive famine and ultimately death.
Spot on!
For someone so convinced to be smartest person on the planet (and getting rich on paypal was LUCK not brains) it's so fucking stupid to believe you are going to have crops to harvest, animals to raise, and clean water to drink. They can't even wipe their own asses.
He makes it easy to hate him.
Its like accumulating billions make people completely hollow inside, or maybe thats actually a requirement
If an advanced alien race came to visit us tomorrow, do you think they would be impressed by all of the shareholder value we’ve generated?
You don't accumulate billions, you wrest billions from the mouths of starving people.
Guys, I'm a lizard person. We don't claim Peter. Sorry
as ugly inside as outside
Yep. Peter "the human race shouldn't survive but I paid for new zealand citizenship and built an underground bunker there anyway because im the exception" Thiel
I’m only realizing, because of this thread, that most people don’t know Peter Theil is a “Rationalist” member that’s big in the Bay Area. It’s basically a religion without the community aspect. Mostly a collective of rich people who believe they need to build a world where AI is king. Because if they don’t, when the AI rise. Anyone who doesn’t serve the ai or help build the world for them. Will die or be put in some sort of hell.
It’s bat shit crazy. These people are not smart. Just very delusional.
He literally looks like a ghoul that is somehow simultaneously dessicated whilst also appearing to be oozing some sort of... sebaceous excretion? Like he looks like if you touched him, he'd be damp and sticky to the touch but would also audibly crackle immediately upon contact?
I don't know. If you were going to paint his portrait, I feel like you'd need to use expired oil paint and various industrial sludges and/or slimes, and you'd leave the canvas (prefefably pretreated with burlap and epoxy) out in the desert for a few decades... just to get the vibe right.
And also the painting would have a smell. The kind of smell that makes you think that either something very disturbing has literally just occurred, or it's an ominous olfactory omen meant to deter you from some vague but certain misery in your possible future.
Lizards are chill and like the sun....thats a primate on to much screen time, ket, and money.
I mean, as a low-middle income human, I feel like I might hesitate too. A lot of humans suck. Including Peter Thiel
He’s a prime example of humans who suck; he has absolute abundance in his life and still insists on fucking things over for others because his extreme wealth has drastically diminished his sense of humanity.
His greatest attribute has also become his greatest weakness. Full stop. He is not like us. He will never be like us. I wouldn't even hand him a broom if I needed a floor swept. His privelidge would screw it all up.
That’s what extreme wealth is doing - it’s corrupting the mind.