
Peter Thiel: “Hypnotic Mass Phenomena” - ovi256
https://www.weltwoche.ch/ausgaben/2018-29/artikel/en-hypnotische-massenphanomene-die-weltwoche-ausgabe-29-2018.html
======
untog
> The mentioning of his name sends shockwaves through Silicon Valley

> And there he is: Rather short for being an internet giant, Mr. Thiel has a
> strong, dynamic appearance and an extraordinary quickness in his thought.

This is cringeworthy stuff, as introductions go.

I don't hide that I'm not particularly fond of Peter Thiel, but I'd absolutely
love to read an in-depth interview with him. This is... not that.

\- Asks one shallow question about the "diversity myth" then immediately
pivots to "so you like Star Wars?".

\- Asks about his New Zealand citizenship... but in the context of him being a
fan of Tolkien, not probing any of the widely-asked questions about how he
obtained it.

\- He throws out lines like "We live in a world where there is too much
welfare and where work is undervalued" and it's entirely unquestioned.

\- "What’s your IQ?"

------
rando444
_> Because in a democracy, we believe that the average person should be able
to make some judgements: Do you like the funny man with the strange hairdo or
do you like the mean grandmother for president in the United States? These are
some common sense things that people should be able to debate. And if you say
that you are not allowed to think about that, then you probably should not be
allowed to think about anything._

Who on Earth is this directed at?

This is the kind of rhetoric you expect from 3rd and 4th graders.

I feel secondary embarrassment as an adult just knowing that someone that
should be a peer or higher thinks like this.

~~~
Waterluvian
49something percent of voting Americans are the audience for that kind of
rhetoric. And I think we fail ourselves when we fail to accept that a vast
quantity of people live and vote with their emotional brain and not their
logical brain.

I feel that one of the largest struggles, one of the largest causes of divide,
is that to logical actors, the concept of an emotional actor is just so
invalid that we believe them to be fundamentally wrong and broken and in need
of fixing and education.

I'm not arguing that irrationality and emotion-driven voting is an equal
alternative to rationalism. I think my point is that we can't just dismiss it
as broken and in need of fixing. It's how our brains can work and it's a valid
state of being.

I'm 31 and run upstairs in a panic when I switch the basement light off. Don't
shake your head at how much of a fool I am, empathize with how I'm still
sometimes driven by 3 million years of evolutionary practice of running away
from predators.

Edit: Clarified in a child reply why my train of thought went in this
direction as a response to parent.

~~~
emsy
I think his point was rather that people are expected not to think about who
they vote for, even abstractly, but vote what they are socially coerced to.
This is certainly true for the last US election more than any other I can
remember.

~~~
Waterluvian
Yeah. I think I'm trying to make that connection but might be failing with my
words. Picking people you like, can have a beer with, look and feel like a
winner, etc. is all, I think, driven by emotion, not patient, rational
analysis. Being socially coerced is just an extension of that. You want to
feel included, feel like a winner, so you'll make the choices that feel right,
even if they're analytically wrong.

------
VeejayRampay
The ego on those people, it never fails to amaze me, condescendingly judging
entire continents with thousands of years of history.

~~~
api
I think you're succumbing to a distortion brought about by Thiel's wealth and
status. Ordinary people make blanket oversimplified statements all the time
but because these people don't have such elevated status those statements are
not taken as seriously. As a result they don't sound quite so glib.

As a general rule the higher your perceived status the more criticism you get.

Another example would be Elon's Twitter spat. Some random dude on the Internet
gets into it with another random dude on the Internet and calls him some bad
names and nobody cares and nobody takes it seriously, but when it's two high-
profile people it's an international story.

~~~
salawat
"Noblesse oblige". Or if you prefer the more modern version, "With great power
comes great responsibility."

It isn't just a "distortion" or quirk. It's a social obligation that goes a
long way back. The new American billionaire would do well to remember that
their state of privilege comes with a whole new set of do's and don'ts that if
they were smart they would pay a good deal more attention to.

The fact that many of the founding father's abhorred the idea of an
aristocratic class developing is beside the point. If these magnates wish not
to live under the microscope, them mayhaps they should look into actually
doing something about the positive feedback loops they have exploited to get
to the point they are at.

I'm sure the labor force would appreciate the wage growth, and an end to under
the table non-compete clauses, and forced arbitration clauses.

~~~
api
Yes, that's what I mean, but here's the thing. Elon (for example) is _nuevo
riche_. People who are brought up in elite families are usually taught
noblesse oblige as part of their upbringing.

------
lispm
> The odd thing is that the main parts of the NATO alliance seem to be in
> Europe, not in America.

That was the point. Seen from the US, it is much better to defend NATO in
Europe, then doing it in the US. That was also the reason why West Germany was
rebuild after the war: better use Germany as a member of NATO and fight the
war against the USSR in Germany. For example huge tank battles in Northern
Germany... Germany was set up with all kinds of military installations as the
battle ground for WWIII in Europe.

Seen from the US, there was nothing odd about it.

~~~
carlmr
Yeah, this was kind of upsetting to me that he bought into that. NATO is
saving the US money for all of what they're doing in the Middle East and
Africa.

------
sillysaurus3
_> Peter Thiel, six months back, you announced to move your company to Los
Angeles, citing doubts about the future of Silicon Valley. And yet, here we
are at the headquarters of Thiel Capital in San Francisco!

We are moving in August, keeping just one of the venture funds here in San
Francisco. The judgement call that I am making is that in the next decade it
will be less centralized where technology happens and that the incredible
premium on this location will not be quite as big anymore._

I'm shocked that everyone here is focused on his politics when he's making one
of the biggest moves SV has seen.

Sama seems to partially agree: [http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-
muove](http://blog.samaltman.com/e-pur-si-muove)

------
aap_
Why was this flagged? I think it was a rather interesting read.

~~~
plinkplonk
Peter Thiel seems to be persona non grata in HN circles because he supported
candidate Trump (in 2016) and later joined some sort of inner circle when
Trump became president (is what I can make out from half a world away).

This kind of flagging is borderline insanity imo. (I have no stake in US or SF
politics / social phenomena)

------
api
This is a very good interview. The click bait title doesn't do it justice.

I find myself agreeing with a huge fraction of what Thiel says, but I also
find myself unable to actually _agree_ with him.

The block for me is admittedly his politics. It's not that his political views
may be different from mine. That's fine. I have friends who are Marxists,
democratic socialists, Christian conservatives, moderate libertarians, and
admirers of Ayn Rand. But I have an Overton window just like everyone else and
some things just don't fit into it.

I have no friends who are fascists and I've dropped people because they start
espousing those ideas. I also have no friends who are totalitarian Soviet-
style communists, and there is at least one case where I've backed away from
someone for seriously espousing the idea that the USSR had it right all along.
Advocacy of totalitarian ideologies with demonstrated histories of massive
bloodshed is outside my Overton window. I've also backed away from people for
espousing racism, misogyny, and other kinds of intellectualized assholery.

To me these are ideologies that go beyond just disagreement about how best to
structure a society, how powerful government should be, or what its priorities
should be. I think the thing they have in common is that they explicitly
advocate hurting people and more importantly believe that you can actually
make the world a better place by hurting certain people. You can make the
world a better place by inflicting pain.

So back to Thiel and his politics. Nowhere in his writing have I ever heard
him explicitly advocate any of those things, but the company he keeps is
another story. He _seems_ to hang around with a fair number of explicit
doctrinaire fascists. I could also say the same thing about Trump. Trump does
not necessarily explicitly espouse fascism (though there are some debatable
statements), but his most ardent and enthusiastic supporters are fascists.

So here we go. I admire and agree with so much of what Thiel says about
business, technology, and the state of the world, but how is it possible that
these apparently very clear and good ideas can coexist with explicit advocacy
of genocide? Or if he doesn't believe that maybe he should reconsider the
company he keeps.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_I have no friends who are fascists and I 've dropped people because they
start espousing those ideas._

 _To me these are ideologies that go beyond just disagreement about how best
to structure a society, how powerful government should be, or what its
priorities should be. I think the thing they have in common is that they
explicitly advocate hurting people and more importantly believe that you can
actually make the world a better place by hurting certain people. You can make
the world a better place by inflicting pain._

I think the defeat of Germany in WW2 has proved that's true.

 _So back to Thiel and his politics. Nowhere in his writing have I ever heard
him explicitly advocate any of those things, but the company he keeps is
another story. He seems to hang around with a fair number of explicit
doctrinaire fascists._

 _explicit advocacy of genocide_

Since this article's off the front page, it probably won't hurt to delve into
politics for a bit here. So I have to ask: What specifically are you talking
about?

~~~
api
I'm referring to his association with a certain milieu of people who are
important figures in the development and promotion of what is today termed the
alt-right.

Association with movements like that (or the others I mentioned) is sort of
special. Movements like the alt-right are different from (for example)
mainstream Christian conservatism or Randian Objectivism or democratic
socialism.

Totalitarian movements whose goals would be considered insane or evil by a
large number of people adopt the structure of a manipulative cult. When you
encounter the Scientology guy on campus he offers to give you a weird kind of
personality test. You have to be pretty deep in before you find out about
galactic emperor Xenu.

The outermost surface of the alt-right (termed the alt-light in its own
terminology) are people who superficially advocate nationalism, question
political correctness, and so on. A layer below that you have a more hard-core
layer that introduces racism, explicit anti-democratic strong-man politics,
and misogyny. A layer below that you have the hard core of the movement where
you find explicit advocacy of absolute totalitarianism, terrorism, and
genocide.

Maybe I'm wrong but what I see is an onion that looks like:

Peter Thiel -> Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopolis -> Richard Spencer
-> Andrew Auernheimer, 4chan /pol

The people on the right hand side represent the true beliefs and goals of the
entire onion. You see it revealed in things like the Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville where the layers mix.

Compare this to for example Randian objectivism or democratic socialism.
Everyone in those movements more or less espouses the same ideas. There's no
onion because there's not much to hide.

In general when I see a movement with this kind of structure where the
innermost people seem to espouse different ideas than the outermost I see it
as a huge red flag. What are they hiding? The other thing about movements like
these is that if you associate seriously and persistently with the outer
layers of the onion I assume you probably know about and accept the inner
layers too.

I was deeply saddened and frustrated when I saw evidence of Thiel's backing of
that movement. Zero to One is still by far the best book about business I've
ever read, and I found myself agreeing with I'd say about 90% of it. Thiel is
also one of the few people who has seen what I've seen for years, namely that
core technological development (what I call fundamental innovation) has slowed
since the early 1970s. I rationalize it by acknowledging the human capacity
for compartmentalization. It's possible for someone to have very rational
views in one area and be completely nuts in others.

~~~
ewzimm
I'm curious about why you accept the idea that the smallest, most extreme
versions of certain ideologies are the true beliefs, while the more widespread
and moderate versions are just nascent extremists. The extremists definitely
advocate this kind of idea, but why accept it?

If you accept this kind of layered idea of right-wing ideas, you could just as
easily accept the same construction for the left-wing, saying that democratic
socialists are just nascent Stalinists, and that totalitarian socialists
represent their true beliefs.

In a way, this has been playing out since at least the French Revolution.
There's a very clear connection between the modern left and the left wing at
the Estate General. Of course, the name has remained the same, but also the
core idea of remaking society as rational and egalitarian has persisted. The
idea that we can be wiser than traditional culture with modern insignts also
drives the technology industry. But it has undeoubtably led to unimaginable
suffering and raised up many totalitarians.

I'd offer that the extremists do not in fact represent the true versions of
either left or right-wing ideologis. They are idealogues caught in the mental
trap of pursuing the purity of their ideas without the ability to accept that
ideas are only abstract expressions. They may even believe that their ideas
are beyond abstractions, as you will see with may people who advocate for
racial purity. They want to find something real, beyond ideas, although in
reality they just found one more idea that won't offer the satisfaction
they're looking for.

So don't believe the extremists when they tell you that everyone remotely like
them will eventually be just like them. That's just elevating their power. If
people like you cut off ties with anyone conservative because you think they
might be proto-fascists, the diversity of thought within their social group
will shrink until eventually maybe the extremists will win after all.

~~~
api
Those are very good points.

I haven't stated my own personal views. I think I'd call myself a kind of
disaffected libertarian. I don't use the L-word much anymore because it's been
twisted and debased just like every other word in political discourse that
used to mean something. I'd say I'm disaffected because I've sat here for a
few years with my mouth hanging open watching a large number of libertarians
put on Nazi brown shirts without blinking. That's a little weird given that
libertarianism is supposed to enshrine ideas like voluntarism and equal
rights. It makes me doubt the basic functional integrity of the human brain.

I also kind of consider myself a liberal, but like the other L word I don't
use that much anymore either. It's also been debased to the point that it
basically doesn't mean anything.

Put those words together and pretend they mean something and you could say I'm
a voluntarist who is skeptical of authority, believes in minimal government
and decentralization, but also believes our goal should be to improve the
condition of the world for conscious beings.

That means I'm willing to entertain the possibility that consistency on
libertarianism might at times merit compromise in favor of a higher
consistency on topics like basic human dignity and well-being. I think health
care might be one such case. Extreme environmental problems might be another.

The inverse is also true from time to time. There are times when we must
tolerate awful things (child porn on encrypted networks, money laundering with
cryptocurrency, gun violence if we are free to own guns) because the only
other practical options on the table involve too great an intrusion into
liberty and personal autonomy or tend to lead to a slippery slope where
further intrusions are inevitable.

As such I can find plenty to dislike on both the left and the right and there
are definitely "onions" on the left.

But the alt-right is something else entirely. I have never in all my years on
this planet seen a more repulsive and vile political movement. I consider the
movement evil, and I think this is the first time in my life I have ever
actually used the E-word to describe anything in the political realm. I have a
tough time thinking of any left-wing movement that's quite as bad and that has
more than a tiny handful of followers. I guess totalitarian communism might
work but when I scan across the Internet I am not met with countless
totalitarian communists sporting anime avatars spewing memes adorned with
Lenin and Stalin quotes praising gulags.

I really think you just have to disown people like that, especially if you
have associations and positions that might label you as a supporter. It's the
political ideology equivalent of having a best friend who turns out to be a
serial murderer. People are going to ask questions.

~~~
ewzimm
I'm not an alt-right supporter, but if you look at something as deep as the
Richard Spencer level of extremism in your diagram, I'd say it's not so
different from the kinds of ideas that would be mainstream in China or Japan.
It's close to an American version of European identitarianism, which advocates
for the continuation of a specific cultural and racial identity. I honestly
struggle to see how this is very different from the ideas of the mainstream
Chinese Communist Party except for a demographic shift. Of course, Chinese
encompases several ethnic identities, but they're related in the same way as a
pan-European identitarianism. I'm not saying that I agree with this or that
it's the right way forward for society, just that it's not in any way new or
uncommon.

It's also clearly a reaction to the extremism of center-left rationalism and
cosmopolitanism. While I actually like those things, I have to admit that any
push to change society will invevitably result in a reaction against it from
people who prefer traditionalism. I think it's very important for those of us
who might like to change society to understand those who prefer traditional
ways, and not just in an abstract sense but to have personal relationships
with mutual respect.

------
raprp
Yep. Free healthcare and 2000 euros / year university tuition really suck.

~~~
thieving_magpie
US Health care costs are wildly expensive but describing healthcare in Europe
as "free" seems terribly misleading.

~~~
amaccuish
well it is in the UK :) (yes everyone knows tax pays for it, spreading the
burdon etc.)

~~~
carlmr
That's the exception though. I pay almost 700€ a month in Germany and my
employer pays a part, too.

It's actually quite expensive, except if you're poor.

EDIT: Not sure why I got downvoted for stating facts. European health care is
not free. And the defense budget is separate. They have nothing to do with
each other.

~~~
germanier
Public health insurance premiums in Germany are capped at slightly above 700€,
including the part the employer pays (Beitragsbemessungsgrenze is the relevant
keyword here).

------
evfanknitram
Interesting how he thinks that science, religion and tech is more important
than politics.

~~~
moccachino
I don't know how he squares that view with his support for Trump

