2026-01-30
My views on Peter Thiel
Disclaimer
My views on Peter Thiel's work
- No opinion on Paypal
- I find it interesting that after Thiel and Musk disagreed at Paypal, Thiel has been consistently pro-AI, whereas Musk has been anti-AI for most of the time.
- Weakly negative opinion on Palantir
- I think Palantir is a good example of might makes right, incentives shape morality. Because Palantir pays its employees lots of money, society respects them, regardless of how this money is made.
My views on Peter Thiel's stated beliefs
- Agreements
- Society is more open to regulating tech now as compared to WW2, see for example the ban on nuclear fission for energy or excavation purposes, or the ban on supersonic aircraft, or the taboo on human genetic engineering, or the ban on human cloning. Watching nuclear bombs explode was the main trigger in people's minds.
- Energy density went up from coal to oil to uranium. Now it is going down from uranium to natural gas to solar and wind.
- Thiel thinks Yudkowsky's anti-AI arguments are highly persuasive.
- Voltaire said religions are created to maintain power. Durkheim said religions happen first, and then they are used by leaders to maintain power. Thiel and I agree with Durkheim on this point.
- Big Tech companies subsidise woke religion, in a similar way Saudi Aramco subsidises whatever muslim interpretation MbS wants to spread
- Thiel thinks imitation is an important part of what makes humans special as compared to other species. Also why Thiel likes Rene Girard. I agree with Thiel but find it suspicious he doesn't mention language or toolmaking as other important parts of this discussion.
- Thiel likes Rene Girard's theories. Rene Girard's theory of scapegoating says that every society needs scapegoats who can be blamed and punished for everything that is wrong in society. He says Egyptian pharoahs and Jesus are examples. I agree scapegoats are common. When an accident happens, often the analysis is to find out who to blame, not what to fix to prevent a next time.
- Internet was supposed to make you part of society no matter where you go, but all internet companies even more ended up in one city, which is San Francisco.
- Not sure
- A lot of environmental and climate change protests were driven by guilt of citizens of the US-allied geopolitical sphere, that they could use more energy per capita than everyone else. I need to see his evidence or world model that predicted this, more closely.
- MKULTRA, CIA psychedelic torture program, may have resulted in LSD becoming popular at Stanford and Harvard. I need to see his evidence.
- Disagreements
- Thiel thinks we are not getting ASI in next 5 years. I disagree. See also: My AI timelines as of 2025-12-14
- Thiel thinks the CCP surveillance AI vision and the Bostrom/Yudkowsky paperclip maximising vision both don't play out. Instead we got an AI that could crack the turing test but not do either of these. Thiel thinks this is evidence against ASI coming afterwards. I disagree. I think the CCP vision is being built right now (see also: drone swarms) and the Yudkowsky vision is coming next.
- Thiel thinks low fertility countries tend to stay low fertility because the population votes for the tax collected to be spent on elderly healthcare, not subsidies for new parents. I disagree. I think people are more influenced by social pressure than economic pressure, when deciding whether to have kids or not. I think one persuasive leader can very quickly change the opinion of the entire country on whether they should have kids.
- Thiel likes Rene Girard's theories. Rene Girard's theory of memetic desire says that people copy each other's desires, then fight for those scarce resources, and end up in conflict. I only weakly agree. I think conflicts over scarce resources are instrumentally convergent regardless of what both competing people hold as their true desires.
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