cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46219073
Lecture attendees started trickling out around 8:30 p.m., carrying mousses, cookies, and various other desserts to their awaiting Ubers. Most of the audience members were hesitant to provide their thoughts on the record, for fear of being disinvited from future events, but a few shared their opinions on condition of anonymity.
The consensus was that the talk largely repeated the points Thiel had made in previous interviews on the subject — namely, that the Antichrist would use the threat of Armageddon, or some looming crisis, in order to consolidate control and create a “one-world government.”
One attendee recalled Thiel specifying that this figure could not be a state figurehead like Chinese President Xi Jinping, because it needs to be more global. He couldn’t recall if Thiel suggested Thunberg would make the cut.
One attendee recalled that Thiel’s discussion of the Antichrist was more about a scenario than an individual. Thiel’s Antichrist scenario is one in which a unified government suppresses technology to impose order, or armageddon, wherein AI takes over and ushers in the end of the world.
"We’ll either have the one government that destroys technology and takes over, or you have the AI that destroys everything,” he said.
Another guest, when asked about the talk, shot back a single word: “Mid.”
A group of three French men, all living in SF and working in tech, gave the talk a 7 out of 10 because of its repetitiveness. But they did appreciate some of Thiel’s jokes — including, apparently, saying it would be a travesty for Elon Musk to go to therapy because it would make him less productive.
"He was really anti-introspection,” one recalled. “[He said] we are very selfish and we care a lot about ourselves as individuals, and that therapy and yoga and stuff like that is not good for the world. We should not care so much about ourselves and care more about the world.”
Another attendee said the talk revealed a less well-known, more scholarly side of Thiel. He noted that Thiel is different from his expectations of a tech investor, pointing to the billionaire’s “cynical” view of technology’s impact on the world.
I’m curious, has anybody ever just asked Thiel why it would make a difference if the globe was ruled by one corporation instead of one government?
So to avoid this, we need one corporation to rule them all instead? You literally have a single corporation building global access to everyone’s data. It’s like you’re creating little nodes of authoritarian easy buttons, but ultimately it will be you with consolidated control of all these nodes. So consolidated control of all the authoritarian easy buttons.
So as long as you, Peter Thiel, are the only one controlling it, we should believe that this won’t happen?
I wonder if Thiel’s ultimate scapegoat is progress/technology itself? He builds these fears while also making these claims about regulations and stagnation, so that he is allowed to build and control the technology that he knows will result in this scenario.
When everything goes to shit because he was allowed to knock down so many regulations and speed bumps, he will claim it’s not his fault, it’s just the inevitable progress of technology. As though this is the only way it ever could have been.
Because in his mind, this is the only possible outcome if technology progresses. So even though he’s the one that builds it, it’s not really his fault if it goes off the rails because it was going to happen one way or another. Oh well, at least he tried to save humanity.
This has all been making me think about mapping the human genome, and how people feared all the potential for a society like Gattaca where genetic discrimination determines your entire future.
It definitely wasn’t an unfounded fear, and that was why we created laws and regulations. Most (ethical) scientists would agree that genetics as a field did not stagnate as result of these regulations.
If anything, we thankfully learned a lot about unintentional side effects of cloning, and the impact of epigenetics and telomeres on longevity via Dolly the sheep. But what if we had said, we figured it out, no need for regulations and stagnation let’s make some human copies!
There was a doctor in China that ignored the rules and regulations, and jumped ahead and created a set of human twins with CRISPR technology. I think he is in prison now, and I don’t think there has been any updates about the twins due to privacy concerns.
What that guy did wasn’t just unethical bc it ignored the agreement about not wanting to live in a real life Gattaca. It was extremely dangerous bc even with CRISPR there is the possibility of off target effects, which can emerge immediately or even decades later in development.
Once again, digging a new hole to fill an old one. You fixed one problem, but you may have inadvertently caused an exponential number of new problems. That is straight up Nazi human experimentation, and the humans you created had zero consent.
Imagine what the world would look like today if somebody like Thiel had taken control of human genome research. Imagine Peter Thiel being allowed to just go full speed ahead with cloning and CRISPR technology in humans without any kind of knowledge or consideration of off target effects or downstream consequences. Where every educated or knowledgeable individual that tried to slow him down or warn him is completely ignored and dismissed.
Maybe the world would look like his fantasy where only a race with superior genetics exists. Everybody thrives and everybody is immortal, happy, and healthy as can be.
More likely it would be a world full of horrific genetic mutations and diseases with no treatment or cure. A world where everyone with money keeps cloning humans to bring them back to life, unable to understand or explain why they all seem to be falling apart more rapidly with each additional clone.
This guy has no fucking chill. His ego does not allow for the time to stop and think about all the unforeseen consequences that develop with progress. In his mind it’s just inevitable, and the way he fantasizes about it working out is the only possible outcome.