For a start
>Peter Thiel and his friends feel they no longer belong to our species.
is basically bollocks. He still thinks he's human and the author is making stuff up. I think because Thiel is right wing and the author thinks that's bad.
The species bit seems to rest on a bit in an interview:
>Douthat: It seems very clear to me that a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism—for transcendence of our mortal flesh—and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine. Do you think that’s all irrelevant fantasy? Or do you think it’s just hype? Do you think people are raising money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine god? Is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about?
and then in answer to those six complex questions Thiel goes kinda um, er, dunno, it's complicated.
I'm not sure that really makes the authors point.
Also I've been casually interested in transhumanism for ages as have a lot of people. It's not exclusively a billionaire thing. I think "transcendence of our mortal flesh" through tech is maybe more a sci-fi or futurist enthusiasm.
You know, democracy, the thing we're supposed to live in but seems more and more like a plutocracy in disguise as we learn about the links between politicians and billionaires.
Just because one was born at the right place doesn't give them the right to rule over us, that's what we've been fighting and dying against for generations. And we'll fight again if it comes to it, we are the 99%, they are nothing but wealth and inflated egos.
xorvoid•5mo ago
metalman•5mo ago
" Even if one doesn’t accept every point made by Hobsbawm, Brenner, or similar Marxist thinkers, their analysis at least has a sturdy basis in political economy and material reality. By contrast, Thiel has a bizarrely cultural analysis of stagnation that doesn’t even pass the laugh test. The Western world, he claims, entered into five decades of anemic growth because of the counterculture of the 1960s. According to Thiel, “in my telling of the history of the 1970s…the hippies did win. We landed on the moon in July of 1969, Woodstock started three weeks later and, with the benefit of hindsight, that’s when progress stopped and the hippies won.” Thiel adds that “everyone became as deranged as Charles Manson.”
Because of the hippies, says Thiel, Western powers embraced an ideology of peace and safety that stalled technological growth."
xorvoid•5mo ago
bigbadfeline•5mo ago
That's an unreasonable request, usually made by people trying to insert FUD in the topic. Recordings require specially arranged interviews, copyrights and agreements to record and distribute, etc.
It's only reasonable to ask for references and witnesses and find them yourself, then you can inform us about the results and state your agreement/disagreement with facts.
> I often prefer the source material
That's nice, the only source material is the person who uttered the quoted words. You can take that up with him and ask about his quoted opinion - did he have it, has he changed it since then, what is he thinking now? Reportedly, he's a billionaire concerned about your well being, he wouldn't deny such an altruistic request.
Failing to provide "source material" contradicting the OP article would automatically validate it. Fair game.
os2warpman•5mo ago
Does Thiel have a hose running from his rectum to his nose so he can get high off the smell of his own farts?
More technological growth has occurred from Woodstock to today than at any similar-length span of time in human history.
He is rich because of that technological advancement and the fortune he amassed due to that technological advancement means he has the ability to pollute the media with his moronic worldview, and bribe politicians in order to make it a reality for the rest of us.
mmh0000•5mo ago