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Margaret Wertheim's avatar

Very nice analysis of the Thiel I/V w Douhart. By far the best I've read. You probably already know of Eric Davis book "Techgnosis" which dealt beautifully with techno-utopianism. You may also like to see my book "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace" - which specially dealt with cyber-religiosity - written in 1997. Everything i said then about Web 2.0 is even more so now with Web 3.0. Also germaine is Mary Midgely's great book "Science as Salvation" - which Thiel and all the tech-bros should be forced to read.

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awbvious's avatar

So, starting with the Peter Thiel interview. I kind of puke a little reading stuff like this, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

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It wasnโ€™t zero, but 1750 to 1970 โ€” 200-plus years โ€” were periods of accelerating change. We were relentlessly moving faster: The ships were faster, the railroads were faster, the cars were faster, the planes were faster. It culminates in the Concorde and the Apollo missions. But then, in all sorts of dimensions, things had slowed.

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Oh you mean it sped up when wealth and power were less concentrated with the elites a la serfdom. And then slowed down around when Reaganites took over and all the wealth and power was concentrated with the elites. And the solution isโ€ฆ Checks notesโ€ฆ More wealth and power concentrated with the elites.

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Sure, the economic number would be: What are your living standards compared to your parents? If youโ€™re a 30-year-old millennial, how are you doing versus when your boomer parents were 30 years old? How were they doing at the time?

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Absolutely right question. Most of are doing worse. We see that weโ€™re being exploited more than our parents were because our wages have stagnated while costs have not. Now, let's seeโ€ฆ Thiel's parents would have been in South Africa, probably with black servants who were probably being exploited to his family's benefit. He allegedly told classmates that apartheid was โ€œa sound economic system.โ€ And now he funds Eugenics-adjacent causes which no doubt would help keep that class exploitable. So, to recap, weโ€™re doing worse than our parents and are getting more exploited. Thiel does better than his parents and is quite possibly doing more exploiting. Almost seems like the one directly impacts the other. Does Thiel think that when we look at our situation versus our parents, we might not decide that maybe itโ€™s people like him that are directly responsible?

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nobody would be mad at me for supporting Trump if he lost

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How about sexual assault victims? Are they nobodies to Peter Thiel? It's not like this stuff was unknown in 2016. It would absolutely be something he would come across prior to supporting Trump and it came out widely before he was elected. He didn't say that it was an unsavory thing but that one could spin and manipulate the narrative enough that a sufficient number would overlook itโ€“as that is apparently what happened. Twice. He didn't say too few would be mad. That their voices would be drowned out by the selfish or misled. No, he thought /no one/ cared enough about that issue that they would be upset with supporting a perpetrator of it. The fact he said โ€œnobodyโ€ is probably the most deeply disturbing thing I've read in this interview. I can't even read any more of this. Okay back to DZM.

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Because Peter Thielโ€™s case for techno-utopianism is a description of a Ponzi scheme, in which we need to sacrifice the comfort and protections of responsible government now, in favor of a chance for something even cooler than clean water and a living wage, some time down the line.

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Yup. That sounds about right. Honestly, it feels even worse than that. It feels more like for the last ten years people have been going around poking other people with a stick. And someone says โ€œlook, we gotta figure out why none of us were getting stick poked before the last ten years. What was different ten years ago? The answer? There was no streaming television! We need to figure out how to go back to something like broadcast or cable television. On demand programming is to blame! Itโ€™s clearly made us very stick-pokable.โ€ Uh what? There also were no people /poking us with a stick/. How about we go back to not having people poke us with a stick? That **** knows exactly that at the same time he says โ€œStreaminโ€™ is the Demonโ€ that he is funding Sticks4PokinRUs /and/ trying to outlaw all regulations against stick poking simultaneously. Of course, Sticks4PokinRUs MegaCorpConglomorateShellCompaniesToo also seems to strangely have a symposium once a year on the glories of Must See TV Thursdays. But that, of course, is when they ainโ€™t stick pokinโ€™. But, yeah, letโ€™s just put up with more stick poking and then maybe there will be less stick poking, through the magic of coaxial cables and the TV Guide. Seriously, it feels that stupid.

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they are unable to stomach the idea that declining innovation is a product of wealth expropriation by elites who have captured democracy.

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Orโ€ฆ They can stomach it just fine. They are just saying BS they don't really believe. I just went down a rabbit hole a few minutes ago on a book called โ€œWhy Does He Do That?โ€ about male domestic abusers. The thesis is these men aren't crazy/insane, they want to seem like enigmas, that thereโ€™s some puzzle to solve. But itโ€™s not complicated at all. They really just have extremely flawed values that tell them they are right in being abusive, that they are /entitled/ to be abusive. And I suspect some people just feel entitled to exploit others. I get strong โ€œplaying by the rules is for suckers and if you don't break rules, you're just going to lose to someone who doesโ€ vibes from Thiel. How can he be so crazy and blind to how elites have been so powerful during the exact times he's lamenting as bad? Is he insane? Or is it maybe, just maybe, he knows he's talking absolute BS and itโ€™s all so he can just go on exploiting others.

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