Behind the Bastards did a good two-parter on Thiel's lectures. He sounds dangerously insane.
It'd be bad enough if he was just some random crank, but the fact he's got the level of power and influence needed to actually make his beliefs happen makes it exponentially worse.
> Genuine questions: what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?
Thiel is only "relevant" because he's wealthy.
In a system that allows wealth to equal political power, systematically weakening the impact of wealth on civic and political systems is an effective method. Whether that can be done in America, with the current understanding of the constitution and the current philosophy that many take towards taxation/wealth is questionable; but the idea that we can do nothing is just not true. We don't need to slide back into an era of 19th century robber barons and pseudo-aristocracy. If we do, it's because we largely gave up or allowed it to happen.
The difference to robber Baron this time is that those companies have gone global, so a new Teddy Roosevelt being elected in USA wouldn't help, because these multinationals can just extend outside jurisdiction. Which is very similar to the actual dynamic of states/federal that Teddy tackled [1]
Unfortunately the political rhetoric have smeared "the globalists" and equated people that want global coordination to limit those multinationals with power, with the ones abusing it. Even the platform that was promising to drain the swamp turns out was just another swamp, so one would need to start from the scratch for that political movement.
Not sure your country but the internet isn't the USA. Secularism very much touched the hearts of Americans. Talarico's words are pretty good at embodying actual American Christian belief on it.
The dixiecrats mascarading as Christian Republicans who HN treats as all American Christians don't even believe in the larger USA/Constitution/Human rights so yeah they ignore/are anti a lot of basic American beliefs. They are from a long line of loser traitors to our beliefs.
I also like a two-pronged approach which includes taxing the billionaires out of existence. I haven't heard any significant downside to doing that. All the more so when weighed against the possible upsides.
I think what frustrates me above all else is that we, as a society, as a people, could have it so much better.
We could all be living in such a better world but for the allowances we make for the most sociopathic and greedy among us.
I sometimes think there should be a completion state to capitalism.
When you reach an arbitrary score, like $100 million, you get presented with a cup that says ‘congratulations, you won capitalism’ and are given the choice of either playing again from the start but this time on hard mode (no emerald mine or parents that are friends with the IBM chairman this time), or keeping your winnings on the condition that you and your family fuck off somewhere and are never seen or heard of again.
Seriously though, that billionaires can exist, that so much power and wealth can be concentrated in the hands of so few while so many have nothing is utterly repugnant.
We are not in a democratic setting in America any more, the people in power are willing to start wars to protect pedophiles, they are willing to hire Nazi thugs to shoot your wives in the face. They are willing to bribe supreme court justices and dismantle democracy, and they will if not stopped by force.
Thiel has been obviously and evil sack of shit for decades but more than half of HN viewers revere him. I fear we have no hope, and the good people asking how we can democratically solve this problem makes me feel even more hopeless. Yall don't get it.
It wasn't voting that "defeated" southern slave owners, it was a war. A war that leveled cities and killed more Americans than any before or since. Also, I'm pretty sure this man and everyone in his class control a larger percentage of the economy than any plantation owners. Saying we should just vote out way out of oligarchy ignores the history of every oligarchy in the world, and makes you at best and unwitting pawn of the pedophile ruling class.
I grew up in a pretty religious household and my parents fully believed that Armageddon would happen in our lifetime. It wasn't until I was older that I realized there were a lot of American Christians that secretly held this belief, and that it has a meaningful influence on how voters want American politicians to deal with Israel and the Middle East in general.
It depends on the religion in the religious household. Its common among American evangelicals, but (unless American Catholics are very different from Catholics in the rest of the world) its not a common belief among Catholics, and its rarely discussed by them.
Why is Thiel, whose parents were American evangelical and whose own beliefs are described as "heterodox", trying to sell this in Catholic packaging outside the US?
>its not a common belief among Catholics, and its rarely discussed by them.
I'll do you one further, as someone from a deeply catholic country: Considering the triggering of Armaggedon in daily politics is seen as batshit crazy.
American Catholics aren't really a monolith on this matter...or any. There are substantial differences between Catholics who seek out Jesuit parishes and those who seek out the Tridentine Mass and people who are just achieving physical presence and thinking about kickoff at 5:00 PM Sunday Mass to fulfill obligation and get out ASAP (no choir please, keep that sermon snappy). All of these are spiritually valid approaches imho.
The same is true here, yes. You'll see widely different stances and practical approaches to topics like immigration, premarital sex, and so on. Some people are strict, some people self define as catholic but only see church during weddings and funerals.
Putting effort in triggering the end of the world is nowhere on the spectrum though. I think if you told a priest you're pushing for that he would be seriously alarmed, like calling the police alarmed if you hold power.
> American Catholics aren't really a monolith on this matter
No, but as a general rule, Catholics don’t and have never fretted about the end times the way all sorts of Protestant sects have, historically. Which is curious given Matthew 24:36 and all the hullabaloo Protestants make about being “scriptural”. And perhaps more importantly, because it has authority on such matters, Church teaching makes no claims about when the end of the world will occur and it never has, because it cannot.
It is not even a universal belief among evangelicals. The denomination/overall group Peter Hegseth is part of (conservative Reformed Christianity) expressly teaches against this, or even makes fun of it.
I would venture that it is less than half of Christians who believe in this idea at all. It does seem to be the domain of wild eyed TV evangelists though.
there was a Catholic reason for this, the Fatima Sheppards. there was an "apparition" of Virgin Mary and some "Prophecies" that were really imprinted on all Catholics over 50 years old. pretty much anti-russian propaganda. they silently pedal back from them in the last 25 years. but last time I visited sn important catholic monument internationally, most of the people in the bus knew about them, how they talk about the end of the world but never realized the Vatican already made them public all and it was a sham.
> [...] If my requests are [not] heeded, Russia [...] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.
I'm not sure it is fair to call it propaganda when it is bang on the money. Even the Holy Father bit checks out, seeing how John Paul II narrowly survived a KGB-sponsored assassination attempt.
Growing up I was exposed to Baptists and Evangelicals that talked about the coming "Rapture". It has always felt like a wild revenge fantasy for the "faithful". A kind of, "Oh, you'll see soon enough, then you'll be sorry!"
Out of curiosity, what grounds their belief that it's going to happen soon? Why not in a thousand years? As far as I know, there is no mention of the exact date in the Bible.
The land of Israel has been a vassal state or part of another state or empire for most of recorded history. Israel becoming an independent state in 1948 ties in with messianic prophesy.
> The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.
It's a Pascal's wager. If you're convinced Armageddon is going to happen at some point, then you should do all you can to prepare for it happening in your lifetime. And that approach is explicitly encouraged in the Bible: "You do not know the day or hour", etc.
Right "you do not know the day or the hour", not "you know that the day will be sometime between 2026 and 2076". I understand being prepared and whatnot. I don't understand the certainty of the date. Even the Bible says that it's unknown.
The closest we have to a "date" is Jesus claiming the current generation wouldn't pass away before the end times arrived, which obviously didn't happen. So even the "Son of God" got it wrong.
Wow thousands of years of theology all got it wrong, including Thomas Aquinas and some of the smartest people who ever lived. If only they had your brilliant HN thesis they could have saved so much time and understood so much more.
New Apostolic Reformationists believe that there are increasing number of "new apostles" who are receiving messages from God, which they see as evidence of the end times.
It is also common among these folks to believe that the end times don't just happen and that instead it is our responsibility to create the circumstances that enable the end times. This can either mean creating a state of instability and violence or creating a worldwide christian theocracy that lasts for 1000 years. Both involve massive upheavals of global systems.
I believe it was related to both Israel gaining statehood after WW2, and the panic of nuclear disaster leading up to the end of the Cold War. It feels like a idea that really took root in the minds of evangelical Baby Boomers and early GenXers, but likely has lost all meaning to millenials.
I grew up in a religious household as a Roman Catholic, in an extremely religious country(Poland) and I've never heard anyone talk about apocalypse as something that might happen soon or well...ever. From my point of view, the "christianity" that American Evangelicals practice is almost unrecognizable as having the same base with the religion I grew up with. Like the core tennets of Jesus have been twisted and warped to serve a very narrow political agenda. That's not to say Roman Catholics don't use religion for politics, but Evangelism is just.....next level?
Well, even European Evangelicals are vastly different from their American counterparts. There's no megachurches, prosperity gospel, televangelism, and the religion is not as strongly intertwined with politics.
It’s almost like they reject the parts of the bible featuring Christ, and only cling on to the Old Testament and the parts after Christ as their guide.
In lack of a better word, that sounds more like anti-Cristian
That belief is very common in secular settings. Marx and current day offshoots believed in a war that will bring redemption and utopia, other complete atheists believe in the inevitable environmental disaster (not whether it is happening but the belief that it cannot be prevented or fixed)
To be clear, Marx believed in the 'march of progress', basically that the constant struggle between classes during the middle age as well as the scientific revolution killed feudal society to give birth to capitalism (which is a very reductionist view of what happened, because the knowledge we had on feudal society then was _extremely_ skewed, but for the time it wasn't that crazy), and that the struggle between the capital class and the worker class will kill capitalism to create socialism (which isn't what is called socialism in Europe right now, it is closer to what European call communism), which is the last step before communism (basically a state of nature where everything goes so well you don't need the state. An ordered anarchy where everyone works for themselves and the society, without coercion from other people or entity). He use violent term (struggle), but never talked about a violent war or revolution, on the opposite, he took the French revolution as an example to avoid if I remember correctly (it has been more than a decade now. I'm old as fuck).
Some of his offshot do believe in a necessary war though. Leninism and Stalinism are the most famous one. Some of them take the US revolution as an example to follow.
I see/hear way more end times doomerism/blow it all up/end it all from my secular friends than I have ever heard Armageddon talk from Christians, but I don't live in the south.
So, you (not you, a generic you) believe that Armageddon is happening in your lifetime, and the event is the literal moment when God will pour his Holy Wrath against unrepentant sinners in a final judgement as the world wraps up... And you, deeply religious as you are, will obviously go to Heaven, while all the annoying people you rightly hate will go to Hell, to be punished for eternity.
Considering this, is it not obvious that this hypothetical person would wish for Armageddon already? I mean, for you it is the final prize.
I believe these people don't want a future. They want the end.
This is an attempt at a reverse Streisand effect, right? He didn't like people memeing that he was the antichrist, so he did all this so any searches would turn up his lectures rather than the memes/accusations.
The thing that really worries me about these kinds of beliefs in some kind of a god or gods is that they can provide a get-out clause for existential risks to humanity. If this physical universe is just one manifestation of existence, then there's less to worry about because there will be some kind of existence afterwards if you screw it up. But in my view the universe is all there is, and it very definitely doesn't "care" if humanity cooks the planet in a way that makes human life impossible. If that's your view, the first priority of every single person should be to work towards stabilising the climate and reduce our impact on the enviromnent, but instead we have shiny-eyed millenarians piling billions of dollars into things like AI that could be much more productively used in funding an energy transition. (And don't get me started on the idea that AI will help that transition - we already know what we need to do, that isn't complicated, even if the route is complex).
>If that's your view, the first priority of every single person should be to work towards stabilising the climate and reduce our impact on the enviromnent
But why though? If that's what you believe and there's nothing more, we know the sun is going to explode and destroy everything and an asteroid impact is likely to happen that destroys even sooner than that, so why does that matter?
Because we could cook the planet in a matter of decades or centuries rather than waiting ~5 billion years for the sun to explode, which would give us plenty of time to figure out how to explore space sustainably rather than some kind of delusional Musk-like sci-fi fantasy of bases on Mars in the next decade.
I think you're missing the historical context of how the "life after death" idea served as an utility, in many religions.
We today have laws and moral separated from religion and institutions that both teaches it to the young citizen and uphold it. But that wasn't the case for vast majority of the history.
How would you convince a tribal person that can't perceive something beyond "good for me & my family/tribe is all justifications required" to act collaboratively beyond that view? Especially if that attitude is also causing suboptimal behavior around him.
Introduce the concept of "good behavior" but there's no guarantee he will follow. Even if you introduced law & punishment you really have no efficient way to enforce it, back in the days.
So you introduce the idea that "if you behave bad,(or your children does) you'll suffer beyond your death".
Just so happen this simple yet powerful idea don't really scale with a complex world
This is a naive world view.
Religion became a tool for the powerful to suppress the masses. I doubt it was ever "for the good of the tribal man", although it's a nice story.
I believe most people have an innate spiritual side, questioning our roles in the universe and what life is really all about.
But powerful people(like Peter Thiel) have throughout history enforced their own fucked up world views on the rest of us, via indoctrination and blunt force. It's still ongoing.
I don't follow how your take is any different? We're essentially saying the same thing: it's a "nice story" == easier to sell to people for the powerful to control them.
Organized religion is pretty much about manipulating our innate spiritual side with nice stories to keep us bought in to the "nice story" that serve the top the most.
I'm just pointing out that the utility of the idea is just that: organization and control. It is quite redundant today because there are more advanced way of doing the same thing.
Or are you just pointing out that things have to be argued in a cynical way for it to be true?
I'm not sure you can blame this on deities. Nazis and Stalinists (especially the latter) were very atheistic. Both at some level thought they're building a better world, literally by murdering millions of people and enslaving orders of magnitude more.
Religion is just one of the excuses/covers used to grab more power and/or shiny baubles by psychopatic people. And there are the ones who just want to see others suffer no matter what. Most of the people that are left don't feel like lifting a finger unless it directly endangers their own comfortable life.
Call me cynical, but I haven't seen any improvement in human nature in 50 years.
Unfortunately, he's not on a park bench covered in his own piss and is instead the puppet master behind the VP of the US and a large chunk of the tech sector.
Correct. We call that “credibility”. People can earn credibility in this world through their accomplishments. If your life accomplishment is sitting in your own piss you lack credibility.
I'm not Christian, but I think that any argument which takes the concept of the Antichrist seriously but removes it from the context of Christianity has no merit.
The Antichrist only makes sense within the framework of Christian eschatology. Invoking the archetype but reframing it as a secular political and cultural force that opposes AI and technological progress seems like meaningless sophistry meant to grant some greater profound scope to what is in essence just basic anti-leftist, pro accelerationist rhetoric, but which only works with a facile understanding of what the Antichrist is supposed to represent, which is opposition to Christ.
And in that sense, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump fit the criteria far more than, say, Greta Thunberg.
Well said. The Antichrist becomes, in Francis Schaeffer's term, a "contentless label". It becomes just something that the speaker thinks is bad. But people (even non-Christians) still have some memory of it meaning something, so it's still an effective term for "something bad".
By the way, "Jesus" also has the same issue. That name is used at times to support positions that are explicitly contrary to what Jesus taught.
Thiel has an enormous amount of money. This makes him and his ideas have power, regardless of whether his ideas are crap. It further convinces people that his ideas aren't garbage even when these ideas are in different domains than his business.
So many believe that rupture or antichrist arrives in their generation, because it would make them feel special. If they die before, it makes them unimportant.
I'm still trying to find the correct term for this, maybe you can help?
I think it's built into our selves that we think this way, or it's a common fallacy or thinking error or perhaps conscious decision to state that the present is the most important time ever and so that position brings a sense of urgency and force to ones argument. We see it on every political side left, right and centre and I think it's more easily seen in environmentalism which uses it as a central point. It doesn't mean that the arguments are necessarily wrong, more like it's a (potentially manipulative) way to spur action.
Looking at history and considering the past might be an antidote to manipulation. I'm still trying to find what the term is properly, Presentism and Chronocentrism seems to be on the right track?
Anyhow these lectures feel to me to be ultimately based on this - to motivate change according to some desired end. To think of the end of the world happening soon, so you better get motivated.
Like the Bene Gesserit in the Dune novels, long running institutions like the Church, I believe at its best understand humanity and measure time and weigh the present on a more universal scale.
If you've gotten this far and are still puzzled, consider this thought experiment: "Today is the closest we are to nuclear Armageddon, we must do something!" Many would agree with this statement. Now, think of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 - its likely that was actually the closest we got to it, and so the statement about today is false and so the urgency to do something now is weakened. One can understand therefore that to counter this inherent bias or fallacy is not something that we generally want to do.
Are these lectures available for anyone to look over or is it only for paying customers? I feel like if it was public it probably has the same weight as the Left Behind books did in the early 2000s.
I've listened to several of his antichrist talks and remain confused by his stance. He's imprecise and rambles, but IMO it boils down to one of a few options:
1) These are actual good faith views that are inspired by his own piety
2) This is some chess game he thinks he's playing in which he erects the world government/ totalitarian state as signals of the antichrist, with Thunberg and other "woke" leaders as candidates, because they pose a risk to his business interests. "Peace and safety" is a guise and a front, but conveniently, are just bad for Palantir.
3) He is too disconnected for too long and has disappeared up his own ass
For anyone considering investigating, I wouldn't advise it. He's given huge liberties by interviewers to give vague non-answers and is never (rarely) pressed about reconciling his actions as an investor with his alleged concern for humanity.
There were a few news outlets (I think maybe the Washington Post?) that got copies of recordings of these insane lectures when Peter Thiel did them in San Francisco. I think it would be in the public interest for them to release the lectures in full.
Maybe people should put some pressure on these outlets to do so.
“has proven so controversial that the Catholic universities initially associated with it have all denied official involvement”
Journalists have a real knack for warping banal things into sensational, ominous nonsense. The implication here is that universities are monolithic coordinated machines with a single voice where all things are organized top-down. Some club here is hosting this event. That’s it. We had clubs at university that did the same thing. The quoted passages read like factual answers to questions posed by journalists to the Angelicum’s and CUA’s communications offices, not some frantic “distancing” or gotchas. They probably don’t care one way or another.
“the Catholic magazine First Things”
Not officially Catholic. Ecumenical is perhaps a better term. Even that word is not accurate, as there are plenty of contributions from Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, etc writers.
“an ancient Christian concept of the order of love, received a famous slapdown from Pope Francis […] Prevost shared an article […] with the headline, ‘JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’”
Charitably, Francis and then-Prevost were critical of what they privately perceived as a misapplication or misunderstanding of this principle, not the principle itself. Prevost’s own Augustinian order draws heavily from St. Augustine who expounded the concept of ordo amoris/ordo caritatis. The concept isn’t an endorsement of national chauvinism, but merely that our love must be prioritized and ordered. It is a moral obligation and is simply part of and entailed by the natural law.
In any case, I don’t see any relevance to the article. It’s like some mish-mash of disconnected propositions held together by dubious or meaningless associations to imply something significant has taken place. It would have sufficed to say “Peter Thiel lecturing on the Antichrist in Rome”.
The funniest part about this is that he either IS or is good friends with the Antichrist he claims is returning.
What sort of mental gymnastics would be required to not only convince yourself the end of days is here, but that it's not directly being caused by the guy who is indiscriminately bombing foreign countries and spends each morning have a group of evangelical zealots call him the chosen one while praying on him.
It is disconcerting to see that quite a few of the well-known billionaires seem to have just outright insane beliefs. And those are people with real power and the ability to influence events on a larger scale.
How does it work with dictators? I suggest it's a spectrum: the more powerful you are, the more you can surround yourself with yes-men. Of course there are a lot of different people, there's probably very grounded dictators and billionaires too, you probably don't hear much about them.
I would say it is natural that humans with so much power go crazy. What is not natural is allowing them to have that power in the first place. If a society allows that, it deserves anything that could happen to it, whether it's Armageddon, climate change, pollution, idiocracy, or whatever.
“Christians debated these prophecies for millennia. Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach?”
Maybe that we all need to surrender all our data to an intransparent global surveillance tool, that gets more and more connected to automatic killer drones?
Oh and also despise democracy of course. Jesus Christ was on the side if the poor, so the antichrist would be on the side of the rich.
I personally think that when he mentioned her name during that interview, it was intended to be used as an archetypal proxy in place of someone else (another public figure) that he had personal dealings with. Yudkowsky checks those same boxes (mission focused on specific existential risk, gets a cult following) for example.
That being said, I don’t care much for Christian prophecies. Better to talk why than who.
There’s nothing Christian about what Thiel is talking about here, even if he does wrap it up in the bible.
Whether you believe in Christianity or not, his views are deeply, deeply heretical. He’s so far out of pocket he’s in a completely different pair of trousers.
He's not doing it directly, that's why his lectures are secr... er, invitation-only. Thiel is content to pull the strings from the background, he's not demen... er, fool..., er, courageous enough to actually accept a role with the Trump administration like Musk was.
Knowing what kind of business Peter Thiel is engaged in, it is not a big surprise that he does not like the religion started by a guy who was crucified for telling others that it would be great if people were nice to each others.
It's suitably insane rambling nonsense. It actually seems to dovetail pretty well with Andreesen's manifesto in that evil is portrayed as anyone who opposed relentless technological progress at any cost. If you worry about the economic or human effects of tech oligarchs (Grete Thunberg is named as a candidate) then you are preparing your evil army for the final battle. Seeking to regulate AI also makes you a candidate.
there was a Catholic reason for this, the Fatima Sheppards. there was an "apparition" of Virgin Mary and some "Prophecies" that were really imprinted on all Catholics over 50 years old. pretty much anti-russian propaganda. they silently pedal back from them in the last 25 years. but last time I visited sn important catholic monument internationally, most of the people in the bus knew about them, how they talk about the end of the world but never realized the Vatican already made them public all and it was a sham.
I like that saying but those are all entrepreneurs right? Where are all the philosopher wannabe billionares? From my experience they seem pretty happy in relatively low paying professor jobs.
I doubt that anyone could categorize the manosphere phenomenon as philosophy. Without empathy you can't really have philosophy. Or, at least not the kind that you can take seriously.
nassim taleb is primarily a philosopher who pretends to be a hedge fund guy, jordan peterson, robert kiyosaki, tim ferriss maybe, sam bankman fried, the tech lead yt
archetype is people who sell their success as a model for you to follow while having none themselves, wrapped up as some kind of philosophical position, so they can make money
lots of self help authors, failed vc funds, podcasts
I don't think Peterson is a philosopher or an entrepreneur. Does debating college kids make you a philosopher now? Is that the bar? At least mention Žižek. He's an actual, present day philosopher.
There’s nothing here about the lectures themselves just constantly repeating that Thiel is a bad guy who founded Palantir and works with republicans to the backdrop of a ton of ads.
Almost the entire article is about the response to the proposed delivery of his, frankly unhinged, antichrist lectures in Italy.
There's some context at the end about Thiels connections to the Trump administration. This is normal for reputable news agencies line AP, not everybody is as keenly aware of Thiel's influence as hn readers.
Don't you find it problematic that the only reason Thiel can organize these lectures is because he is a billionaire? Is he a bona fide scholar on the subject? Would any tenured theology scholar be welcome to hold the same lectures at the Vatican?
I guess that's what you get for electing an American as the Pope. /s
The lectures were not given in the Vatican but somewhere nearby, and if you read the article you would see that all the Catholic institutions names denied involved with the lectures.
He didn't give lectures at Vatican, not even at the Catholic university close to Vatican, and even Catholic University of America didn't have anything to do with it.
I am very much not a billionaire; but I can hire a village hall and give a lecture on the antichrist. I may have to work a little harder to get as much press coverage but that is not what is stopping me.
Behind the Bastards did a good two-parter on Thiel's lectures. He sounds dangerously insane.
It'd be bad enough if he was just some random crank, but the fact he's got the level of power and influence needed to actually make his beliefs happen makes it exponentially worse.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtR7ny9TuCY
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXhyx-vVG_Y
Genuine questions: what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?
Who should take into their hands the job to stop him, and to what lengths should they push themselves?
> Genuine questions: what can be done in a democratic setting to stop him?
Thiel is only "relevant" because he's wealthy.
In a system that allows wealth to equal political power, systematically weakening the impact of wealth on civic and political systems is an effective method. Whether that can be done in America, with the current understanding of the constitution and the current philosophy that many take towards taxation/wealth is questionable; but the idea that we can do nothing is just not true. We don't need to slide back into an era of 19th century robber barons and pseudo-aristocracy. If we do, it's because we largely gave up or allowed it to happen.
The difference to robber Baron this time is that those companies have gone global, so a new Teddy Roosevelt being elected in USA wouldn't help, because these multinationals can just extend outside jurisdiction. Which is very similar to the actual dynamic of states/federal that Teddy tackled [1]
Unfortunately the political rhetoric have smeared "the globalists" and equated people that want global coordination to limit those multinationals with power, with the ones abusing it. Even the platform that was promising to drain the swamp turns out was just another swamp, so one would need to start from the scratch for that political movement.
[1] https://youtu.be/ItKtQCAZHhg
The penchant for Christ clown insanity is distinctly American though. Secularism never truly touched the hearts of Americans.
Not sure your country but the internet isn't the USA. Secularism very much touched the hearts of Americans. Talarico's words are pretty good at embodying actual American Christian belief on it.
The dixiecrats mascarading as Christian Republicans who HN treats as all American Christians don't even believe in the larger USA/Constitution/Human rights so yeah they ignore/are anti a lot of basic American beliefs. They are from a long line of loser traitors to our beliefs.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Kjah99E1fIo
Ask yourself - where does his wealth (power) come from and how do you stop that?
In his case - I assume most of it is from Palantir these days. Therefore stop your governments from contracting with them.
https://youtu.be/P8ijiLqfXP0?t=20
Not agreeing as a society that money == speech would be a good start.
I like that.
I also like a two-pronged approach which includes taxing the billionaires out of existence. I haven't heard any significant downside to doing that. All the more so when weighed against the possible upsides.
I think what frustrates me above all else is that we, as a society, as a people, could have it so much better.
We could all be living in such a better world but for the allowances we make for the most sociopathic and greedy among us.
I sometimes think there should be a completion state to capitalism.
When you reach an arbitrary score, like $100 million, you get presented with a cup that says ‘congratulations, you won capitalism’ and are given the choice of either playing again from the start but this time on hard mode (no emerald mine or parents that are friends with the IBM chairman this time), or keeping your winnings on the condition that you and your family fuck off somewhere and are never seen or heard of again.
Seriously though, that billionaires can exist, that so much power and wealth can be concentrated in the hands of so few while so many have nothing is utterly repugnant.
We are not in a democratic setting in America any more, the people in power are willing to start wars to protect pedophiles, they are willing to hire Nazi thugs to shoot your wives in the face. They are willing to bribe supreme court justices and dismantle democracy, and they will if not stopped by force.
Thiel has been obviously and evil sack of shit for decades but more than half of HN viewers revere him. I fear we have no hope, and the good people asking how we can democratically solve this problem makes me feel even more hopeless. Yall don't get it.
We defeated the incredibly rich southern slave owners. We can defeat these shitty traitors.
If voting didn't work, they wouldn't poor money into it. If voting didn't work, they wouldn't be trying to force their horrible new ID poll tax laws.
It wasn't voting that "defeated" southern slave owners, it was a war. A war that leveled cities and killed more Americans than any before or since. Also, I'm pretty sure this man and everyone in his class control a larger percentage of the economy than any plantation owners. Saying we should just vote out way out of oligarchy ignores the history of every oligarchy in the world, and makes you at best and unwitting pawn of the pedophile ruling class.
What would China do to such billionaires run amok?
This is the only answer that has any reference to an actionable approach that has been proven to work.
I grew up in a pretty religious household and my parents fully believed that Armageddon would happen in our lifetime. It wasn't until I was older that I realized there were a lot of American Christians that secretly held this belief, and that it has a meaningful influence on how voters want American politicians to deal with Israel and the Middle East in general.
It depends on the religion in the religious household. Its common among American evangelicals, but (unless American Catholics are very different from Catholics in the rest of the world) its not a common belief among Catholics, and its rarely discussed by them.
Why is Thiel, whose parents were American evangelical and whose own beliefs are described as "heterodox", trying to sell this in Catholic packaging outside the US?
>its not a common belief among Catholics, and its rarely discussed by them.
I'll do you one further, as someone from a deeply catholic country: Considering the triggering of Armaggedon in daily politics is seen as batshit crazy.
American Catholics aren't really a monolith on this matter...or any. There are substantial differences between Catholics who seek out Jesuit parishes and those who seek out the Tridentine Mass and people who are just achieving physical presence and thinking about kickoff at 5:00 PM Sunday Mass to fulfill obligation and get out ASAP (no choir please, keep that sermon snappy). All of these are spiritually valid approaches imho.
The same is true here, yes. You'll see widely different stances and practical approaches to topics like immigration, premarital sex, and so on. Some people are strict, some people self define as catholic but only see church during weddings and funerals.
Putting effort in triggering the end of the world is nowhere on the spectrum though. I think if you told a priest you're pushing for that he would be seriously alarmed, like calling the police alarmed if you hold power.
It remains a fact, though, that the Catholic Church doesn’t teach these things about Armageddon.
> American Catholics aren't really a monolith on this matter
No, but as a general rule, Catholics don’t and have never fretted about the end times the way all sorts of Protestant sects have, historically. Which is curious given Matthew 24:36 and all the hullabaloo Protestants make about being “scriptural”. And perhaps more importantly, because it has authority on such matters, Church teaching makes no claims about when the end of the world will occur and it never has, because it cannot.
It is not even a universal belief among evangelicals. The denomination/overall group Peter Hegseth is part of (conservative Reformed Christianity) expressly teaches against this, or even makes fun of it.
I would venture that it is less than half of Christians who believe in this idea at all. It does seem to be the domain of wild eyed TV evangelists though.
there was a Catholic reason for this, the Fatima Sheppards. there was an "apparition" of Virgin Mary and some "Prophecies" that were really imprinted on all Catholics over 50 years old. pretty much anti-russian propaganda. they silently pedal back from them in the last 25 years. but last time I visited sn important catholic monument internationally, most of the people in the bus knew about them, how they talk about the end of the world but never realized the Vatican already made them public all and it was a sham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Secrets_of_F%C3%A1tima
also end of the world prophecies are a Catholic meme
my favorite is Pope Sylvester II in 1000 AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...
> pretty much anti-russian propaganda
Russia bit of the prophecies:
> [...] If my requests are [not] heeded, Russia [...] will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.
I'm not sure it is fair to call it propaganda when it is bang on the money. Even the Holy Father bit checks out, seeing how John Paul II narrowly survived a KGB-sponsored assassination attempt.
Those who triumphed over “Russia” (also a tell) had anything but immaculate hearts.
> The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.
Rings a bell. Errors are spreading but “Russian” they are not.
> The date of the attempted assassination, 13 May 1981, was the 64th anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary to the children at Fátima.
Do I have to spell it out.
Growing up I was exposed to Baptists and Evangelicals that talked about the coming "Rapture". It has always felt like a wild revenge fantasy for the "faithful". A kind of, "Oh, you'll see soon enough, then you'll be sorry!"
Out of curiosity, what grounds their belief that it's going to happen soon? Why not in a thousand years? As far as I know, there is no mention of the exact date in the Bible.
The land of Israel has been a vassal state or part of another state or empire for most of recorded history. Israel becoming an independent state in 1948 ties in with messianic prophesy.
No, but even the first christians believed they were living in the end times. It's been believed for 2000 years.
For the first Christians, it made sense. But gradually, as it didn't happen, people adjusted their expectations.
My favourite bit of Biblical trivia. Consider this passage from the Revelation of St John: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%208%... describing, perhaps, events leading to the end of the world:
> The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter.
"Wormwood", a type of bitter plant, translates to Russian as "Chernobyl", and Ukrainian "Chornobyl": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl > Etymology
Sure, but this description doesn't correspond to what happened in Chernobyl, and none of the other trumpets have corresponding events.
So do the Evangelicals believe that Chernobyl disaster triggered the apocalypse, and that it has been happening ever since? I don't think so.
Yes, you would have to extend some poetic license.
This was a bit of ad lib, the US branch of Christianity follows it's own logic and sadly I cannot answer the serious question.
I'm pretty sure there were some bits in the Bible about loving thy enemy and turning the other cheek. But maybe I misremember.
It's a Pascal's wager. If you're convinced Armageddon is going to happen at some point, then you should do all you can to prepare for it happening in your lifetime. And that approach is explicitly encouraged in the Bible: "You do not know the day or hour", etc.
Right "you do not know the day or the hour", not "you know that the day will be sometime between 2026 and 2076". I understand being prepared and whatnot. I don't understand the certainty of the date. Even the Bible says that it's unknown.
The same self-centeredness that drove man to think that Earth was the center of its Universe.
See also: bean soup / "what about me?*
Not only is there no date, it explicitly says the time and date is not known to us.
The closest we have to a "date" is Jesus claiming the current generation wouldn't pass away before the end times arrived, which obviously didn't happen. So even the "Son of God" got it wrong.
Wow thousands of years of theology all got it wrong, including Thomas Aquinas and some of the smartest people who ever lived. If only they had your brilliant HN thesis they could have saved so much time and understood so much more.
Owwie looks like I'm going to need some lotion for that sick burn.
New Apostolic Reformationists believe that there are increasing number of "new apostles" who are receiving messages from God, which they see as evidence of the end times.
It is also common among these folks to believe that the end times don't just happen and that instead it is our responsibility to create the circumstances that enable the end times. This can either mean creating a state of instability and violence or creating a worldwide christian theocracy that lasts for 1000 years. Both involve massive upheavals of global systems.
I believe it was related to both Israel gaining statehood after WW2, and the panic of nuclear disaster leading up to the end of the Cold War. It feels like a idea that really took root in the minds of evangelical Baby Boomers and early GenXers, but likely has lost all meaning to millenials.
I grew up in a religious household as a Roman Catholic, in an extremely religious country(Poland) and I've never heard anyone talk about apocalypse as something that might happen soon or well...ever. From my point of view, the "christianity" that American Evangelicals practice is almost unrecognizable as having the same base with the religion I grew up with. Like the core tennets of Jesus have been twisted and warped to serve a very narrow political agenda. That's not to say Roman Catholics don't use religion for politics, but Evangelism is just.....next level?
Well, even European Evangelicals are vastly different from their American counterparts. There's no megachurches, prosperity gospel, televangelism, and the religion is not as strongly intertwined with politics.
Poland is quite intertwined.
But Catholicism has its own government, which prevents individual catholic countries to veer off too much.
Poland isn't Evangelical.
Blame William Miller for American Evangelicalism's preoccupation with the end times.
It’s almost like they reject the parts of the bible featuring Christ, and only cling on to the Old Testament and the parts after Christ as their guide.
In lack of a better word, that sounds more like anti-Cristian
That belief is very common in secular settings. Marx and current day offshoots believed in a war that will bring redemption and utopia, other complete atheists believe in the inevitable environmental disaster (not whether it is happening but the belief that it cannot be prevented or fixed)
Also similar is a belief in the AI singularity.
To be clear, Marx believed in the 'march of progress', basically that the constant struggle between classes during the middle age as well as the scientific revolution killed feudal society to give birth to capitalism (which is a very reductionist view of what happened, because the knowledge we had on feudal society then was _extremely_ skewed, but for the time it wasn't that crazy), and that the struggle between the capital class and the worker class will kill capitalism to create socialism (which isn't what is called socialism in Europe right now, it is closer to what European call communism), which is the last step before communism (basically a state of nature where everything goes so well you don't need the state. An ordered anarchy where everyone works for themselves and the society, without coercion from other people or entity). He use violent term (struggle), but never talked about a violent war or revolution, on the opposite, he took the French revolution as an example to avoid if I remember correctly (it has been more than a decade now. I'm old as fuck).
Some of his offshot do believe in a necessary war though. Leninism and Stalinism are the most famous one. Some of them take the US revolution as an example to follow.
I see/hear way more end times doomerism/blow it all up/end it all from my secular friends than I have ever heard Armageddon talk from Christians, but I don't live in the south.
I think there's an extra layer of crazy there.
So, you (not you, a generic you) believe that Armageddon is happening in your lifetime, and the event is the literal moment when God will pour his Holy Wrath against unrepentant sinners in a final judgement as the world wraps up... And you, deeply religious as you are, will obviously go to Heaven, while all the annoying people you rightly hate will go to Hell, to be punished for eternity.
Considering this, is it not obvious that this hypothetical person would wish for Armageddon already? I mean, for you it is the final prize.
I believe these people don't want a future. They want the end.
This is an attempt at a reverse Streisand effect, right? He didn't like people memeing that he was the antichrist, so he did all this so any searches would turn up his lectures rather than the memes/accusations.
No, he has been ranting and raving about the antichrist for at least a decade. He and JD Vance bonded over it.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter...
No, Peter Thiel is a nut job and these are his beliefs.
Unfortunately, he also knows everything about you and everybody else in the so called free world.
Possibly, but I think he does believe it. it fits.
A Google search turns up the usual stuff (e.g. his Wikipedia page) and then a Youtube video accusing him of destroying democracy, so if that is what he is trying its not working: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=peter%20thiel&sei=tfWzadnD...
The thing that really worries me about these kinds of beliefs in some kind of a god or gods is that they can provide a get-out clause for existential risks to humanity. If this physical universe is just one manifestation of existence, then there's less to worry about because there will be some kind of existence afterwards if you screw it up. But in my view the universe is all there is, and it very definitely doesn't "care" if humanity cooks the planet in a way that makes human life impossible. If that's your view, the first priority of every single person should be to work towards stabilising the climate and reduce our impact on the enviromnent, but instead we have shiny-eyed millenarians piling billions of dollars into things like AI that could be much more productively used in funding an energy transition. (And don't get me started on the idea that AI will help that transition - we already know what we need to do, that isn't complicated, even if the route is complex).
>If that's your view, the first priority of every single person should be to work towards stabilising the climate and reduce our impact on the enviromnent
But why though? If that's what you believe and there's nothing more, we know the sun is going to explode and destroy everything and an asteroid impact is likely to happen that destroys even sooner than that, so why does that matter?
Because we could cook the planet in a matter of decades or centuries rather than waiting ~5 billion years for the sun to explode, which would give us plenty of time to figure out how to explore space sustainably rather than some kind of delusional Musk-like sci-fi fantasy of bases on Mars in the next decade.
I think you're missing the historical context of how the "life after death" idea served as an utility, in many religions.
We today have laws and moral separated from religion and institutions that both teaches it to the young citizen and uphold it. But that wasn't the case for vast majority of the history.
How would you convince a tribal person that can't perceive something beyond "good for me & my family/tribe is all justifications required" to act collaboratively beyond that view? Especially if that attitude is also causing suboptimal behavior around him.
Introduce the concept of "good behavior" but there's no guarantee he will follow. Even if you introduced law & punishment you really have no efficient way to enforce it, back in the days.
So you introduce the idea that "if you behave bad,(or your children does) you'll suffer beyond your death".
Just so happen this simple yet powerful idea don't really scale with a complex world
This is a naive world view. Religion became a tool for the powerful to suppress the masses. I doubt it was ever "for the good of the tribal man", although it's a nice story.
I believe most people have an innate spiritual side, questioning our roles in the universe and what life is really all about.
But powerful people(like Peter Thiel) have throughout history enforced their own fucked up world views on the rest of us, via indoctrination and blunt force. It's still ongoing.
People are wired to follow their leaders.
I don't follow how your take is any different? We're essentially saying the same thing: it's a "nice story" == easier to sell to people for the powerful to control them.
Organized religion is pretty much about manipulating our innate spiritual side with nice stories to keep us bought in to the "nice story" that serve the top the most.
I'm just pointing out that the utility of the idea is just that: organization and control. It is quite redundant today because there are more advanced way of doing the same thing.
Or are you just pointing out that things have to be argued in a cynical way for it to be true?
I'm not sure you can blame this on deities. Nazis and Stalinists (especially the latter) were very atheistic. Both at some level thought they're building a better world, literally by murdering millions of people and enslaving orders of magnitude more.
Religion is just one of the excuses/covers used to grab more power and/or shiny baubles by psychopatic people. And there are the ones who just want to see others suffer no matter what. Most of the people that are left don't feel like lifting a finger unless it directly endangers their own comfortable life.
Call me cynical, but I haven't seen any improvement in human nature in 50 years.
If he was on a park bench covered in his own piss no one would pay any attention to the same words.
Unfortunately, he's not on a park bench covered in his own piss and is instead the puppet master behind the VP of the US and a large chunk of the tech sector.
He's not the master merely another puppet controlling puppets. If you want to get closer to the masters read the epstein files.
And realistically, if we did live in a meritocracy, that's where he would be.
Correct. We call that “credibility”. People can earn credibility in this world through their accomplishments. If your life accomplishment is sitting in your own piss you lack credibility.
In this case it's more of Halo effect which is plaguing the tech world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
All arguments should be considered on merit of the argument not on credibility of the person.
We need filters. I’m not agreeing with Thiel but pointing out to parent why he is listened to but a guy sitting in his own piss is not.
I'm not Christian, but I think that any argument which takes the concept of the Antichrist seriously but removes it from the context of Christianity has no merit.
The Antichrist only makes sense within the framework of Christian eschatology. Invoking the archetype but reframing it as a secular political and cultural force that opposes AI and technological progress seems like meaningless sophistry meant to grant some greater profound scope to what is in essence just basic anti-leftist, pro accelerationist rhetoric, but which only works with a facile understanding of what the Antichrist is supposed to represent, which is opposition to Christ.
And in that sense, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump fit the criteria far more than, say, Greta Thunberg.
Exactly which is why the argument has no merit.
And even if it was in context to Christianity it has no veracity as the entire argument stands on faith which is fallible.
Well said. The Antichrist becomes, in Francis Schaeffer's term, a "contentless label". It becomes just something that the speaker thinks is bad. But people (even non-Christians) still have some memory of it meaning something, so it's still an effective term for "something bad".
By the way, "Jesus" also has the same issue. That name is used at times to support positions that are explicitly contrary to what Jesus taught.
I believe it is a separate set of things.
Thiel has an enormous amount of money. This makes him and his ideas have power, regardless of whether his ideas are crap. It further convinces people that his ideas aren't garbage even when these ideas are in different domains than his business.
So many believe that rupture or antichrist arrives in their generation, because it would make them feel special. If they die before, it makes them unimportant.
I'm still trying to find the correct term for this, maybe you can help?
I think it's built into our selves that we think this way, or it's a common fallacy or thinking error or perhaps conscious decision to state that the present is the most important time ever and so that position brings a sense of urgency and force to ones argument. We see it on every political side left, right and centre and I think it's more easily seen in environmentalism which uses it as a central point. It doesn't mean that the arguments are necessarily wrong, more like it's a (potentially manipulative) way to spur action.
Looking at history and considering the past might be an antidote to manipulation. I'm still trying to find what the term is properly, Presentism and Chronocentrism seems to be on the right track?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(historical_analysi... Chronocentrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronocentrism
Anyhow these lectures feel to me to be ultimately based on this - to motivate change according to some desired end. To think of the end of the world happening soon, so you better get motivated.
Like the Bene Gesserit in the Dune novels, long running institutions like the Church, I believe at its best understand humanity and measure time and weigh the present on a more universal scale.
If you've gotten this far and are still puzzled, consider this thought experiment: "Today is the closest we are to nuclear Armageddon, we must do something!" Many would agree with this statement. Now, think of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 - its likely that was actually the closest we got to it, and so the statement about today is false and so the urgency to do something now is weakened. One can understand therefore that to counter this inherent bias or fallacy is not something that we generally want to do.
Are these lectures available for anyone to look over or is it only for paying customers? I feel like if it was public it probably has the same weight as the Left Behind books did in the early 2000s.
I've listened to several of his antichrist talks and remain confused by his stance. He's imprecise and rambles, but IMO it boils down to one of a few options:
1) These are actual good faith views that are inspired by his own piety
2) This is some chess game he thinks he's playing in which he erects the world government/ totalitarian state as signals of the antichrist, with Thunberg and other "woke" leaders as candidates, because they pose a risk to his business interests. "Peace and safety" is a guise and a front, but conveniently, are just bad for Palantir.
3) He is too disconnected for too long and has disappeared up his own ass
For anyone considering investigating, I wouldn't advise it. He's given huge liberties by interviewers to give vague non-answers and is never (rarely) pressed about reconciling his actions as an investor with his alleged concern for humanity.
There were a few news outlets (I think maybe the Washington Post?) that got copies of recordings of these insane lectures when Peter Thiel did them in San Francisco. I think it would be in the public interest for them to release the lectures in full.
Maybe people should put some pressure on these outlets to do so.
“has proven so controversial that the Catholic universities initially associated with it have all denied official involvement”
Journalists have a real knack for warping banal things into sensational, ominous nonsense. The implication here is that universities are monolithic coordinated machines with a single voice where all things are organized top-down. Some club here is hosting this event. That’s it. We had clubs at university that did the same thing. The quoted passages read like factual answers to questions posed by journalists to the Angelicum’s and CUA’s communications offices, not some frantic “distancing” or gotchas. They probably don’t care one way or another.
“the Catholic magazine First Things”
Not officially Catholic. Ecumenical is perhaps a better term. Even that word is not accurate, as there are plenty of contributions from Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, etc writers.
“an ancient Christian concept of the order of love, received a famous slapdown from Pope Francis […] Prevost shared an article […] with the headline, ‘JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.’”
Charitably, Francis and then-Prevost were critical of what they privately perceived as a misapplication or misunderstanding of this principle, not the principle itself. Prevost’s own Augustinian order draws heavily from St. Augustine who expounded the concept of ordo amoris/ordo caritatis. The concept isn’t an endorsement of national chauvinism, but merely that our love must be prioritized and ordered. It is a moral obligation and is simply part of and entailed by the natural law.
In any case, I don’t see any relevance to the article. It’s like some mish-mash of disconnected propositions held together by dubious or meaningless associations to imply something significant has taken place. It would have sufficed to say “Peter Thiel lecturing on the Antichrist in Rome”.
So reasoning from first principles is equivalent to doing it for the money?
“Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach? What kind of SaaS offerings will he want to invest in?”
From Zero to (1) Antichrist.
The funniest part about this is that he either IS or is good friends with the Antichrist he claims is returning.
What sort of mental gymnastics would be required to not only convince yourself the end of days is here, but that it's not directly being caused by the guy who is indiscriminately bombing foreign countries and spends each morning have a group of evangelical zealots call him the chosen one while praying on him.
lecture is doing a lot of lifting.
It is disconcerting to see that quite a few of the well-known billionaires seem to have just outright insane beliefs. And those are people with real power and the ability to influence events on a larger scale.
How does it work with dictators? I suggest it's a spectrum: the more powerful you are, the more you can surround yourself with yes-men. Of course there are a lot of different people, there's probably very grounded dictators and billionaires too, you probably don't hear much about them.
I would say it is natural that humans with so much power go crazy. What is not natural is allowing them to have that power in the first place. If a society allows that, it deserves anything that could happen to it, whether it's Armageddon, climate change, pollution, idiocracy, or whatever.
It doesn't seem that supprising. You need a certain level of narcissism/sociopathy to have the drive to become a billionaire in the first place.
South Park season 28 has Peter Thiel as an exorcist trying to cure Cartman's devilish obsession with 6-7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_season_28
“Christians debated these prophecies for millennia. Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach?”
Maybe that we all need to surrender all our data to an intransparent global surveillance tool, that gets more and more connected to automatic killer drones?
Oh and also despise democracy of course. Jesus Christ was on the side if the poor, so the antichrist would be on the side of the rich.
Any ideas who the new antichrist might be?
Greta Thunberg, according to Thiel (seriously).
I personally think that when he mentioned her name during that interview, it was intended to be used as an archetypal proxy in place of someone else (another public figure) that he had personal dealings with. Yudkowsky checks those same boxes (mission focused on specific existential risk, gets a cult following) for example.
That being said, I don’t care much for Christian prophecies. Better to talk why than who.
There’s nothing Christian about what Thiel is talking about here, even if he does wrap it up in the bible.
Whether you believe in Christianity or not, his views are deeply, deeply heretical. He’s so far out of pocket he’s in a completely different pair of trousers.
Anyone got a bootleg?
He’s appealing to the largest maga faction, fundamentalist christians because they are the kingmakers after Trump decays.
He's not doing it directly, that's why his lectures are secr... er, invitation-only. Thiel is content to pull the strings from the background, he's not demen... er, fool..., er, courageous enough to actually accept a role with the Trump administration like Musk was.
It is interesting the article doesn’t mention that Thiel is gay. It’s especially relevant because the article is largely about Catholic interactions.
It’s a natural point of interest. Very interesting they didn’t pick it up.
Knowing what kind of business Peter Thiel is engaged in, it is not a big surprise that he does not like the religion started by a guy who was crucified for telling others that it would be great if people were nice to each others.
Takes one to know one.
Some reporting on the contents of the speech from last year:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-...
It's suitably insane rambling nonsense. It actually seems to dovetail pretty well with Andreesen's manifesto in that evil is portrayed as anyone who opposed relentless technological progress at any cost. If you worry about the economic or human effects of tech oligarchs (Grete Thunberg is named as a candidate) then you are preparing your evil army for the final battle. Seeking to regulate AI also makes you a candidate.
Ironic that for someone so steeped in tech, his views on technology seem to be simplistic.
“People who oppose what I want to do are the antichrist” is one step away from “I’m Jesus!”, which is something you normally hear in mental wards.
there was a Catholic reason for this, the Fatima Sheppards. there was an "apparition" of Virgin Mary and some "Prophecies" that were really imprinted on all Catholics over 50 years old. pretty much anti-russian propaganda. they silently pedal back from them in the last 25 years. but last time I visited sn important catholic monument internationally, most of the people in the bus knew about them, how they talk about the end of the world but never realized the Vatican already made them public all and it was a sham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Secrets_of_F%C3%A1tima
also end of the world prophecies are a Catholic meme
my favorite is Pope Sylvester II in 1000 AD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...
AI is the Antichrist.
the old saying goes that every entrepreneur wishes they were a philosopher, and every philosopher wishes they were an entrepreneur
generally holds true soros marc rich bill gates musk thiel nassim taleb epstein etc
I like that saying but those are all entrepreneurs right? Where are all the philosopher wannabe billionares? From my experience they seem pretty happy in relatively low paying professor jobs.
> Where are all the philosopher wannabe billionares?
On Twitter, in my experience. The 'manosphere' is practically all philosopher-wannabe-billionaires.
I doubt that anyone could categorize the manosphere phenomenon as philosophy. Without empathy you can't really have philosophy. Or, at least not the kind that you can take seriously.
It struck me as I was watching the new Louis Theroux Netflix documentary that the manosphere must love Nietzsche.
I don't take them seriously. They do see themselves philosophers though.
nassim taleb is primarily a philosopher who pretends to be a hedge fund guy, jordan peterson, robert kiyosaki, tim ferriss maybe, sam bankman fried, the tech lead yt
archetype is people who sell their success as a model for you to follow while having none themselves, wrapped up as some kind of philosophical position, so they can make money
lots of self help authors, failed vc funds, podcasts
I don't think Peterson is a philosopher or an entrepreneur. Does debating college kids make you a philosopher now? Is that the bar? At least mention Žižek. He's an actual, present day philosopher.
That’s all tech bros and self-help gurus? I guess anyone can claim themselves to be an “philosopher”
There are some good studies out there about the rates of Sociopathy among executives. But even among that group, Theil seems particularly deranged.
> It's me, hi,
> I'm the problem, it's me
- Taylor Swift, 2022
"Well of course I know him, he is me" (Obi-Wan Kenobi, 0 BBY)
It seems to me that the idea of Armageddon without clear evidence, is the lizard brain taking over.
My point is that it's not crazy, it's survival. It's a feature not a bug.
In other words this looks dangerous, but it's really just every day normality for all of us.
There’s nothing here about the lectures themselves just constantly repeating that Thiel is a bad guy who founded Palantir and works with republicans to the backdrop of a ton of ads.
Almost the entire article is about the response to the proposed delivery of his, frankly unhinged, antichrist lectures in Italy.
There's some context at the end about Thiels connections to the Trump administration. This is normal for reputable news agencies line AP, not everybody is as keenly aware of Thiel's influence as hn readers.
Don't you find it problematic that the only reason Thiel can organize these lectures is because he is a billionaire? Is he a bona fide scholar on the subject? Would any tenured theology scholar be welcome to hold the same lectures at the Vatican?
I guess that's what you get for electing an American as the Pope. /s
The lectures were not given in the Vatican but somewhere nearby, and if you read the article you would see that all the Catholic institutions names denied involved with the lectures.
He didn't give lectures at Vatican, not even at the Catholic university close to Vatican, and even Catholic University of America didn't have anything to do with it.
I am very much not a billionaire; but I can hire a village hall and give a lecture on the antichrist. I may have to work a little harder to get as much press coverage but that is not what is stopping me.