Bravo Joe for sounding an alarm that needs to be sounded. Thiel is clearly a great thinker, although not a theologian as far as I know. And I have no idea of his faith basis. That said, I'll pay attention to what he is saying and compare it with my understanding of scripture. And hopefully gain in wisdom!
So because he made the first investment into Facebook we should take his predictions on the end of the world seriously? I think that might be peak ‘im a wealthy founder therefore I know everything’ syndrome
No, because he is the first investor in Facebook, the co-founder of PayPal, Palantir, Founders Fund, Thiel Capital, and Clarium Capital; the creator of the Thiel Fellowship; an early backer of SpaceX, Airbnb, Spotify, Stripe, Lyft and dozens more; the author of the bestseller Zero to One; a Time 100 honoree; a perennial member of the Forbes Midas List and Forbes 400; and one of the most influential technologists, investors, and thinkers of the last two decades.
But is Palantir not one of the most useful tools ever created for consolidating information and power in the hands of very few? Has there ever been a tool more useful for empowering a global governance?
It's nice to see an entrepreneur/investor who understands and reads the classics, and Thiel embodies both. For a lot of us, it's been bizarre to watch new trends take shape, aggregate mass out of nowhere, and then overwhelm markets and push discussions at breakneck speed with something closer to a mob or riot-level fever pitch. Should we ever get to the point of a new world order (global governance), it will be because we allowed ourselves to be overwhelmed by fear and took the lazy/autocratic off-ramp (in NT metaphor, we took the mark of the beast).
While it feels like we stepped back from that brink a couple of years ago, I've never been more troubled by how quickly bad ideas spread. Peter is dead over the target citing the Antichrist, and I couldn't agree more with your assessment and citing of Kant: bad ideas are adopted way too quickly without being tested and reshaped by reality.
Great write up—makes this "wacky" concept legible and approachable for a wider audience. I found a great source of clarity on the subject in Thiel's conversation with Tyler Cowen [0].
Request: please ask Peter to publish his lectures online
Thanks for this writeup. Coverage of Peter's Antichrist talks have, obviously, been skewed against him. You leave me with much to think about, but I wanted to address one point: "It’s unclear to me if our culture is transcending or falling back past the age of the Enlightenment, as he also seems to hint..."
I think this is quite the opposite of what is happening. True, in some limited cases we have allowed pathos to overwhelm the logos as extended by the Enlightenment. However, what has happened more often is that we've extended true science into Scientism. We have no shortage of institutions and elites who believe that empirical authority can substitute for moral authority. We've extended beyond reason into an over-reliance on models at the cost of a moral vision. We are substituting "what is" for "what ought to be" in governance, business, and beyond. Precise measurement and muddied empiricism do not substitute for moral vision.
What is needed is a recovery of virtue, and an insistence that there are ways of living that erode the person. Virtue enables us to reground sciences like economics in human enablement rather than human steering. This provides us with the tools to see the darker forces we're working against with clearer eyes.
But the bible and scriptures are poorly written nonsense by men, there is no God or divine presence and therefore Thiel is himself talking nonsense about an antichrist that doesn't exist.
It seems that we too often get swept up with the mechanics of thought without giving intuition its due. Peter is truly unique in his thinking and intuition. The Antichrist is a difficult subject. I have read Revelations maybe a half dozen times and still find it hard to grasp. Thanks for your thoughts and comments.
Your piece truly made me stop and read all the way through which is rare nowadays, thank you for that :)
One tension stayed with me: the Antechrist/Katechon frame is read through a vertical and sovereign logic of power (empire, state, global governance). and interestingly, despite the references to Daniel, it feels lightly anchored in the Jewish way of reading power (more diffuse, indirect and even fractured)
From a Grey Zone pov, power operates below sovereignty. Moving through perception and ambiguity rather than being "held by X" and applied.
So where would you locate the Katechon today if power no longer sits at the level of sovereignty?
People recognize the need for guard rails for LLMs. What's even more critically important is guard rails for the mind. Here are two guard rails: propositional logic and conceptual logic.
Propositional logic is given to us by Aristotle. It says that we need to validate our propositions with the facts of reality.
Conceptual logic is given to us by Ayn Rand. It says that we need to validate our *concepts* with the facts of reality. Given that propositions are built from concepts, conceptual logic is more fundamental and important.
Without validated propositions and concepts, what you have is debate on the same epistemological level as people discussing a Harry Potter book while treating it as representative of reality.
I am not sure that there is halfway solution to Daniel. Either he was sent a vision by God or he was hallucinating. Referring to him as wisdom of the ancients doesn't make sense. The implications of him being sent as a prophet of God has greater implications than resisting wokeness.
Bravo Joe for sounding an alarm that needs to be sounded. Thiel is clearly a great thinker, although not a theologian as far as I know. And I have no idea of his faith basis. That said, I'll pay attention to what he is saying and compare it with my understanding of scripture. And hopefully gain in wisdom!
So because he made the first investment into Facebook we should take his predictions on the end of the world seriously? I think that might be peak ‘im a wealthy founder therefore I know everything’ syndrome
No, because he is the first investor in Facebook, the co-founder of PayPal, Palantir, Founders Fund, Thiel Capital, and Clarium Capital; the creator of the Thiel Fellowship; an early backer of SpaceX, Airbnb, Spotify, Stripe, Lyft and dozens more; the author of the bestseller Zero to One; a Time 100 honoree; a perennial member of the Forbes Midas List and Forbes 400; and one of the most influential technologists, investors, and thinkers of the last two decades.
But is Palantir not one of the most useful tools ever created for consolidating information and power in the hands of very few? Has there ever been a tool more useful for empowering a global governance?
It's nice to see an entrepreneur/investor who understands and reads the classics, and Thiel embodies both. For a lot of us, it's been bizarre to watch new trends take shape, aggregate mass out of nowhere, and then overwhelm markets and push discussions at breakneck speed with something closer to a mob or riot-level fever pitch. Should we ever get to the point of a new world order (global governance), it will be because we allowed ourselves to be overwhelmed by fear and took the lazy/autocratic off-ramp (in NT metaphor, we took the mark of the beast).
While it feels like we stepped back from that brink a couple of years ago, I've never been more troubled by how quickly bad ideas spread. Peter is dead over the target citing the Antichrist, and I couldn't agree more with your assessment and citing of Kant: bad ideas are adopted way too quickly without being tested and reshaped by reality.
The problem with Kant: “the eye sees only colors; the mind sees things”…but that includes eyes, and therefore also colors.
Kant's Categorical Imperative is what's important.
It's just bizarre to me that after 80 years Jews still kvetch about the fake holocaust nonsense
Lmao
Great write up—makes this "wacky" concept legible and approachable for a wider audience. I found a great source of clarity on the subject in Thiel's conversation with Tyler Cowen [0].
Request: please ask Peter to publish his lectures online
[0]: https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/peter-thiel-political-theology/
Thanks for this writeup. Coverage of Peter's Antichrist talks have, obviously, been skewed against him. You leave me with much to think about, but I wanted to address one point: "It’s unclear to me if our culture is transcending or falling back past the age of the Enlightenment, as he also seems to hint..."
I think this is quite the opposite of what is happening. True, in some limited cases we have allowed pathos to overwhelm the logos as extended by the Enlightenment. However, what has happened more often is that we've extended true science into Scientism. We have no shortage of institutions and elites who believe that empirical authority can substitute for moral authority. We've extended beyond reason into an over-reliance on models at the cost of a moral vision. We are substituting "what is" for "what ought to be" in governance, business, and beyond. Precise measurement and muddied empiricism do not substitute for moral vision.
What is needed is a recovery of virtue, and an insistence that there are ways of living that erode the person. Virtue enables us to reground sciences like economics in human enablement rather than human steering. This provides us with the tools to see the darker forces we're working against with clearer eyes.
But the bible and scriptures are poorly written nonsense by men, there is no God or divine presence and therefore Thiel is himself talking nonsense about an antichrist that doesn't exist.
It is all made up piffle.
"there is no God or divine presence"- and you know this, how?
It seems that we too often get swept up with the mechanics of thought without giving intuition its due. Peter is truly unique in his thinking and intuition. The Antichrist is a difficult subject. I have read Revelations maybe a half dozen times and still find it hard to grasp. Thanks for your thoughts and comments.
it is hard to grasp because it was very poorly written by men there is no divine presence and therefore no antichrist it is all piffle.
Your piece truly made me stop and read all the way through which is rare nowadays, thank you for that :)
One tension stayed with me: the Antechrist/Katechon frame is read through a vertical and sovereign logic of power (empire, state, global governance). and interestingly, despite the references to Daniel, it feels lightly anchored in the Jewish way of reading power (more diffuse, indirect and even fractured)
From a Grey Zone pov, power operates below sovereignty. Moving through perception and ambiguity rather than being "held by X" and applied.
So where would you locate the Katechon today if power no longer sits at the level of sovereignty?
Thanks again for the reading.
In mathematics, it's called the Monster Group. Iphigenia was sacrificed to the Monster, when it was really a physics problem.
People recognize the need for guard rails for LLMs. What's even more critically important is guard rails for the mind. Here are two guard rails: propositional logic and conceptual logic.
Propositional logic is given to us by Aristotle. It says that we need to validate our propositions with the facts of reality.
Conceptual logic is given to us by Ayn Rand. It says that we need to validate our *concepts* with the facts of reality. Given that propositions are built from concepts, conceptual logic is more fundamental and important.
Without validated propositions and concepts, what you have is debate on the same epistemological level as people discussing a Harry Potter book while treating it as representative of reality.
Quick Claude explanation of the Kant passage https://claude.ai/share/47589636-e143-492c-a8ca-062f39113d40 if you would benefit from a refresher
This is not AI. This is a large language model. It does not think. It does not reason.
I am not sure that there is halfway solution to Daniel. Either he was sent a vision by God or he was hallucinating. Referring to him as wisdom of the ancients doesn't make sense. The implications of him being sent as a prophet of God has greater implications than resisting wokeness.
Daniel was on drugs so that caused his hallucinations.