Thiel seems to believe that the status-quo “international community” of liberal western nations (as embodied by the likes of Obama, Angela Merkel, etc) is currently doomed to slowly slide into some kind of stagnant, inescapable, communistic, one-world-government dystopia.
Personally, I very strongly disagree with Thiel that this is inevitable or even likely (although I see where he’s coming from insofar as IMO this is at least a possibility worth worrying about). Consequently, I think the implied neoreactionary strategy (not sure if this is really Thiel’s strategy since obviously he wouldn’t just admit it) -- something like “have somebody like JD Vance or Elon Musk coup the government, then roll the dice and hope that you end up getting a semi-benevolent libertarian dictatorship that eventually matures into a competent normal government, like Singapore or Chile, instead of ending up getting a catastrophic outcome like Nazi Germany or North Korea or a devastating civil war”—is an incredibly stupid strategy that is likely to go extremely wrong.
I also agree with you that Christianity is obviously false and thus reflects poorly on people who sincerely believe it. (Although I think Ben’s post exaggerates the degree to which Thiel is taking Christian ideas literally, since he certainly doesn’t seem to follow official doctrine on lots of stuff.) Thiel’s weird reasoning style that he brings not just to Christianity but to everything (very nonlinear, heavy on metaphors and analogies, not interested in technical details) is certainly not an exemplar of rationalist virtue. (I think it’s more like… heavily optimized for trying to come up with a different perspective than everyone else, which MIGHT be right, or might at least have something to it. Especially on the very biggest questions where, he presumably believes, bias is the strongest and cutting through groupthink is the most difficult. Versus normal rationalist-style thinking is optimized for just, you know, being actually fully correct the highest % of the time, which involves much more careful technical reasoning, lots of hive-mind-style “deferring” to the analysis of other smart people, etc)
Thiel seems to believe that the status-quo “international community” of liberal western nations (as embodied by the likes of Obama, Angela Merkel, etc) is currently doomed to slowly slide into some kind of stagnant, inescapable, communistic, one-world-government dystopia.
Personally, I very strongly disagree with Thiel that this is inevitable or even likely (although I see where he’s coming from insofar as IMO this is at least a possibility worth worrying about). Consequently, I think the implied neoreactionary strategy (not sure if this is really Thiel’s strategy since obviously he wouldn’t just admit it) -- something like “have somebody like JD Vance or Elon Musk coup the government, then roll the dice and hope that you end up getting a semi-benevolent libertarian dictatorship that eventually matures into a competent normal government, like Singapore or Chile, instead of ending up getting a catastrophic outcome like Nazi Germany or North Korea or a devastating civil war”—is an incredibly stupid strategy that is likely to go extremely wrong.
I also agree with you that Christianity is obviously false and thus reflects poorly on people who sincerely believe it. (Although I think Ben’s post exaggerates the degree to which Thiel is taking Christian ideas literally, since he certainly doesn’t seem to follow official doctrine on lots of stuff.) Thiel’s weird reasoning style that he brings not just to Christianity but to everything (very nonlinear, heavy on metaphors and analogies, not interested in technical details) is certainly not an exemplar of rationalist virtue. (I think it’s more like… heavily optimized for trying to come up with a different perspective than everyone else, which MIGHT be right, or might at least have something to it. Especially on the very biggest questions where, he presumably believes, bias is the strongest and cutting through groupthink is the most difficult. Versus normal rationalist-style thinking is optimized for just, you know, being actually fully correct the highest % of the time, which involves much more careful technical reasoning, lots of hive-mind-style “deferring” to the analysis of other smart people, etc)