And yet . . . if you put these same ideas into the mouth of a random person, I suspect the vast majority of the Forum readership and commentariat would dismiss them as ridiculous ramblings, the same way we would treat the speech of your average person holding forth about the end of days on an urban street corner.
I think this is a reasonable objection to make in general—I made similar objections in a similar case here.
But I think your argument that Peter hasn’t done anything to earn any epistemic credit is mistaken:
To the extent that we’re analyzing what Thiel is selling with any degree of seriousness because of his wealth and influence rather than the merit of his ideas, does that pose any epistemic concerns? To my (Christian) ears, this should be taken about as seriously as a major investor in the Coca-Cola Company spouting off that Pepsi is the work of Antichrist
This seems quite dis-analogous to me. Peter has made his money largely by making a small number of investments that have done extraordinarily well. Skill at this involves understanding leaders and teams, future technological developments, economics and other fields. It’s always possible to get lucky, but his degree of success provides I think significant evidence of skill. In contrast, over the last 25 years Coca-Cola has significantly underperformed the S&P500, so your hypothetical Pepsi critic does not have the same standing.
I think this is a reasonable objection to make in general—I made similar objections in a similar case here.
But I think your argument that Peter hasn’t done anything to earn any epistemic credit is mistaken:
This seems quite dis-analogous to me. Peter has made his money largely by making a small number of investments that have done extraordinarily well. Skill at this involves understanding leaders and teams, future technological developments, economics and other fields. It’s always possible to get lucky, but his degree of success provides I think significant evidence of skill. In contrast, over the last 25 years Coca-Cola has significantly underperformed the S&P500, so your hypothetical Pepsi critic does not have the same standing.