This was really insightful but i’m curious if you assign much or any probability to the idea that he doesn’t actually have any strong ethical view(s). Seems plausible that he likes talking and sounding smart, has some weakly held views, but when the chips hit the table will mainly just optimize for money and power?
I think Thiel really does have a variety of strongly held views. Whether these are “ethical” views, ie views that are ultimately motivated by moral considerations… idk, kinda depends on what you are willing to certify as “ethical”.
I think you could build a decent simplified model of Thiel’s motivations (although this would be crediting him with WAY more coherence and single-mindedness than he or anyone else really has IMO) by imagining he is totally selfishly focused on obtaining transhumanist benefits (immortality, etc) for himself, but realizes that even if he becomes one of the richest people on the planet, you obviously can’t just go out and buy immortality, or even pay for a successful immortality research program—it’s too expensive, there are too many regulatory roadblocks to progress, etc. You need to create a whole society that is pro-freedom and pro-property-rights (so it’s a pleasant, secure place for you to live) and radically pro-progress. Realistically it’s not possible to just create an offshoot society, like a charter city in the ocean or a new country on Mars (the other countries will mess with you and shut you down). So this means that just to get a personal benefit to yourself, you actually have to influence the entire trajectory of civilization, avoiding various apocalyptic outcomes along the way (nuclear war, stable totalitarianism), etc. Is this an “ethical” view?
Obviously, creating a utopian society and defeating death would create huge positive externalities for all of humanity, not just Mr Thiel.
(Although longtermists would object that this course of action is net-negative from an impartial utilitarian perspective—he’s short-changing unborn future generations of humanity, running a higher level of extinction risk in order to sprint to grab the transhumanist benefits within his own lifetime.)
But if the positive externalities are just a side-benefit, and the main motivation is the personal benefit, then it is a selfish rather than altruistic view. (Can a selfish desire for personal improvement and transcendence still be “ethical”, if you’re not making other people worse off?)
Would Thiel press a button to destroy the whole world if it meant he personally got to live forever? I would guess he wouldn’t, which would go to show that this simplified monomanaical model of his motivations is wrong, and that there’s at least a substantial amount of altruistic motivation in there.
I also think that lots of big, world-spanning goals (including altruistic things like “minimize existential risk to civilization”, or “minimimze animal suffering”, or “make humanity an interplanetary species”) often problematically route through the convergent instrumental goal of “optimize for money and power”, while also being sincerely-held views. And none moreso than a personal quest for immortality! But he doesn’t strike me as optimising for power-over-others as a sadistic goal for its own sake (as it may have been for, say, Stalin) -- he seems to have such a strong belief in the importance of individual human freedom and agency that it would be suprising if he’s secretly dreaming of enslaving everyone and making them do his bidding. (Rather, he consistently sees himeself as trying to help the world throw off the shackles of a stultifying, controlling, anti-progress regime.)
But getting away from this big-picture philosophy, Thiel also seems to have lots of views which, although they technically fit nicely into the overall “perfect rational selfishness” model above, seem to at least in part be fueled by an ethical sense of anger at the injustice of the world. For example, sometime in the past few years Thiel started becoming a huge Georgist. (Disclaimer: I myself am a huge Georgist, and I think it always reflects well on people, both morally and in terms of the quality of their world-models / ability to discern truth.)
Here is a video lecture where Thiel spends half an hour at the National Conservatism Conference, desperately begging Republicans to stop just being obsessed with culture-war chum and instead learn a little bit about WHY California is so messed up (ie, the housing market), and therefore REALIZE that they need to pass a ton of “Yimby” laws right away in all the red states, or else red-state housing markets will soon become just as disfunctional as California’s, and hurt middle class and poor people there just like they do in California. There is some mean-spiritedness and a lot of Republican in-group signalling throughout the video (like when he is mocking the 2020 dem presidential primary candidates), but fundamentally, giving a speech trying to save the American middle class by Yimby-pilling the Republicans seems like a very good thing, potentially motivated by sincere moral belief that ordinary people shouldn’t be squeezed by artificial scarcity creating insane rents.
Here’s a short, two-minute video where Thiel is basically just spreading the Good News about Henry George, wherin he says that housing markets in anglosphere countries are a NIMBY catastrophe which has been “a massive hit to the lower-middle class and to young people”.
Thiel’s georgism ties into some broader ideas about a broken “inter-generational compact”, whereby the boomer generation has unjustly stolen from younger generations via housing scarcity pushing up rents, via ever-growing medicare / social-security spending and growing government debt, via shutting down technological progress in favor of safetyism, via a “corrupt” higher-education system that charges ever-higher tuition and not providing good enough value for money, and various other means.
The cynical interpretation of this is that this is just a piece of his overall project to “make the world safe for capitalism”, which in turn is part of his overall selfish motivation: He realizes that young people are turning socialist because the capitalist system seems broken to them. It seems broken to them, not because ALL of capitalism is actually corrupt, but specifically because they are getting unjustly scammed by NIMBYism. So he figures that to save capitalism from being overthrown by angry millenials voting for Bernie, we need to make America YIMBY so that the system finally works for young people and they have a stake in the system. (This is broadly correct analysis IMO) Somewhere I remember Thiel explicitly explaining this (ie, saying “we need to repair the intergenerational compact so all these young people stop turning socialist”), but unfortunately I don’t remember where he said this so I don’t have a link.
So you could say, “Aha! It’s really just selfishness all the way down, the guy is basically voldemort.” But, idk… altruistically trying to save young people from the scourge of high housing prices seems like going pretty far out of your way if your motivations are entirely selfish. It seems much more straightforwardly motivated by caring about justice and about individual freedom, and wanting to create a utopian world of maximally meritocratic, dynamic capitalism rather than a world of stagnant rent-seeking that crushes individual human agency.
Somewhere I remember Thiel explicitly explaining this (ie, saying “we need to repair the intergenerational compact so all these young people stop turning socialist”), but unfortunately I don’t remember where he said this so I don’t have a link.
This was really insightful but i’m curious if you assign much or any probability to the idea that he doesn’t actually have any strong ethical view(s). Seems plausible that he likes talking and sounding smart, has some weakly held views, but when the chips hit the table will mainly just optimize for money and power?
I think Thiel really does have a variety of strongly held views. Whether these are “ethical” views, ie views that are ultimately motivated by moral considerations… idk, kinda depends on what you are willing to certify as “ethical”.
I think you could build a decent simplified model of Thiel’s motivations (although this would be crediting him with WAY more coherence and single-mindedness than he or anyone else really has IMO) by imagining he is totally selfishly focused on obtaining transhumanist benefits (immortality, etc) for himself, but realizes that even if he becomes one of the richest people on the planet, you obviously can’t just go out and buy immortality, or even pay for a successful immortality research program—it’s too expensive, there are too many regulatory roadblocks to progress, etc. You need to create a whole society that is pro-freedom and pro-property-rights (so it’s a pleasant, secure place for you to live) and radically pro-progress. Realistically it’s not possible to just create an offshoot society, like a charter city in the ocean or a new country on Mars (the other countries will mess with you and shut you down). So this means that just to get a personal benefit to yourself, you actually have to influence the entire trajectory of civilization, avoiding various apocalyptic outcomes along the way (nuclear war, stable totalitarianism), etc. Is this an “ethical” view?
Obviously, creating a utopian society and defeating death would create huge positive externalities for all of humanity, not just Mr Thiel.
(Although longtermists would object that this course of action is net-negative from an impartial utilitarian perspective—he’s short-changing unborn future generations of humanity, running a higher level of extinction risk in order to sprint to grab the transhumanist benefits within his own lifetime.)
But if the positive externalities are just a side-benefit, and the main motivation is the personal benefit, then it is a selfish rather than altruistic view. (Can a selfish desire for personal improvement and transcendence still be “ethical”, if you’re not making other people worse off?)
Would Thiel press a button to destroy the whole world if it meant he personally got to live forever? I would guess he wouldn’t, which would go to show that this simplified monomanaical model of his motivations is wrong, and that there’s at least a substantial amount of altruistic motivation in there.
I also think that lots of big, world-spanning goals (including altruistic things like “minimize existential risk to civilization”, or “minimimze animal suffering”, or “make humanity an interplanetary species”) often problematically route through the convergent instrumental goal of “optimize for money and power”, while also being sincerely-held views. And none moreso than a personal quest for immortality! But he doesn’t strike me as optimising for power-over-others as a sadistic goal for its own sake (as it may have been for, say, Stalin) -- he seems to have such a strong belief in the importance of individual human freedom and agency that it would be suprising if he’s secretly dreaming of enslaving everyone and making them do his bidding. (Rather, he consistently sees himeself as trying to help the world throw off the shackles of a stultifying, controlling, anti-progress regime.)
But getting away from this big-picture philosophy, Thiel also seems to have lots of views which, although they technically fit nicely into the overall “perfect rational selfishness” model above, seem to at least in part be fueled by an ethical sense of anger at the injustice of the world. For example, sometime in the past few years Thiel started becoming a huge Georgist. (Disclaimer: I myself am a huge Georgist, and I think it always reflects well on people, both morally and in terms of the quality of their world-models / ability to discern truth.)
Here is a video lecture where Thiel spends half an hour at the National Conservatism Conference, desperately begging Republicans to stop just being obsessed with culture-war chum and instead learn a little bit about WHY California is so messed up (ie, the housing market), and therefore REALIZE that they need to pass a ton of “Yimby” laws right away in all the red states, or else red-state housing markets will soon become just as disfunctional as California’s, and hurt middle class and poor people there just like they do in California. There is some mean-spiritedness and a lot of Republican in-group signalling throughout the video (like when he is mocking the 2020 dem presidential primary candidates), but fundamentally, giving a speech trying to save the American middle class by Yimby-pilling the Republicans seems like a very good thing, potentially motivated by sincere moral belief that ordinary people shouldn’t be squeezed by artificial scarcity creating insane rents.
Here’s a short, two-minute video where Thiel is basically just spreading the Good News about Henry George, wherin he says that housing markets in anglosphere countries are a NIMBY catastrophe which has been “a massive hit to the lower-middle class and to young people”.
Thiel’s georgism ties into some broader ideas about a broken “inter-generational compact”, whereby the boomer generation has unjustly stolen from younger generations via housing scarcity pushing up rents, via ever-growing medicare / social-security spending and growing government debt, via shutting down technological progress in favor of safetyism, via a “corrupt” higher-education system that charges ever-higher tuition and not providing good enough value for money, and various other means.
The cynical interpretation of this is that this is just a piece of his overall project to “make the world safe for capitalism”, which in turn is part of his overall selfish motivation: He realizes that young people are turning socialist because the capitalist system seems broken to them. It seems broken to them, not because ALL of capitalism is actually corrupt, but specifically because they are getting unjustly scammed by NIMBYism. So he figures that to save capitalism from being overthrown by angry millenials voting for Bernie, we need to make America YIMBY so that the system finally works for young people and they have a stake in the system. (This is broadly correct analysis IMO) Somewhere I remember Thiel explicitly explaining this (ie, saying “we need to repair the intergenerational compact so all these young people stop turning socialist”), but unfortunately I don’t remember where he said this so I don’t have a link.
So you could say, “Aha! It’s really just selfishness all the way down, the guy is basically voldemort.” But, idk… altruistically trying to save young people from the scourge of high housing prices seems like going pretty far out of your way if your motivations are entirely selfish. It seems much more straightforwardly motivated by caring about justice and about individual freedom, and wanting to create a utopian world of maximally meritocratic, dynamic capitalism rather than a world of stagnant rent-seeking that crushes individual human agency.
https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-peter-thiel-millennials