The Most Unhinged Peter Thiel Interview

0:00 It's a cold day in hell that your boy defends Peter Thiel, but Uh so why do we always moralize new technologies? I would say technologies are just neutral. You can use them for good and for bad. God agreed. And it depends on us what we human beings are doing with it. Yes. I'm

0:45 going to get in trouble for what I'm about to say, but uh I I think we moralize moralize way too much. And uh there's always a question uh I like to ask what is the antonyym of good and the moral antonyym is evil. The functional antonym is bad. A Ferrari is an evil car because it doesn't get many miles per gallon. A um a TBY is a bad car. It it works. It's less good than a golf cart. You know, the former East German car. And um and uh and so um you know, if you're um if you're evil, you're least competent. Um, and if you're evil, you're not bad and therefore you're act maybe you're actually kind of kind of good because you're at least getting something done. In u in if you contrast the Faust books of Marlo versus Gerta,

1:32 in Marlo's FA, it was the 16th century Faustst story. Uh, Faustst is a fake scientist. He's sort of like a magician, you know, sort of um a fake alchemist and um it's bad science and he goes straight to hell. in Gertus Foust he has a pact with the devil and he sort of gets this knowledge by morally dubious means but it always it still always you know works out more more for the best and uh go to spouse uh gets redeemed and I I you know so I think it's better to be good than evil I want to be very clear but uh but perhaps um but you know um I I prefer go's foulo's fou and then the the moral question the moral question ours so this is where clip clipping culture

2:17 gets a little out of hand because I think you all saw the clips where the clip was like where he's like where he's saying like it's better to be evil because you're you're you're you're good and you're not bad but like without that earlier context of what he was talking about like the antonyms, right? Like that's what he's talking about when he's talking about the bad. So, like it actually makes what he's saying less like clickbaity as like that clip that's been going out and I've actually been waiting for this. But then also like I think I think he's uh like he kind of makes sense.

3:02 I mean, he is saying and maybe he's just saying that so it's there on record or he's saying like I mean it's still better to be good than evil and maybe he believes that but maybe he's talking about this more in the philosophical sense than in the this is what I believe sense cuz I mean that is a great clip that's a fantastic clip that's been going around. But I do think it's been a little taken out of context. So I again that's why I wanted to kind of watch this to see for our for myself. This is the clip. If you're evil, you're at least competent. Um and if you're evil, you're not bad and therefore you're actually maybe you're actually kind of kind of good because you're at least getting something done. So that's an 11second clip of the most inflammatory thing if taken out of

3:48 context. Like I'm never one here to defend Peter Thiel, but seeing what we just watched, I actually think that he was speaking philosophically and not like this is what I think and feel. And again, it's a cold day in hell that your boy defends Peter Thiel, but I if something's taken out of context and you see the full context, I think it's worth calling out. I think it's worth standing up. I So, I'm here for I'm standing up for context, not Peter Thiel. Yeah, it is still a weird thing to say. He is a weird dude. He's a weird dude. His ultimate

4:33 goal is to basically have a data center for his own mind upload so that he can take his mind upload and merge it with AI and then have some legion of robots that go out and do the for him. That's literally what he wants. That's literally what he wants. And this is what I said. I said this is the great mind and this logic that gets to run the world. Transhumanists are the worst. But guess what? Even with the full context, I'm still standing by that. I still stand by that a thousand% because he is a transhumanist and he is the worst. He actually is the worst. I do think that this is I don't even know if I want if I could

5:18 want to go about like what is evil. I don't even know if he's evil necessarily. I just think he's I don't know. I It's like he's drinking his own Kool-Aid or something. It's I don't know. I don't know how about feel about Peter Thiel other than he just seems to have his hand when you look into anything bad in the last 20 years. Somehow he's either funding it or operating it or doing deals on it or or or he's, you know, done plenty of other things with the people who are doing the evil things. It's there's always, you know, what do they say in Hollywood? You have like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Like every single actor in Hollywood has some six degrees of

6:05 separation between them and Kevin Bacon because Kevin Bacon had done so much like movies and television things that nature. I just think in the world of conspiracies and crazy things that are happening in this world, it's the six degrees of Peter Thiel because Peter Thiel is involved or like directly or indirectly with everything. Yeah, he's evil. I mean, yeah, he he is evil. I think I think his actions are evil. What I'm saying is is his justification in his head like I think it's more than just being evil. It's like like look at this guy. Look at this dude's face. If you told me that an alien was running his

6:50 body from the inside like a chest cavity or something like he's the chef and Ratatouille is up there pulling his hair. That's the look of a guy like that. He talks like that. Society is um we have we have all these good versus evil debates and we're just we're full of badness. It's most of the time those things are not they're not even evil. They're not even good. They're just merely bad. And so if you're in a world where 99% of the businesses, companies, people, political leaders, business leaders are totally incompetent, uh that's that's the problem we should actually be talking about. Very few people. I do agree with that. And basically what he's talking about is, and I I forget what the saying is, but the gist of it is basically like, you know, not

7:35 everybody is evil. Sometimes it's just incompetence. It's like especially when we're dealing with the government. Do I think that everybody in Congress and the Senate and is is evil? I actually don't think that. And I've said that before. I've said that on this stream. I've said it in real life. I've said it multiple times. I don't necessarily believe that every single person that does something up in our government is evil. I think a lot of them are stupid. They're incompetent. They're selfish. They're easily manipulated. Probably because of any of the other things that I just mentioned that they are or could be. Yes. Or blackmailed. Yes. So, I think they're just stupid, incompetent,

8:20 if you want to be really nice about it, but they're stupid. Even the blackmailed ones, especially the blackmailed ones. You put yourself in a position to get blackmailed. You're a And if it is about you being evil, it is about democracy. And some people are portraying you as the anti-democrat and they are [clears throat] basically all referring to one quote from 2009 where you wrote I stopped believing that freedom uh and democracy are compat compatible. Can you explain why you wrote it? what you mean with it and what you're thinking today is about. He did say that and it's it's always, you know, it's always very dangerous to write things, right? It's a very dangerous ide, you know, the context was it was it was this article I quickly typed out one night. I um I sent it to one of my

9:05 colleagues. I asked him to write anything controversial in it that I should not have written. And um no, nothing controversial in here at all. And then my the metal level postmortem I had was the fact that I asked someone for a second opinion told me that I had probably needed to be more careful in my wording. I did issue a correction two weeks later. So you can still go to the website where you know I make it very clear that I'm not I don't think anyone's votes are going to be taken away. I don't think the democracy will will go anywhere. Uh and that I was was what I was arguing for was a certain depoliticization a de-intensification of of politics. Um the original article occurred in this in this sort of libertarian uh Kato online journal and uh the the point of it was directed against you know libertarians who put too much faith in politics and wanted to

9:50 change things change the world by by winning elections and doing things like that. And uh you know I thought you know um uh these pure libertarian pure classical liberal ideas I believe in them. I don't think they're they're easy to win in a democracy. I didn't say anything that Montescu or, you know, John Stewart Mill um or any of these people wouldn't have said, but uh and here's the thing. I'm actually registered as a libertarian, although I'm feeling less and less like uh I'm in alignment with what the li what the libertarian party is right now. Um but he always hangs on this libertarianism, libertarianism, libertarianism. He keeps saying that, but like libertarianism isn't down for

10:38 the surveillance state. They're not. We're not. Okay. You're actively funding the surveillance state. So, how are you a libertarian? How do you embody these libertarian values? I don't see it, bro. I don't see it. I don't see it. I think and and and this is proven by his funding is that he will align himself with whoever he needs to align himself with for his goals. And that by the way is not unique to Peter Thiel. That's pretty much anybody anybody who puts money into politics because if you actually look okay so let's say you get the funding records of soand so and

11:24 they funded the party that you like or the party you don't like go back go back four years eight years go back go back and look at their history of funding you'll find that they also funded the other party Peter Thiel he's He's he's literally framed as this right-wing antichrist tech oligarch dude, but nobody ever calls him like a Democrat when he was funding Democrats all through the 2010s and 2020s. They just focus on on on on his contribution to Trump. And again, this isn't defending him. It's just looking at the truth. I want I want to look at the truth. And the truth is is that he's

12:09 not inherently right. I don't think he's inherently libertarian, though he says he is, and people will more closely relate the libertarians to the to the right, which I think is wrong. But he's he wants to build a police state. He's playing the political game. He's funding who best serves him and who has the better chance of getting him what he wants as his goals. And that's the game he plays. I don't know what you would do if you ran for office. I don't think I would be a good politician. It's not what I would want to do. I', you know, uh, no. Why would you be a politician when you can just control a large number of politicians to do your bidding? Why be the vice president when

12:54 you can groom the vice president and then force him into the vice presidency to do your bidding for you while you go and do the that you do? Why would you want that? And of course you don't want to be in politics. You don't want to be a puppet. You want to be a puppet master. Yeah. Like in theory you could slow it down if you had if you had genuine you know deep cooperation AC across the whole world and uh and then I but I think that would require like a you know one world government with real teeth real force and the Did you catch that? Let's bring it back. Let's bring it back. had if you had genuine, you know, deep cooperation,

13:39 genuine deep cooperation, like China and America could have an agreement and have cooperation because the whole thing is is that we can't like pause or even slow down our production because if we do that then China's going to ramp up and then we're going to lose to China. So he he frames it like this genuine deep cooperation but it's not just solving anything. It's all it's all yeah like in theory you could slow it down if you had if you had genuine you know deep cooperation AC across the whole world and uh and then I but I think that would require like a you know one world government with

14:25 but you know it would just require the new world order. It would just require absolute total power. It would just like require like a surveillance state that can see absolutely everything that you've ever done and knows you better than he knows yourself. It's just it would just take that like one little thing. One little thing like but don't you want like safety in a world with AI? Don't you what am I even asking you for? You're a You're a insect, bro. Like that's that's that's the mentality here underneath. I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it. Real teeth. Real force. Real teeth. So in that spirit, could you share with me the most optimistic, the most

15:12 visionary case about longevity? What can be achieved? Eternal life. Um 150 years. Um it's it's not it's not clear why it shouldn't be. You know, it's not clear there are any natural limits. We still have not you know there are there all sorts of reasons people have become more pessimistic because you know it's it's it certain things have been very hard to cure. Nixon declared war on cancer in 71 said it would be cured in 5 years. It's now 55 years later. There's been some progress, but it's, you know, it's it's very far from very far from accelerating it. And then you know but then there's

15:57 always a question um you know are um I don't know you know it's this is badly simplifying things but um if if you think of biological processes is sort of irreversible and um information computational processes as fundamentally reversible. You know, if you could understand biology as an information science, um then um then in theory you could find a way to um traverse all these, you know, all these processes and uh um and that's and then that's you know like you know computers can live forever but is it then more in this physical sense? Yeah, computers can live forever because he

16:42 wants to upload his mind into a computer, probably a data center, and then merge it with AI and become a god. That's just that is I know I'm making fun of it, but that is very close to I think what he thinks based on things he's actually said and running under the assumption that those are the few times that where he's actually saying what he means and thinks. So um when I started giving these speeches about the antichrist um three years ago, I thought this was an extremely unconventional view that was very far outside the zone. And so I would have said that that that's an answer. And uh now I would say um and then yeah most people would say yeah that's a really crazy thing to talk

17:28 about. Um I would now say that it's actually um it's not contrarian that most people think something like the antichrist is right around the corner that we have incipient totalitarianism throughout the world and uh and so it was less contrarian than I thought. But then the the metal level truth is um I think um everybody thinks everybody says that the antichrist is a crazy idea and the reality is they actually secretly agree with me. Peter, thank you very much for coming. Well, that was a journey. My takeaway is that and and and I I haven't really articulated this before, but I actually do think in a lot of ways Peter Thiel is

18:15 he he is like being pretty genuine. I think he's just extremely autistic. He has a very warped way of looking at the world and I don't agree with him on most things. And the things that I do agree with him on are for different reasons. Yeah, he's a pretty uncomfortable dude. He makes me feel uncomfortable. I mean, he's certainly a very interesting person. I think that he believes in all of the things he says. Like I think I like I don't think he's like a grifter necessarily. Like I think he's very genuine about his positions on things. He definitely is very careful about what he's gonna say and what he's not gonna say, but I don't know. He's uh he's got

19:02 some weird and he's not very he's not super forthcoming about what he really thinks about