Peter Thiel on Political Theology | Conversations with Tyler

Hello Peter thank you for doing this hello Tyler now the title of this conversation is political theology that was a phrase I think first used by the Russian Anarchist bakunin to mock the Italian nationalist mazini German legal theorist Carl Schmidt then picked it up and said it's something that everyone needs they they all need a political theology what does the term mean to you well it's a it's a bit of a fuzzy broad Concept but uh maybe uh maybe sort of to motivate it as a contrast I I I think that in late modernity we're

often living in this world of hyp specialization where you can't think about the big picture and it's sort of like I don't know it's like Adam Smith's pin Factory on steroids is sort of our our world and uh and I think I think there is some way that we have to try to integrate all these different um facets of our life to try to make progress and That's that's what political philosophy does that's what political theology does um the reasons these sorts of things were abandoned you know I think I maybe maybe it's already was

like the enlightenment sort of abandoned it from you know and you know one one one type of reason it was abandoned was because it's too hard to figure this stuff out or it's just a sort of a Fool's errand I'm inclined to think the other reason was it was often think it's too Dangerous too divisive you're not supposed to have debates about religion we settled that in 1648 at the Treaty of West failure we're just going to forget about it not talk about these things um but and I think that might have been a reasonable

compromise in the 18th century um it's my view that when you you fast forward to the 21st century it's maybe more dangerous not to think about things and it's uh it's again more dangerous to go into become it for us to Become ever smaller cogs and an Ever bigger machine you know all the the Adam Smith pin Factory um and then the uh you know the political dimension on it just to say one one thing on that is uh is there's always sort of a question um you know if we're trying to figure out something

about the whole about our whole world you know do you start on sort of a human scale or do you start on you know sort of a microscopic telescopic Atomic or Cosmic scale and um There's probably some way these things are related but the you know the political theology political philosophy debate are frame I think this's also a Socratic idea we start the sort of turn to Common Sense human the world around us questions about politics economics Society culture um and that's that that's sort of actually this important way to get access you know there's

some deep link between the university and the universe there's some deep link between The failing multiversity and the um crazed Multiverse um but uh but we're you know the sort of the the sort of political orientation I have is you're you're never going to solve these things by uh you have to start with the University or or whatever that's that's gone wrong uh if you're ever going to make S of the universe and there's some analog to that that motivates all of these things let's say I'm trying to make sense of your political theology so

I recall you saying in a recent talk you consider yourself religious but not spiritual and that strikes me as quite a calvinist point so if you put aside predestination and think of Calvinism as insisting we know nothing about heaven so it's an aration of Man's power to claim to know about heaven that's related to your critique of the left the notion that we don't know anything about heaven it also means you can't really be spiritual that's also a kind of Arrogation isn't the consistent Peter teal really a calvinist thinker and Calvinism it's quite concrete it's

quite serious it takes governance and Authority uh very literally why aren't you just a calvinist man I like I'm I'm I'm still like mostly a Liber Arian Tyler and uh but you can be both and that's you know um I mean I think probably there there things I they're probably redeeming things I can find in Calvinism it's probably you know it's It's it's so anti-utopian that it's probably helpful in the battle against communism but um you know I don't I don't know if uh that's the only way to be anti-communist and uh I you do

fivepoint Calvinism it's you know um total depravity unconditional election limited atonement irresistible Grace perseverance of the Saints I don't know if I agree with even one out of those those five things I would say uh you know a girardian Anthropological uh frame is that um is that you know um there is this deep link between um gods and scapegoats and uh we tend to always we have these scapegoats we turn into Gods we uh project our violence onto them and this is what you know archaic religion does this is in some ways what you know

atheist liberalism does you blame everything on Mr God and um isn't Calvinism just an extreme form of scapegoating where Mr God did everything he determined Everything he's why you're wearing that blue uh jacket and it's it's uh it's why uh you everything you did wrong it's all Mr God's fault and um it is just it's just sort of we should be deeply distrustful of um of scapegoating Mr God for everything like that so that's that's an anthropological argument against against Calvinism but the the int and then the intellectual reason I'm I'm not calvinist is that

uh I think we should be trying to make sense of the World and if if if um if you are you know if if you you know so depraved that you can't even think which is sort of I think a core calvinist thing we shouldn't be having a conversation so if I were if I were a real calvinist we wouldn't even be able to have have a conversation here and uh and if I you know if I if I sort of you know you know you know there's atomistic distinction between the intellect and the will

and the medievals believe in the power of The intellect the weakness of the will uh the moderns it's sort of in some ways reversed but uh but if you if you sort of take a effective altruist East Bay rationalist these people they're they're much closer to Calvinism they they claim to be rationals but if you're in a you know if you're in a rationalist Bible study equivalent and you know the outward facing thing is that you're rational and you're pure and you're and you're thinking the inward facing thing Is is all just spaghetti code you're

so you can never be right about anything maybe you can be a little little less wrong but um it's um it's that's and so I'm I'm against both Calvinism and um and so-called rationalism but here here's then the puzzle I'm faced with let's take all of that at face value why is it you just don't slide into Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox belief in Free Will there's some middle position and and why is your middle Position stable you could either be Catholic or for that matter Mormon or there's plenty of room for free will right uh

well again these aren't they're purely not not all the all the Alternatives uh you know I have it's always a little bit of a cheap shot my my my two-word you know rebuttal to Roman Catholicism is Pope Francis um and um and you know and um and you know we were talking a little Bit about you know the you know the uh you know what what you know I grew up as a Lutheran um you know they probably all these things that are you know problematic um about Luther there things that were were good about

him but you know I I think the you know the one the one part of it that uh um if we judge him by the standard of the 16th century you know I don't know um I think the Reformation had to come from the outside it couldn't it was not actually possible For to to start from within and um and there is a way that uh you know the Lutheran piece was it was the uh it was the less globally um centralized church it was going to be a it was going to be a less

centralized ized church and there's probably you know there's probably still um some part of the the uh um Protestant political project that lines up more closely with a libertarian view what is it from the Hebrew Bible or one could say Old Testament that you've Incorporated into your own political thought well I I think um I don't know I think my views on this are pretty fairly Orthodox Christian and that there's some continuity between the old and the new you know there's there's some some sense it's sort of hard to Define where you maybe the Christian

God is the original Progressive where the new is better than the old it's I think it's the first time where the new is simply better than the old just by virtue of being new um but Uh if you um if you exaggerate the difference too much that uh that ends up being problematic and that's you know sort of the where you know you end up saying that uh the Old Testament God is even is like maybe just a different God from the New Testament god um and that uh you sort of all the extremely uh

Progressive uh forms of higher criticism things like this in the 19th century we all they were all deeply anti-semitic and I so I think if you're if you're too Progressive you end up um becoming an anti-semite if you're um if you and then if you're and then you have to somehow say there's some progress but uh the the the jardian intuition I would have is it's just always this uh this this reversal and perspective where uh the Bible takes things from the the side of the victim there there's a um and it's already in the

Book of Genesis where it's the story of Cain and Abel um you know the founding of the first city in The history of the world is a parallel but opposite story to the story of ramulus and Remis the founding of the greatest City where you know Romulus and Remis story is told from the point of view of Romulus uh the Canan Abel stories told from point of view of Abel or the you know the Israelites coming out of Egypt that would normally be told from the point of view of the Egyptians where we had these

troublemakers and we got rid of them and uh and it's it's it And you have the sort of inversion of perspectives um you know um throughout the Old Testament I would say is it possible that we can read the Old Testament conclude essentially history is something really bad that's the central message of the woke and then just say the woke basically are correct we should side with the woke they have all these excesses those are terrible but they're in a way a method of advertising the fundamental conclusion That history is bad and they're the ones

who make us deal with that and thus you and I should be woke what's wrong with that line of reasoning yes I think the history was very bad I think it's always a mistake for um conservatives or anti-woke people to whitewash it too much and so if we if we say that you know um um you know yeah there used to be slavery but the slaves were all happy people they were all happy slaves that is a loser argument and you you Shouldn't you shouldn't do this um you know the what I would say the

the again the sort of rough Christian frame on this is somehow the history is really bad and I think Christianity probably it is much worse than Islam or Judaism on this because uh I don't know you know Islam and Judaism it would be inconceivable that you could murder God you know in the form of a person if someone claimed to be God and and he got killed that would just prove that he's Not God um and so uh so yeah so sort of the original sin the violence in some sense is is is is is

far greater in a Christian context and then uh but then there is some way that we're all part of that Matrix and you also need to have you know you need to have forgiveness so if if you want to maybe Outline Three three rough possibilities there's this you know hardto Define christian in between one which is the history is terrible um and it's awful but we need To try to find a way to forgive people and then there is a let's say uh let's say a woke version where the history is terrible but um we're

going to forget about the Forgiveness part and then there is I don't know maybe maybe sort of a right-wing nian Bronze Age pervert alternative which is uh we um we're just um you know we're going to forget about the history it's kind of oppressive I'm I'm sick of the skill trip and don't want to hear anything more about the History and uh and somehow the the um the the sort of in between Christian one I think is is the most tenable even though there are all sorts of tensions in that there was a recent Harvard

talk you gave where if I understand you correctly you suggested the left needed to learn how to relativize its victimhood what did you mean by that and how does it relate to what you just said it's well in the the the context was uh you know how much how much victimhood is Is um is unhealthy for people to have and you know um there all these ways where um you can you can identify yourself as a victim I'm not I I don't want to have sort of blanket rule where you can never say that you

weren't a victim you know I don't know I sometimes like to joke that I'm a poor and persecuted Peter person and uh and that's uh maybe there are elements of Truth to that maybe it's you know maybe it's it's uh very exaggerated um but if I if I absolutize that too much it's probably unhealthy and sort of a um you know a Christian division that I I I I suggested at the Harvard talk was that uh if um it's okay to say you're a victim it's it's okay to do these things up to a certain

point you can't say that you're a greater victim than Christ and uh once you do that um um you've probably lost perspective are there other holy books besides the Bible that you draw ideas And inspiration from and what would those be well you know I I I think I think it's probably all you know in some sense it's all the great books were you know were these sort of I I don't know they're not quite they're not quite at the scale of of these holy books but uh there was there was a way that uh

you know we we treated you know I don't know Shakespeare or Cervantes or go as these almost semi Divine writers and uh and uh that's and that I think that's the sort Of attitude one has to have to to um read any of these books you know appropriately and seriously so the Western Cannon would be your answer so to speak something like the Western can I I don't think that you know I don't think the great books are are quite as holy as Bible but um and I you know as a result I I don't

probably don't read enough of them but but yes that that's that's the closest approximation and it includes science fiction yes or No I I read a lot as a kid I'm I I I just read so little of that nowadays it's just it's all too depressing last week I was teaching my graduate class and a bunch of them asked me why is it we keep on hearing about Carl Schmidt now and I tried to explain that to them but why do you think there's now a Resurgence of Interest interest in Carl Schmidt and for you

what are the valuable insights in Schmidt you know um Carl Carl Schmidt Was he was one of sort of this group of uh thinkers uh came to prominence in the 1920s in wear wear Germany and there was you know obviously there were a lot of things that went you know very Haywire with many of these uh many of these people you know that sort of in some ways Schmidt got somewhat entangled with the Nazis who distanced himself a few years later but there was some it it was very bad judgment in certain ways but the

the thing that's you know the thing That I think is um interesting dangerous about looking at the the Yar thinkers it was somehow in you it was in the aftermath of World War I Germany had lost um you couldn't go back to sort of the throne and altar um you know Empire the Hops borgs um and you couldn't um you didn't really want to go forward with liberal democracy and so they were all these people had these uh fairly deep critiques and in some ways it was going Back to these questions of political theology political

philosophy had been sort of whitewashed and set aside um since the uh since the uh since the enlightenment um and and there were again there were things about it that were dangerous you know sort of you know one way one way to think of uh the Yar period was I don't know it's like the dwarves in Moria where they dwelled too deep and you know finally they they awaken the nameless Terror the ballog um But uh but I think I think there are and again I I don't think we're ever in a cyclical world but

there are certainly certain parallels in the US in the 2020s to Germany in the 1920s where you know um you know liberalism is exhausted one suspects the Democracy whatever that means is exhausted and um and uh you know that that uh we have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window what is that you think that missed that's very important let's let's Maybe I'll I'll just sort of do one Insight that I think is powerful and then sort of what's what's what's wrong about that you know one of one of his books was

the concept of the political and sort of what what defines politics and it's sort of this of it's some of this division of friends and enemies there and that that somehow is really foundational and you shouldn't get sidetracked with all these other things and then there all these interesting Ways you could apply this there's you know sort of a 1980 Reagan Coalition question I always like to ask people where you had this you know the Reagan Coalition was somehow the free market Libertarians the um defense Hawks and the social conservatives and so if you ask

what does the millionaire and the general and the priest what do they actually have in common we just sort of Imagine these three people are seated at a dinner Table and they're having dinner and what do they actually talk about and uh it's really hard to come up with with an answer and uh and yet the Coalition worked incredibly well and the answer I submit that they haven't common is they're anti-communist and they have a common enemy and um and that was you know incredibly powerful it was it was it was in some ways my

formative political IDE idea as a teenager you know junior high School high school late 70s early 8s was was anti-communism um and uh and then there was a way that you when the Berlin Wall came down in ' 89 this this seemingly incredibly powerful political constellation dis disintegrated and and there's and there's sort of a natural schmidan analysis of this so that's that's sort of that's sort of where where I find um Schmidt quite powerful as a thinker the you know the place um where uh it probably tends to always go Haywi there's always a

question whether um politics is like a market um or is is it is it a sort of thing where if you understand it better it works better um and uh and so or is it something like a scapegoating machine where um the scapegoating machine only works if you don't uh look into the sausage making factory and so if you say we're having you know a lot of conflicts in our village and we have to find some um random elderly woman and accuse her of Witchcraft so that will aieve some psychosocial Unity as a village um

this sort of thing doesn't really work if you're if you're that self-aware and so uh and so there was sort of a you know Schmidt had this you know in a way had this uh optimistic Enlightenment rationality to it where if we just describe Politics as you know the arbitrary division of the world into friends and enemies then this will somehow you know um strengthen the Political and it probably actually you know in some ways um accelerated its disintegration instead is Schmid missing out on a certain possible cyclicality in history so the notion that liberalism

will collapse in the viore Germany of the 1920s obviously that was the correct prediction but if you reappear in West Germany of 1948 it was a completely incorrect prediction and just as well liberalism had collapsed leading up to World War I It it tends to come back uh why isn't the cyclical perspective the correct one man that's that's a big question but I uh I don't know I I think you can you can stress the the aspects that are Timeless and eternal I prefer to stress the aspects that are one time and World historical I

think that you in some sense every moment in history only um only happens once and uh you know I I think there is some kind of a meaning to History um I think it has a certain type of linearity to it um and if you um I think that is sort of the the let's say the judeo-christian view of history as distinct from let's say the uh the classical um Greco Roman one I don't I don't know if you can have a concept of History that's cyclical and so if you look at um I don't

know if you look at thus cities where um it's this um great period of peace that leads to this great war between Athens and Sparta so the Periclean age some of them gives way to this this great conflict and then people came back to studying thus cities right after World War I there were some certain parallel 100 Years of peace between the Napoleonic Wars and then it led to this great conflict but um but there's nothing particular in the history none of the details matter in thus cities he makes up all the speeches and so

on and then you know you contrast this with something like of the Book of Daniel in the Bible where it's um it's a succession of four kingdoms and it is a one-time world history um where everything that happens is unique not not to be repeated and and there's sort of a sense in which I would say the the the real first historian was Daniel um and the cities isn't even close um and then um and then yeah we you know we we we talked off off the set a little bit about you know was well

what about you know the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire and isn't the European Union sort of like the Roman Empire and then I don't know my my my my response is well you know we have nuclear weapons today and they didn't have those you know even in 1900 and so even just on the Science and Tech Arc um things are are so different and I I would I would not trivialize the importance of science and technology so you think now the stakes are too high for the cyclical version of History to work because

at Some point it's just not possible to come back it's just that the the the Science and Tech has a progressive character and so it is um you know yes I there there are elements I think that are probably quite apocalyptic about our time but but I I I wouldn't um I would I would just start by saying they're they're very different and we're yeah we're in a very different world than we were in 1900 and I don't know how you go I don't know how you un Unlearn all the knowledge we've gained even since

1900 do you think we're entering a new age of millenarian thought somewhat akin to the English 17th century where everything was very fertile there's a scientific revolution Tech you could say is revitalized again a lot of people went crazy uh highly diverse theologies uh they execute a king many strange things happen but in many ways we're living in the world of the English 17th Century right with constitutions political parties uh central banks is this the new this is again this is again this is again like absurdly cyclical frame you're you're putting on things it's it's

just no I I don't think any moment ever repeats itself it is just radically different um of course there are things that are um you that are apocalyptic about our world we we have you know we have all these uh kinds of uh dangers that uh they um unlike the 17th century they seem to come from you know this place that's uh very non-religious it's like science technology it was nuclear weapons after 1945 you know it's uh maybe it's environmental degradation climate change we can debate about you know various forms of the environment there's certainly

uh you know there certainly are fears people have about bioweapons we can ask what really happened with the Wuhan lab there are apocalyptic fears um You know around AI that I think you know deserve to be uh T taken seriously so if yeah if it's if it's millenarian um or apocalyptic it's uh it it has a very very different feel um it is um it's sort of a apocalyptic violence that comes from a purely human Source it's not it's not really being you know orchestrated by by uh by God um you know um uh the

one of the one of the one of the points that Rene jard always lik to make Was that uh in the in the Catholic church it was I think the sort of um during the Advent season you'd often have these sort of sermons on the end times and the terrible things that happened at the end of the world and um in Gerard's telling the church Stop Those sermons in after 1945 because people needed to be reassured that uh um the nuclear weapons had nothing to do with Armageddon or fire and brimstone or or anything like

this even though of Course you know there were you know there were all these slight Mythic elements you know the first nuclear test was called Trinity or you know you named it after all these Greek gods the Saturn Jupiter Zeus whatever um but uh but yeah I think uh I think it's uh I I think we are we we're sort of there there are elements of that that I think are uh that are are very true but um if I had to do my anti- millenarian frame or um maybe it's it's Not a prot tech

argument this is sort of an anti- anti-tech argument is that uh you know if if we if we again talk about all these existential risks um today and uh you know we can nuclear weapons climate change biotech you know nanotech Killer Robots um the AI That's going to turn everyone to a paperclip or whatever um um I always think you have to you you should at least include you know one more kind of existential risk if we're Going to throw it in and uh in in my mind one one other existential risk is a one

world totalitarian government and I find that as least as scary as the others and um you know the in sort of a uh Biblical eschatological context uh you know you're supposed to worry about Armageddon you're also supposed to worry about the Antichrist maybe you're supposed to worry more about the Antichrist because the Antichrist comes first um and uh and so you know if we're Going to find a pathway through this apocalyptic age you have to sort of navigate between the the Sila of all these you know existential risks that are and and the corbus of

the sort of political totalitarian uh catastrophe if um if I had to do sort of a more literary version on this you know it's very hard to write sort of a literary account of the Antichrist but there were sort of the two good Antichrist books that were Written um the two best fictional ones in my mind were pre-World War I there was 1908 Robert hubens from sort of a Catholic book lord of the world there was a 1900 one by salv War progress in the end of History they both had these sort of um accounts

of this future totalitarian World dictator who took over the whole world and both of them it's kind of a um demonium exmo sort of really unclear how the Antichrist takes over it's like he gives these hypnotic Speeches and no one can remember word he say but they all just sell their souls for no parent good reason whatsoever and he just takes over the world um but it seems to me that if we were to write if one were to try to write a novel like this post 1945 it's it's very straightforward it would be you

know um it'd be like one world or none this is a short film by uh the nuclear scientists after 1945 if we don't give the nuclear Weapons to to the One World Government it's going to blow up the whole world and um and basically um the the the literary version would be that the Antichrist comes to Power by constantly talking about Armageddon and constantly telling us scary millenarian stories and so that's that's sort of my complicated nuanced answer is um there's a lot of Truth um to these existential risks I don't want to completely dismiss

them but uh but that's also uh that's also um You know how we're going to get this uh totalitarian state if you look at um you there all these aversions this I can I can go down but it's like you know um it's you you want to worry about Dr Strange Love or Greta um and it seems like doct strange Love's more dangerous but uh if if everyone's going to have to you know ride a bicycle um that's not just going to happen on its own and that requires you know some some uh some real

real enforcement of this stuff where There's you know there's a there's a there's a short you know Bost there's a boster messay from 2019 on how to how to stop all the uh the the AI risks and it's basically you know maybe maybe we can change the culture so that nobody will have heterodox ideas anymore and so a few different ideas like this but then uh what you really need is um really effective Global government and really effective policing because uh you and you have to have some kind of global Compute governance and um and

uh that sounds to me um at least as scary as the AI but isn't the much greater risk a collapse into a kind of disorderly feudalism so we're in Florida the United States seems to be becoming more federalised it's very hard for me to imagine China say taking over India you can look at the Balkans it's even a word balkanized you look at the Middle East if it goes very Badly it's hard to see any single power just ruling any substantial part of the Middle East it's easy to imagine it being in a kind of

chaos uh why think there's so much scale that that kind of totalitarianism would be possible man I I don't I don't know it's it's uh it's uh there's so many different versions of this but just if if we think about um I don't know the the the versions of this I would have Been more on your side let's say post 911 you know it was you know wow aren't we just going to have all this chaotic terrorism all over the world and and uh and we didn't get that much terrorism and we instead got you

know uh the Patriot Act and um you know incredible tracking of you know of money flows incredible monitoring of people and uh and so the you know um and of course you know there's still there still are things that can go wrong but but uh you Know the the political slogan of the Antichrist uh 1 Thessalonians 5:3 I think is uh is peace and safety and um it's it seems that we've gone far more in the peace and safety Direction than the the global chaos Direction I I don't know it's it's I don't I think

it's hard to even have like an illegal Swiss bank account and that's like a really modest modest way it's it's it's you know um it's it's hard to exit it's hard it's much harder to exit the United States Than it was you know 20 30 years ago let's say you're trying to track the probability uh that the Western World and its allies somehow muddles through and just keeps on muddling through what variable or variables do you look at to try to track or estimate that what do you watch I I don't I don't think it's

a really empirical question so this is it's it's if if um yes if you could convince me that it was empirical and You'd say these are the variables we should pay attention to if I if I could if I agreed with that frame you've already won half the argument and so be like variables well you know the sun has risen set every day and so it'll probably keep doing that and so we shouldn't worry or you know the planet has always muddled through so Greta is kind of wrong and um it you know uh and

we shouldn't really pay attention to her and I'm I'm sympathetic to not paying Attention to her but I I don't think this is a great argument and um and uh or you know this this is of course if if we think about the the globalization project of of of of you know of of the postc Cold War um period where um in some sense it's you know globalization is just sort of happens it's going to be more movement of goods and people and ideas and and money and um we're going to sort of become this

uh you know more peaceful um better Integrated world and um you don't need to sweat the details we're just going to kind of muddle through and then what you know in my telling you know there were a lot of things around that story that that um went very Haywire um you know one one simple version is the the US China thing hasn't quite worked the way people fukuyama and all these people envisioned it back in 1989 um and um and I think one could have figured this out much earlier and Um and if if if

we had not been told you you can just you're just going to muddle through um uh it would it you know the alarm Bells would have gone off much sooner and uh you know um you know may maybe maybe globalization is leading towards you know sort of a neoliberal paradise maybe it's leading to the totalitarian state of the Antichrist but um I would be yeah I'd be let's see it's not a very empirical argument but but if someone like you didn't ask questions About muddling through I'd be so much like an optimistic Boomer libertarian like

you uh stopped asking questions about muddling through um I'd be so much more assured so are you so much more hopeful are you saying it's ultimately a metaphysical question rather rather than an empirical question I I don't I don't think it's metaphysical but it's it's somewhat analytic it's and moral even it's it's that you're laying down some Duty by talking about muddling through Well it's it's um it it it does tie into all these these bigger questions so I think um I don't I don't think if we had you know a one world state that

this would automatically be for the best and so there are you know there are you know I'm not sure that you know if we do a classical liberal or libertarian intuition on this it would be you know maybe maybe um the absolute power that a one world state would have would corrupt absolutely I don't think the Libertarians were critical enough of it the last 20 or 30 years so there was some way um they didn't believe their own theories they didn't connect things enough I don't I don't know if I say that's a moral failure

but there was some failure of the of the imagination so this multipronged skepticism about muddling through would you say that's your actual real political theology like if we got to the bottom of this now it that that would be That would be a a you know it's it's it's whenever people think you can just muddle through um yeah that you're you're probably set up for some kind of disaster that's that that's fair I it doesn't it's not like not as positive an agenda but but I always I always think you know I I don't know

as a as a you know it's one of my chapters in in the 0 to1 book was was you know you're not a lottery ticket and sort of like the the basic advice is if you're if you're an Investor and you know you can just think okay I'm just muddling through as an investor here I have no idea what to invest in they're all these people I don't I can't pay attention to any of them I'm just going to write checks to everyone make them go away and I'm just going to set up you know

um a desk somewhere here in uh on South Beach and I'm going to give a check to everyone who comes up to the desk or you know not everybody but I'll just it'll it's just I'm writing lottery tickets and that's just a formula for losing all your money and um and there's some there's some an the the muddling the the place where I react so violently to the muddling through it's it's just it's again we're we're just not thinking and this is like it's it's it can be calvinist it can be it can be rationalist

it's it's anti-intellectual it's it's not thinking about things so the muddling through View and the calvinist view in your Opinion they have the same flaw actually it's uh a distrust in human agency a distrust in human thought a distrust you know in our ability to uh yeah to to make choices now for months I've been asking myself why you and also Schmid are so interested in this catacon idea which is also from the Bible you can explain that to us in a moment but am I correct in now thinking it just occurs to me that

the catacon is in a sense your substitute vision for what for me Is muddling through so you're not willing to believe in muddling through but things haven't collapsed now not here so you need something else holding the finger in the Dyke and that's catacon or or no uh well it's it's a very mysterious idea I'm not it's it's sort of this uh this um there's always a question why the Antichrist hasn't taken over yet and it's this mysterious force that holds back this restraining force that that holds back you know the Totalitarian One World State

and um and and uh you know I don't necessarily put too much stock in it because it's uh it's sort of uh on its own terms it's somewhat unstable it's um it's provisional it has these sort of um archaic sacred elements it can it can work for a while it's um but it's not something uh it's not a you can't identify it with an institution you know and again the schmidan view was there were all these Different things that played the role of the catacon at various points in time but uh if you're not supposed

to immanentize the escaton you're also not supposed to immanentize the catacon and um and so if you if you uh if you identify too much as one thing that can go very wrong and then um if you if you think of the catacon as the thing that restrains the one world State um um there were you know there were various thing or that restrains the Antichrist Um anything that's sort of like the opposite this is sort of gerian cut is always going to be mimetically entangled and so it's going to have sort of this parallelism

and so there's always a risk that the catacon becomes the Antichrist so you know the original anti the Proto Antichrist was Nero Claudius the the good Emperor was the catacon he was restraining Nero but then at some point you know it's yeah Nero is the opposite of Claudius but they're both they're Both uh Roman Emperor or um or you know you could say that um you could say that um in the middle of the 20th century I don't know from let's say 1949 to 1989 I would identify the catacon as anti-communism I would identify communism

as the ideology of the Antichrist in the 20th century and anti-communism was this you know it was not what what stopped communism was not you know the United States couldn't have done it it was not just one country it Was not um it was not like some libertarian debating Society was you know something was like pretty violent pretty pretty hard to morally justify not really that Christian um but um but would that that sort of had this unifying effect and then um the way it morphed would be you know 1989 something like anti-communism morphs into

neoliberalism and that's actually you know uh well if you're anti-communist you're not aspiring for World control you're just trying to stop the Communists from getting World control once you've defeated the Communists what are you supposed to do and like maybe you can just go home and forget about all all all of what you did but in practice these things have a tendency to perpetuate themselves and it was like Bush 41 anti-communism became the New World Order and we're now going to just govern the world in the name of anti-communism and uh and so there's Something

about it that's always U misleading or or even what I said about the Antichrist in this apocalyptic thing doesn't the Antichrist just come to power by acting as a catacon like this is what Greta says she's doing she is the catac on stopping climate change and um and so it's yeah it's a it's a somewhat useful concept but um I wouldn't put too much weight on it so at at the macro level uh all the weight you're putting on human agency is that Really so compatible with Lutheranism I'm I'm probably not I I I'm not

a perfect Lutheran not A's a lot there's a lot that was if you look all these all these people that one would judge very differently in retrospect if you look in the Bible Old Testament New Testament and you think about all the Christian thinkers who believed in some form of predestination or Moses was chosen and the like uh Abraham was chosen what is it in the Bible that Points you in the direction of so much belief in human agency being so important and there's sort of a lot of different levels on this but uh but

certainly um if you uh if you if you think of it as as um this this shift away from um uh sacrificing individuals sacrificing people um there there is sort of an anti- the anti-s sacrificial theme and you know we can you know you can always say how is you know modernity or Enlightened values how how are they T tied with this but uh um certainly the the idea I would have would be some something like the idea of the individual came out of this this context where you know um um the state was not

AB it was not not not sacred it it um you know it was not necessarily providential um you know this is always uh Gerard like to always say that um you know uh Christ was the first political atheist because on the on the level of Of the uh of the political order if if you say um Christ says that he's the son of God Son of the father um there's a way you can go into trinitarian metaphysics but the uh the political interpretation of this is that c C Augustus um U the son of the

divinized Caesar is not um that is is is not um you know somehow that's not exactly the Son of God and uh that the Roman Empire is not simply divinely ordained and then that Somehow you know opens a space for for um you know a less a less unitary system that you know takes you know many many centuries to develop or something like this but this is where I don't know I I I think of you know I think of even Ein Rand as like a pretty good Christian in this way I know that would

probably be really scand say that but it's it's just it's at least you know yeah it's Jewish and atheist and shrill and crazy but it's but it's it's it's just no you Can't sacrifice the individual and and then um and then you know you you shouldn't sacrifice your mind you shouldn't sacrifice your reason it's just that you can't you can't sacrifice that you've been quoting The Tempest lately in some of your talks how is it you think the Shakespearean political Vision differs from the Christian well it's always it's always hard to know What um what

Shakespeare really thought but I I I I um you know you have you certainly have different characters if you have you know I think it's um you know um you have someone like MC Beth I think says life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound Fury signifying nothing so um that doesn't sound like a particularly Christian worldview but maybe you know that's just what MC Beth says it's not what Shakespeare says so It's always it's always very hard to know maybe it's a sort of a Christian nihilistic view of the world or

some something like that um but um but I think the the the contrast I always frame is that uh I think I think um uh the way I understand Shakespeare is always in contrast with someone like KL Marx where um Marx believed that people had battles over differences that mattered it was you know the different classes and they had objectively Different interests and this is what led to the intensity of the the struggle and there's something in um Shakespeare that's sort of Proto Gerard and or very mimetic where um people have conflicts over um when

they uh the conflicts are the most intense when they don't differ at all and so it is you know it's the opening line of Romeo and Juliet it's uh the Capulet versus the monu two houses alike in dignity they're identical and that's why they they hate each other so Much or think it's at the end of Hamlet where Hamlet says you know to be truly great you must stake everything for an eggshell because um because an average person would fight over things that mattered but a truly great person would fight over things as ephemeral as

honor or an eggshell or something something like this and um and of course you know the Hamlet's problems he doesn't really um believe all all the you know the the sort of insane Revenge drama he's he's Supposed to he's he's supposed to be in um so I think I think there is probably a um a place where I would I would say uh yeah Shakespeare would probably be very distrustful of you know um extreme ideological differences today would probably in some way also be be a kind of political atheist I find the play Julia Caesar

very interesting because there's no catacon there's no muddling through so they sacrifice Caesar there's a Civil War and A lot more people dying and no end to that in sight it's the the pessimistic scenario of the teal Universe I think you know there's there's sort of a strange way where where they're all going back and thinking they're they're reenacting things right so it's uh it's um it's um you know the way Brutus uh gets pulled into the conspiracy in juliia Caesar is that uh he um he gets reminded or that you know his ancestor another

person named Brutus had Overthrown Tarin the the last of the kings of Rome in 509 BC and so he thinks he's he's just you know reenacting that murder and then of course there's a you know there's a um and then I think I think there is uh some part in the in the in in the in the play where um um um um the Shakespeare has the actors say you know I'm going to get get this slightly garbled but it's something like um you know and uh centuries hence there will be people reenacting this on

a Stage in front of an audience and and and this is what motivates Brutus to do it it's like the the future Applause in The Shakespearean uh theater and then of course you know the uh the crazy literal reenactment of it was um John wils Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln in 1865 where uh um you know um Booth uh was a Shakespearean actor and then it was six Seer Tannis was what he said it was like he he thought he was reenacting the Brutus Caesar thing and then you can you Can look at the uh I

think it's 1838 Lincoln speech the young men's lysium address where um Lincoln sort of portrays himself um sort of in a somewhat coded way as sort of a Proto Caesar where you know there and he sort of tells the audience there there people in this country who um you know who um wouldn't be happy to be you know there all these some people are like really ambitious and uh um but no one can be like a Founder um because that was in The past and the most you can now be is a president but there

are people for whom being president's not enough and there's some people who um if you didn't stop them they would keep going until they enslaved all the white people or freed all the slaves and sort of Lincoln talking about himself and saying that he has the ambition to be like a caesar or a Napoleon or or something like this um but uh but yeah so there's s there a bit of a roundabout answer so um yes so There are ways we can see it as a as a cycle but but surely that's what we want

to transcend it was it was a bad idea for Brutus to think he was reenacting the Caesar thing and somehow um there was something about uh the John wils Booth story that's pretty sad too for our last segment let's turn to artificial intelligence as you know large language models are already quite powerful they're only going to get better in this world to come will the Word cells just lose their influence people who write people who play around with ideas pundits are they just toast what's this going to look like are they going to give up

power peacefully are they going to go down with the ship are they going to um off nuclear bombs I I you know I I I sort of I had this riff where I I I think again sort of the one of the things I I'll say the the AI thing broadly the llms it's a big breakthrough it's very important um and It's striking to me how um how bad Silicon Valley is at talking about these sorts of things and uh and there there sort of you know there sort of all kinds of the questions are

either way too narrow where it's something like you know we're going to have um uh you know is the next Transformer model going to be improve by 20% on the last one or something like this or they maybe too Cosmic where it's like we go straight from there we go straight to The simulation theory of the universe and uh and surely there are you know a lot of um in between questions one one could ask um let me try to answer uh yours um um my my intuition would be it's going to be quite the

opposite where it seems much worse for the math people than the word people um and what you know what people have told me is that uh um you they they think within 3 to 5 years um the AI models will be able to solve all the um us math Olympiad Problems and um and uh that that would you know that would um that would shift things uh things quite a bit um there there's sort of a longer history I always have on the math versus verbal uh riff where if you ask when did um when

did our society bias to uh testing people more for ver math ability I believe it was during the French Revolution because it was believed that uh verbal ability ran in families um math ability was sort of distributed um In the sort of idious sant way throughout the population and so if we um if we prioritized uh math ability um it had sort of this meritocratic but also egalitarian uh effect on society um and then I I think by the time you get to the Soviet Union and Soviet communism in the 20th century where you give

um you know a um number theorist or chess Grandmaster metal which I was always a part I was somewhat sympathetic to in the in the uh Soviet Union um um um um You um it maybe it's actually just sort of a control mechanism where the math people are singularly clueless they don't understand anything but if we um put them on a pedestal we tell everyone else you need to be like the math person then um it's actually a way to sort of control or that the chess Grandmaster doesn't understand anything about the world um that's

a way to to Really control things and if I sort of fast forward to let's say Silicon Valley in The early 21st century it's way too biased towards the math people I don't know if it's a French Revolution thing or a Russian sort of um straussian uh secret cabal control thing where you sort of priortize but uh but that's that's the thing that seems deeply unstable and uh that's what I would bet on on getting reversed where you know it's like isn't it like um like the the place where math ability like you know um

you know it's it's sort of it's the Thing that's the test for everything right it's like if do you want to go to medical school okay we weed people out through uh physics and calculus and and like I'm not sure that's really correlated with your you know I don't know your dexterity as a neurosurgeon I don't really want someone operating on my brain to be you know doing prime number factorizations in their head while they're operating on my brain or something like that and so um you know I I I when you know in the

late 80s early 90s I I had sort of a chess bias because I was a pretty good chess player and so my chess bias was you should just test everyone on chess ability and that should be the gating Factor Why why even do math why not just chess and that got undermined by uh by the computers in 1997 um and isn't that what's going to happen to math and isn't that a long overdue rebalancing of our society and how is manual labor going to do in this World to come there'll be a lot more new

projects right if you're a very good Gardener Carpenter will your wages go up by 5x or is there something else in store for us it's it's hard to say but I look I think I it seems to me the kinds of let me just not give the answer but let me sort of suggest some of the questions I'd like us to focus on more with the ey so I think yeah I think one question is you know is it going to how much will it increase GDP versus how Much will it increase inequality and probably

it does does some some of both um um is it a very centralizing technology that's another question I'd like to get a better handle on um you know I had this RI five six years ago where if um if crypto is libertarian why can't we say that AI is communist and that and um and and one of the things that I I'm still probably a little bit uncomfortable about it is that it seems to lead to these incredible returns to Scale you know um man I thought I thought s you know I thought San Francisco

had at least you know committed suicide and we could move on from San Francisco and then um but the uh the returns to scale on AI are so big that uh may maybe even San Francisco will will survive with um with uh the AI Revolution but then you know there and there are benefits to this but but it also leads to um this kind of a set of centralization questions or the Geopolitical question you know um you know if if it is as big a technology as you and I think it is um what is

it going to do to the China us rivalry will it you know and what do you think um I I don't actually I'm just saying like it would be good if we just at least ask the right sorts of questions I don't have answers to all these my um I I can do the I'll do the pro-china argument is they um they will not hesitate to use the AI and train it on all their people And so um it'll be more quickly implemented the uh Pro us argument is that uh is that we are probably

ahead of China maybe the large language models are not really communist you know maybe if if you can't ask the large language model who Winnie the Pooh is uh you have to Nerf it so badly that it doesn't even work or something like that so I I I I think there's sort of a um there's an intuition that the effective altruists are not just fifth columnists on the Part of the CCP where they're trying to sabotage us but where they actually simply are uh um um um doing what the CCP wants uh which is actually

to stop the LMS and that that it's very disruptive um and then um to the extent I think the second one that it probably helps the us more than China um is that actually massively destabilizing where um you know China was a sort of low vol volatility plan to Victory where they were just going to slowly um beat the Western World um and if if if you now have this uh volatility increasing technology that China cannot match does that just accelerate China's timetable and does China become sort of like Russia where you know you're ultimately

going to lose and you have to you know maybe you have to invade Taiwan in the next year or two and you can't wait for another decade final question what is the next thing you will choose to learn about Man this is always these are all these question you know this is all they all this projections of your personality Tyler you know it's like and it's the Isaiah Berlin thing where you know um you have these two you have the sort of uh you know the the Hedgehog who knows one thing the fox who knows

many things you know so many different things you're interested in so many different things you know I'm I'm just I don't know it's just sort of a few core ideas I come Back to and it's something like this uh you know wonderful and terrible history of the world that we're living through as you know um you know Christianity's unraveling our culture and we have to figure out a way to get to the other side and I think that's what's going to keep me busy for a long time Peter teal thank you very [Applause] much we

now have time for questions yes hello um it's it's kind of a basic Question maybe to you but to me I'm wondering your opinion you have this dystopic view of like one world order which I totally understand and I know that Founders fund has invested in cryptocurrency and made money on it but do you view crypto or Bitcoin in particular as something that could put power back in the hands of the people or something that's likely to catalyze uh more more centralization of power in this one world order in the Future I I'm still hopeful

that onet um Bitcoin is on the anti- One World Order side just based on all the people who are against it but maybe that's a little bit too of a simplistic schmidan analysis um but uh yeah no um there are uh the the the questions are you know the the sort of questions would be can you um can you uh do you have genuine um anonymity genuine pseudonymity um and probably there are certain ways in which you know if we Want to have decentralized things where um you use money for questionable purposes you know maybe

maybe physical cash is still better than Bitcoin and and things have not gone in quite the uh sort of um I don't know crypto Anarchist Utopia that people were were fantasizing about in the in the in the late in the late 90s on the other hand um uh you know I I think it probably is still um you know if if if if you're just you know thinking of it is a you Know one-time way to get money outside of the control of a particular government is probably still extremely good for that thank you so

you can huddle until you need it next question uh so Nick Bostrom and uh communism they sort of start out with a very different premise end up in the same place we need a one world government do you think that there some sort of metaphysical reason for that some kind of ATT tractor well there I think there's there's a certain Rationality to it if if if we may maybe just Enlightenment rationality where if we if we say that uh there's you know some set of things that make sense and uh that are good and then

you know it's it's it's probably there's some kind of a way you should have in a world order it sounds more peaceful in both cases than having you know a divided world World um uh but uh but yeah it there's probably just some kind of um some kind of a rationality where um if you had one Modality of governance that would uh if it's the best that would make for the best possible world and you should you should have that everywhere and then um and then if you have it's only you have you know some

very deep concerns about you know um maybe human nature or the people would run the government or things like that that uh you start to second guess that they they're probably both you know somehow pretty optimistic about human Nature he um if one extra year at the end of your life was for sale what would you be willing to pay for it today man I I I I I don't I don't agree with hypothetical questions where I don't believe in the premise I I I I would uh I would uh probably not pay the person

who asked me that anything because I think they were just ripping me off since it's uh I I don't uh I I I you know it be I I hope to live for more than just one more year and uh by the Time I needed to collect on that extra year I think that person will be long gone all right cool thanks what are the straussian messages of the Bible and what do they tell us about political theology simple questions tonight oh boy um well I think I think um well I think uh was this

uh political philosopher who's you know I wouldn't describe as Christian was probably sort of uh very Very classical um but the the place where I'd say both let's say someone like Strauss and Gerard agreed on was that there there's certain ways of understanding the world that um um have this disruptive way and you know you don't want Enlightenment simply that if you uh if you just tell people the secret messages um it it has a sort of unraveling effect and so the I don't know I'm not I'm not sure it's esoteric but it is um

you know um it's the Book Of Revelations is the apocalypse because um you know Apocalypse in Greek means unveiling and um and it is um and if you unveil the social order you um you um you you might end up um you know deconstructing and destroying it and uh you know this is or you know one of Gerard's book was um um I see Satan fall like lightning and it's sort of to see Satan is to see Satan fall so the the only time Satan appears in the Bible is at the very end of the

world every other Time it's maybe he's talking to God or he's talking to Christ in the desert but no human being ever sees Satan simply because to see Satan is um to see Satan fall you know it's sort of the you know the sort of the libertarian you know another libertarian cut on Christianity is that uh you know when Christ is tempted in the desert and Satan says just worshiped me and you can have all these Kingdoms in the world it's uh it's somehow saying that all the governments Are more satanic than divinely ordained and

um and then people don't understand that they think the government governments are somehow divinely ordained and so once you see how satanic the government is how satanic taxes are other things besides the governments do um um it it will have this unraveling effect thank you hi um a big part of the thesis of the sovereign individual is that uh The Defenders will be able to have an Advantage over offense and that that's the way that violence and the exertion of force is going um I mentioned if you still think that to be the case particularly

with uh companies like andell where the thesis is kind of there is no inherent properties of a smaller weapon that a smaller State can easily have but rather the proliferation of those is simply a tactic that larger States need to use to evolve their strategies Yeah so I I was extremely influenced by the um ree mock Davidson book of 1997 the sovereign individual where um um and and where the thesis was that uh U let's say the computer technology Information Age was trending in this very deeply decentralizing libertarian way and uh that seemed yeah that

seemed very true in 1999 and then certainly by um the last you know by the end of the 2010s one would have said that uh um there's Something about a lot of information technology that seemed maybe centralizing maybe uh maybe the opposite there's always a riff I have on this where you know if we look at uh there's a you know Star Trek or you know the world of 1968 people also thought um you know 2001 Space Odyssey IBM is how you know it's it's it's sort of you're going to have one big supercomputer that's

going to run a planet or the planet beta and one of the early Star Trek episodes Where there's one big supercomputer that runs the planet and the inhabitants are sort of these doile robot-like people who've been living peacefully but uneventfully for 8,000 years and then of course as always the uh Star Trek people you know don't follow the prime directive and blow up the computer and then leave leave the planet um but um but that was you the future of the computer age in the late 60s was highly centralized by the late ' 90s was

very Decentralized you know by the late uh 2010s maybe crypto accepted it was again seem to be pushing back to centralization um I don't know my my my intuition these things are not you know absolutely written in stone and it's up to us to work on you know making the Technologies happen to push it one way or the other as a followup not quite that predetermined would you bat on open source AI I if decentralization is great it Should have more Dynamic properties should innovate more should be safer have many other virtues I don't quite

know if that's the the main variable that's going to push the centralization or decentralization with it but yeah that there probably some version of it that that would be helpful I I don't know the Linux versus Microsoft precedent not sure that changed anything that much on the on the level of the operating system thank You when do you think humans are going to destroy themselves do you think AI is going to do it I I I I don't think I don't think these things are uh written in in stone I'm not a calvinist I'm not

a I'm not a p Doom EA East Bay rationalist I think it's it's up to us um but uh but as I said I'm I'm I'm much more worried about um the humans um trying to stop the AI than the AI destroying us you know like a you know a force that's powerful enough to stop the AI is probably a force that's powerful enough to destroy the world too so I would I want to worry more about the humans that are trying to stop the AI um a her Ali recently converted to Christianity but it

seems mostly for utilitarian reasons um something like for the Great civilizational War because secularism doesn't provide a good enough answer do you see religion as mainly a utility in the postmodern world you can have you can have utilitarian elements I I don't think one can ever stress those too much and so my my bias is always to focus more on you know questions of Truth you mentioned Lincoln's lium address where he talks about that towering genius figure and I'd never heard before that he thought did you think at the time he thought he was the

Towering genius and do you approve of Lincoln's political religion or view for America well I I think it's a very it's a very fascinating speech because um he He references some some Caesar or Napoleon like figure who will enslave the white people or free the slaves and so that seems like it seems plausible to think that he was thinking of himself I have a question about your personal life if I may and if possible if you could give your answers a story that'd be lovely obviously um you feel a great sense of personal responsibility indeed

responsibility to history um how did that sentiment begin how was it Evolved sort of what have you found to be the more fruitful and less fruitful avenues for expressing it oh I'm always so bad at at doing a self psychoanalysis or something like that um I don't know the you know the there were sort of all these ways I was you know I I was like incredibly competitive and tracked as a kid you my eighth grade Junior High School yearbook one of my friends said I know you're going to get into Stanford In four years

I got into Stanford and I went to Stanford I went to law school I ended up you know at a top law firm in Manhattan from the outside it was a place um where everybody wanted to get in on the inside was a place everybody wanted to get out and um and so yeah I sort of had some kind of a quarter life crisis in my mid 20s and uh you know it's was you know unclear what what what to do but somehow um you um you you can't uh you have to try to avoid

the Worst memetic entanglements the worst forms of medic competition possible it's uh I I don't I don't think one you know I don't think psychology really works I don't I don't think sort of awareness of these things is is quite quite the way to to do it but uh but uh yeah there was there was some some some some some part of that that was very important for me thank you so uh to that point to get people off of the mtic track I think um you Know teal Fellowship was really amazing and has had

tremendous success have you thought about trying to scale that in a way that might be profitable or could make a larger impact than say 20 folks a year and maybe 20,000 eventually we've thought about scaling it a lot of times it's it's probably quite quite hard to to scale it's always you know the the sort of the Paradox of something like the teal fellowship or my 0 to1 book or any sort of self-help thing is like you Know um it's it's always bad to sort of give advice where okay these are the things you're supposed

to do because it's sort of like um and so um I I I I I worry that um trying to scale things you know the only way you can scale things is by somehow automating them mechanizing them turning it them into more of a cookie cutter type process and then um I always worry that that uh deranges it at scale so somehow you know it's you know like I Don't have like a I can't give it people a formula what to do it's something like well you should think for yourself and figure it out and

then but then um if I try to to scale that it's like I don't know it's like some kind of I don't maest Little Red Book or something you're producing and that's it's quite the opposite thank you Peter my question is about diversity Equity inclusion uh Dei has become very Prevalent in Corporate America and uh I wanted to get your thoughts on whether you're seeing this in some of the early stage companies also like the companies that Founders fund is investing in and what are your thoughts do you think this is something positive are you

neutral or you think this has gone a little over the top would love to know your views on that you know I'm I'm I'm I'm very against it I don't always know it's the most important issue either so somehow Uh you know I I I I wrote a book as an um for my undergraduate years entitled The diversity myth and it was sort of focusing on a lot of the um craziness the campus Wars culture wars that were taking place at Stanford in the late ' 80s early 90s and uh there are parts of it

that seemed very pre and uh it sort of you know described a lot of things that eventually spread to the broader culture on another level it was like a completely ineffective book where the Arguments didn't matter um and uh and uh what what what drove these things somehow was was on a on a very uh very different level I think um I think the and then you know if we think about the you know the woke Corporation in in Silicon Valley it seems unhealthy if a company is is um leaning too much into into the

Dei narratives it um but you know there always are there probably are machia vellan ways where this can also Work where it sort of you know you know just distracts people so there's a you know I don't know Walmart was sort of the Proto woke company in the 2000s and they were constantly being attacked by the labor unions because they were um you know they weren't paying their workers enough and then uh you know they could they could pay their workers more or they could Rebrand themselves as a green environmentally friendly company and that turned

out to be a very cheap Way to split up the um the um left-wing anti-walmart Coalition and uh and so that was a version of it as um I as this sort of capitalist um conspiracy um against it and then there you know there are cases where that can work in cases where can go wrong um for the most part I uh I think that uh it's it's it's just a distraction from more important things and so there's there's there's you know there's one level on which I find the Issues very silly uh there's another

level where where it's evil because it's stopping us from paying attention to more important things and uh and you know it's things like the economy like Science and Tech or even these these broader religious questions that we we' we've talked about today I don't know I the sort of a you know um people always talk about it in terms of cultural Marxism but I I think um you know I think a real Marxist would be much Preferable to a uh diversity person if Rosa Luxembourg who's you know sort of this uh crazed communist from the

early 20th century was like you know I think one of the things she said was there can be nobody more revolutionary than a factory worker that nobody can be more revolutionary than a proletarian and so um a diversity officer in a university or Corporation what would Rosa Luxenberg think of this it would be in the same category as a bank robber or a Prostitute it's someone who's just uh extremely um corrupt form of crony capitalism thank you so much there's a fair amount of variation in regulation on biotech um you know there's prospera funded some

C setting places what's your sense for why there aren't crazy cool ambitious biohacking things going on where are the genit babies the only one that we know about happened in China and that guy went to jail what's why isn't there more crazy Stuff happening in different jurisdictions my my sense is the FDA has a global strangle hold on everything um and it's uh it is because there a lot of different reasons in in practice most governments are not willing to have looser regulations than the FDA so it's actually um so there's less regulatory Arbitrage than

it looks and then um secondarily um the US pays a lot more for this than other countries and we can you know go into all these debates about Whether we're paying too much in the US or whether um the rest of the world should be penalized for free writing off of it but uh if you develop a biotech uh drug and if you can't sell it in the US um the economics are much less good and so it's it's uh it's in in practice it t tends to be us robust do you think that technology

will eventually render a larger proportion of the human population unproductive or unable to contribute to the economy and If so what should those unproductive people do with themselves well I think I think the Lites have have always they've been wrong for a long time um there are there's certainly ways you could probably scare me some with with with AI and um their their versions of it that where where you you could um you know you you might but even if you convinced me that the Lites were right about Ai and that it's actually going to

just Replace people without you know you know if you were Le you know in the mid 19th century you said you know the machines are going to replace the humans and that was well that would be such a relief because there's so much work for people to do and they it would just free them up to do other things and and so maybe it's um maybe it's less complimentary more game of substitution even if you could convince me of that that I'm still in favor of of the AI because um because My default is muddling

through isn't good my default is you know the default is really bad and so you know we're not you you don't get to muddle through with grea on her bicycle thanks for coming you've alluded to a lot of the forces between decentralization and centralization particularly around AI or forces of around the individual I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more Describe what you think the forces could be that stop AI development particularly as it relates to the state's role or how a politician or another entity could Co-op that Force for their own

benefit versus the benefit of many you maybe but maybe the premise of your question is what i' challenge is it's it's it's it's why is AI going to be the only technology that matters and so if if if we if we say there's just there's only this one big technology that's going to Be developed and it is going to dominate everything else that's that's already in a way you know um conceding a ver version of the centralization point so uh so yeah if we say that it's all around the next generation of large language models

Nothing Else Matters then um you've probably collapsed it to you know you know a small number of players and um and that is you know that's a that's a future that I find you know somewhat Uncomfortably centralizing probably but you know this is you know the definition of Technology um you in the 1960s technology meant you know it meant computers but it also meant new medicines and it meant you know spaceships and supersonic planes and the Green Revolution Agriculture and then at some point technology today just means it and maybe you know we're going to

you know narrow it even further to Ai and it It seems to me that this this narrowing is you know is sort of a manifestation of the centralizing stagnation that we should be trying to get out of um earlier you mentioned that Tech might end up saving San Francisco from itself ai ai specifically yeah hey sorry ai ai specifically uh how do you evaluate the efforts of places like Miami and Austin to present them themselves as alternative Tech hubs and has that opinion changed over the course of the Last two years well I'm still very

I'm still very Pro Miami I I think I think the Miami story has been more more of a anti- York story so it's A Tale of Two Cities of and and the finance part of the economy doesn't have to be centered in in New York um and um and and that alone I think you know explains you know a great deal of of Miami's success I think the you know I think the tech you know again some we're in a very Different place from what people were focused on even two 2 and a half years

ago but 2 and a half years ago there was sort of much more of a crypto story and the um you know crypto is a decentralizing technology but also the companies that were doing crypto were decentralized not just in the US there's a decent number of them outside the US and so um if if crypto is going to be a big part of the future tech tech story um that would have been a you know Naturally a decentralizing from Silicon Valley narrative and Silicon Valley had really missed out on the crypto thing in a relative

sense and then um you know I know consumer internet you know a lot of this happened in Silicon Valley for all sorts of complicated reasons you know supposed to get rid of the tyranny of place but it all happened in one place and then um the uh the AI piece seem seems to be even more centralized in Silicon Valley so again if we if we say That um you know the next uh decade or two decades are just going to be doubling down on AI um that that probably suggests that uh you know uh San

Francisco will maintain and Silicon Valley will maintain or even gain gain in power hello first and foremost I just want to say thank you for GU for coming out and doing this event it's been wonderful um I have a silly question and I going to bring Star Wars into it since We were talking Star Trek but when you this concept of the world order it's the first time I've really delve into it and thinking about it I'm wondering do you envision a world order that's just like totalitarian dictator ship or just the similar to like

there's just too much information too many countries too many people trying to VI uh together and that everything just kind of gets lost and that the power isn't really about the people but that kind of world Central I Mean a global Central like what is that that you envision well I'd like to avoid the first type um and then it's always uh yeah the second one I I I will concede is it's it's a little bit more confusing and you know there's and so yeah you I would like to have you know a Libertarian World

Order of you know many nations and you can you can move between them um but and so there's some there's some um there's some um transnational Thing you're not completely stuck in a particular country but then the transnational thing can't be so powerful that it actually controls all the nations and this is this these are these are sort of maybe maybe this is just a sort of a paradox of globalizations like hegelian thought is always you know thesis antithesis synthesis even if you agree this is the correct framing the problem is people always confuse the

synthesis with um the superposition of The thesis and an antithesis so if we say globalization some Global World Order is the final synthesis is globalization as it's described today just a superposition of slightly unstable you know um Global Market but no Global government and then is can that can that really be maintained so um yeah so I I I think uh there probably are you know some paradoxes in my my picture of a desirable world order that you know one could one could unpack some More um but uh but yeah if if we have too

concrete a picture of exactly what the world order looks like that's probably really bad a bit of a follow-up to the gentleman too before me um I I understand you've spent a little bit of time in in Miami so um at kind of coming down from the macro level um to the street level local governance um almost like an econom economist getting lunch perspective what is Miami doing well and what does Miami need to improve Upon well there are a lot of things I I've been here the last four Winters so it's been two three

months each each winter here uh yeah there a lot of things that I think are are going incredibly well I'm always into these sort of gorist um real estate theories where if you're not very careful um all the the value in a place gets captured by the sort of corrupt real estate group of people and there sort of Henry George was uh late 19th century Economist who Was sort of like sort of socialist then today seem as sort of libertarian which probably just tells us something about how our society's changed um but uh but the

you know the the the worry in Miami is that um is it have we really escaped the georg's disaster that is San Francisco that is New York that is London where um even though there's been a tremendous increase in in GDP you know it's it's it's it's not good if 100% of it gets captured by um you know by by Slum Lords or something like that thanks last question thanks um so question about Ai and theology uh voler had this great quote um if God didn't exist we would need to invent him or her or

whatever the pronoun is um do do you find this view of like superintelligence AI which might be in the near future as a kind of deity as a kind of machine God is that useful is there a leverage to that and could it even be more than just a Aristic some kind of substantive statement it's it's sort of a purely theological question I want to focus more on the political theology question which would be something like you know if if it's a centralizing AI That's controlled by communist China will it just uhu be very good

at convincing people that um the party is God or that the wisdom of crowds or you know whatever the consensus is is is the truth and uh and then yeah there are These metaphysical questions where it doesn't seem like it's exactly you know I don't know a Transcendent traditional monotheistic God but I yeah I I would I would I would I would go to more the political questions than the you know the the metaphysical ones and probably the you know the risk danger is that um there's something something about the sort of telescopes even more

the sort of um you know consensus truth wisdom of crowds you Know I I think probably um all the models I you know will tell you that there's no particular religion that's more true than any other one um and then is that really what the models generate or is that has that been hardwired in those are the questions I'd be more curious about thank you all for listening to conversations with Tyler at the mercades center most of all thank you Peter thank you