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Hello Peter.
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Thank you for doing this. Hello Tyler.
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Now the title of this conversation is political theology.
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That was a phrase I think first used by the Russian anarchist Bakunin to mock the Italian nationalist Mazzini.
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German legal theorist Carl Schmitt then picked it up and said it's something that everyone needs.
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They they all need a political theology.
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What does the term mean to you?
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Well, it's a it's a bit of a fuzzy broad concept, but maybe maybe sort of to motivate as a contrast.
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I I I think that in late modernity we're often living in this world of hyper 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.
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It's sort of our our world and 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.
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That's what political theology does.
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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 you it's just a sort of a fool's errand.
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I'm inclined to think the other reason was that it was often things too dangerous too divisive.
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You're not supposed to have debates about religion.
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We settled that in 1648 at the Treaty of Westphalia.
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We're just going to forget about it and not talk about these things.
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Um but and I think that might have been a reasonable compromise in the 18th century.
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Um it's my view that when you you know, fast forward to the 21st century, it's maybe more dangerous not to think about things and it's a it's again more dangerous to go into become it for us to become ever smaller cogs in an ever bigger machine.
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You know, all of the the Adam Smith pin factory.
1:51
Um and then the 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?
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And um there's probably some way these things are related, but the you know, the political theology philosophy debate our frame I think this was also a Socratic idea.
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We we start the sort of turn to common sense human the world around us questions about politics, economics, society, culture.
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Um and that's that that's sort of actually this important way to get access.
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You know, there's some deep link between the university and the universe.
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There's some deep link between the failing multiversity and the um crazed multiverse.
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Um but uh but we're you know, the 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 sense of the universe and there's some analog to that that motivates all these things.
3:08
Well, let's say I'm trying to make sense of your political theology.
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So I recall you saying in a recent talk you consider yourself religious, but not spiritual.
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And that strikes me as quite a Calvinist point.
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So if you put aside predestination and think of Calvinism as insisting we know nothing about heaven.
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So it's an arrogation of man's power to claim to know about heaven.
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That's related to your critique of the left.
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Uh the notion that we don't know anything about heaven, it also means you can't really be spiritual.
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That's also a kind of arrogation.
3:42
Isn't the consistent Peter Thiel really a Calvinist thinker?
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And Calvinism it's quite concrete. It's quite serious.
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It takes governance and authority uh very literally.
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Why aren't you just a Calvinist?
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Man, I like I'm I'm I'm I'm still like mostly a libertarian Tyler and uh But you can be both.
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And that's you know, um I mean I I think probably there are there are things I there probably redeeming things I can find in Calvinism.
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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 if that's the only way to be anti-communist and I know you do five-point Calvinism.
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It's you know, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints.
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I don't know if I agree with even one out of those those five things.
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I would say you know, the a Girardian anthropological uh frame is that um is that you know, um there is this deep link between um gods and scapegoats and we tend to always we have these scapegoats we turn into gods.
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We project our violence onto them and this is what you know, archaic religion does.
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This is in some ways what you know, atheist liberalism does.
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You blame everything on Mr. God.
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And um isn't Calvinism just an extreme form of scapegoating where uh Mr. God did everything.
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He determined everything.
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He's why you're wearing that blue uh jacket and it's it's uh it's why uh you every everything you did wrong, it's all Mr. God's fault.
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And um it is just it's just sort of we should be deeply distrustful of of scapegoating Mr.
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God for everything like that.
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So that's that's an anthropological argument reason I'm I'm not Calvinist is that I think we should be trying to make sense of the world and if if um if you are you know, if if you're 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.
5:47
So if I were if I were a real Calvinist, we wouldn't even be able to have have a conversation here and if I you know, if I if I sort of you know you know you know, there's a Thomistic distinction between the intellect and the will and the medievals believe in the power of the intellect, the weakness of the will.
6:03
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.
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They they claim to be rationalists, 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 in your thinking, the inward-facing thing is it's all just spaghetti code.
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You're so you can never be right about anything.
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Maybe you can be a little bit less wrong, but um it's it's that's and so I'm I'm against both Calvinism and and so-called rationalism.
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But here here's then the puzzle I'm faced with.
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Let let's take all of that at face value.
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Why is it you just don't slide into Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox belief in free will?
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There's some middle position and why is your middle position stable?
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You could either be Catholic or for that matter Mormon where there's plenty of room for free will, right?
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Uh well, again these aren't they're they're certainly not not all the all the alternatives.
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You know, I have it's it's always a little bit of a cheap shot.
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My my my two-word you know, rebuttal to Roman Catholicism is Pope Francis.
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Um and um and you know, and um and you know, we 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.
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Um you know, there probably all these things that are you know, problematic um about Luther.
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There are things that were were good about him, but you know, I I I think the the you know, the one the one part of it that uh um if we judge him by the standards of the 16th century, you know, I don't know um I think the Reformation had to come from the outside.
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It couldn't it was not actually possible for it to to start from within and and there is a way that uh you know, the Lutheran piece was it was the it was the less globally um centralized church.
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It was going to be a it was going to be a a less centralized 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.
8:10
What is it from the Hebrew Bible or one could say Old Testament that you've incorporated into your own political thought?
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Well, I think I think um I don't know I I think my views on this are pretty fairly Orthodox Christian in that there's some continuity between the old and the new.
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You know, there's there's some some sense it's sort of hard to define where you know, maybe the Christian God is the original progressive where the new is better than the old.
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It's the I think it's the first time where the new is simply better than the old just by virtue of being new.
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Um but if you if you exaggerate the difference too much, that that ends up being problematic and that's you know, sort of the where you know, you end up saying that the Old Testament God isn't even is like maybe just a different God from the New Testament God.
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Um and that sort of all the extremely progressive forms of higher criticism things like this in the 19th century were all they were all deeply anti-Semitic and I think so I think if you're if you're too progressive, you end up becoming an anti-Semite.
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If you're if you and then if you're and then you have some way to say there's some progress, but the the the Girardian intuition I would have is it's just always this this this reversal in perspective where uh the Bible takes things from the the side of the victim.
9:27
There there's a and and it's it's already in the book of Genesis where it's the story of Cain and Abel.
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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 Romulus and Remus the founding of the greatest city where you know, Romulus and Remus story is told from point of view of Romulus.
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Uh the Cain and Abel story is 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 you had these troublemakers and you got rid of them and it's it's it's and you have this sort of inversion of perspectives.
10:02
Um, you know, um, throughout the Old Testament I would say.
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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.
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We should side with the woke.
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They have all these excesses that are terrible, but they're in a way a method of advertising the fundamental conclusion that history is bad.
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And they're the ones who make us deal with that and thus you and I should be woke.
10:27
What's wrong with that line of reasoning?
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Yes, I think that history was very bad.
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I think it's always a mistake for, um, conservatives or anti-woke people to whitewash it too much.
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And so if we if we say that, you know, 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 should you shouldn't you shouldn't do this.
10:49
Um, you know, the what I would say the the again, they sort of rough Christian frame on this is somehow the history is really bad.
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And I 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.
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If if someone claimed to be God and and and got killed, that would just prove that he's not God.
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Um, and so, uh, so yeah, so so the 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.
11:35
So if you if you want to maybe outline three three rough possibilities.
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There's this, you know, hard to define Christian in between one which is the history's terrible, um, and it's awful, but we need to try to find a way to forgive people.
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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.
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And then there is, I don't know, maybe maybe sort of a right-wing Nietzschean 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.
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I'm I'm sick of the guilt trip and don't want to hear anything more about the history.
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And, uh, and somehow the the, um, the the sort of in between Christian one I I think is is the most tenable even though there are all sorts of tensions in that.
12:23
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.
12:32
What did you mean by that and how does it relate to what you just said?
12:35
It's well it was in the the the the context was, uh, you know, how much how much victimhood is is, um, is unhealthy for people to have.
12:44
And, you know, um, yeah, there are all these ways where, um, you can you can identify yourself as a victim.
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I'm not I I don't want to have some blanket rule where you you can never say that you weren't a victim. You know, I don't know.
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I sometimes like to joke that I'm a poor and persecuted Peter person.
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And, uh, and that's, uh, maybe there are elements of truth to that.
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Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's it's, uh, very exaggerated.
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Um, but if I if I absolutize that too much, it's probably unhealthy in 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.
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It's it's okay to do these things up to a certain point.
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You can't say that you're a greater victim than Christ.
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And, uh, once you do that, um, um, you've probably lost perspective.
13:37
Are there other holy books besides the Bible that you draw ideas and inspiration from and what would those be?
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Well, you know, I I I think I think it's probably all, you know, in some sense it's all the great books.
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We're, you know, we're these sort of I I don't know.
13:52
They're they're not quite they're not quite at the scale of of these holy books, but 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 Goethe as these almost semi-divine writers.
14:08
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.
14:19
So the Western canon would be your answer, so to speak.
14:22
Something like the Western canon.
14:22
I don't think that, you know, I don't think the great books are are quite as holy as the 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.
14:36
And it includes science fiction, yes or no? I I read a lot as a kid.
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I'm I I I just read so little of that nowadays.
14:44
It's just it's all too depressing.
14:47
Last week I was teaching my graduate class and a bunch of them asked me, why is it we keep on hearing about Carl Schmitt now?
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And I tried to explain that to them, but why do you think there's now a resurgence of interest in Carl Schmitt?
14:59
And for you, what are the valuable insights in Schmitt?
15:03
You know, um, Carl Carl Schmitt was he was one of a sort of this group of, uh, thinkers, uh, who came to prominence in the 1920s in Weimar Weimar Germany.
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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, uh, Schmitt got somewhat entangled with the Nazis.
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He distanced himself a few years later, but there were some it was it was some very bad judgment in certain ways.
15:30
But the the thing that's, you know, the thing that I think is, um, interesting, dangerous about looking at the the Weimar thinkers who somehow in the you know, 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 of the Habsburgs, um, and you couldn't, um, you didn't really want to go forward with the liberal democracy.
15:58
And so there 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 that had been sort of whitewashed and set aside, um, since the, uh, since the, uh, since the Enlightenment.
16:14
Um, and and there were again, there were things about that were dangerous, you know, sort of you know, one way one way to think of, uh, the Weimar period was I don't know, it's like them dwarves in Moria where they dwelled too deep and, you know, finally they they awakened the nameless terror of the Balrog.
16:28
Um, but, uh, but I think I think there are and again, I I don't 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.
16:44
One suspects that democracy, whatever that means, is exhausted.
16:47
And, um, and, uh, you know, that that, uh, we have to ask some questions very far outside the Overton window.
16:58
What is it you think that Schmitt missed that's very important?
17:02
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.
17:08
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, uh, it's some of this division of friends and enemies and that there's then that that somehow is really foundational and you shouldn't get sidetracked with all these other things.
17:24
There are all these interesting ways you could apply this.
17:27
There's, you know, sort of a 1980s 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.
17:42
And so if you ask, what does the millionaire and the general and the priest, what do they actually have in common?
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We just sort of imagine these three people are seated at a dinner table and they're having dinner.
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And what do they actually talk about?
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And, uh, it's really hard to come up with with an answer.
17:59
And, uh, and yet the coalition worked incredibly well.
18:04
And the answer I submit that they have in common is they're anti-communist.
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And they have a common enemy.
18:09
And, um, and that was, you know, incredibly powerful.
18:13
It was it was it was in some ways my formative political ideas as a teenager, you know, junior high school, high school, late '70s, early '80s was was anti-communism.
18:23
Um, and, uh, and then there was a way that, you know, when the Berlin Wall came down in '89, this this seemingly incredibly powerful political constellation dis- disintegrated.
18:35
And and there's and there's sort of a natural Schmittian analysis of this.
18:40
So that's that's sort of that's sort of where where I find, um, Schmitt quite powerful as a thinker.
18:45
The you know, the place, um, where, uh, it probably tends to always go haywire is there's always a question whether, um, politics is like a market where um, or is is it is it a sort of thing where if you understand it better, it works better.
19:06
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.
19:16
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 we'll achieve some psychosocial unity as a village.
19:25
Um, this sort of thing doesn't really work if you're if you're that self-aware.
19:31
And so, uh, and so there was sort of, uh, you know, Schmitt 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 you um, strengthen the political and it probably actually, you know, in some ways um, accelerated its disintegration instead.
19:59
Is Schmick missing out on a certain possible cyclicality in history?
20:01
So, the notion that liberalism will collapse in the Weimar Germany of the 1920s, obviously that was the correct prediction.
20:10
But if you reappear in West Germany of 1948, it was a completely incorrect prediction.
20:16
And just as well, liberalism had collapsed leading up to World War I, it tends to come back.
20:22
Uh, why isn't the cyclical perspective the correct one?
20:26
Man, that's a that's a big question, but I uh, I don't know.
20:29
I I think you can you can stress the the aspects that are timeless and eternal.
20:34
Uh, I prefer to stress the aspects that are one-time and world historical.
20:39
I think that, you know, in some sense every moment in history only um, only happens once and uh, you know, I think I think there is some kind of a meaning to history.
20:49
Um, I I think it has a certain type of linearity to it.
20:52
Um, and if you um, I think that is sort of the, let's say the Judeo-Christian view of history as distinct from, let's say, the the classical um, Greco-Roman one.
21:02
I don't I don't know if you can have a concept of history that's cyclical.
21:08
And so, if you look at um, I don't know.
21:12
If you look at Thucydides, where um, it's this um, great period of peace that leads this great war between Athens and Sparta.
21:19
So, the Periclean Age suddenly gives way to this this great conflict.
21:24
And then, uh, people came back to studying Thucydides right after World War I because there were some certain parallel to 100 years of peace between the Napoleonic Wars and then it led to this great conflict.
21:32
But um, but there's nothing particular in the history.
21:35
None of the details matter in Thucydides.
21:37
He makes up all the speeches and so on.
21:41
And then, you know, you contrast this with something like the Book of Daniel in the Bible, where it's um, it's a succession of four kingdoms.
21:50
And it is a one-time world history um, where everything that happens is unique, not not to be repeated in and there's sort of a sense which I would say the the the real first historian was Daniel.
22:02
Um, and Thucydides isn't even close.
22:05
Um, and then um, and then yeah, we, you know, we we talked off off the settle bit about, you know, what 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.
22:17
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.
22:21
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.
22:34
So, you think now the stakes are too high for the cyclical version of history to work?
22:38
Because at some point it's just not possible to come back?
22:40
It's just the the the the science and tech has a progressive character.
22:44
And so, it is um, you know, Yes, I have there there 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.
22:57
And we're yeah, we're in a very different world than we were in 1900 and I don't know how you go.
23:03
I don't know how you unlearn all the knowledge we've gained even since 1900.
23:11
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 executed a king, many strange things happened, but in in many ways we're living in the world of the English 17th century, right?
23:35
With constitutions, political parties, uh, central banks.
23:41
Is this the new millenarian this again this is again this is again like a absurdly cyclical frame you're you're putting on things.
23:45
It's it's just No, I I don't think any moment ever repeats itself.
23:49
It is just radically different.
23:51
Um, of course there are things that are um, you know, that are apocalyptic about our world.
23:55
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.
24:08
It's like science, technology was nuclear weapons after 1945, you know, it's uh, maybe it's environmental degradation, climate change, we debate about, you know, various ones with environment.
24:19
There's certainly uh, you know, there certainly are fears people have about bioweapons.
24:25
We can ask what really happened with the Wuhan lab.
24:27
There are apocalyptic fears um, you know, around AI that I think, you know, deserves to be uh, taken seriously.
24:35
So, if yeah, if it's if it's millenarian um, or apocalyptic, it's uh, it has a very very different feel.
24:42
Um, it is um, it's sort of a apocalyptic violence that comes to me purely human source.
24:51
It's not it's not really being, you know, orchestrated by by uh, by God.
24:56
Um, you know, um, uh, the one of the one of the one of the points that Rene Girard always liked to make was that uh, in the in the Catholic Church was I 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.
25:12
And um, and Girard's telling the church stopped those sermons and 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.
25:29
Even though, of course, you know, there were you know, there were all these slight mythic elements.
25:31
You know, the first nuclear test was called Trinity or you know, you named it after all these Greek gods, Saturn, Jupiter, Zeus, whatever.
25:39
Um, but uh, but yeah, I I think uh, I think it's uh, I think we are we're we're sort of there there elements of that that I think are uh, that are are very true.
25:50
But um, if I had to do my anti-millenarian frame or um, uh, maybe it's it's not a pro-tech argument.
25:59
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 paper clip or whatever.
26:22
Um, um, I always think you have to you have you should at least include, you know, one more kind of existential risk if we're going to throw it in.
26:32
And uh, in in my mind one one other existential risk is a one-world totalitarian government.
26:37
And I find that at least as scary as the others.
26:43
And um, you know, in the in the in the in sort of a uh, biblical eschatological context, uh, you know, you're supposed to worry about Armageddon.
26:51
You're also supposed to worry about the Antichrist.
26:52
Maybe you're supposed to worry more about the Antichrist because the Antichrist comes first.
26:57
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 Scylla of all these, you know, existential risks that are and and the Charybdis of the sort of political totalitarian uh, catastrophe.
27:15
If um, if I had to do sort of a more literary version on this, you know, it's it's very hard to write sort of a literary account of the Antichrist.
27:23
But there were sort of the the two good Antichrist books that were written um, the two best fictional ones in my mind were pre-World War I.
27:32
There was a 1908 Robert Hugh Benson, sort of a Catholic book, Lord of the World.
27:35
There was a 1900 one by Solovyev, War Progress and the End of History.
27:40
They both had these sort of um, accounts of this future totalitarian world dictator who took over the whole world.
27:46
And both of them it's kind of a um, demonium ex machina.
27:51
So, really unclear how the Antichrist takes over.
27:53
It's like he gives these hypnotic speeches and and no one can remember a word he says, but they all just sell their souls for no apparent good reason whatsoever and he just takes over the world.
28:02
Um, but it seems to me that if we were to write if we were to try to write a novel like this post-1945, it's it's very straightforward.
28:11
It would be, you know, um, it'd be like One World or None.
28:13
This is this is a short film by uh, the nuclear scientists after 1945.
28:19
If we don't give the nuclear weapons to the to the one-world government, it's going to blow up the whole world.
28:25
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.
28:38
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.
28:46
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.
28:56
If you look at um, you know, there there all these versions of this I can I can go down, but it's like, you know, um, it's you know, do you want to worry about Dr. Strangelove or Greta?
29:08
Um, and it seems like Dr.
29:08
Strangelove'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.
29:16
And that requires, you know, some some uh, some real real enforcement of this stuff.
29:20
Or there's, you know, there's a there's a there's a short uh, you know, Bostrom at there's a Bostrom essay 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.
29:36
And so, there are sort of 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 have and you have to have some kind of global compute governance and and that sounds to me at least as scary as the AI.
29:58
But isn't the much greater risk a collapse into a kind of disorderly feudalism?
30:02
So we're in Florida, the United States seems to be becoming more federalistic.
30:06
It's very hard for me to imagine China say taking over India.
30:09
You can look at the Balkans, it's even a word Balkan.
30:14
Now if 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.
30:23
It's easy to imagine it being in a kind of chaos.
30:27
Why think there's so much scale that that kind of totalitarianism would be possible?
30:33
Man, I I don't I don't know.
30:33
It's it's uh it's uh there's so many different versions of this but just if you if we think about um I don't know the the the the the the versions of this I would have been more on your side. Let's say post 9/11.
30:50
Let's say post 9/11. You know, it was you know, well aren't we just going to have all this chaotic terrorism all over the world and we didn't get that much terrorism and we instead got you know, the Patriot Act and you know, incredible
31:05
tracking of you know, of money flows, incredible monitoring of people and uh and so the you know, and of course you know, there's still there's still are things that can go wrong but but you know, the the political slogan of the Antichrist first Thessalonians 5:3 I think is is peace and safety. And it
31:24
And 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.
31:33
It's it's I don't I think it's hard to even have a like an illegal Swiss bank account.
31:39
And that's like a really modest modest way.
31:42
It's it's it's you know, it's it's hard to exit.
31:45
It's hard it's much harder to exit the United States than it was you know, 20 30 years ago.
31:54
Let's say you're trying to track the probability that the Western world and its allies somehow muddles through and just keeps on muddling through.
32:03
What variable or variables do you look at to try to track or estimate that? What do you watch?
32:09
I I don't I don't think it's a really empirical question.
32:11
So this is it's it's if if yes, if you could convince me that it was empirical and you'd say these are the variables we should pay attention to.
32:19
If I if I could if I agreed with that frame, you've already won half the argument.
32:23
And so it'd be like variables, well you know, the sun has risen and 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's kind of wrong and you know, and we shouldn't be really pay attention to her.
32:39
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 and or you know, this this is of course if if we think about the the globalization project of of you know, of of the post-Cold War
32:57
period where in some sense it's you know, globalization is just sort of happens to be more movement of goods and people and ideas and and money and we're going to sort of become this you know, more peaceful better integrated world and you don't need to sweat the details. We're just
33:14
We're just going to kind of muddle through and then what you know, in my telling there are a lot of things around that story that that went very haywire.
33:27
You know, one one simple version is the the US-China thing hasn't quite worked the way people and Fukuyama and all these people envisioned it back in 1989 and and I think one could have figured this out much earlier and and if if if we had not been you you can just you're just going to muddle through.
33:49
Um it would it you know, the alarm bells would have gone off much sooner and you know, you know, maybe maybe globalization is leading towards you know, sort of a neoliberal paradise.
34:00
Maybe it's leading to the totalitarian state of the Antichrist but I would be yeah, I'd be let's say it's a 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 stopped asking questions about muddling through.
34:20
I'd be so much more assured.
34:23
So are you saying it's more hopeful?
34:23
Are you saying it's ultimately a metaphysical question rather than an empirical question?
34:29
I I don't I don't think it's metaphysical but it's it's somewhat analytic. It's and moral even.
34:35
It's it's that you're laying down some duty by talking about muddling through.
34:43
Well, I it's it's it's um it it does tie into all these these bigger questions so I think 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 the absolute power that a one-world state would have would corrupt absolutely.
35:10
I don't think the libertarians were critical enough of it last 20 or 30 years.
35:14
So there was some way they didn't believe their own theories.
35:20
They didn't connect things enough and I don't I don't know if I'd say that's a moral failure but there was some failure of the of the imagination.
35:27
So this multi-pronged skepticism about muddling through, would you say that's your actual real political theology?
35:34
Like if we got into the bottom of this now?
35:35
That would be that would be a you know, it's it's it's whenever people think you can just muddle through.
35:43
Yeah, that you're you're probably set up for some kind of disaster. That's that's fair.
35:47
I mean it doesn't it's not like not as positive an agenda but but I always I always think you know, I don't know as a as a you know, it's one of my chapters in in the zero to one book was was you know, you're not a lottery ticket and it's sort of like 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.
36:06
I have no idea what to invest in there are all these people.
36:08
I don't I can't pay attention to any of them.
36:11
I'm just going to write checks to everyone, make them go away.
36:13
And I'm just going to set up you know, a desk somewhere here in 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.
36:32
And and there's some there's some the muddling the place where I react so violently to the muddling through is it's just it's again we're we're just not thinking.
36:44
And this is like it's it's it can be Calvinist, it can be it can be rationalist.
36:48
It's it's anti-intellectual.
36:49
It's it's not thinking about things.
36:51
So the muddling through view and the Calvinist view in your opinion they have the same flaw actually.
36:57
It's a distrust in human agency, a distrust in human thought, a distrust you know, in our ability to uh yeah, to to make choices.
37:08
Now for months I've been asking myself why you and also Schmidt are so interested in this Katechon idea which is also from the Bible.
37:14
You can explain that to us in a moment but am I correct in now thinking it's just occurs to me that the Katechon is in a sense your substitute vision for what for me is muddling through.
37:25
So you're not willing to believe in muddling through but things haven't collapsed now. Not here.
37:32
So you need something else holding the finger in the dike and that's Katechon or or no?
37:36
Well, it's it's a very mysterious idea.
37:39
I'm not that's it's sort of this this is 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 and you know, I don't necessarily put too much stock in it because it's it's sort of uh on its own terms it's somewhat unstable. It's it's provisional.
38:08
It has these sort of archaic sacred elements.
38:12
It can it can work for a while.
38:15
It's but it's not something it's not a you can't identify it with an institution.
38:23
You know, and again the the Schmiedian view is there are all these different things that played the role of the Katechon at various points in time but if you're not supposed to imminentize the eschaton, you're also not supposed to imminentize the Katechon.
38:34
And and so if you if you if you identify too much as one thing, that can go very wrong.
38:43
And then if you if you think of the Katechon as the thing that restrains the one-world state there were you know, there were various thing or that restrains the Antichrist.
38:54
Um Anything that's sort of like the opposite, this is a Girardian cut, is always going to be memetically entangled and so it's going to have sort of this parallelism.
39:02
And so there's always a risk that the Katechon becomes the Antichrist.
39:06
This is the you know, the the original anti the proto-Antichrist was Nero.
39:09
Claudius the the good emperor was the Katechon.
39:12
He was restraining Nero but then at some point you know, it's yeah, Nero's the opposite of Claudius but they're both they're both Roman emperors or or you know, you could say that um you could say that in the middle of the 20th century, I don't know, from let's say 1949 to 1989, I would identify the Katechon as anti-communism.
39:35
I would identify communism as the ideology of the Antichrist in the 20th century and anti-communism was this, you know, it was not You know, what what stopped communism was not, you know, the United States couldn't have done it.
39:48
It was not just one country.
39:49
It was not um it was not like some libertarian debating society.
39:55
It was, you know, something was like pretty violent, pretty pretty hard to morally justify, not really that Christian.
40:00
Um but um but with that that sort of had this unifying effect.
40:05
And then um the way it morphed would be, you know, in 1989, something like anti-communism morphs into neoliberalism.
40:15
And that's actually, you know, uh well, if you're anti-communist, you're not aspiring for world control.
40:20
You're just trying to stop the communists from getting world control.
40:23
Once you've defeated the communists, what are you supposed to do?
40:27
And like maybe you can just go home and forget about all all of what you did.
40:31
But in practice, these things have a tendency to perpetuate themselves.
40:32
And it was like Bush 41, anti-communism became the new world order.
40:36
And we're now going to just govern the world in the name of anti-communism.
40:40
And uh and so there's something about it that's always uh misleading.
40:44
Or or even what I said about the Antichrist in this apocalyptic thing.
40:49
Doesn't the Antichrist just come to power by acting as a catacon?
40:53
Like this is what Greta says she's doing.
40:55
She is the catacon stopping climate change.
40:57
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.
41:05
So at at the macro level, uh all the weight you're putting on human agency, is that really so compatible with Lutheranism?
41:15
I'm I'm probably not I'm I I I'm I'm not a perfect Lutheran.
41:17
But I mean there's a a lot luck There's a lot that was If you look Not all these all these people that one would judge very differently in retrospect.
41:25
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?
41:45
There's sort of a lot 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.
42:01
So uh sacrificing people.
42:03
Um there there is sort of an anti the anti-sacrificial theme.
42:08
And you know, we can you know, you can always say how is you know, modernity or enlightened values, how how are they tied with this?
42:14
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 absolute.
42:25
It was not not not sacred.
42:27
It it um you know, it was not necessarily providential.
42:30
Um you know, this is always uh Girard liked to always say that um you know, uh Christ was the first political atheist.
42:40
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.
42:54
But the uh the political interpretation of this is that Caesar Augustus, um uh the son of the divinized Caesar, is not um that is is is not um you know, the somehow that's not exactly the son of God.
43:09
And uh that the Roman Empire is not simply divinely ordained.
43:11
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.
43:24
But this is where I don't know.
43:26
I I I think of, you know, I I think of even Ayn Rand as like a pretty good Christian.
43:32
And that's why I know that would probably be really scandalous things to say.
43:34
But it's it's just it's at least, you know, yes, 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.
43:47
And and then um and then, you know, you you shouldn't sacrifice your mind.
43:50
You shouldn't sacrifice your reason.
43:51
It's just that you can't you can't sacrifice that.
43:57
You've been quoting The Tempest lately in some of your talks.
43:59
How is it you think the Shakespearean political vision differs from the Christian?
44:07
Well, it's always it's always hard to know what um what Shakespeare really thought.
44:14
But I I I I um You know, you have you certainly have different characters.
44:22
If you have, you know, I think it's um you know, um You have someone like Macbeth, I think, says life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
44:34
So um that doesn't sound like a particularly Christian worldview, but maybe, you know, this is what Macbeth says.
44:42
It's not what Shakespeare says.
44:42
So it's always it's always very hard to know how or maybe it's a sort of a Christian nihilistic view of the world or something something like that.
44:49
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 Karl Marx, where um Marx believed that people had battles over differences that mattered.
45:09
It was, you know, the different classes and they had objectively different interests.
45:12
And this is what led to the intensity of the the struggle.
45:16
And there's something in um Shakespeare that's sort of proto-Girardian 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.
45:31
And so it is, you know, it's the opening line of Romeo and Juliet.
45:33
It's uh the Capulets versus the Montagues, two houses alike in dignity.
45:36
They're identical, and that's why they they hate each other so much.
45:40
Or I think it's at the end of Hamlet, where Hamlet says, you know, to be truly great, you must take everything for an eggshell.
45:46
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.
45:56
And um and of course, you know, the Hamlet's problem is he doesn't really um believe all all the, you know, the sort of insane revenge drama he's he's supposed to he's he's supposed to be in.
46:10
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.
46:21
Today, I would probably in some ways also be be a kind of a political atheist.
46:28
I find the play Julius Caesar very interesting, because there's no catacon.
46:32
There's no muddling through.
46:34
So they sacrifice Caesar.
46:36
There's a civil war and a lot more people dying.
46:38
And no one came to that insight.
46:40
It's the the pessimistic scenario of the Teal mental universe, I think.
46:48
You know, there's there's sort of a strange way where where they're they're all going back and thinking they're they're reenacting things. Right?
46:52
So it's uh it's um it's um you know, the way Brutus uh gets pulled into the conspiracy in Julius Caesar is that uh he um he gets reminded or he that, you know, his ancestor or another person named Brutus had overthrown Tarquin, the the last of the kings of Rome in 509 BC.
47:10
So he thinks he's he's just, you know, reenacting that murder.
47:16
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'll be people reenacting this on a stage in front of an audience.
47:37
And and and this is what motivates Brutus to do it.
47:41
It's like the the future applause in the Shakespearean uh theater.
47:43
And then of course, you know, the uh the crazy literal reenactment of it was um John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln in 1865, where uh um you know, um Booth uh was a Shakespearean actor.
47:58
And then it was sic semper tyrannis was what he said.
48:00
It was like he was he thought he was reenacting the Brutus Caesar thing.
48:03
And then you can you can look at the uh I think it's 1838 Lincoln's speech, the Young Men's Lyceum 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 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.
48:26
And uh um but no one could be like a founder um because that was in the past.
48:31
And the most you can now be as a president.
48:33
But there are people for whom being president is not enough.
48:36
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.
48:43
This is sort of Lincoln talking about himself and saying that he has the ambition to be like a Caesar or Napoleon or or something like this.
48:48
Um but uh but yeah, so there's so there's there's a bit of a roundabout answer.
48:53
So um yeah, so there are ways we can see it as a as a cycle.
48:58
But but surely that's what we want to transcend.
49:00
It was it was a bad idea for Brutus to think he was reenacting the Caesar thing.
49:04
And somehow um there's something about uh the John Wilkes Booth story that's pretty sad, too.
49:12
For our last segment, let's turn to artificial intelligence.
49:13
As you know, large language models are already quite powerful.
49:17
They're only going to get better.
49:20
In this world to come, will the word cells just lose their influence?
49:22
People who write, people who play around with ideas, pundits, are they just toast?
49:29
What What's this going to look like?
49:29
Are they going to give up power peacefully?
49:32
Are they going to go down with the ship?
49:34
Are they going to Um Set off nuclear bombs?
49:36
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'll I'll say the the AI thing broadly, the LLMs, it's a big breakthrough. It's very important.
49:50
Um and it's striking to me how um how bad Silicon Valley is at talking about these sorts of things.
49:58
And uh and uh they're they're sort of you know, there's sort of all kinds of the questions are either way too narrow where it's something like I you know, we're going to have um uh you know, is the next transformer model going to be improved by 20% on the last one or something like this?
50:14
Or they're maybe too cosmic where it's like we go straight from there we go straight to the simulation theory of the universe.
50:22
And uh and surely there are, you know, a lot of um in between questions one one could ask.
50:26
Um let me try to answer uh yours.
50:28
I'll I'll um Um my my intuition leads going to be quite the opposite where it seems much worse for the math people than the word people.
50:38
Um and what you know, what people have told me is that uh um yeah, they they they think within 3 to 5 years um the AI models will be able to solve all the um US math Olympiad problems.
50:51
And um and uh that would you know, that would um that would shift things uh things quite a bit.
51:00
Um 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 a math ability?
51:11
I believe it was during the French Revolution because it was believed that uh verbal ability ran in families.
51:17
Um math ability was sort of distributed um in the sort of idiot savant way throughout the population.
51:23
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.
51:34
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 um number theorist or chess grandmaster a medal, which I is always a part I was somewhat sympathetic to in the in the uh Soviet Union.
51:48
Um um um um you um it may be it's actually just sort of a control mechanism where the math people are singularly clueless.
51:56
They don't understand anything.
51:58
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.
52:08
Um that's a way to to really control things.
52:11
And if I sort of fast forwarded to, let's say, Silicon Valley in the early 21st century, it's way too biased towards the math people.
52:22
I don't know if it's a French Revolution thing or a Russian uh sort of um Straussian uh secret cabal control thing where you have sort of pri- pri- prioritize it.
52:32
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 and the the the place where math ability, like you know, you know, it's it's sort of it's the thing that's the test for everything, right?
52:50
It's like if you want to go to medical school, okay, we weed people out through uh physics and calculus.
52:54
And like I'm not sure that's really correlated with your you know, I don't know your dexterity as a neurosurgeon.
52:59
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.
53:08
And so um you know, I I I when you know, in in the late '80s, early '90s, I I had sort of a chess bias cuz I was a pretty good chess player.
53:18
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?
53:24
And that got undermined by uh by the computers in 1997.
53:26
And um and isn't that what's going to happen to math?
53:30
And isn't that a long overdue rebalancing of our society?
53:33
And how is manual labor going to do in this world to come?
53:39
There'll be a lot more new projects, right?
53:40
If you're a very good gardener, carpenter, will your wages go up by 5x or is there something else in store for us?
53:48
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 AI.
53:57
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?
54:06
And probably it does does some some of both.
54:11
Um um is it a very centralizing technology?
54:14
That's another question I'd like to get a better handle on.
54:15
Um you know, I I had this riff 5 6 years ago where if um if crypto's libertarian, why can't we say that AI is communist?
54:24
Um and that it it and um and and one of the things that I I'm I'm still probably a little bit uncomfortable about it is that it seems to lead to these incredible returns to scale.
54:35
You know, um man, I thought I thought so you know, I thought San Francisco had at least, you know, committed suicide.
54:40
And we could move on from San Francisco.
54:43
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.
54:54
But then, you know, there are and there are benefits to this, but but it also leads to um the this kind of a a set of centralization questions.
55:03
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?
55:13
Will it, you know, And what do you think?
55:16
Um I I don't actually I'm I'm just saying like it would be good if we just at least ask the right sorts of questions.
55:22
I don't have answers to all these.
55:23
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 uh train it on all their people.
55:32
And so, um it will be more quickly implemented.
55:36
The uh pro-US argument is that uh is that we are probably ahead of China.
55:42
Maybe the large language models are not really communist, you know, maybe if if you can't ask 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.
55:52
So, 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 doing what the CCP wants, uh which is actually to stop the LLMs and that that's very disruptive.
56:12
Um and then um to the extent I think that 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 volatility plan to victory where they were just going to slowly um beat the Western world.
56:30
Um and if if if you now have this uh volatility increasing technology that China cannot match, does that just accelerate China's timetable?
56:39
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.
56:51
What is the next thing you will choose to learn about?
56:57
Man, this is always these are all these questions, you know, this is all they're all these 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 these sort of uh you know, the the hedgehog knows one thing, the fox who knows many things.
57:14
You know so many different things, you're interested in so many different things.
57:18
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 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.
57:38
I think that's what's going to keep me busy for a long time.
57:41
Peter Thiel, thank you very much.
57:50
[Applause] We now have time for questions. Yes. Hello.
57:57
Um it's it's kind of a basic question maybe to you, but to me I'm wondering your opinion.
58:03
You have this dystopic view of like one world order, which I totally understand.
58:07
And I know that Founders Fund has invested in cryptocurrency and made money on it.
58:10
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?
58:26
I I'm still hopeful that on net um Bitcoin is on the anti-one world order side just based on all the people who are against it.
58:34
But maybe that's a little bit too of a simplistic Schmitty and analysis. Um but uh yeah, no.
58:41
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?
58:58
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 in the late in the late '90s.
59:22
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 as a you know, one-time way to get money outside of the control of a particular government, it's probably still extremely good for that. Thank you.
59:44
So, you can huddle huddle until you need it. Next question.
59:47
Uh so, Nick Bostrom and uh communism both sort of start out with very different premise and end up in the same place, we need a one-world government.
59:55
Do you think that there's some sort of metaphysical reason for that?
59:56
Some kind of attractor well there?
1:00:01
No, I I think there's a there's a certain rationality to it.
1:00:03
If if if we may maybe just an 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 you know, world order.
1:00:20
It sounds more peaceful in both cases than having you know, a divided world.
1:00:25
Um uh but uh but yeah, it there's probably just some kind of 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.
1:00:41
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 who would run the government or things like that that uh you start to second-guess that.
1:00:54
The pro- they're probably both you know, somehow pretty optimistic about human nature. Okay.
1:01:02
Uh if one extra year at the end of your life was for sale, what would you be willing to pay for it today?
1:01:12
Man, I I I I I don't I don't agree with hypothetical questions where I don't believe in the premise.
1:01:16
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 a I I don't uh I I I you know, it would be I I hope to live for more than just one more year.
1:01:29
And uh by the time I needed to collect on that extra year, I think that person would be long gone. All right, cool. Thanks.
1:01:40
What are the Straussian messages of the Bible and what do they tell us about political theology?
1:01:45
Simple questions tonight. Oh boy.
1:01:48
Um well, I think I think um well, I think uh Stra- Strauss was this uh political philosopher who's you know, 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
1:02:09
like Strauss and Girard agreed on was that's 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 if you just tell people the secret messages
1:02:26
um it it has a sort of unraveling effect and so the I don't 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
1:02:45
social order, you um you um you you might end up um you know, deconstructing and uh destroying it and uh you know, this is you know, one of Girard's book was um um I see Satan fall like lightning and it's sort of to see Satan is to see Satan fall. And so, the the only time
1:03:03
And so, the the only time Satan appears in the Bible is at the very end of the world.
1:03:07
A- 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.
1:03:17
um to see Satan fall. You know, it's sort of the you know, the they're sort of the libertarian you know, another libertarian cut on Christianity is that you know, when Christ is tempted in the desert and Satan says just worship me
1:03:28
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 govern- governments are somehow divinely ordained. And so, once
1:03:40
And so, once 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.
1:03:56
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's the way that violence and the exertion of force is going.
1:04:05
Um I'm interested if you still think that's to be the case particularly with uh companies like Anduril 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.
1:04:26
Yeah, so I I was extremely influenced by the um Rees-Mogg Davidson book uh 1997 The Sovereign Individual where um um and and where the thesis was that uh uh let's say the computer technology information age was trending in this very deeply decentralizing libertarian way.
1:04:48
And uh that seemed yeah, that seemed very true in 1999 and then certainly by um the last you know, the by the end of the 2010s, one would have said that um there's something about a lot of information technology that seemed to maybe centralizing, maybe uh may- maybe the opposite.
1:05:08
the opposite. There's al- always a riff I have on this where you know, if if we look at uh there's a you know, in Star Trek or you know, the world of 1968, people also thought um you know, 2001 Space Odyssey's IBM is HAL you know, it's it's it's it's sort of you're going
1:05:22
to have one big supercomputer that's going to run a planet or the planet beta in one of the early Star Trek episodes where there's one big supercomputer that runs the planet and the inhabitants are sort of these uh docile robot-like people who've been living peacefully but uneventfully for 8,000 years. And then
1:05:35
And then of course, there's 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.
1:05:42
Um but um but that was you know, the future of the computer age in the late '60s was highly centralized, by the late '90s was very decentralized, and by the late uh 2010s, maybe crypto accepted, it was again seemed to be pushing back to centralization.
1:05:58
Um I don't know, my my my intuition is 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.
1:06:13
As a follow-up, would you not quite that predetermined?
1:06:14
Would you bet on open-source AI?
1:06:20
I If decentralization is great, it should have more dynamic properties, should innovate more, should be safer, has many other virtues.
1:06:29
I don't quite know if that's the the main variable that's going to push the centralization or decentralization with it.
1:06:35
But yeah, that the the probably some version of it that that would be helpful.
1:06:39
I I don't know, the Linux versus Microsoft precedent.
1:06:44
Not sure that changed anything that much on the on the level of the operating system. Thank you.
1:06:52
When do you think humans are going to destroy themselves and do you think AI is going to do it?
1:06:58
I I I I don't think I don't think these things are uh written in in stone.
1:07:02
I I'm not a Calvinist, I'm not a I'm not a P Doom EA East Bay rationalist.
1:07:10
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.
1:07:23
You know, like a you know, a force that's powerful enough to stop the AI is probably a force as powerful enough to destroy the world, too.
1:07:30
So, I want I want to worry more about the humans that are trying to stop the AI.
1:07:36
Um Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently converted to Christianity but it seems mostly for utilitarian reasons.
1:07:41
Um something like for the great civilizational war because secularism doesn't provide a good enough answer.
1:07:48
Do you see religion as mainly a utility in the post-modern world?
1:07:49
You can have you can have utilitarian elements.
1:07:51
I don't think one can ever stress those too much.
1:07:56
So, my my bias is always to focus more on you know, questions of truth.
1:08:01
Uh you mentioned Lincoln's Lyceum 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?
1:08:10
And do you approve of Lincoln's political religion or view for America?
1:08:16
Well, I I I think it's a very it's a very fascinating speech because um he he references some some Caesar and Napoleon-like figure who will enslave the white people or free the slaves.
1:08:25
And so, that seems like it it seems plausible to think that he was thinking of himself.
1:08:34
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.
1:08:40
Obviously, um you feel a great sense of personal responsibility, indeed responsibility to history.
1:08:44
Um how did that sentiment begin? How has it evolved?
1:08:49
Sort of what have you found to be the more fruitful and less fruitful avenues for expressing it?
1:08:56
Oh, I'm always so bad at at doing uh self-psychoanalysis or something like that.
1:09:01
Um I don't know, the you know, the the the were sort of all these ways I was you know, I I was like incredibly competitive in track as a kid.
1:09:15
You know, in my eighth grade junior high school yearbook, one of my friends said, "I know you're you're going to you're going to get into Stanford in four years."
1:09:20
I got into Stanford and I went to Stanford. I went to law school.
1:09:22
I ended up you know, at a a law firm in Manhattan.
1:09:25
From the outside, it was a place um where everybody wanted to get in.
1:09:30
On the inside, it was a place everybody wanted to get out.
1:09:31
And um and so yeah, I I sort of had some kind of a quarter-life crisis in my mid-20s.
1:09:40
And uh you know, it's was you know, unclear what what what to do.
1:09:44
But somehow um you um you you can't uh you you have to try to avoid the worst memetic entanglements the worst forms of memetic competition possible.
1:09:57
It's I I don't I don't think one you know, I I don't think psychology really works.
1:10:01
I don't I don't think sort of awareness of these things is is quite quite the way to to do it.
1:10:05
But uh but uh yeah, there was there was some some some some some part of that was very important for me. Thank you.
1:10:19
So uh to that point, to get people off of the memetic track, I think um you know, Thiel Fellowship was really amazing and has had tremendous success.
1:10:27
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?
1:10:36
We've thought about scaling it a lot of times.
1:10:37
It's it's probably quite quite hard to to scale.
1:10:41
It's always you know, the the sort of the paradox of something like the Thiel Fellowship or my zero to one book or any sort of self-help thing is like, you know, um it's it's always bad to sort of give advice or okay, these are the things you're supposed to do.
1:10:57
Because it's sort of like um and so um the 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.
1:11:13
And then um I always worry that that uh deranges it at scale.
1:11:19
And so somehow, you know, it's you know, I I don't have like a I can't give it people a formula what to do.
1:11:25
It's something like, well, you should think for yourself and figure it out.
1:11:28
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 know, Maoist little red book or something you're producing and that's it's quite the opposite. Thank you.
1:11:45
Peter, my question is about diversity, equity, inclusion.
1:11:48
Uh DEI has become very prevalent in corporate America.
1:11:53
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.
1:12:03
And what are your thoughts?
1:12:03
Do you think this is something positive? Are you neutral?
1:12:06
Or you think this is gone a little over the top?
1:12:10
Would love to know your views on that.
1:12:13
You know, I'm I'm I'm very against it.
1:12:13
I don't always know if it's the most important issue either.
1:12:20
So somehow uh you know, I I I I wrote a book as an um in 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 uh Stanford in the late '80s, early '90s.
1:12:35
And uh there are parts of it that seemed very prescient and uh it sort of you know, described a a lot of things that eventually spread to the broader culture.
1:12:43
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 so much was was on a on a very uh very different level.
1:12:57
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 it is is um leaning too much into into the DEI narratives.
1:13:16
It um but you know, there always are there probably are Machiavellian ways where this can also work where it sort of you know, just distracts people.
1:13:25
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.
1:13:36
And then uh you know, they could they could pay their workers more or they could rebrand themselves as a green environmentally friendly company.
1:13:44
And that turned out to be a very cheap way to split up the the left-wing anti-Walmart coalition.
1:13:49
And uh and so that was a version of it as um you know, as this sort of capitalist um conspiracy um against it.
1:13:58
And then there you know, there cases where that can work and cases where it can go wrong.
1:14:04
Um for the most part, I uh I think that uh you know, it's it's it's just a distraction from more important things.
1:14:12
And so there's there's there's you know, there's one level on which I find the issues very silly.
1:14:15
Uh there's another level where where it's evil because it's stopping us from paying attention to more important things.
1:14:20
And uh and it you know, it's it's things like the economy, like science and tech, or even these these broader religious questions that we we've we've talked about today. I don't know.
1:14:31
I I I there's sort of a you know, um the people always talk about it in terms of cultural Marxism.
1:14:36
But I I think um you know, I think a real Marxist would be much preferable to a diversity person.
1:14:43
If Rosa Luxemburg, who's you know, sort of this uh crazed communist from the early 20th century, was like, you know, I think one thing she said was that there can be nobody more revolutionary than a factory worker.
1:14:53
That nobody can be more revolutionary than a proletarian.
1:14:56
And so um a diversity officer in a university or corporation, what would Rosa Luxemburg think of this?
1:15:03
It would be in the same category as a bank robber or a prostitute.
1:15:06
It's someone who's just extremely um corrupt form of crony capitalism. Thank you so much.
1:15:19
There's a fair amount of variation in regulation on biotech.
1:15:21
Um you know, there's Prospera, you funded some sea setting places.
1:15:25
What's your sense for why there aren't crazy cool ambitious biohacking things going on?
1:15:30
Where are the gene edited babies?
1:15:32
The only one that we know about happened in China and that guy went to jail.
1:15:35
What's Why isn't there more crazy stuff happening in different jurisdictions?
1:15:39
My my sense is the FDA has a global stranglehold on everything.
1:15:44
Um and it's uh it is because there are a lot of different reasons.
1:15:48
In In practice, most governments are not willing to have looser regulations than the FDA.
1:15:54
So it's actually um so there's less regulatory arbitrage than it looks.
1:15:59
And then 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 riding off of it.
1:16:13
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 tends to be US or bust.
1:16:27
Do you think that technology will eventually render a larger proportion of the human population unproductive or unable to contribute to the economy?
1:16:33
And if so, what should those unproductive people do with themselves?
1:16:40
Well, I think I think the Luddites have have always they've been wrong for a long time.
1:16:43
Um there are there are certainly ways who probably scare me some with with with AI and um there there versions of it that where where you you could um you know, you you you might but even if you convinced me that the Luddites were right about AI and that it's actually going to just replace people without, you know, you know, if you were a Luddite in you know, the mid-19th century said, you know, the machines are going to replace the humans.
1:17:11
And that was well, that would be such a relief because there's so much work for people to do and they would just free them up to do other things.
1:17:17
And And so maybe it's um maybe it's less complementary, more game of substitution.
1:17:22
Even if you could convince me of that, I'm still in favor of the of the AI because um because my default is muddling through isn't good.
1:17:30
My default is, you know, the default is really bad.
1:17:36
And so, you know, we're not you you don't get to muddle through with Greta on her bicycle. Thanks for coming.
1:17:44
You've alluded to a lot of the forces between decentralization and centralization, particularly around AI with forces centered around the individual.
1:17:51
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more or describe what you think the forces could be that stop AI development, particularly as it relates to the state's role or how uh a politician or another entity could co-opt that force for their own benefit versus the benefit of many.
1:18:09
You know, may- maybe but maybe the premise of your question is what I'd challenge.
1:18:12
It's It's It's It's It's why is AI going to be the only technology that matters?
1:18:17
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.
1:18:26
That's that's already in a way, you know, um conceding a ver- version of the centralization point.
1:18:34
So uh so yeah, if we say that it's all around the next generation of large language models, nothing else matters, then you've probably collapsed it to, you know, you know, a small number of players and uh and that is, you know, that's a that's a future that I find, you know, somewhat uncomfortably centralizing probably.
1:18:55
But you know, this is you know, the the definition of technology um you know, in the 1960s, technology meant, you know, it meant computers but it also meant new medicines and meant, you know, spaceships and supersonic planes and the green revolution and agriculture.
1:19:11
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.
1:19:16
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.
1:19:29
Earlier you mentioned that tech might end up saving San Francisco from itself.
1:19:34
AI AI specifically, yeah.
1:19:34
Sorry, AI AI specifically.
1:19:36
How do you evaluate the efforts of places like Miami and Austin to present themselves as alternative tech hubs and has that opinion changed over the course of the last 2 years?
1:19:44
[Music] I'm still very I'm still very pro Miami.
1:19:48
I I think I think the Miami story has been more more of a anti-New York story.
1:19:52
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 and and and that alone I think you know explains you know a great deal of of Miami's success.
1:20:10
I think the you know I think the tech you know again it's somewhere in a very different place from what people were focused on even two two and a half years ago but two and a half years ago there was sort of much more of a crypto story and the you know crypto is a decentralizing
1:20:28
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 if if crypto was going to be a big part of the future tech tech story that would have been a you know naturally decentralizing from Silicon Valley narrative. If Silicon Valley had really
1:20:47
If Silicon Valley had really missed out on the crypto thing in a relative sense and then you know I don't know consumer internet you know a lot of this happened in Silicon Valley for all sorts of complicated reasons you know it's supposed to get rid of the tyranny of place but all happened in one place and then the the AI piece seems seems to be even more centralized in Silicon Valley.
1:21:07
So again if we if we say that you know the next decade or two decades are just going to be doubling down on AI um that that probably suggests that you know San Francisco will maintain and Silicon Valley will maintain or even gain gain power. Hello.
1:21:28
First and foremost I just want to say thank you for for coming out and doing this event it's been wonderful.
1:21:32
doing this event it's been wonderful. 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
1:21:53
totalitarian dictatorship or just the similar to like there's just too much information too many countries too many people trying to vie 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
1:22:17
Well I'd like to avoid the first type and then it's always yeah the second one I I I will concede 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 you know many nations and you can you can move between them but and so there's some there's some there's some transnational thing you're not completely stuck in a particular country
1:22:47
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 globalization 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 the superposition of the thesis and antithesis. So if we say globalization
1:23:10
So if we say globalization some global world order is the final synthesis is globalization as it's described today just a superposition of a slightly unstable you know global market but no global government and then can that can that really be maintained?
1:23:28
So um yes I I think 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 but but yeah if if if we have too concrete a picture of exactly what the world order looks like that's probably really bad.
1:23:48
A bit of a follow up to the gentleman before me.
1:23:50
Um I I understand you've spent a little bit of time in Miami so at kind of coming down from the macro level to the street level local governance um almost like an economist economist getting lunch perspective what is Miami doing well and what does Miami need to improve upon?
1:24:09
Well there are a lot of things I I've been here the last four winters so two three months each each winter here.
1:24:18
Yeah there are a lot of things that I think are are going incredibly well.
1:24:21
I'm always into these sort of Georgist real estate theories where if you're not very careful all the the value in a place gets captured by the sort of corrupt real estate group of people and they're sort of a Henry George was late 19th century economist who was sort of like sort of socialist then today seen as sort of libertarian which probably just tells something about how our society's changed.
1:24:46
But but the you know the the the worry in Miami is that is it have we really escaped the Georgist disaster that is San Francisco that is New York that is London where 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 you know by by slum lords or something like that. Thanks. Last question. Thanks.
1:25:18
So a question about AI and theology.
1:25:21
Voltaire had this great quote if God didn't exist we would need to invent him or her or whatever the pronoun is.
1:25:30
Do you do you find this view of like super intelligent AI which might be in the near future as a kind of deity as a kind of machine God is that useful?
1:25:36
Is there leverage to that and it could it even be more than just a heuristic some kind of substantive statement?
1:25:44
It's it's sort of a purely theological question and I would 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 be very good at convincing people that the party is God or that the wisdom of crowds or you know whatever the consensus is is is the truth.
1:26:11
And and then yeah there are these metaphysical questions where it doesn't seem like it's exactly you know I don't know transcendent traditional monotheistic God but I yeah I I would I would I would I would go to more of the political questions than the you know the the metaphysical ones and probably
1:26:30
the you know the risk danger is that there's something something about it sort of telescopes even more the sort of you know consensus truth wisdom of crowds you know I think probably all the models I you know I I will tell you that there's no particular religion that's more true than any other one. And then is that really what the models
1:26:56
And then is that really what the models generate or is that is that been hardwired in?
1:27:01
Those are the questions I'd be more curious about.
1:27:05
Thank you all for listening to conversations with Tyler at the Mercatus Center.
1:27:08
Most of all thank you Peter Thiel. Thank you.