The question was posed in a safe environment. Douthat, one of the Times’ most reliable conservatives, offered Thiel sufficient context to escape with an easy answer. Douthat prefaced his question by saying: “a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism—for transcendence of our mortal flesh—and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine.” He was referencing the movement to radically enhance and evolve humans to achieve immortality. Transhumanist adherents advocate for a range of innovations, from genetic biohacking to uploading our consciousness to a computer to merge with A.I., freezing ourselves through cryonics, and robotically adapting our bodies through expansive bionics that reach the level of cyborgs.
Douthat clearly thought that Thiel would choose human over machine. But Thiel responded with a long hesitation. In a video of the exchange, Douthat—to his credit—is clearly taken aback.
Thiel has long been cagey and ambiguous about his beliefs—likely a strategic play for his career as an investor—but he has clearly been fascinated with transhumanism for a long time. This recent interview, though, seems more direct and dangerous. Thiel seems unwilling to answer the question: Does he eventually want to be a literal, honest-to-god brain in a jar wired to a Macbook Pro?
Yes… That’s been the plan the whole fucking time. I thought we all knew this already?
There is just something about watching the slow, but inevitable collapse of the U.S. and eventually humanity as we know it, due to the very deliberate actions of one billionaire who was born in another country and who has been playing both sides against each other, while all other silicon valley billionaires have just accepted this as inevitable and are holding brainstorming sessions about what they can do following the collapse, rather than just stopping the guy who is orchestrating the whole thing.
Transhumanism is our inevitable fate, but this was all kicked off by a movement thar coerced Americans into believing they had to organize against secular humanism before things got anymore out of hand.
Thank God (can I still say God or do I have to say Thank Thiel?) we didn’t let that happen.
Isn’t this the plot of Pantheon?
I came to this show very late cause it was so poorly marketed, it’s amazing and very prescient and relevant to the society of today. It’s an amazing show, that more people should watch, I’ll start reading the books soon
We need to start calling this sort of thinking what it actually is, techno nihilism. These people like Thiel and Musk aren’t trying to build a better world for humanity, they are building escape pods for themselves to exit our world and they don’t care how much of this world they trash to get there.
Putin and P Thiel
I’ve never seen Putin look that happy IRL. He’s glowing
He’s got that white phosphorus glow
He really does just look so much more relaxed and carefree. Like one picture says 1000 words and tells the story of the life that could have been had he followed his heart rather than becoming a murderous dictator.
Theil looks roughly the same, but with a fun captains hat.
The world would probably be a better more peaceful place if he could find a pair of heels that fit, and the right place to rock them at.
Even if he’s not into that, there’s still more lifestyle options he may have missed.
Maybe he’s so grumpy because he’s not a he at all! Maybe both heads are stuck in the USSR (U Shall Stay Repressed)
The world needs those Absolutely Safe Capsules from Mother 3 to escort these idiots away from money, power, influence, and most devastatingly of all, any internet access or network connectivity to keep them truly solipsistic. In a thousand years of zero interference with them or from them, they will join and become one with their precious machines and become one with it
Its endlessly fascinating to me how throughout all of human history the ruling class has been intent on achieving immortality. The first story we know of is about a despotic ruler scouring the world for the key to immortality. Many emporers of China were driven to madness by this search.
Oh shit. Somebody tell Thiel the key to immortality is mercury.
tell him it’s in lead so everyone can get scrap for their service pipes maybe
My username actually pulled it off by becoming a god. Didn’t work out so well for him in the end.
Meanwhile, I’m just wondering who’d want to live that goddamn long 🤣 they’re absolutely pathological.
I was so into this shit when I was a teenager, reading Mondo 2000 and early WIRED, visiting the WELL, it seemed so cyberpunk and cool. After the events of the past 30 years it just seems like a fucking nightmare now.
It’s funny how death seems like the best case scenario these days, I used to find sci-fi like this cool back in the day as well
It’s always fascinating to me how depictions of cyberpunk-style implants have evolved since the 80’s.
The 80’s stuff certainly has corporate spyware and such, but modern reimaginings has it an ever-present and practically undefeatable threat.
How can you beat it, after all? They make the implants.
This breed of trans humanists are simple garbage because they are not about trans humanism - they are about staying oligarchs forever.
Let them upload themselves into an iridium and unobtainum machine with nuclear fusion batteries and then we drop it into the Mariana Trench and let them watch the spectacle from inside.
Exactly. They’re all about transhumanism until people want to take cross sex hormones or engage in body mods that aren’t vanity projects.
They imagine themselves as the Titans from the Dune universe.
Is any of our current AI tech even making significant strides towards achieving this? I really don’t think the current crop or billionaires will live to see this being viable even if they live another 100 years.
Immortality is the end of human evolution. Imagine humans, as we currently are, never changing from our impulsive and selfish behavior. That’s a fucking nightmare.
There’s a crushing Love, Death & Robots short about this, if I recall
Are you refering to Pop Squad
Thiel is a piece of shit…
But so is this author for writing an article about a pause proceeding and answer, and never saying the answer
You’re right. The link below is not the only place I’ve seen the quote cited, just the first I found in a hurry.
The host asked Thiel ‘You would prefer the human race to endure, right?’
Thiel hesitated, doing some umm-ing and ahh-ing, even at one point saying ‘I don’t know’.
The billionaire went on to clarify and said: “Yes [I would like us to endure] but I also would like us to radically solve these problems.
Yeah they’re reading into it way too much.
The host asked Thiel ‘You would prefer the human race to endure, right?’
Thiel hesitated, doing some umm-ing and ahh-ing, even at one point saying ‘I don’t know’.
The billionaire went on to clarify and said: “Yes [I would like us to endure] but I also would like us to radically solve these problems.
Yeah totally, now is not the time to bring this up. Just like Trump saying “you’ll never need to vote again.” Or that Nazi salute that Musk did that wasn’t really a Nazi salute when he did it, but now we all can acknowledge it was.
Once our Lord and Savior Peter Thiel has ascended after sacrificing us all for our mortal sins, then we can acknowledge this.
It was 100% a nazi salute
Dont be a dick, people arent simping for Thiel just because they think the article you posted is over interpreting a single pause.
Simping is the least we can do for our Lord and savior, who has never done anything else to indicate his ultimate goal in life is to achieve immortality no matter the cost, other than hesitate when asked directly during this specific interview if he was rooting for survival of humanity.
Perspective: A future for me and not for thee — the hubris of transhumanism (2023)
If we simp our hardest we might have the privilege of being frozen and placed in his space coffin with him in order to serve him into the next life, or chosen to be ground up in order to serve as his personal biofuel as he travels through space. 🚀
It’s like that old saying,
shootsimp for the 🌝 Even if you miss, you’ll still land among the ✨You’re the author of this, aren’t you? Here you are completely misreading every response to you. Holy shit, take a breath.
The author of the article? Lol no
i for one appreciated your well intended farce
clap clap
the art is not dead. Good job spooking the ground show.
Plausibly, I would deny you.
Thanks! Just calls em like I sees em. Not defending or criticizing a sports team, or anything else I could see somebody might reasonably take personal.
Just the facts about an evil piece of shit psychotic billionaire who would rather use you and me for biofuel before he would bother to spend a penny or lift a finger to do anything positive for humanity if it didn’t also benefit him in some way.
deleted by creator
https://www.christianpost.com/news/we-asked-grok-whether-its-new-logo-is-a-broken-cross.html
The 53-year-old Tesla and SpaceX CEO told Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson in an interview last July that the decision to build a supercomputer in Memphis evoked references, at least in part, to the Memphis of ancient Egypt and its pantheon of gods.
“Perhaps that’s where our new god will come from,” Musk said.
I fucking hate these people so much!
Yeah, an oracle for the masses is something very convenient.
Just remind me, who had the power - Alexander or his fortunetellers? Caesar or his fortunetellers? Or whether Delphi oracle ever managed to turn the religious part into power?
BTW - I understand how such ideas can be out of sincere desire to help humanity. Magic thinking is natural, and some perception of the world is natural, and evolution is just not fast enough for the technical developments we have.
And what I’d want in the future to account for that (sort of a panopticon, not because I’m an exhibitionist, but because you can’t make a subset of society always tracked and visible without making everyone always tracked and visible ; and lack of banking privacy, for example, in Scandinavian countries doesn’t seem to hurt them that much) might well be worse than what they want. A bit like Zamyatin’s book.
It’s just that “might” doesn’t negate the fact that they are already doing a few very bad things, like genocide. Perhaps their mitigation is just not worth such sacrifices. Perhaps mine is better then.
I just want to make this very clear.
What began as right wing fear mongering in the 1970s under the message of protecting traditional family values against secular humanism, and involved a film literally called “Whatever happened to the human race?” might very well end with the extinction of the human race, at the hands of an evil gay villain who has funded hateful racist and anti LGBTQ policy, while spreading all kinds of nonsense about population decline, reducing overall quality of life in America, replacing jobs with AI, making healthcare and birth control inaccessible to many Americans, preventing gay couples from adopting (while also quietly raising his own adopted children with his husband, and let’s be honest, likely murdering his kept boyfriend on the side when he started speaking out about Thiel’s hypocrisy), and is intentionally trying to collapse the entire economy bc he knows that once that happens, he will control the majority of resources and power. Following human extinction, he (or at least his name) will live on eternally via transhumanism as the one representative of all humankind and all it’s earthly achievements. Just really let that all sink in.
Congrassions! Ya Done It!
I hope we’re alone in the Universe.
I know what you mean. At least that would make Thiel’s evil bullshit all for naught. Just Thiel’s stupid ugly fucking face floating through an empty void for all eternity. How fitting.
He’s bringing us closer and closer to destruction in order to make this a reality. In the meantime to reach that point, two of the leaders of Epstein’s sex trafficking ring are about to be subpoenaed by Congress while they continuing to make money from Epstein’s investments in Thiel’s companies.
For some reason, the media keeps giving them the euphemism of “Epstein’s estate” rather than alerting the public that these are the indispensable captains of his trafficking network.
Government contracts keep providing Thiel’s company with money in exchange for use of his technology to round up families and separate parents from their children. Often the children become lost in the system…
The money Thiel makes through these contracts goes into the pockets of the captains of Epstein’s network and members of the White House administration via their investments, or the pockets of democratic and Republican congressmen via donations for their campaign or state projects, and for some reason America just keeps pretending they don’t see this happening right in front of them, on their streets, with their tax dollars.
Lemmy as a whole is more seems to attract neo-Luddites but I’m still surprised to see someone so against transhumanism in c/technology.
Not it. People are worried about what their brand of authoritarin capitalism will do with transhumnism.
Whenever you see technoligical skepticism, it’s almost always about its effects on the working class as used by the ruling class of the time. If for example you opened up a new public research agency for AI (like NASA but NAIA) with the short term goal of developing open source AI and the long term promise to reduce the work week for all through AI productivity advancement, I think you’d get broad support.
Today however we hear private execs left front and centre salivating over the layoffs they’d be able to achieve thanks to AI, or over the new profit growth they’re gonna achieve. Most people know they ain’t getting any of that profit and would instead be stuck with the layoffs and inequality, among other negative effects. And history tells us this is a well founded concern.
Transhumanism—if it happens at all—is not happening anytime soon. Like, not for thousands of years if ever.
Listening to people talk about transhumanism today is like seeing people imagine flying cars in the 1950s. “Oh we’ve got this cool technology surely it means this wild extrapolation is right around the corner.”
Give me a break.
There’s a difference between the want for convergence with tech for all, if they want
Vs.
We’re going to transfer your consciousness into a virtual world and use you for biofuel while we, the powerful enjoy the wealth of your sacrifice.
https://lemmy.ca/post/34658048/13290827
It’s called the dark enlightenment.
This article warns from way back in 2017 https://qz.com/1007144/the-neo-fascist-philosophy-that-underpins-both-the-alt-right-and-silicon-valley-technophiles
They also want to use you for biofuel.
No, I’m not fucking kidding. These people are pure evil
“The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide.”
https://newrepublic.com/article/183971/jd-vance-weird-terrifying-techno-authoritarian-ideas
Why are we not Luigi’ing these people?
I’m surprised to see someone so supportive of Peter Thiel on Lemmy.
I feel like you’re so lovestruck you’ve somehow confused Thiel and his money with the technology he’s attached his name to, but I will loop you in on this hot take and very well kept secret: You can oppose Peter Thiel and the broligarchy trying to control the technology most of them played no role in creating, and not be opposed to technology.
Especially when you realize that the rush to this is bc Thiel just wants to attach his name to a very lackluster final product before anyone else can improve it out make it their own.
I’m not necessarily supportive of Thiel - he does some things that I oppose, and also some things that I think are silly. He’s not a very likeable man overall. I’m supportive of transhumanism. The substance of this article is merely that:
Peter Thiel hesitated when asked if he “would prefer the human race to endure.”
The article doesn’t even say what his reply ultimately was, but the implication is that even considering that a transhuman future would be better is somehow horrifying, and that’s the implication I’m surprised to see supported here.
You can find the video interview. I’ll spoil it for you: He didn’t say he would prefer the human race endure following that very concerning pregnant pause. Rather, he hemmed and hawed.
Thiel isn’t just a transhumanist, he’s an accelerationist, and he has a fuckton of money.
I’m for transhumanism and potentially some kind of ai governance but thiel (and the rest of the slime in the tech industry) are not the people to bring it to us. Everything they touch is tainted by greed and our current direction with ai is a lobotomized tumorous speech center.
Its a bit dated (written in the 90s) and doesn’t address transhumanism but Stark by Ben Elton really gets the vibe of these assholes.
Technology is a great thing that can assist us, when it changes who we are it goes too far.
I love chocolate. I don’t eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Nuance is indeed a thing.
