It's so weird to me that these folks don't just retire with a bag of money to a nice beach house and enjoy life. They're always seeming to meddle. And in doing so they take away our, and their peace. It's like they're troubled deeply and they need us to be also? Why can't they just not do demonstrably evil, deeply wrong things?
Because the sample size for "mega-rich" selects for more psychopaths per thousand people than the sample of people who are "just rich".
You can get "just rich" by being a doctor, or a partner at an IT consulting firm, without screwing people over.
But to be "mega-rich", you have to be OK with screwing people over any chance you get. Over time, that behavioural trait has a compounding effect where you don't see things as "right" and "wrong" anymore. That perspective is accelerated further as their money and power insulate them from consequences due to the political and legal latitude it can buy.
Bill Gates plotted to dilute Paul Allen's Microsoft shares because "he wasn't pulling his weight" when he was undergoing cancer treatment. Goldman Sachs' top legal counsel Kathryn Ruemmler accepted expensive handbags from Epstein and called him "uncle" in communications after he was re-arrested on trafficking charges. Bezos, Musk, Zuck, Ellison...need I say more?
The saying _Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison_ should transformed to _Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising the ultra wealthy_.
I also suspect there is a vortex of temptation as you become an increasingly interesting person. Rich, famous, powerful, well-connected, beautiful etc are all interesting characteristics to nefarious people since those characteristics can advance their own nefarious interests. I suspect that, as you become an increasingly interesting person, you must actively defend your peace. It's not like they actively undermine their own peace, at least not always.
This vortex of temptation appears to have many points of origin, such as cults like Scientology, or particular persons such as the casually described "gold diggers", or... whatever organization Epstein is a part of, etc.
Well the Forbes Top 1000 (which has a lower threshold of $3.8 B) is missing 30-200 wealthy but totally obscure people. That proportion is close to what HN might consider "smart".
It takes a certain personality to continue hoarding wealth even when you know that it comes from exploiting others. The reason why they can't just not do demonstrably evil things is that they have relied on doing evil things to get to where they are.
The kind of person that thinks "I've got more than enough money, I might as well use it to help others" doesn't get to be a billionaire.
I have to stop her right there. I stop myself there too. Neither one of us could, in any iteration of life, become billionaires.
(There's a time-travel story for someone. Like the movie Primer but with one person who round-trips through time—placing stock bets and other investments in order to become wealthy. When they screw up an investment they get a do-over.
Life also happens though: a relationship, marriage… This aspect though begins to play on a sense of guilt and he resists do-overs in the relationship.
By the close of the story his pursuit of wealth wanes, evaporates completely. Contentment comes finally from his relationship, from accepting his missteps, from embracing the uncertainty of the future. The machine is scrapped, no more do-overs.)
You are getting closer to realizing that becoming a billionaire demands a psychological detachment most people would find disturbing...
It is not always brilliance that drives the relentless accumulation of wealth, but a deep, unresolved hole...an inner void shaped by trauma, by the need for validation never received from a parent, a world, or a past self.
That constant dissatisfaction fuels an endless pursuit of wealth they imagine will finally provide meaning or peace, yet never does. The accumulation becomes the self justification. The proof of worth in a game that can never truly be won. And from that height grows the contempt... Not for ignorance, but for poverty itself. Not because the poor are seen as incapable, but because they serve as a reminder of everything these individuals fear becoming.
That "antichrist" lecture was an attempt at a reverse Streisand effect - there was a meme that Thiel was the antichrist, but now if you google "peter thiel antichrist" all you're going to see is that lecture.
Pretty clever but to be clear he is an incredibly dodgy human being
Yeah that's what I thought as well. Because even if he hates Greta Thunberg, there are much more extreme people in all the direction. So saying something so absurd seems bizarre. And for sure if anyone is to be tagged Antichrist, it would be war machine profiteer for most people.
Tbh it's kind of a genius move when countless comments like GP tags the antichrist as just slightly malicious or weird comment by him.
People can be profoundly stupid in areas like basic/fundamental morality, while also being in the top 0.001% in areas like manipulating media and making money.
Examples: Every billionaire. Every single one - except Chuck Feeney who proved the rule.
It's not very smart to fail morally and spiritually, over and over, without ever looking into why or trying to correct the issues.
It does take intelligence of a particular kind to examine yourself and what makes you happy, fulfilled. And it takes a certain kind of stupidity to become greedy for more and more and more, neverending.
I don't believe that intelligence is a single axis. You can even have different levels of intelligence on different days for the exact same topic; even on the same day from one hour to the next.
Some people might be great at set theory but terrible at calculus; some people might be great with their hands at sewing but clumsy with glasswork. People are weird and complex.
But what's clear is when people don't even try to be good people. And that requires a particularly dense form of stupidity.
Apropos Greta Thunberg, I noticed on the top of the "no stupid questions" subreddit the question "How can people like Greta Thunberg afford to be a full time activist?". The submitter was a one-month old account, one of their posts was in the whatismycqs subreddit - a sure tell for bot/farm accounts.
Yet it is rather serious question - most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves. I think that it is pretty bad for democracy that political action is delegated to only those few that are able to gain sponsorship and don't need to work to eat.
We do not need professional activists, quite the contrary.
> most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves
Do they? Or do they get convinced by adverts that their lives won't be complete unless they spend more than they can afford on an endless stream of shiny promises?
I've always found it very easy to put a huge fraction of my income to one side because all my hobbies are cheap or free.
I've sometimes expressed surprise at how much other people buy, or spend regularly, and in one case the response was approximately "of course I need to spend £2500/month after my mortgage, there's the £50/month phone and same for internet, there's Netflix, I eat out twice a week, there's the car (which I like taking across the channel to France and driving around a lot), there's …"
Meanwhile, I'm mostly content living off my €1k/month passive income, of which 25% is spent on mandatory social and health insurance; and the only thing I'm unsure about at this income level is visiting friends and family on the other end of a 2h flight where the airport isn't all that close to any of them.
> Do they? Or do they get convinced by adverts that their lives won't be complete unless they spend more than they can afford on an endless stream of shiny promises?
> Meanwhile, I'm mostly content living off my €1k/month passive income
This means you have sufficient capital to sustain yourself this way, and probably a place to live with no rent or mortgage. This also means you had either a rich family or earned quite a lot in the past what allowed you to collect this capital. And lastly this means you don't have family to support.
Well, maybe everyone could decide to grind few years (though in my country the minimal wage is not much greater than your "passive income", so grind options are limited) and then decide to not have a family and don't buy a phone. We would then have a whole society of full-time political activists, but then there is a question why any action matters.
Your comment reeks of classism. "Oh, they really do not try enough. Just get up earlier and cancel your Netflix sub".
Yeah, I'll tell my family we need to move to the mouldy 1 bedroom flat because a guy in the internet says so. That'll help with the mortgage bit;
Also kids need to manage their expectations and instead of having active hobbies (that require some minimum hardware but lots of activities), they should try sculpting with clay instead. Especially that with the asthma they'll get from the black mould they'll be in no position to be very active anyway.
I've seen clay on the field, so we'll save money here. We can also collect their art through the winter to bake them in the sun once they're ready (to save on the oven).
School? Right, we need to move to the closest one, why let them have friends or aspirations.
Now work, hmm, that's easy. Instead of going to the work I get paid a lot but commute cost over £5k a year, I'll take something that pays 1/6 of my original salary but we can save on the commute. Will he'll with arguing why we need to move to the smaller place and ditch their activities.
Living costs a lot.
And if I sound absurd so do you by suggesting your life choices are applicable to everyone or they're just convinced by adverts to spend.
You're inventing a fictional narrative unrelated to anything I just said.
Especially as this was in the context of how Greta Thunberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no kids of her own and thus doesn't need to also cover the cost of their hobbies or how to get them to school, and furthermore in the context of "how does she manage to be a full-time activist with no obvious means of support?" where such things as "commuting" is more like "hitchhiking on someone else's yacht for 2 weeks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_voyages_of_Greta...
You can do a lot of travel very cheaply when your reputation alone is sufficient for people to give you a free lift across the Atlantic ocean as part of your own activism against, in that case, the CO2 emissions of flying. Should that be limited, given the travel itself was part of the attempt at activism to move people away from air travel, but also it took 2 weeks and therefore probably wouldn't do any such thing?
(For those without this advantage, I'm reminded of Tom Scott explaining how he managed to do so much on-site filming around the world for relatively little money; my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination).
> Especially as this was in the context of how Greta Thunberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no kids of her own and thus doesn't need to also cover the cost of their hobbies or how to get them to school
And comes from the rich middle-class background. But let's ignore that, because all that matters is small financial discipline.
> my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination
I know a couple of other politicians as well where I say over and over again, that's not them being a blowhard, that's a trial balloon. They're testing the water for how much of a lunatic blowhard it's profitable to be.
These people want to fill Trump's shoes when he's gone, that's very obvious. But I think - and hope - that Trump's fans will notice what they're doing and not be charmed by it.
Sure they are, but Thiel is not one of them. Or rather, there's little reason to think the nutjob beliefs he presents to you are his sincerely held nutjob beliefs.
You run into people sometimes, where you realize they're testing the waters constantly to figure out where they have you and what they can get away with.
Strong disagree, he's one of them, and he means it. The myth that these guys are 'really smart' should die, they're good at grifting, but they're not so smart they can't have nutjob beliefs and when they say what they think and it is negative believing them will not lead to a less true picture of the individual.
Nah, it's advanced SEO. He almost certainly didn't even come up with it himself; billionaires and even centimillionaires can have teams of PR people just coming up with this shit for them all the time.
Boris Johnson (or his PR team) did it with the bus thing, and cheese [0].
Yes, Thiel has nutjob beliefs. Utterly insane.
No, this wasn't one of them. Too calculated. Too sweaty.
We're talking about one of the guys connected to Cambridge Analytica here.
Maybe we should be clear about which beliefs we're talking about.
If your claim is that he doesn't believe Greta Thunberg specifically is the Antichrist, then sure. But that's just listening to the words that he says. He never says he believes Greta is actually the Antichrist.
"In our world, [the Antichrist] is far more likely to be Greta Thunberg [than Edward Teller or other mad technologist, or implicitly weapons and surveillance tech manufacturer Peter Thiel himsef]."
He does actually believe this.
So yes OP is correct that Thiel said and does actually believe Greta "is potentially" the Antichrist. But that's a different claim than saying that she actually is the Antichrist. There are thousands or millions of people (most unknown to Thiel) who could fit into the Greta-Antichrist category broadly. So it's a much weaker claim than that Greta is herself singularly the Antichrist.
Both claims are equal levels of insane though. If you believe the weaker claim that the Antichrist would be someone like Greta, it requires exactly zero additional insanity to believe the stronger claim that Greta is actually the Antichrist.
Exactly. The literal claim is just a fig leaf for being able to say 'oh, he surely doesn't mean that' whereas the subtext is far more important and he definitely believes that based on this and many other statements and actions in the past.
You can be a nut job with but job beliefs and be smart about it. Obviously our dear friend from Austria wasn't going to directly talk about crematoria.
Traditional response to a non-rich person saying nutjob shit: Are you a fucking idiot?
Traditional response to a rich person saying nutjob shit: That's really interesting, especially as it connects to this thing I am working on that needs funding
Facebook's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: Check out this other nutjob shit
ChatGPT's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: You've nailed it. You're thinking about this exactly how a professional philosopher would.
On the topic of projection, I wonder where the "Pizzagate!" frothing-at-the-mouth QAnon geniuses are, now that the actual sex-child-trafficking conspiracy has been revealed, just that it involves their champion fascists.
Hah at one point they were saying an online furniture shop is a website for trafficking children hiding in plain sight, using coded messages to describe said children (something like "leather sofa" meaning "blonde teenager" or some insanity like that). Come on you freaking geniuses, the Epstein emails show that they don't need codes on a public website, they just talk to each other in plain speech, but over email!
A child-trafficking conspiracy was a total fabrication, meanwhile a major child-trafficking conspiracy was happening under everybody’s noses. What a coincidence, huh?
Seems to me, like all legends, it started on a kernel of truth, then it evolved into something of its own. Not sure why you believe Pizzagate to be totally unrelated to Epstein.
I'm asking about where the Pizzagate outrage brigade is... Are they quiet now because it's their own champions who are implicated?
To be honest I haven't been looking out for them, but I imagine the news/the Internet detectives would've covered them.
"Kernel of truth", hah. Feels more like a distraction tactic. "Oh, Trump barged into dressing room of teenage pageants, let's accuse the other side of running a trafficking ring!"
The issue with pizzagate (and a lot of these conspiracy theories) is not that it was directionally incorrect about 'some heinous shit is going down' (which is a good cold reading any day of the week in any age), it's that it jumped to specific and often just unhinged conclusions from basically zero evidence.
The latter part tending to both create more problems and give cover to the existing ones.
No, the only issue is that it was a purposeful distraction from the real heinous shit. The rest is a distraction from the fact that it was a distraction.
qanon was almost certainly foreign agit-prop. it may have started with a real human but if you think they're running false-flags out of 4chan you're literally insane.
the US Gov doesn't need to go to 4chan, they can get headlines in the Washington Post and NBC.
why would Q-anon continue to advocate for Jan 7th and overthrowing the gubmnt even after Biden won?
Always cute to read people who speak with such confidence but just dole out partial information, seemingly bragging "Ooh I know something you don't".
You sound like yet another conspiracy nutjob, but to be explicit: What website? What controlled opposition, where's your info from? I don't know if I'm just feeding a troll who'll be gleeful because in his brain he "knows" something others don't know, so that makes him special; or if I actually want to learn about whatever other meta-conspiracy that made you special...
Thiel and Musk are the two biggest jerks to come out of the tech scene bar none. Zuckerberg and Andreessen must be ecstatic, because those two make them look reasonable (which they're not).
Thiel briefly talked publicly about his relationship with Epstein on the Joe Rogan podcast. It is interesting to see the juxtaposition of the private conversations with the public presentation of the relationship
Somehow there is a lot less discussion online about Thiel and Musk, both of whom are in the Epstein files. These are the most powerful people on the planet, steering elections at every level in America through their spending and connections. They need to be outed.
Thiel appears to be a Russian asset since he meets with Russians at Epstein’s properties per the files.
Musk is different. He simply begs Epstein to let Musk and his then wife Talulah Riley attend the “wildest party” on the island. Epstein even warns him that the “ratio” on the island may not be to his wife’s liking but Musk insists on coming to such a party.
Their approaches to defend themselves are different too. Thiel is silent. Musk has made huge numbers of posts, retweets, and replies trying to pretend he’s not part of the Epstein class, pointing fingers at others, and claiming he’s never been to the island. And he hasn’t ever explained why he was asking Epstein about the wildest parties.
Keep in mind that Elon was asking Epstein about these island parties years after Epstein was already a convicted child sex offender. He knew what was happening and wanted in.
People talk about "inbox zero". I want to learn "inbox Epstein".
Somehow, this guy had time to have regular email conversations with about 1,000 of the most powerful people in the planet (the head of the Nobel Prize Committee was one).
Which I found amazing when one of Musk's tweets to defend himself was to say that if he wanted to have creepy sex parties he could just throw them himself and not need a loser like Epstein involved.
Well, I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO. Even though I cannot stand buffone Musk, it looks like it to me.
Thiel and especially Trump though are very different story. Trump happily dived in all the crime he could get.
> Well, I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO.
... Wait, okay, I realise Musk isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but just how stupid do you think he is? Anyone corresponding with Epstein after his first conviction knew very well the sort of person they were dealing with; they just didn't care.
Well… judging by his behaviour on all the times he's been told "no" by domain experts, and that random reward schedules are highly addictive (which in this context means "on some occasions he's even correct when he tells experts he knows better"), I think it's very plausible that someone told him what Epstein was and he ignored and/or fired them for doing so because he didn't want it to be the case.
But that's the positive spin, where Musk actually didn't know and was simply an idiot, and at this point I'm tired of giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Example of the kind of stuff easily findable in 2006 if you ask an underling who knows how to Google to check out the guy throwing sex parties you want to attend:
Oh, yeah, if you were to do any due diligence (which you probably _should_, as a billionaire intending to go to sex parties) the red flags were there long before. But the first conviction really removed any vestiges of plausible deniability.
Since no charges have been laid for all the noise this topic has generated, I can only assume that this is a distraction from another more important operation. Maybe there's war coming, maybe that 1 Trillion dollar interest payment is a very big problem but you shouldn't panic, and we'll help you with that.
A lot of the noise about this is specifically because the entities that are supposed to be investigating and bringing charges on this matter seem to be doing anything but that.
> Since no charges have been laid for all the noise this topic has generated
Considering that both the FBI and DOJ themselves seems to be compromised and more interested in a cover-up than finding the co-conspirators, who exactly would you expect to bring up charges here, if FBI and DOJ basically been put out of play?
It's so weird to me that these folks don't just retire with a bag of money to a nice beach house and enjoy life. They're always seeming to meddle. And in doing so they take away our, and their peace. It's like they're troubled deeply and they need us to be also? Why can't they just not do demonstrably evil, deeply wrong things?
Because the sample size for "mega-rich" selects for more psychopaths per thousand people than the sample of people who are "just rich".
You can get "just rich" by being a doctor, or a partner at an IT consulting firm, without screwing people over.
But to be "mega-rich", you have to be OK with screwing people over any chance you get. Over time, that behavioural trait has a compounding effect where you don't see things as "right" and "wrong" anymore. That perspective is accelerated further as their money and power insulate them from consequences due to the political and legal latitude it can buy.
Bill Gates plotted to dilute Paul Allen's Microsoft shares because "he wasn't pulling his weight" when he was undergoing cancer treatment. Goldman Sachs' top legal counsel Kathryn Ruemmler accepted expensive handbags from Epstein and called him "uncle" in communications after he was re-arrested on trafficking charges. Bezos, Musk, Zuck, Ellison...need I say more?
Yeah, give me some sunshine and relative obscurity and we're golden.
The saying _Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison_ should transformed to _Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising the ultra wealthy_.
I also suspect there is a vortex of temptation as you become an increasingly interesting person. Rich, famous, powerful, well-connected, beautiful etc are all interesting characteristics to nefarious people since those characteristics can advance their own nefarious interests. I suspect that, as you become an increasingly interesting person, you must actively defend your peace. It's not like they actively undermine their own peace, at least not always.
This vortex of temptation appears to have many points of origin, such as cults like Scientology, or particular persons such as the casually described "gold diggers", or... whatever organization Epstein is a part of, etc.
Well the Forbes Top 1000 (which has a lower threshold of $3.8 B) is missing 30-200 wealthy but totally obscure people. That proportion is close to what HN might consider "smart".
People probably do that, but they do it as multi millionaires more often than not.
It takes a certain personality to continue hoarding wealth even when you know that it comes from exploiting others. The reason why they can't just not do demonstrably evil things is that they have relied on doing evil things to get to where they are.
The kind of person that thinks "I've got more than enough money, I might as well use it to help others" doesn't get to be a billionaire.
Exactly.
The wife too, "If I were a billionaire…"
I have to stop her right there. I stop myself there too. Neither one of us could, in any iteration of life, become billionaires.
(There's a time-travel story for someone. Like the movie Primer but with one person who round-trips through time—placing stock bets and other investments in order to become wealthy. When they screw up an investment they get a do-over.
Life also happens though: a relationship, marriage… This aspect though begins to play on a sense of guilt and he resists do-overs in the relationship.
By the close of the story his pursuit of wealth wanes, evaporates completely. Contentment comes finally from his relationship, from accepting his missteps, from embracing the uncertainty of the future. The machine is scrapped, no more do-overs.)
You may be interested in the excellent film "About Time". It has a similar, though not exactly the same, premise and conclusion.
You are getting closer to realizing that becoming a billionaire demands a psychological detachment most people would find disturbing...
It is not always brilliance that drives the relentless accumulation of wealth, but a deep, unresolved hole...an inner void shaped by trauma, by the need for validation never received from a parent, a world, or a past self.
That constant dissatisfaction fuels an endless pursuit of wealth they imagine will finally provide meaning or peace, yet never does. The accumulation becomes the self justification. The proof of worth in a game that can never truly be won. And from that height grows the contempt... Not for ignorance, but for poverty itself. Not because the poor are seen as incapable, but because they serve as a reminder of everything these individuals fear becoming.
Seems the Antichrist is way closer to him than he thinks.
/s (but not much)
That "antichrist" lecture was an attempt at a reverse Streisand effect - there was a meme that Thiel was the antichrist, but now if you google "peter thiel antichrist" all you're going to see is that lecture.
Pretty clever but to be clear he is an incredibly dodgy human being
Ah, this is the Boris Bus Distraction technique: https://spectator.com/article/the-boris-bus-conspiracy/ (not endorsing the Speccy, but this is an accurate summary)
Yeah that's what I thought as well. Because even if he hates Greta Thunberg, there are much more extreme people in all the direction. So saying something so absurd seems bizarre. And for sure if anyone is to be tagged Antichrist, it would be war machine profiteer for most people.
Tbh it's kind of a genius move when countless comments like GP tags the antichrist as just slightly malicious or weird comment by him.
Yep it's clever. He's many things but he's not stupid
No. He is stupid...
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4ZjhdkOf0_E
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s-BQhXdCs8Y
https://www.tiktok.com/@eddiethemediatrainer/video/752115237...
> He's many things but he's not stupid
evil, sun of satan, bringer of the end of times
People can be profoundly stupid in areas like basic/fundamental morality, while also being in the top 0.001% in areas like manipulating media and making money.
Examples: Every billionaire. Every single one - except Chuck Feeney who proved the rule.
I'd argue that's not really stupidity, it's more of a moral and spiritual failing.
IMO those are really two separate axes, you can be very smart and also completely evil or quite dumb but a genuinely good person
It's not very smart to fail morally and spiritually, over and over, without ever looking into why or trying to correct the issues.
It does take intelligence of a particular kind to examine yourself and what makes you happy, fulfilled. And it takes a certain kind of stupidity to become greedy for more and more and more, neverending.
I don't believe that intelligence is a single axis. You can even have different levels of intelligence on different days for the exact same topic; even on the same day from one hour to the next.
Some people might be great at set theory but terrible at calculus; some people might be great with their hands at sewing but clumsy with glasswork. People are weird and complex.
But what's clear is when people don't even try to be good people. And that requires a particularly dense form of stupidity.
True yes, I do get what you're saying
I can't believe he was calling Greta a potential antichrist when there's... this
Apropos Greta Thunberg, I noticed on the top of the "no stupid questions" subreddit the question "How can people like Greta Thunberg afford to be a full time activist?". The submitter was a one-month old account, one of their posts was in the whatismycqs subreddit - a sure tell for bot/farm accounts.
Yet it is rather serious question - most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves. I think that it is pretty bad for democracy that political action is delegated to only those few that are able to gain sponsorship and don't need to work to eat.
We do not need professional activists, quite the contrary.
> most people spent most of their time to sustain themselves
Do they? Or do they get convinced by adverts that their lives won't be complete unless they spend more than they can afford on an endless stream of shiny promises?
I've always found it very easy to put a huge fraction of my income to one side because all my hobbies are cheap or free.
I've sometimes expressed surprise at how much other people buy, or spend regularly, and in one case the response was approximately "of course I need to spend £2500/month after my mortgage, there's the £50/month phone and same for internet, there's Netflix, I eat out twice a week, there's the car (which I like taking across the channel to France and driving around a lot), there's …"
Meanwhile, I'm mostly content living off my €1k/month passive income, of which 25% is spent on mandatory social and health insurance; and the only thing I'm unsure about at this income level is visiting friends and family on the other end of a 2h flight where the airport isn't all that close to any of them.
> Do they? Or do they get convinced by adverts that their lives won't be complete unless they spend more than they can afford on an endless stream of shiny promises?
> Meanwhile, I'm mostly content living off my €1k/month passive income
This means you have sufficient capital to sustain yourself this way, and probably a place to live with no rent or mortgage. This also means you had either a rich family or earned quite a lot in the past what allowed you to collect this capital. And lastly this means you don't have family to support.
Well, maybe everyone could decide to grind few years (though in my country the minimal wage is not much greater than your "passive income", so grind options are limited) and then decide to not have a family and don't buy a phone. We would then have a whole society of full-time political activists, but then there is a question why any action matters.
Your comment reeks of classism. "Oh, they really do not try enough. Just get up earlier and cancel your Netflix sub".
Yeah, I'll tell my family we need to move to the mouldy 1 bedroom flat because a guy in the internet says so. That'll help with the mortgage bit;
Also kids need to manage their expectations and instead of having active hobbies (that require some minimum hardware but lots of activities), they should try sculpting with clay instead. Especially that with the asthma they'll get from the black mould they'll be in no position to be very active anyway.
I've seen clay on the field, so we'll save money here. We can also collect their art through the winter to bake them in the sun once they're ready (to save on the oven).
School? Right, we need to move to the closest one, why let them have friends or aspirations.
Now work, hmm, that's easy. Instead of going to the work I get paid a lot but commute cost over £5k a year, I'll take something that pays 1/6 of my original salary but we can save on the commute. Will he'll with arguing why we need to move to the smaller place and ditch their activities.
Living costs a lot.
And if I sound absurd so do you by suggesting your life choices are applicable to everyone or they're just convinced by adverts to spend.
You're inventing a fictional narrative unrelated to anything I just said.
Especially as this was in the context of how Greta Thunberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no kids of her own and thus doesn't need to also cover the cost of their hobbies or how to get them to school, and furthermore in the context of "how does she manage to be a full-time activist with no obvious means of support?" where such things as "commuting" is more like "hitchhiking on someone else's yacht for 2 weeks": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_voyages_of_Greta...
You can do a lot of travel very cheaply when your reputation alone is sufficient for people to give you a free lift across the Atlantic ocean as part of your own activism against, in that case, the CO2 emissions of flying. Should that be limited, given the travel itself was part of the attempt at activism to move people away from air travel, but also it took 2 weeks and therefore probably wouldn't do any such thing?
(For those without this advantage, I'm reminded of Tom Scott explaining how he managed to do so much on-site filming around the world for relatively little money; my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination).
> Especially as this was in the context of how Greta Thunberg, who, to the best of my knowledge, has no kids of her own and thus doesn't need to also cover the cost of their hobbies or how to get them to school
And comes from the rich middle-class background. But let's ignore that, because all that matters is small financial discipline.
> my own cheapest flight was under a tenner, an effect somewhat spoiled by the cost of the British Rail ticket from the airport to my actual destination
The cost of any trip to the UK is a constant...
Copium is a powerful drug.
Such efforts are just an SEO/media manipulation game for Thiel.
Try and spread a mind virus, see if a "flock" forms behind him.
I know a couple of other politicians as well where I say over and over again, that's not them being a blowhard, that's a trial balloon. They're testing the water for how much of a lunatic blowhard it's profitable to be.
These people want to fill Trump's shoes when he's gone, that's very obvious. But I think - and hope - that Trump's fans will notice what they're doing and not be charmed by it.
No, some people are actually nutjobs with nutjob beliefs.
Sure they are, but Thiel is not one of them. Or rather, there's little reason to think the nutjob beliefs he presents to you are his sincerely held nutjob beliefs.
You run into people sometimes, where you realize they're testing the waters constantly to figure out where they have you and what they can get away with.
Strong disagree, he's one of them, and he means it. The myth that these guys are 'really smart' should die, they're good at grifting, but they're not so smart they can't have nutjob beliefs and when they say what they think and it is negative believing them will not lead to a less true picture of the individual.
Smart people are also good at convincing themselves.
Nah, it's advanced SEO. He almost certainly didn't even come up with it himself; billionaires and even centimillionaires can have teams of PR people just coming up with this shit for them all the time.
Boris Johnson (or his PR team) did it with the bus thing, and cheese [0].
Yes, Thiel has nutjob beliefs. Utterly insane.
No, this wasn't one of them. Too calculated. Too sweaty.
We're talking about one of the guys connected to Cambridge Analytica here.
0 - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/boris-johnson-google-search...
Maybe we should be clear about which beliefs we're talking about.
If your claim is that he doesn't believe Greta Thunberg specifically is the Antichrist, then sure. But that's just listening to the words that he says. He never says he believes Greta is actually the Antichrist.
"In our world, [the Antichrist] is far more likely to be Greta Thunberg [than Edward Teller or other mad technologist, or implicitly weapons and surveillance tech manufacturer Peter Thiel himsef]."
He does actually believe this.
So yes OP is correct that Thiel said and does actually believe Greta "is potentially" the Antichrist. But that's a different claim than saying that she actually is the Antichrist. There are thousands or millions of people (most unknown to Thiel) who could fit into the Greta-Antichrist category broadly. So it's a much weaker claim than that Greta is herself singularly the Antichrist.
Both claims are equal levels of insane though. If you believe the weaker claim that the Antichrist would be someone like Greta, it requires exactly zero additional insanity to believe the stronger claim that Greta is actually the Antichrist.
Exactly. The literal claim is just a fig leaf for being able to say 'oh, he surely doesn't mean that' whereas the subtext is far more important and he definitely believes that based on this and many other statements and actions in the past.
You can be a nut job with but job beliefs and be smart about it. Obviously our dear friend from Austria wasn't going to directly talk about crematoria.
Nah, I've met him. He believes plenty of nutjob shit.
Traditional response to a non-rich person saying nutjob shit: Are you a fucking idiot?
Traditional response to a rich person saying nutjob shit: That's really interesting, especially as it connects to this thing I am working on that needs funding
Facebook's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: Check out this other nutjob shit
ChatGPT's modern response to anyone saying nutjob shit: You've nailed it. You're thinking about this exactly how a professional philosopher would.
On the topic of projection, I wonder where the "Pizzagate!" frothing-at-the-mouth QAnon geniuses are, now that the actual sex-child-trafficking conspiracy has been revealed, just that it involves their champion fascists.
Hah at one point they were saying an online furniture shop is a website for trafficking children hiding in plain sight, using coded messages to describe said children (something like "leather sofa" meaning "blonde teenager" or some insanity like that). Come on you freaking geniuses, the Epstein emails show that they don't need codes on a public website, they just talk to each other in plain speech, but over email!
A child-trafficking conspiracy was a total fabrication, meanwhile a major child-trafficking conspiracy was happening under everybody’s noses. What a coincidence, huh?
Seems to me, like all legends, it started on a kernel of truth, then it evolved into something of its own. Not sure why you believe Pizzagate to be totally unrelated to Epstein.
I'm asking about where the Pizzagate outrage brigade is... Are they quiet now because it's their own champions who are implicated?
To be honest I haven't been looking out for them, but I imagine the news/the Internet detectives would've covered them.
"Kernel of truth", hah. Feels more like a distraction tactic. "Oh, Trump barged into dressing room of teenage pageants, let's accuse the other side of running a trafficking ring!"
They just got the wrong place. It was Pizza Express in Woking.
The issue with pizzagate (and a lot of these conspiracy theories) is not that it was directionally incorrect about 'some heinous shit is going down' (which is a good cold reading any day of the week in any age), it's that it jumped to specific and often just unhinged conclusions from basically zero evidence.
The latter part tending to both create more problems and give cover to the existing ones.
No, the only issue is that it was a purposeful distraction from the real heinous shit. The rest is a distraction from the fact that it was a distraction.
But Epstein met the guy in charge of 4Chan the day before /pol got created to "contain" the fascists.
And that's where QAnon started.
So now we have meta-conspiracy theories about who started conspiracy theories.
They just ended up in the wrong kitchen, instead of that particular pizza parlor they were supposed to go to Florida instead...
Always cute to see people speak with such confidence about stuff they know nothing about.
QAnon was always controlled opposition, unlike the website that was monitored then closed by the feds (CF) via false flag attack.
qanon was almost certainly foreign agit-prop. it may have started with a real human but if you think they're running false-flags out of 4chan you're literally insane.
the US Gov doesn't need to go to 4chan, they can get headlines in the Washington Post and NBC.
why would Q-anon continue to advocate for Jan 7th and overthrowing the gubmnt even after Biden won?
Always cute to read people who speak with such confidence but just dole out partial information, seemingly bragging "Ooh I know something you don't".
You sound like yet another conspiracy nutjob, but to be explicit: What website? What controlled opposition, where's your info from? I don't know if I'm just feeding a troll who'll be gleeful because in his brain he "knows" something others don't know, so that makes him special; or if I actually want to learn about whatever other meta-conspiracy that made you special...
He is cool with sexual abuse of teenagers and with Epstein philosophyly, connection to crime, racism, sexism ... all if that.
However, Greta Thunberg stands for evrrything he despises. She should be givimg massages and shut up.
Man, no /s at all. Peter Thiel is demonstrably evil even before the Epstein files come into play.
close? you could say they were right up each others ass, twice a day
Greta??? ;-p
Downvoted? PT fans I guess.:)
Bummer. I Don't want him to lose his Kiwi status. Can't wait for him to escape the apocalypse to NZ, that's gonna be hilarious. Not for him though...
Why do you hate NZ that much?
people too nice, country too majestic
Thiel and Musk are the two biggest jerks to come out of the tech scene bar none. Zuckerberg and Andreessen must be ecstatic, because those two make them look reasonable (which they're not).
Thiel briefly talked publicly about his relationship with Epstein on the Joe Rogan podcast. It is interesting to see the juxtaposition of the private conversations with the public presentation of the relationship
https://youtu.be/klRb0_BAX9g @ 2:11:11
Somehow there is a lot less discussion online about Thiel and Musk, both of whom are in the Epstein files. These are the most powerful people on the planet, steering elections at every level in America through their spending and connections. They need to be outed.
Thiel appears to be a Russian asset since he meets with Russians at Epstein’s properties per the files.
Musk is different. He simply begs Epstein to let Musk and his then wife Talulah Riley attend the “wildest party” on the island. Epstein even warns him that the “ratio” on the island may not be to his wife’s liking but Musk insists on coming to such a party.
Their approaches to defend themselves are different too. Thiel is silent. Musk has made huge numbers of posts, retweets, and replies trying to pretend he’s not part of the Epstein class, pointing fingers at others, and claiming he’s never been to the island. And he hasn’t ever explained why he was asking Epstein about the wildest parties.
Keep in mind that Elon was asking Epstein about these island parties years after Epstein was already a convicted child sex offender. He knew what was happening and wanted in.
People talk about "inbox zero". I want to learn "inbox Epstein".
Somehow, this guy had time to have regular email conversations with about 1,000 of the most powerful people in the planet (the head of the Nobel Prize Committee was one).
And he did this before LLMs.
You can answer a lot more email if you type badly. And don't care about not recording federal crimes in a durable medium.
There were some occasions he replied to questions as "not for email".
The trick is to keep it short and send off your first attempt at it. Takes a few seconds.
Almost like he had a couple secretaries
Both members of the South African contingent of the Paypal Mafia
What are the chances that AI czar / All In podcast host David Sacks had NO IDEA that his close friends Musk and Thiel were Epstein affiliated?
Musk's brother Kimbal had close ties to Epstein too.
Which I found amazing when one of Musk's tweets to defend himself was to say that if he wanted to have creepy sex parties he could just throw them himself and not need a loser like Epstein involved.
What a way to totally burn your brother.
Well, I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO. Even though I cannot stand buffone Musk, it looks like it to me.
Thiel and especially Trump though are very different story. Trump happily dived in all the crime he could get.
> I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO.
There is a meme for this.
> Well, I can accept that Musk didn't know about criminal stuff and just thought it's like a Burning Man and had a big FOMO.
... Wait, okay, I realise Musk isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but just how stupid do you think he is? Anyone corresponding with Epstein after his first conviction knew very well the sort of person they were dealing with; they just didn't care.
Well… judging by his behaviour on all the times he's been told "no" by domain experts, and that random reward schedules are highly addictive (which in this context means "on some occasions he's even correct when he tells experts he knows better"), I think it's very plausible that someone told him what Epstein was and he ignored and/or fired them for doing so because he didn't want it to be the case.
But that's the positive spin, where Musk actually didn't know and was simply an idiot, and at this point I'm tired of giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Example of the kind of stuff easily findable in 2006 if you ask an underling who knows how to Google to check out the guy throwing sex parties you want to attend:
https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/sex/billionaire-palm...
Oh, yeah, if you were to do any due diligence (which you probably _should_, as a billionaire intending to go to sex parties) the red flags were there long before. But the first conviction really removed any vestiges of plausible deniability.
elon musk, a guy touted for being a literal genius, didn't know what happened on the epstein island?
Okaaay... Except Thiel is the one guy we know wasn't fucking any underage girls.
The emphasis is on the wrong word
So you're saying he was drinking their blood? That makes sense.
Yeah not girls… just the boys.
You lack imagination.
We know that. Just go ask Jeff Thoma- ohhh right he got murdered.
> Thiel is known for his libertarian political views and became a prominent supporter of Donald Trump
Apparently AI does deadpan sarcasm now?
More seriously, is there a technical write up on how they are generating these wiki pages from the emails?
Since no charges have been laid for all the noise this topic has generated, I can only assume that this is a distraction from another more important operation. Maybe there's war coming, maybe that 1 Trillion dollar interest payment is a very big problem but you shouldn't panic, and we'll help you with that.
A lot of the noise about this is specifically because the entities that are supposed to be investigating and bringing charges on this matter seem to be doing anything but that.
> Since no charges have been laid for all the noise this topic has generated
Considering that both the FBI and DOJ themselves seems to be compromised and more interested in a cover-up than finding the co-conspirators, who exactly would you expect to bring up charges here, if FBI and DOJ basically been put out of play?
You're wondering why the people who report to Epstein associates aren't prosecuting them?