Here is audio, video and transcription, accompanied by nearly thirty minutes of questions from the audience, filmed in Miami. Here is the summary of the episode:
Tyler and Peter Thiel delve into the complexities of political theology, including why it’s a concept we still need today, why Peter is against Calvinism (and rationalism), whether the Old Testament should lead us to wake up, why Carl Schmitt is experiencing a resurgence. , If We Are Entering a New Era of Millennial Thinking, The One Existential Risk Peter Thinks We’re Overlooking, Why Everyone’s Coping Leads to Disaster, The Role of the Katechon, Shakespeare’s Political Vision, How AI Will Affect the World the influence of wordcels, Straussian messages in the Bible, what worries Peter about Miami, and more.
Here is an exerpt :
COWEN: Let’s say you’re trying to assess the likelihood that the Western world and its allies will somehow get through this, and continue to get through this. What variable(s) are you looking at to try to track or estimate this? What are you watching?
THIEL: Well, I don’t think it’s really an empirical question. If you could convince me that it was empirical, and you said, “These are the variables we should be paying attention to” – if I agreed with that framework, you’ve already won half the argument. It would be like variables. . . Well, the sun has risen and set every day, so it will probably continue to do that, so we shouldn’t worry. Or the planet has always managed itself, so Greta is wrong, and we shouldn’t really pay attention to her. I understand that I don’t pay attention to him, but I don’t think that’s a good argument.
Of course, if we think about the post-Cold War globalization project, where in some sense globalization is happening, there will be more movement of goods, people, ideas and money, and we will become a more peaceful and better integrated world. You don’t need to worry about details. We’ll just make do.
Then, in my story, there were a lot of things around this story that went wrong. A simple version is that the relationship between the United States and China has not really worked out as expected. Fukuyama and all these people came up with it in 1989. I think we could have realized it a lot sooner if we hadn’t been told, “You’re just going to get by.” The alarm bells would have rung much sooner.
Perhaps globalization leads to a neoliberal paradise. Perhaps this leads to the totalitarian state of the Antichrist. Let’s say it’s not a very empirical argument, but if someone like you wasn’t asking questions about how to get out of this, I would be so – like an optimistic baby boomer libertarian like you stop asking questions about how to get through it, I would be so much more assured, so much more hopeful.
COWEN: Are you saying that this is ultimately a metaphysical question rather than an empirical question?
THIEL: I don’t think it’s metaphysical, but it is somewhat analytical.
COWEN: And even moral. You are imposing a certain obligation on yourself by talking about getting by.
THIEL: Well, that ties into all these bigger questions. I don’t think if we had a one world state it would automatically be for the best. I’m not sure if we take a classical liberal or libertarian intuition about this, it might be absolute power that a one world state would absolutely corrupt. I don’t think libertarians have been critical enough about this over the last 20 or 30 years, so there was a reason they didn’t believe their own theories. They didn’t connect things well enough. I don’t know if I would call it a moral failure, but there was a failure of imagination.
COWEN: This multi-pronged skepticism about how difficult it is to get by – would you say this is your real real political theology if we got to the bottom of it now?
THIEL: Any time people think you can just get by, you’re probably setting yourself up for some sort of disaster. It’s just. It’s not as positive as a planner, but I still think. . .
One of my chapters in the From zero to one The book said: “You are not a lottery ticket. » The basic advice is: if you’re an investor and you can just think, “Okay, I’m just getting by as an investor here.” I don’t know what to invest in. There are all these people. I can’t pay attention to any of them. I’m just going to write checks to everyone, send them away. I’m just going to set up an office somewhere here in South Beach, and I’m going to give a check to everyone who comes near the office, or not everyone. It’s just writing lottery tickets.
It’s just a formula for losing all your money. The place where I react so violently to confusion – again, we just don’t think. It can be Calvinist. This can be rationalistic. It’s anti-intellectual. It’s not about thinking about things.
Interesting throughout, definitely recommended. You may remember that the very first episode of CWT (2015!) was with Peter, i.e. here.
