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Comment by conartist6 | Hacker News Reader

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Did Thiel seem in any way sane before the advent of LLMs? Don't have a single positive memory about anything he's ever done or said.

The book Zero to One is legitimately good.

His actions helping Hulk Hogan against Gawker were also thoroughly deserved.

He only cared cuz it exposed his own hypocrisy

The ends justify the means.

I wonder if he has any positive memories. All these billionaires are so detached from regular life that they don’t experience what humans normally do. It’s why they’re mostly sociopaths.

Makes you wonder if that's where they got the name of Palantir, since Denethor went mad by using one (at least according to the Peter Jackson movies, I reckon the situation was different in the books).

That’s pretty much what happened in the books. More accurately he lost all hope for the world after being fed visions by Sauron to manipulate him. Hey wait…

Thats true, but in the books, Denethor is competent and a seasoned strategist and has a battle of strategy with the witch king, one upping them in most instances, answering with brilliant maneuvers to the brilliant maneuvers of the witch king.

Perhaps that's why Sauron's trick is to use the Palantir to show him some things while hiding others, so as to convince him that his every move would be futile.

I'm not sure even this is what destroys Denethor's mind though so much as it is the thought of the ring. He sees it as his by right of need. He sacrifices both his sons in his madness to have it, for the madness of power. His view of the world is so bleak that saving it in a way that destroys it seems "right" to him

That’s a good point, in the movie they only show the already “broken” Denethor.

In the extended edition of Two Towers they show him in a flashback of Gondor retaking Osgiliath.

It's not a particularly flattering portrayal- the military success is shown as belonging to Boromir more than Denethor- but at least it shows him sane.

This guy is obviously on drugs half of the time, his wealth shields him from reality and the yes-men around him let his crazy anti-humanist ideas fester in his mind and turn into religious psychosis. No need for AI here.

In any sane place, his hate of democracy and freedom would make him a pariah. Instead, he is the current US Vice President's mentor and most trusted advisor.

One way to view AI-induced psychosis, is that it's just giving regular people access to the kind of sycophancy powerful people always had.

I believe the term is democratization?

It's wealth-induced psychosis. Still reassuringly exclusive.

Couldn't this antichrist stuff be his sane/rational strategy to manipulate the powerful but religious rightwing people under his sway? Is there evidence to assume he himself is on the verge of some kind of psychosis and not fully in control of his faculties?

My guess is it's just his megalomania playing out in a religious arena instead of a political or economic one.

Its possibly just an SEO trick. People have been calling Thiel the antichrist for a long time.

I've listened to him and other people like him a lot, and my conclusion is that their brains are truly fried. I don't believe they are playing roles.

I'm not sure battling the Vatican over interpretations of an obscure philosopher who mentored him back when he was an undergrad is the easiest way of winning over the religious right. Most of whom will happily go along with generic arguments about Peter Thiel's portfolio being essential to defeat Communist China and the woke libs. Treating Eliezer Yudkowsky as an irrelevant nutter probably works better on people with all kinds of views on religion and politics than attempting to elevate him to the status of antichrist

This is what concerns me. The VP is a protege of a billionaire who wants to end democracy.

> This guy is obviously on drugs half of the time, his wealth shields him from reality and the yes-men around him let his crazy anti-humanist ideas fester in his mind and turn into religious psychosis. No need for AI here.

You just described a good dozen or so VC/Tech Bros

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