It's useful that psychopaths always tell on themselves like this.
It's useful that psychopaths always tell on themselves like this.
"The Dark Triad traits predict authoritarian political correctness and alt-right attitudes"
These kinds of claims generally come from people who don't feel any moral or ethical impulses. These people are most commonly malignant narcissists and psychopaths. A great example is Elon Musk who described empathy as a "bug".
Morality is a fundamental feature for most humans. The people who make the kinds of claims above constitute a small, single digit percentage of the population. They tend to have an outsize influence though, because they exploit the trust of others to rise to positions of power, where their lack of compunction can be an advantage.
People like Trump, Musk, and Thiel are canonical examples of this. Eventually, when their actions make things bad enough for everyone else, people tend to take action. We may be approaching a time like that. You acknowledged this yourself in earlier comments.
The cultivation of a sense of actual morality requires a lot of study and humility and quieting your own feelings and ego. This is very difficult and most people can't do it, ideally in a healthy society the elites you have are people who can and do do this.
Ironically Thiel in particular is precisely one of these people. He's very thoughtful and well read and displays a lot of humility in his speech and conduct.
Oh good grief. Hot take of the month right there. All you're doing is demonstrating how uninformed you are on the subject. Can you name anything you've ever read about this?
> [Thiel] displays a lot of humility in his speech and conduct.
You can't be serious. Where in this does the talk of the "Antichrist" fit?
What kind of humility are you talking about? Because if it means intellectual modesty, willingness to acknowledge one's own fallibility, or reluctance to cast one's own political/intellectual beliefs as uniquely farsighted, Thiel's public record is not consist with "displaying a lot of humility."
It's really that simple and this is a good illustration of what I'm talking about.
On Democracy and Freedom: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible"
On Competition: "Competition is for losers"
On Technology and Control: "One of the things I like about technology is that when technology is unregulated, you can change the world without getting approval from other people. At its best, it's not subject to democratic control and not subject to the majority, which I think is often hostile to change"
On Reputation: "I'd rather be seen as evil than incompetent"
I wouldn’t say these statements even have moral judgments in them either way. For example, this doesn’t even ascribe moral weight to “freedom” or “democracy” just that they are at odds.
This is why these types of things are better left to elite minded people who are capable of these types of discussions. You’re just responding essentially to the valence of these terms.
“Democracy = good feeling, freedom = good feeling, how can good feeling != good feeling?” This is the level at which you’re engaging.
In a world of eye-poppingly hot takes, I commend your ability to somehow raise the bar
Bonus points for dismissing things like "you can change the world without getting approval from other people" (you could hardly ask for a more substantive topic to debate in moral philosophy than one's freedom to affect other people) as mere valence-level "how can good feeling != good feeling" sophistry
What makes us separate from animals and thrive as a civilization is that majority of us do not act on our intrusive ideas without consequences.
Thiel is an exception because he is acting on thsea ideas, causing harm to real innocent people, without any regard for consequences.
fred sanford noises WE ALL GONNA DIE
Maybe DHH was right.
Not too mention the completely sociopathic comments made above.
Are you trying to fool me or Stephen Miller here?
Well, that’s a point of view, I guess.
Power and wealth are already so entrenched I think we have little chance of effecting any lasting change without violence. So either I become a literal terrorist, or I enable Daniel Plainview mode. It seems to me like the rational move is to try to get rich by any means necessary so I can fuck off to somewhere isolated and never have to deal with the rotten society I hate ever again.