Interesting Times: A Mind-Bending Conversation With Peter Thiel  ## Metadata - Author: [[Hard Fork]] - Full Title: Interesting Times: A Mind-Bending Conversation With Peter Thiel - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/5e74b5fd-d363-40ee-9b54-fa84d1471a0b ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Understanding Technological Stagnation** - Technological stagnation means slowed velocity of progress, not zero progress. - Since 1970, progress in many fields has decelerated compared to earlier accelerating change. Transcript: Ross Douthat So I'm curious, in 2025, do you think that diagnosis still holds? Peter Thiel Yes, I still broadly believe in the stagnation thesis. It was never an absolute thesis. So the claim was not that we were absolutely completely It was in some ways a claim about the velocity had slowed. It wasn't zero. But from 1750 to 1970, 200 plus years were periods of accelerating change where we're relentlessly moving faster. The ships were faster. The railroads were faster, the cars were faster, the planes were faster. It culminates in the Concorde and the Apollo missions. And then that in all sorts of dimensions, things had slowed. You know, I always made an exception for the world of bits. So we had, you know, computers and software and internet and mobile internet. And then the last 10, 15 years, you had crypto and the AI revolution, which I think is in some sense pretty big. But the question is, is it enough to really get out of this generalized sense of stagnation? The future essays, how do we even know whether we're in stagnation or acceleration? Because one of the features of late modernity is that people are hyper-specialized. And so, you know, can you say that we're not making progress in physics unless you've devoted half your life to studying string theory? Or what about quantum computers? Or what about cancer research and biotech? And sort's sort of all these verticals. And then how much does progress in cancer count versus string theory? And so you have to give weightings to all these things. So in theory, it's an extremely difficult question to get a handle of. And the fact that it's so hard to answer, that we have ever narrower groups of guardians guarding themselves, is it cause for skepticism. And so, yes, I think broadly we're in this world that's still pretty stuck. ([Time 0:05:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0de18690-9bff-4f7b-962d-23f14845c478)) - **Why Stagnation Happened** - Stagnation happened partly because society ran out of ideas and became risk averse. - Environmental and nuclear worries also slowed accelerating progress. Transcript: Peter Thiel I think there are deep reasons the stagnation happened. So, you know, there are always three questions you ask about history. What actually happened? And then you have a question, what should be done about it? But there's also this intermediate question, why did it happen? People ran out of ideas. I think to some extent, the institutions degraded and became risk averse and sort of these cultural transformations we can describe. But then I think to some extent, also people had some very legitimate worries about the future, where if we continue to have accelerating progress, were you accelerating towards environmental Apocalypse or nuclear apocalypse or things like that? But I think, you know, if we don't find a way back to the future, I do think the society, I don't know, it unravels, it doesn't work. You know, the middle class, I would define the middle class as the people who expect their kids to do better than themselves. And when that expectation collapses, we no longer have a middle class society. And maybe there's some way you can have a feudal society in which things are always static and stuck. Or maybe there's some way you can shift some radically different society, but it's not the way the Western world, it's not the way the United States has functioned for the first 200 years Of its existence. ([Time 0:10:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/889244e1-e724-4354-867f-89de4f80471f)) - **Take Bold Risks in Research** - Take significantly more risks to escape stagnation, especially in biotech. - We need to abandon ineffective approaches like obsession with beta amyloids in Alzheimer's research. Transcript: Ross Douthat Right? Peter Thiel I don't know if I'd give you a precise answer, but my directional answer is a lot more. We should take a lot more risk. We should be be doing a lot more. And I don't know, I can go through all these different verticals. If you look at biotech, something like dementia, Alzheimer's, we've made zero progress in 40 to 50 years. People are completely stuck on beta amyloids. It's obviously not working. It's just some kind of a stupid racket where the people are just reinforcing themselves. So yes, we need to take way more risk in that department. ([Time 0:15:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6de88738-95f8-4e1c-87c5-f900c6f9521d)) - **Cryonics Party at PayPal** - In 1999, PayPal employees attended cryonics 'freezing parties' selling policies to freeze heads or bodies. - That belief in radical life extension faded in younger generations, reflecting lost optimism. Transcript: Peter Thiel And then, but I don't know, I remember 1999, 2000, when I was, when we were running PayPal, one of my co-founders, Luke, knows like he was into Alcor and cryonics and people should freeze Themselves. And we had one day where we took the whole company to a freezing party, you know, a Tupperware party. People sell Tupperware policies at a freezing party. Ross Douthat They sell. Was it just your heads? Peter Thiel What was going to be frozen? You could get a full body or just a head. Just a head. Just a head was cheaper. It was disturbing when the dot matrix printer didn't quite work, and so the freezing policies couldn't be printed out. But in retrospect, this was still- Technological stagnation once again, right. But it's also a symptom of the decline because in 1999, this was not a mainstream view, but there was still a fringe boomer view where they still believed they could live forever. And that was the last generation. So I'm always anti-boomer, but maybe there's something we've lost even in this fringe boomer narcissism where there were at least a few boomers who still believed science would cure All their diseases. ([Time 0:16:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/78f63cee-6573-4c1d-a20e-84e782dd908b)) - **Trump as Political Disruption** - Peter Thiel supported Trump as a disruptive political force to change stagnation. - He hoped for serious societal conversation about decline rather than empty rhetoric. Transcript: Ross Douthat You were saying, here are some disruptive agents who might change the political status quo, and it's worth a certain kind of risk here. Is that how you thought about that? Sure. There were all sorts of levels. Peter Thiel I mean, one level was these hopes that we could redirect the Titanic from the iceberg was heading to, or whatever the metaphor is, you know, really changed courses as a society. Through political change. Maybe a narrower, a much narrower aspiration was that we could maybe at least have a conversation about this. And so when someone like Trump said, make America great again, okay, is that a positive, optimistic, ambitious agenda? Or is it merely a very pessimistic assessment of where we are, that we are no longer a great country? And I didn't have great expectations about what Trump would do in a positive way. But I thought at least for the first time in 100 years, we had a Republican who was not giving us this syrupy Bush nonsense. And that was it was not the same as progress, but we could at least have a conversation. In retrospect, this was a preposterous fantasy. You know, I had these two thoughts in 2016, and you often have these ideas that are just below the level of your sort of consciousness. But the two thoughts I had that I wasn't able to combine was, number one, nobody would be mad at me for supporting Trump if he lost. And number two, I thought he had a 50-50 chance of winning. And then I had this implicit- Why would nobody be mad at you if he lost? It would just be such a weird thing and it wouldn't really matter. Okay. And then, but then I thought he had a 50-50 chance because the problems were deep and the stagnation was frustrating. And the reality was people weren't ready for it. And then maybe we've progressed to the point where we can have this conversation in 2025, a decade after Trump. And of course, you're not, you know, sort of a zombie left wing person, Ross, but it's it. ([Time 0:19:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3a3efff6-a6d3-466c-aabb-6b96e9ff9e6c)) - **Acknowledging Decline in Tech** - The Trump administration slowly made people acknowledge that something was wrong. - Silicon Valley elites previously ignored stagnation but have since updated their views. Transcript: Peter Thiel Think it took longer and it was slower than I would have liked. But we have gotten to the place where a lot of people think something's gone wrong. And that was not the conversation I was having in 2012, 2013, 2014. I had, I don't know, I had a debate with Eric Schmidt in 2012 and Marc Andreessen in 2013 and Bezos in 2014. I was on the, there's a stagnation problem. And all three of them were versions of, you know, everything's going great. And I think at least those three people have, to varying degrees, updated and adjusted. ([Time 0:21:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/634f7456-eb45-46d5-8b50-a284e9ac8e0f)) - **Populism as Best Option** - Populism remains the best available option to counter stagnation despite imperfections. - Traditional institutions like Harvard are unlikely to cure major diseases by continuing as usual. Transcript: Peter Thiel It's still by far the best option we have. I don't think, I don't know, is Harvard going to cure dementia by just puttering along, doing the same thing that hasn't worked for 50 years? Ross Douthat So that's just a case for it can't get worse. Let's do disruption. Right. But the critique of populism right now would be Silicon Valley made an alliance with the populists. But in the end, the populists don't care about science. They don't want to spend money on science. They want to kill funding to Harvard just because they don't like Harvard. And in the end, you're not going to get the kind of investments in the future that Silicon Valley wanted. Is that wrong? ([Time 0:25:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0bef29c3-4b45-4ee2-b2d6-0f6a89b41316)) - **Clearing Field Before Construction** - Deregulation and clearing existing barriers are steps before constructing new technological projects. - Political disruption helps remove stagnation but must be followed by actual innovation. Transcript: Ross Douthat As opposed to maybe for some other people in Silicon Valley, the value of populism is in tearing away the veils and illusions. And we're not necessarily in the stage where you're looking to the Trump administration to do the Manhattan Project, to do the moonshot. It's more like populism helps us see that it was all fake. Peter Thiel You need to try to do both. And they're very entangled with each other. And I don't know, there's a deregulation of nuclear power. And at some point, we'll get back to building new nuclear power plants or better designed or maybe even fusion reactors. And so, yes, there's a deregulatory, deconstructive part. And then at some point, you actually get to construction. And it's all things like that. So, yeah, in some ways, you're clearing the field. ([Time 0:26:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a8e80f51-ba74-4825-9a32-3ced0c8e8707)) - **Mars Lost as Political Project** - Elon Musk abandoned Mars as a political project in 2024, believing US socialism and woke AI would follow him there. - Mars lost its allure as an alternative society and became just a science project. Transcript: Peter Thiel You can't, I don't know, this is a conversation I had with Elon back in 2024. And we had all these, you know, conversations. I had the seasteading version with Elon where I said, you know Trump doesn't win. I want to just leave the country. And then Elon said, there's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to go. This is the only place. And then, you know, you always think of the right arguments to make later. And it was about two hours after we had dinner and I was home that I thought of, wow, Elon, you don't believe in going to Mars anymore. 2024, 2024 is the year where Elon stopped believing in Mars, not as a silly science tech project, but as a political project. Mars was supposed to be a political project, was building an alternative. And in 2024, Elon came to believe that if you went to Mars, the socialist US government, the woke AI, it would follow you to Mars. It was, you know, it was the Demis meeting with Elon that we sort of brokered. Ross Douthat He was- This is an AI company. Peter Thiel Yeah, this was the rough conversation was, you know, Demis tells Elon, I'm working on the most important project in the world. I'm building a superhuman AI. And Elon responds to Demis, well, I'm working on the most important project in the world. I am turning this into an interplanetary species. ([Time 0:28:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ed3cec65-3e4a-4db2-b60e-f3b28ceeddc9)) - **AI as Limited Breakthrough** - AI progress is significant but comparable only to the internet's impact in the late 90s. - AI is currently the only area showing progress amid broader societal stagnation. Transcript: Peter Thiel I don't know, there's sort of a lot of layers to this. So I do think, you know, one question we can frame is just how big a thing do I think AI is? And it's, I don't know, my stupid answer is it's somewhere, it's more than a nothing burger, and it's less than the total transformation of our society. So my placeholder is that it's roughly on the scale of the internet in the late 90s, which is, you know, I'm not sure it's enough to really end the stagnation. It might be enough to create some great companies. And the internet, you know, it added maybe a few points, percentage points to the GDP, maybe 1% to GDP growth every year for 10, 15 years. It added some to productivity. And so that's sort of roughly my placeholder for AI. It's the only thing we have. It's a little bit unhealthy that it's so unbalanced. This is the only thing we have. I'd like to have more multidimensional progress. I'd like us to be going to Mars. I'd like us to be having cures for dementia. If all we have is AI, I will take it. There are risks with it. ([Time 0:32:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7564fcac-4a92-4498-82dc-f09b6be14b4f)) - **Limits Beyond Intelligence** - Intelligence alone isn't the gating factor for progress; societal issues limit application of smartness. - AI may produce conformity and stagnation if it reinforces existing norms without heterodox innovation. Transcript: Peter Thiel And so maybe the problems are unsolvable, which is the pessimistic view. Maybe there is no cure for dementia at all, and it's a deeply unsolvable problem. There's no cure for mortality. Maybe it's an unsolvable problem. Or maybe it's these cultural things. So it's not the individually smart person, but it's how this fits into our society. Do we tolerate heterodox smart people? Maybe you need heterodox smart people to do crazy experiments. And if the AI is just conventionally smart, if we define wokeness again, wokeness is too ideological, but if you just define it as conformist, maybe that's not the kind of smartness Ross Douthat That's going to make a difference. So do you fear then a plausible future where AI in a way becomes itself stagnationist? That it's like highly intelligent, creative in a conformist way. It's like the Netflix algorithm. It makes infinite okay movies that people watch. It generates infinite okay ideas. It puts a bunch of people out of work and makes them obsolete, but it doesn't, it like deepens stagnation in some way. Is that a fear? It, it's, it's quite possible. Peter Thiel That's, that's certainly a risk, but, uh, But I guess where I end up is I still think we should be trying AI and that the alternative is just total stagnation. So, yeah, there's sort of all sorts of interesting things can happen with you. Maybe drones in a military context are combined with AI. And, OK, this is kind of scary or dangerous or dystopian or it's going to change things. But if you don't have AI, there's just nothing going on. ([Time 0:36:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a7c0213d-b492-47a6-b374-e931f73a08ee)) - **Modern Antichrist as Stagnation** - The greatest existential risk is a one-world totalitarian state, the modern Antichrist. - Political consensus focuses on regulating science to avoid risks, leading to stagnation and control. Transcript: Ross Douthat You have been giving talks recently about the concept of the Antichrist, which is a Christian concept, an apocalyptic concept. What does that mean to you? What is the Antichrist? How much time do we have? We've got as much time as you have to talk about the Antichrist. Peter Thiel All right. Well, I could talk about it for a long time. But I think there's always a question, how do we articulate some of these existential risks, some of the challenges we have. And they're all framed in this sort of runaway dystopian science text. There's a risk of nuclear war. There's a risk of environmental disaster, maybe something specific like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we could come up with. There's a risk of, you know, bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with AI. But I always think that if we're going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would Describe as the one-world totalitarian state. I would say the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance. What do you do about nuclear weapons? We have a United Nations with real teeth that controls them, and they're controlled by an international political order. And then something like this is also, you know, what do we do about AI? And we need global compute governance. We need, you know, a one-world government to control all the computers, log every single keystroke to make sure people don't program a dangerous AI. And I've been wondering whether that's sort of, you know, going from the frying pan into the fire. And so the atheist philosophical framing is one world or none. That was a short film that was put out by the Federation of American Scientists in the late 40s. It starts with a nuclear bomb blowing up the world. And obviously, you need a one-world government to stop it, one world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question, is Antichrist or Armageddon. You have the one-world state of the Antichrist, or we're sleepwalking towards Armageddon. One world or none, Antichrist or Armageddon, on one level are the same question. Now, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but one question is, you know, and this was a plot hole in all these Antichrist books people wrote. How does the Antichrist take over the world? He gives these demonic, hypnotic speeches, and people just fall for it. And so it's this plot hole. It's this demonium ex machina. Totally, it's implausible. It's a very implausible plot hole. But I think we have an answer to this plot hole. The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate. It's the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take Over the world. People are way too scared for that. In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is we need to stop science. We need to just say stop to this. And this is where, yeah, I don't know. In the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller type person taking over the world. In our world, it's far more likely to be Greta Thunberg. Okay. Ross Douthat I want to suggest a middle ground between those two options, right? It used to be that the reasonable fear of the Antichrist was a kind of wizard of technology. And now the reasonable fear is someone who promises to control technology, make it safe, and sort of usher in what, your point of view would be a kind of universal stagnation. ([Time 0:48:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ff1d21ff-1748-46d0-af1a-e917d974e9f8)) - **Fear Drives Control or Collapse** - An accelerationist apocalypse could lead to a controlled totalitarian regime. - Environmentalism is a powerful current in Europe and a major factor in societal direction. Transcript: Ross Douthat To get your peace and safety antichrist, you need more technological progress. Like one of the key failures of totalitarianism in the 20th century was it had a problem of knowledge. It couldn't know what was going on all over in the world, right? So you need the AI or whatever else to be capable of helping the peace and safety totalitarian rule. So don't you think you need, essentially you need your worst case scenario to involve some burst of progress that is then tamed and used to impose stagnant totalitarianism. You can't just get there from where we are right now. Well, it can. Like Greta Thunberg's on a boat in the Mediterranean, right, you know, like protesting Israel, like the I just don't see the promise of safety from AI, safety from tech, safety, even Safety from climate change right now as a powerful universal rallying cry absent accelerating change and real fear of total catastrophe? Peter Thiel Man, these things are so hard to score, but I think environmentalism is pretty powerful. You know, I don't know if it's absolutely powerful enough to create a one world totalitarian state, but man, it is— I think it is not. It is— In its current form. I want to say it's the only thing people still believe in in Europe. ([Time 0:53:17](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0afffe47-bb21-4d68-9053-21b66d500ad0)) - **Hippies Won, Progress Stopped** - The 1970s hippie culture marked the end of rapid progress following the moon landing. - Cultural shifts can cause stagnation without dramatic political takeover. Transcript: Peter Thiel The moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later. And with the benefit of hindsight, that's when progress stopped and the hippies won. And, yeah, it was not literally Charles Manson. Ross Douthat Okay, but you're just, I want to stay with the Antichrist just to end, right? ([Time 0:56:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9709614e-c6d9-4269-876f-8b8a1c26a3d4)) - **Global Regulation Enforces Stagnation** - The current stagnation is partly due to global regulatory frameworks that stall innovation. - US agencies like the FDA and NRC effectively control technology worldwide, enforcing safety but causing stagnation. Transcript: Ross Douthat I mean, isn't that a concern? Wouldn't that be the, you know, the irony of history would be that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival? Peter Thiel There are all these different scenarios. I obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing. I mean, to be clear, I don't think that's what you're doing either. Ross Douthat I'm just interested in how you get to a world willing to submit to permanent authoritarian rule. Peter Thiel Well, but again, there are these different gradations of this we can describe, but is this so preposterous, what I've just told you, as a broad account of the stagnation that the entire World has submitted for 50 years to peace and safetyism. This is a 1 Thessalonians 5.3. The slogan of the Antichrist is peace and safety. And we've submitted to the FDA regulates not just drugs in the U.S., but de facto in the whole world because the rest of the world defers the FDA. ([Time 0:58:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bfdb92ed-e139-40b1-817c-d6e575e83f25))