“Don’t make this political.” See, right there? That’s the entire shtick. The negation of the political. Repeat that very political mantra until it takes hold. Until the political philosophy of not-politics has won.
Politics is conflicts of interests between persons and groups. A political problem is a people problem. A technical problem has a technical and objective solution. Fifty different interests does not have a technical solution.
Or does it? Everything is dynamic, and one person’s supposed technical problem is a political problem for another one. But mix the two together? Then it becomes a political problem unless the first one manages to dominate the other.
In reality it's a bunch of children that were "socialists in their teens , conservatives as adults" (but because socialism was bad taste their only choice was libertarianism). They are still not very old, not very evil. They have some way to go. Musk is 52, Thiel is 58, Zuck is 41. Wait to see what happens after 65... the culture of technologists will take a very dark turn
This makes the Roko's Basilisk post seem sane and reasonable
Having worked as a software engineer in the industry for almost 15 years, my experience is that the leading (elite) proponents of this philosophy don't really care about tech or innovation; they only care to the extent that they control the innovation.
Any innovation created outside of their sphere of control will be ignored and suppressed (as best as possible). It's ironic because this is how they view China's tech sector. I remember reading an article about DeepSeek and the author made a comment about how it was developed independently of government by a relatively small company and how unusual this is for China; surprised that they were able to build without the blessing of the CCP... But the US works the same way! Except instead of the CCP, the power is called Big VC.
Anyway this is the past 20 years or so. I'm skeptical of this model. I'm quite sure, as a tech guy, I would do better in a strict hard-money capitalist system, even if I just did software as a side project. Right now it's just too centralized and monopolized and there are perverse incentives keeping everything locked in. It used to be that a 10x solution could get you noticed, now nothing will get you noticed besides the right technocratic pedigree.
I lived in SF for a few years and found the tech community's disinterest in art to border on allergy. It was as if expressing an aesthetic preference weren't an optimal way to spend one's time or money. Better to spend those things "optimizing efficiency” or optimizing oneself/one’s own life
It seems like Thiel and co _don't actually care about other people_ or human welfare writ large. This isn't a novel observation, but it bears repeating
It's mirrored in something I ask myself every time I hear that Thiel is a "libertarian" _while also_ being the founder of the biggest surveillance dragnet ever created: what about surveillance is libertarian? I thought libertarians were all about "live and let live" and "stay out of my business". It's the opposite. But I guess what he really wants is "freedom for me, surveillance for thee". Again, not a novel observation, but it finally clicked into place for me reading this piece
The state integration and the separatist fantasy aren't competing visions, though; you build the surveillance infrastructure inside the state, then exit into your own enclave that benefits from it. It all feels like a way to create the world depicted in Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy (fantastic if you haven't read it): corporate enclaves with private security built for employees and their families with lawless "pleeblands" outside the walls
Art takes many forms, and not everyone need be interested in the same kind of art.
There's plenty of aesthetic consideration that goes into scientific and technological projects. Consider the huge stack of technologies starting with silicon to massive computing clusters and code-bases with hundreds of millions of lines of code running on them. It's an impressive feat of science and technology, but the many pieces that go into making them also have an austere beauty of their own, often constrained by the need to be actually useful in an unforgiving world.
They're wannabe-Morlocks.
That has to do with the crowd you ran into. Burning Man is many things, but among those, it does have a lot of art. Did you go to SF Museum of Modern Art? or any of the art anything's? Same with sports. There are a ton of nerds that call it sportsball and think they're clever, but at the same time, the Superbowl is this weekend and there's a lot of sport-related things happening around the Bay Area that you wouldn't know about if you didn't look for it. So I'd be wary of drawing conclusions from such a limited sample set.
Those who are fundamentally humanist want to tear down systems of oppression because it pains them to see their fellow humans abused and brought low by corrupt laws and regulations. They (perhaps naively) imagine that if the system was dismantled or at least shrunk to minimum size, basic human decency will step in to fill the vacuum and people will thrive. Folks like Penn Gillette are the face of this group.
The narcissists are drawn to the movement because they feel like “if only everyone would get out of my way, I can do GREAT THINGS™ “. They like ideas like social Darwinism because they are already privileged enough to not be worried about losing in a survival of the fittest contest, and don’t tend to concern themselves with the second order effects of dismantling the system because it is simply an immoral impediment to their greatness. Peter Thiel and folks like him are the face of this group. This is largely the strain that has taken root in SV.
It's a generational thing I think, you see public money being spent on junk, and laws used to entrench and make competition hard; and you think "why do we want the government to do these things at all?". And if you look at common ideas around 20 years ago, the default answer was libertarianism.
Surveillance does not directly violate the non-aggression principle, and a myopic adherence to minimal principles without any consideration to where they lead is the central feature of libertarianism.
Your definition, maybe. Redefining that idea and assuming it is accepted as fact is a touch arrogant.
So you get to a point where mass surveillance is justified by the anti-crime angle; there is no contradiction, libertarianism logic where you can live and let live requires no crime...
Whatever technical definition of Libertarianism you're using is very narrow. Nobody is under the delusion that Libertarianism requires no crime.
I think this new version is the latter case, a bad rehearsal used as a veil of the ascent of fascism in the States.
I've found over time that one man's utopia is another's hellish nightmare. This is true of every utopia and should be a pretty strong argument against implementing them at all.
The time will come when it’s rational for powerful people to make a stand - but that time has not yet arrived. According to the pattern, society has to go through a dark time first. Probably so there’s something to contrast against.
The most tragic thing is how many museums we already have - all over the world! - that tell this story.
Stand for what? They all seem to gain from this so I am not sure where your logic is coming from.
> According to the pattern, society has to go through a dark time first.
This sounds like a stereotypical hollywood story and not an actual thoughtful response to what is actually going on.
People need to see how bad it can get before they’ll care.
What do you mean, "make a stand?"
