Charles P Pierce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Pierce
If any of them are running the world, we're not seeing the results. The current level of competence at world-running is very low. Putin, Trump, Netanyahu, Xi, and whomever is running the UK this month are all worse than average for their job.
Yes? If by "running competently" you mean the prosperity of the general population and peace, sure, it's not that competent. But why'd you think that'd be their goal? If anything, Orwell's "1984" shows the mindset perfectly: keep the general public in misery, while skimming whatever cream there is; no need to try and grow the pie, there is enough for them, and the rest of the world can go buck itself.
(There is also a great deal of distance between "running the world" and "influencing some events for the benefit of a select few, no matter what the costs to the rest of the world". Personally, I find the latter far more likely, but also undesireable.)
Those things are far more necessary for an Employee than an Owner.
Reality is a lot less forgiving of their delusions.
–Dialog is a conference. I went once in 2018 and once in 2022. No one ever asked me to keep it or my presence a secret.
–My understanding was Thiel was one of its founders but no longer involved by the time I went. I never saw or talked to him in connection with Dialog.
–Nor did I see the other names I’ve heard mentioned, like Ted Cruz or Elon Musk or Joseph Gordon-Levitt or Jared Kushner. Dialog was not sold to me as a bunch of big names, which is part of why I went. I don’t need to go to a conference to hear what Ted Cruz thinks.
–You could be a Dialog member, but I wasn’t. I don’t think joining got you much except guaranteed invitations to future Dialogs. There were occasional dinners and webinars, but I never went to one. I would not have described it as a secret or a society.
–The panels were largely self-organized, so people would propose panels and hold them. I went to one on being a working parent and another on whether crypto had any real use cases and another on how to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. You’d usually have 8 or 10 people in a room. It was all very TED-talk adjacent.
–In 2018, I found it very optimistic, with an idealistic hacker-ish vibe. In 2022, I found the conversations and vibe more curdled and resentful. I didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t go back. (That did prove a pretty good signal of where tech’s politics were going though, maybe I should’ve paid more attention.)
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first half of his comment about it from X
> They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prep...
> "Turn's Out..."
There's been a psycho cabal of the idiot wealthy trying to run the world since the invention of currency...
Before that, there was a murderous cabal of warlords. They haven't gone away, they've just been joined by the idiot wealthy...
There are strong historical trends (going thousands of years) associating obsession with those three items (human mimicry, living forever, predicting the future) with terrible outcomes for those who pursue them. In stories, religion, myths and all sorts of blurry ancient ruins of people who exist no more.
I don't know if there's a cabal or not, but there's always a bigger fish (and it's often some unforseen social dynamic).
> The records sit in Airtable
A secret cabal running the world. On AirTable.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-th...
> registrants returned again and again to the same theme: that AI will reorder work, war, education, and belief within a few years.
lmao. nvm. they're idiots.
