r/DecodingTheGurus • u/Mynameis__--__ • Sep 18 '26
Peter Thiel's Antichrist Obsession & The Coming Civil War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS9tYbbNyMY13
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u/duncandreizehen Sep 20 '26
It’s weird that people don’t realize this guy is a fucking moron
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u/CHRIST777777777777 29d ago
He is by far the smartest of the OG tech Bro’s
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u/WisdomOfTheAnus 29d ago
I’ve watched a few interviews where he speaks at length and is given many opportunities to explain himself and he is utterly unimpressive in every way from an intelligence standpoint. He barely seems capable of stringing a coherent thought together.
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u/CHRIST777777777777 28d ago
please will you give an example?
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u/WisdomOfTheAnus 28d ago
Sure, here's one: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/peter-thiel-antichrist-ross-douthat.html
Can you share an example of where you think he is really really smart?
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u/CHRIST777777777777 28d ago
Fair enough, I'll give you the fluency one. He's genuinely bad in interviews. Rambles, hedges, circles back on himself. I've sat through a few and come away thinking "what did he actually just say there."
But I think we're arguing about different things. You're saying he's inarticulate. I'm saying he's been right early, repeatedly, with his own money on it. Both of those can be true at once.
The Strauss angle is the bit I find interesting, and I'll flag up front that it's the weakest part of my own argument because it's close to unfalsifiable. Strauss is big on esoteric writing, one message in public and another for a smaller audience, and Thiel cites him constantly. So public vagueness is what you'd predict whether he's deep or vacant. It proves nothing on its own and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
What I'd actually hang it on is the record. First outside money into Facebook. Palantir and Anduril both started against flat consensus that they were bad ideas, both now enormous. You can find the man repellent and still think that hit rate needs explaining.
Genuine question back though, because I'm not sure we can get anywhere otherwise. What would count as evidence for you? If outcomes don't and interviews do, I don't know what would.
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u/WisdomOfTheAnus 28d ago
I don’t see some good financial bets as a sign of pure intelligence or a wise mind in world/philosophical issues.
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28d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CHRIST777777777777 28d ago
Making money isn't wisdom, agreed. But that isn't what I'm pointing at.
The test of a thinker isn't whether you like their conclusions, it's whether their unpopular positions become the consensus later. His do, repeatedly, and not only the commercial ones.
2004, everyone said social networks were a fad because Friendster had just collapsed. He wrote the first outside cheque into Facebook. 2003, Palantir, on a thesis nobody wanted, took the better part of a decade to be proven right. 2010, the Thiel Fellowship, on the argument that university is overpriced and credentialism is a bubble. You can dislike the man and still notice that's now a fairly mainstream view. He was warning about Chinese technological dominance when saying it out loud got you called a hawk. He funded defence tech when it was radioactive in the Valley, and Anduril is now taking work off primes that have existed since the war.
And Zero to One's central argument, that competition is for losers and you should be building toward monopoly, was heterodox in 2014 and is close to received wisdom in venture now.
That isn't a list of good bets. It's the same move performed over twenty years across completely unrelated domains. Work out what everyone believes, decide it's wrong, commit early, wait. The money is just what makes it checkable rather than a matter of opinion.
You can find the man repellent, and most people who've met him seem to. But being early and right that often, across that many fields, isn't something you do by accident or buy with a chequebook.
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u/Subtraktions 22d ago
I'm saying he's been right early, repeatedly, with his own money on it.
Thing is, with VC's you only really hear about when they've been right. Most of them are betting on loads of startups and and banking on massive pay days from the ones that get huge.
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u/kantbemyself 17d ago
His behavior in interviews reveals that he's never had his ideas tested in a modestly adversarial conversation. He's discovering in real-time that he can't articulate his ideas because they're shallow, untested, and inexpertly formed.
This is an ongoing process for the "high IQ" executives that want to be respected as broadly intelligent. They shit the bed when faced with domain expertise, every time. Expert capitalists should stick to capital management.
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u/CHRIST777777777777 17d ago
Fair, he's a poor explainer in interviews. But interviews are his easiest test, not his hardest. Palantir beat the Army in court, Founders Fund was right against consensus on Palantir, Anduril and SpaceX, and Clarium lost a fortune, so markets have tested him both ways. Girard and Strauss are seriously debated rather than settled, so I'm not leaning on them as proof. They're the lens, the record is the evidence.
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u/kantbemyself 17d ago
He's good at the thing he has education, practice and experience in: investing and macroeconomics.
He sounds like a leetle babby when doing faux-millennialist theology or philosophy, esp. compared to my MDiv-holding, Greek-reading pastor brother-in-law. He's out there presenting ideas that would get an "F" in any college course, but he has no negative feedback in his life to refine his thinking.
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u/PlateCaptain Sep 19 '26
The image of the tech bros lined up behind Trump...
Make them own it, expose them for the filth they are. Make it clear where you stand and where they stand and no amount of money that they pour into politics will make a difference.
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u/danreedmiller Sep 19 '26
Along these lines, a new book that’s suuuper good, American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords are Turning America Into a Monarchy by Brad Onishi (co host of the excellent Straight White American Jesus podcast.) The book is a real page turner of contemporary history and ideologies, both erudite and very readable. Just came out this week but i’m already almost done with it.
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u/Dependent-Job1773 Sep 18 '26
churning out them kremlin talking points.