Palantir cofounder and libertarian tech billionaire Peter Thiel has been giving a series of secret lectures about technology and religion, which centered on his theories about the antichrist — yes, the one from the Bible.
And according to leaked audio of the sessions, obtained by news outlets including The Washington Post and The Guardian, the events sound just about as weird as you might expect.
The political megadonor just wrapped up a stint of two-ish hour lectures titled “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series,” which he delivered to sold-out crowds in San Francisco. During the seminars, Thiel — who described himself to the audience as a “small-o orthodox Christian” — reportedly argued that putting any limits on technological development would destroy America and roll out the red carpet for totalitarianism, in addition to simply being bad for business. And the antichrist somehow fits into that, of course.
“The antichrist comes to power by talking constantly about Armageddon, about rumors of wars,” Thiel told the audience during one of the lectures, according to The Guardian, “and scaring you into giving him control over science and technology.”
As for who Thiel thinks the antichrist might actually be? According to the leaked audio, the billionaire has his eyes on Greta Thunberg, the 22-year-old Swedish climate activist who is under five feet tall, and Eliezer Yudkowsky, the well-known AI doomer who recently cowrote a book arguing that AI must be stopped in its tracks or it will consume humanity (the volume’s not-so-subtle title: “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.“)
“In the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science,” Thiel said in his Sept. 15 opening talk, according to the recordings. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta or Eliezer.”
Thiel reportedly talked at length about other people he doesn’t like, but who he doesn’t think have the juice to actually be the antichrist. Among them were fellow tech billionaire Bill Gates, who he described as a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-type character,” but who’s not a “political leader” or “broadly popular” and thus can’t actually cause Armageddon. He also chided Gates for believing that “science and atheism are compatible.”
“I don’t think even someone like Bill Gates, who I think is a very, very awful person, is remotely able to be the antichrist,” Thiel said at one point, according to The Guardian.
Thiel also tore into fellow Silicon Valley accelerationist and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who he accused of spouting “pure Silicon Valley gobbledygook propaganda.” Meanwhile, Thiel spoke…
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