Can someone who actually likes Thiel explain his allure? I find just about everything that comes out of his mouth vile, but apparently people listen to him.
Just be careful, there was an Austrian painter in the past who also had very unique takes and even wrote a book, but it didn't end well for him or for anyone who started thinking that way.
I am not the OG commentator, but it’s not a mental illness to believe something that has been presented from authority to you for all your life. That’s a pretty normal human response.
I’d bet money that everyone on this site believes deeply in something that others would fine unusual, mainly because it’s been culturally or religiously significant to them.
While it's impossible to completely avoid beliefs that are effectively from authority, we do have systems such as science (scientific peer review), capitalism (economic freedom) that give credibility to certain ideas or patterns. Not moral credibility, but effective consensus that is relatively stable. Sure there are disruptions -- scientific revolutions, economic creative destruction -- but those are typically viewed as having been good things after the fact.
Moral authority (elders, traditions, cultural norms) can be helpful in some ways, but they are much more crude and error prone. Respected elders can prey on children, long-held traditions can be oppressive and even harmful (genital mutilation, circumcision). Cultural norms can create significant social costs (women keeping house rather than starting companies or curing diseases, men spending weekends bored out of the social pressure to pretend to like various sports, ec.)
When the average person flips on a light switch they believe they know why the light turned on -- electricity! wire! -- but few could explain it much more specifically than that and could not ELI5 it. So in a sense they are expressing a faith-based belief. But most people can tell you who does understand it and know how to find more detailed explanations if they care to learn. This is quite unlike religious faith/tradition which demands that people profess beliefs that are impossible. When you think about it, the word faith means nearly the same thing as the word doubt only with a different connotation.
I am trying to understand your comment in context with the thread. Are you saying that if people continue to hold cultural or religious beliefs via faith in this day and age that they are mentally ill? You don’t outright say this, but in context that’s the message I took from it.
Perhaps you just used it as a springboard to point out contradiction of certain beliefs with modern knowledge or perhaps it’s a bias against religion that you hold. If so, noted.
Not at all. I respect that people accept religious authority, the authority of trusted elders., etc., as part of their decision making function. But in my view it should be considered largely an aesthetic preference, much like a favorite color or favorite rock and roll band or preferred pizza toppings.
Such authority has an important societal role, and traditions are important for a lot of people.
Thiel is smart. He is not from the US, so you can be sure he is not really religious. This is a ruse to prevent him and his ilk being regulated and his power being diminished.
Anybody who threatens regulation or upsetting the current order is, by his definition, the anti-christ. He doesn't need everybody to believe him. Just enough useful idiots.
I suspect that it's people who are absolutely unable to "put themselves in other's shoes"(c) so to speak. They can't think abstract enough to imagine themselves a different person in different circumstances. So from this starting point they threat every external/outside restriction on them as an attack. They are worse off after such restriction hence it is completely bad. People who try to attack him personally (via laws, regulation, activism etc.) the most are the worst and he predicts that there will be some ultimate devil who will attack poor Thiel the most in a near future. Thus he complains about common humanity problems like climate change, because he couldn't care less about climate change, his funds allow him to never experience it until his death. While regulation coming from that topic is abhorrent, because he sees it as an attack on himself. Same with taxes, urban development, education (elite already have enough 100k/year schools no more required, helthcare and so on)
People who like his speeches or similar thoughts, think the same way. They think it's a global attack on themselves, so they tend to look out for the new leaders to defend against it.
