Congratulations Garry! Your blogs were my inspirations when I was running my startup. I always remember this line:
“The ideal startup team involves really two major roles — builder, and hustler. I used to say it took three roles (designer, engineer, hustler).....In reality, I think designer / engineer can be abstracted to builder”.
> they out themselves as either evil or stupid
I served in the Marine Corps. I've had some exposure to Palantir's 'offerings'. It's a fucking nightmare of a company, morally and ethically, and it always has been.
Doesn't come across evil to me unless by evil you mean just not mainstream left, which might be the correct in the valley.
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/donald-tr...
If your viewpoint is so myopically constrained by a single data point, I don't know what to say.
I find intellectuals from all corners of political spectrum to be interesting. Usually, when people dismiss intellectuals not for their arguments, but by some ostensible thinly veiled morality or the media zeitgeist; it is already an indicator that something interesting is out there. Anyways, all I am saying is that Peter is not evil in any stretch of the definition as the media portrays him. He is just not your typical conformist thinker.
[1] They only paused after Jan 6th, they were happily donating to both parties: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-corporate-go...
Do you remember why Thiel invested in Confinity which became PayPal? Because he thought a digital wallet could lead to “the erosion of the nation-state”. If it's not self evident to you why that's a bad thing perhaps read https://eand.co/how-america-collapsed-and-became-a-fourth-wo...
Max Chafkin argues that Thiel “has been responsible for creating the ideology that has come to define Silicon Valley: that technological progress should be pursued relentlessly—with little, if any, regard for potential costs or dangers to society.” continued with “Palantir, his second company, popularized the concept of data mining after 9/11 and paved the way for what critics of the technology call surveillance capitalism”.
And of course there was gawker. No, what gawker did was not right but Thiel's reaction was not right either. That's some straight up vigilante BS.
If you want a proper critique of Thiel, proper as in properly sourced/researched, not opinions of what someone has made up in their mind: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right...