I guess we could all forgive trying to destroy western civilization under the guise of saving it, but drew the line at poor media literacy when it comes to One Piece and Watchmen.
It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.
I'm forever grateful to Thiel for that clip, and to Musk for his crippling Twitter addiction. It was pretty impossible to get regular people to understand that folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers when all they ever see about these people is professionally managed public relations content.
The list is getting longer and longer, but a good touchstone is simply net worth. You don't normally get to the top of a foodchain without being an apex predator.
People aught to be questioning more the future vision of those in positions to shape it. Someone who struggles with such simple questions around humanity while simultaneously building the tools of a surveillance state probably should not be one of the individuals driving our future.
It's quite clear that my vision of the future is nothing like theirs.
A frustrating aspect of the AI debates has been the number of people who believe people like Sam Altman who say that the immense wealth created by AGI would be distributed to the masses to improve their lives. The notion that the mega wealthy Elon/Sams/Bezos elites are going to willingly give up unprecedented wealth because millions of people have become unemployed and impoverished is so wildly out of step with how those people have behaved their entire lives. Someone who says they have enough billions and want to improve millions of lives don't make it to those positions.
The only way that wealth gets shared will be unprecedented government coercion or worse.
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.
One "good" thing that came out of that thing.
I think main problem is that many people just think of them as "just a normal person but richer". But no. You don't get to that level of power by staying normal.
Hell, I remember when people pointed at Bill Gates going "see, you can be billionaire that puts their money to good", and while even before PDFiles got posted he had long history of being a piece of shit, now at least that stopped
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad
This is mostly because normal people are not THINKING usually. It requires some event or insight when they begin to question what they see.
There are many ways to go about it, but my own personal favourite one, even though cheesy, is to tell them to watch the old B movie "They Live". Now, the movie is not really grand, has many plot holes, but Roddy made it fun (the kick ass scene with regards to bubblegem); and using glasses to see the thruth is such a powerful meme. People can then begin to question who owns the mass media. Then perhaps they may watch other movies such as Manufacturing consent (is a bit old now and thus dated, and people may find it boring, but I loved Noam's analysis back when his health was in prime condition). It is mostly in the USA where people think the superrich are god-sent. In other parts of the world this worshipping is way less. Or often does not exist; you won't find much love for the average superrich in Denmark or Sweden for instance.
The only non-evil Billionaire I know are the South park creators although they aren't tech Billionaires. I consider everyone else for the most part to not-be-good people.
Because south park decided to personally say essentially bad words to paramount using their episodes, the company which gave them a billion dollars.
So they took a billion dollars and they were still consistent with how they've been for decades at this point. All of this is truly remarkable in the particular world we live in.
>It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad
By the "greying out" of your comment, I would assume two things:
First, the difficulty you describe is not on the past.
Second, normies are here in much bigger proportion than a hacker would assume, and they are offended on the behalf of tech billionaires.
A lot of the older folks are also not well versed in their language or whatever you want to call it, so they can’t even connect comprehend these guys are compulsive liars and paranoid man children with no scruples.
They just think they are eccentric and by the virtue of their wealth they must be smart upstanding humans with a strong character.
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.
He was thinking about convergence. You're probably smart enough to be aware of that, so you're deliberately twisting his words.
> folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers
On HN a decade ago this would have been moderated into oblivion. The recent manual un-flagging of poolitical posts by the mods (dang has openly discussed this) has changed the site for the worse.
So someone is evil because they answer questions by thinking through them? There are no questions in the universe that can’t be stopped and pondered over. In fact, it’s dangerous to even suggest that, that’s the exact mechanism that propaganda runs on.
I used to get the occasional recruiter cold-calling me and hyping up the chance to work for some Musk- or Bezos-associated entity, and for me it's not as appealing as they think it is. But I politely decline without pointing out their fallacy.
Thiel is one of the more public faces of what is now known as the "Epstein class" of societal predators. But one of many and certainly not the epicenter.
There is certainly a shadow cabal of these elite billionaire types that avoid all public exposure yet are working very hard to destroy society and profit
Yep Epstein class. It’s a great phrase for the billionaire elites who have corrupted our society through their wealth. We need heavy taxes on them now to preserve our democracy.
And also, Thiel is literally in the Epstein files. Meeting with Russian officials repeatedly on the island. One is said to be his handler so he may just be an asset tasked with destabilizing America.
What are you, Thiel’s alt? The guy backed Facebook, built a mass surveillance firm, and talks about democracy as an obstacle. How do you expect people to feel about him?
That's fine, if not very good, but the central problem remains (ignoring the capitalist corrupted business culture and its merging with the state behind much of this). We can't centralize our communications without major concessions in significant ways that non-techies seem unaware of until a big news item like this comes out. "What, they're logging my chats, and IP, voice clips, and now they want my ID for 18+ discords?" Yes, absolutely you are being logged and those logs will go places you have no control over. Maybe even to oppress you or your loved ones.
Discord's entire value proposition was "Hey just click here, no need to pay for a teamspeak server or do peer-to-peer jank." Deeply personal stuff is said and posted in those spaces. Common communication should not be shared like this and we keep falling back to the "tapped my phone line" problem.
The difference between then and now is that for a long time there was no alternative to POTS. You just had to use the phone to call someone. The phone company and whatever government tapping was very hard to get around. But today there are other ways to do near everything if we give up on for-profit centralized services.
I think society keeps flirting with federation and other things similar to that but never quite makes the jump. The twitter exodus went back to a new centralized service like Bluesky that will one day be sold to another deep-pocketed buyer with its own agenda, thus creating this problem again. Sure, now with federation or personal servers, the privacy issue goes back to the server operator, but at least that could be someone you trust, or even you. When currently, neither of those options are possible with things like Discord or Bluesky.
I'm testing moving my friends and gaming group to self-hosted teamspeak or stout or mumble or something like that. I think we'll lose some convenience, but life isn't all about gains. Sometimes you have to sacrifice things for the greater good. I also really want to start moving away from things like reddit, bluesky, HN, etc to federated services and have dipped my toes there quite a bit, but the population isn't there (yet?).
I hope this is a wakeup call that people need, much like the wake-up call the fight against personal encryption was in the 90s. I think we're in a super bad place right now, and its worth discussing the elephant in the room, even to non-techies, and what alternatives there are to the current system. I think people need to get over the convivence of the current system and realize if they want privacy and safety, they may have to migrate to services built with that in mind.
Everyone needs to cut ties with those companies. Not just with Persona but any service linked to Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Palmer Luckey, Elon Musk, David Sacks, etc. The entire MAGA cultist ecosystem.
Unfortunately there will be companies that take their money and won’t care. It’ll be up to other companies and consumers to punish them for it. Maybe we need a website that lets you quickly check if you should or shouldn’t use some service based on the investors.
I'm getting there. Just a few more. I've found myself kicking my not so distant past self for not listening better to my even further distant past self...
I think it's a bad trend. It's kind of a meta version of an ad hominem attack. The headline contained no information about why Discord is making the decision, only that there's a bad name associated with the company. The name of the company isn't even mentioned in the headline. This is prioritizing hate over information.
I guess we could all forgive trying to destroy western civilization under the guise of saving it, but drew the line at poor media literacy when it comes to One Piece and Watchmen.
(This is a joke in case that wasn't clear)
It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.
I'm forever grateful to Thiel for that clip, and to Musk for his crippling Twitter addiction. It was pretty impossible to get regular people to understand that folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers when all they ever see about these people is professionally managed public relations content.
The list is getting longer and longer, but a good touchstone is simply net worth. You don't normally get to the top of a foodchain without being an apex predator.
50 replies →
People aught to be questioning more the future vision of those in positions to shape it. Someone who struggles with such simple questions around humanity while simultaneously building the tools of a surveillance state probably should not be one of the individuals driving our future.
It's quite clear that my vision of the future is nothing like theirs.
1 reply →
A frustrating aspect of the AI debates has been the number of people who believe people like Sam Altman who say that the immense wealth created by AGI would be distributed to the masses to improve their lives. The notion that the mega wealthy Elon/Sams/Bezos elites are going to willingly give up unprecedented wealth because millions of people have become unemployed and impoverished is so wildly out of step with how those people have behaved their entire lives. Someone who says they have enough billions and want to improve millions of lives don't make it to those positions.
The only way that wealth gets shared will be unprecedented government coercion or worse.
18 replies →
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.
One "good" thing that came out of that thing.
I think main problem is that many people just think of them as "just a normal person but richer". But no. You don't get to that level of power by staying normal.
Hell, I remember when people pointed at Bill Gates going "see, you can be billionaire that puts their money to good", and while even before PDFiles got posted he had long history of being a piece of shit, now at least that stopped
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad
This is mostly because normal people are not THINKING usually. It requires some event or insight when they begin to question what they see.
There are many ways to go about it, but my own personal favourite one, even though cheesy, is to tell them to watch the old B movie "They Live". Now, the movie is not really grand, has many plot holes, but Roddy made it fun (the kick ass scene with regards to bubblegem); and using glasses to see the thruth is such a powerful meme. People can then begin to question who owns the mass media. Then perhaps they may watch other movies such as Manufacturing consent (is a bit old now and thus dated, and people may find it boring, but I loved Noam's analysis back when his health was in prime condition). It is mostly in the USA where people think the superrich are god-sent. In other parts of the world this worshipping is way less. Or often does not exist; you won't find much love for the average superrich in Denmark or Sweden for instance.
1 reply →
The only non-evil Billionaire I know are the South park creators although they aren't tech Billionaires. I consider everyone else for the most part to not-be-good people.
Because south park decided to personally say essentially bad words to paramount using their episodes, the company which gave them a billion dollars.
So they took a billion dollars and they were still consistent with how they've been for decades at this point. All of this is truly remarkable in the particular world we live in.
5 replies →
>It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad
By the "greying out" of your comment, I would assume two things: First, the difficulty you describe is not on the past. Second, normies are here in much bigger proportion than a hacker would assume, and they are offended on the behalf of tech billionaires.
9 replies →
A lot of the older folks are also not well versed in their language or whatever you want to call it, so they can’t even connect comprehend these guys are compulsive liars and paranoid man children with no scruples.
They just think they are eccentric and by the virtue of their wealth they must be smart upstanding humans with a strong character.
1 reply →
> Peter Thiel on Transhumanism and the Future of Humanity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp07P8jvYs
It’s very naive to think this is the interpretation.
That humanity should survive is a deeper question than it looks. Ask any transhumanist.
> It was always difficult to get normal people to understand why the tech billionaires are so bad until Thiel gave us that clip of him getting stumped by the "should humanity survive" question.
He was thinking about convergence. You're probably smart enough to be aware of that, so you're deliberately twisting his words.
> folks like Bill Gates or Larry Ellison are skinwalkers
On HN a decade ago this would have been moderated into oblivion. The recent manual un-flagging of poolitical posts by the mods (dang has openly discussed this) has changed the site for the worse.
3 replies →
That guy has a strong Nazi feel. I'd stay far, far away from anything he creates
So someone is evil because they answer questions by thinking through them? There are no questions in the universe that can’t be stopped and pondered over. In fact, it’s dangerous to even suggest that, that’s the exact mechanism that propaganda runs on.
8 replies →
it's all a fuckin' joke
I always explain it to recruiters contacting me from one of his companies.
I used to get the occasional recruiter cold-calling me and hyping up the chance to work for some Musk- or Bezos-associated entity, and for me it's not as appealing as they think it is. But I politely decline without pointing out their fallacy.
it is truly amazing how much damage one person is able to do to civilized society
if you expand the scope to a handful of adjacent figures, the catastrophe is truly amazing
Maybe a society that can be so damaged by someone because they're incredibly wealthy shouldn't be considered civilized.
What is more civilized than concentrating large amounts of power into the hands of a few? Hierarchy and civilization seem to go hand-in-hand.
yeah, this is what unchecked wealth gives you. yay capitalism.
Thiel is one of the more public faces of what is now known as the "Epstein class" of societal predators. But one of many and certainly not the epicenter.
There is certainly a shadow cabal of these elite billionaire types that avoid all public exposure yet are working very hard to destroy society and profit
2 replies →
Yep Epstein class. It’s a great phrase for the billionaire elites who have corrupted our society through their wealth. We need heavy taxes on them now to preserve our democracy.
And also, Thiel is literally in the Epstein files. Meeting with Russian officials repeatedly on the island. One is said to be his handler so he may just be an asset tasked with destabilizing America.
I’m hearing this a lot but never with any substance, would you care to elaborate with a hard action or idea with a direct result?
What are you, Thiel’s alt? The guy backed Facebook, built a mass surveillance firm, and talks about democracy as an obstacle. How do you expect people to feel about him?
3 replies →
Direct quote from Peter Thiel:
> I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible
That's fine, if not very good, but the central problem remains (ignoring the capitalist corrupted business culture and its merging with the state behind much of this). We can't centralize our communications without major concessions in significant ways that non-techies seem unaware of until a big news item like this comes out. "What, they're logging my chats, and IP, voice clips, and now they want my ID for 18+ discords?" Yes, absolutely you are being logged and those logs will go places you have no control over. Maybe even to oppress you or your loved ones.
Discord's entire value proposition was "Hey just click here, no need to pay for a teamspeak server or do peer-to-peer jank." Deeply personal stuff is said and posted in those spaces. Common communication should not be shared like this and we keep falling back to the "tapped my phone line" problem.
The difference between then and now is that for a long time there was no alternative to POTS. You just had to use the phone to call someone. The phone company and whatever government tapping was very hard to get around. But today there are other ways to do near everything if we give up on for-profit centralized services.
I think society keeps flirting with federation and other things similar to that but never quite makes the jump. The twitter exodus went back to a new centralized service like Bluesky that will one day be sold to another deep-pocketed buyer with its own agenda, thus creating this problem again. Sure, now with federation or personal servers, the privacy issue goes back to the server operator, but at least that could be someone you trust, or even you. When currently, neither of those options are possible with things like Discord or Bluesky.
I'm testing moving my friends and gaming group to self-hosted teamspeak or stout or mumble or something like that. I think we'll lose some convenience, but life isn't all about gains. Sometimes you have to sacrifice things for the greater good. I also really want to start moving away from things like reddit, bluesky, HN, etc to federated services and have dipped my toes there quite a bit, but the population isn't there (yet?).
I hope this is a wakeup call that people need, much like the wake-up call the fight against personal encryption was in the 90s. I think we're in a super bad place right now, and its worth discussing the elephant in the room, even to non-techies, and what alternatives there are to the current system. I think people need to get over the convivence of the current system and realize if they want privacy and safety, they may have to migrate to services built with that in mind.
Peter Thiel Integration (PTI) halted
The (PTB) Peter Theil Be
Everyone needs to cut ties with those companies. Not just with Persona but any service linked to Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Palmer Luckey, Elon Musk, David Sacks, etc. The entire MAGA cultist ecosystem.
Unfortunately there will be companies that take their money and won’t care. It’ll be up to other companies and consumers to punish them for it. Maybe we need a website that lets you quickly check if you should or shouldn’t use some service based on the investors.
I'm getting there. Just a few more. I've found myself kicking my not so distant past self for not listening better to my even further distant past self...
Which is pretty much everything at this point... God help us.
[flagged]
Why should there be mass hysteria over Soros-backed entities? What entities are those?
Open Society Foundation. You can find this and why people dislike OSF very easily using a search engine or an LLM.
I think it's a bad trend. It's kind of a meta version of an ad hominem attack. The headline contained no information about why Discord is making the decision, only that there's a bad name associated with the company. The name of the company isn't even mentioned in the headline. This is prioritizing hate over information.
Having the name associated with the company says a lot, actually. The man is the Forrest Gump of backing creepy companies.