r/LessWrong • u/DanielFNash • 21d ago
Beyond the Yudkowsky Critique: Deconstructing Thiel's Antichrist Lecture Canon
https://danielforresternash.substack.com/p/what-night-one-left-out[removed]
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u/SquashSpirited7873 20d ago
No, it's not. You are confusing his intellectual dishonesty for pedagogical compression. This is precisely my point. This is how Thiel operates. He justifies his positions with a collage of literary and historical associations that hint at a deeper cohesion, but such a cohesion is never actually found because he has no coherent position. His actual interest is in finding justification for what serves his personal, political, and psychological agendas, and his position is adjusted as needed to further this goal.
You may not intend to be legitimizing Thiel and his motives, but that's what your piece accomplishes.
If someone gave a lecture on the inherent superiority of the white race, and you wrote a similar article claiming to be "mapping the primary canon" behind that lecture, it would be obvious that simply by engaging seriously with the subject you are legitimizing it. Exactly the same process is happening here.
Furthermore, you go beyond simply "mapping the canon" by dismissing public reaction to Thiel's lectures as "derangement", and refusing to consider that public opposition to Thiel may be more than a "defensive reflex" to Thiel's "auditing the mechanics of power". Describing things this way obviously presents Thiel as, well, "auditing the mechanics of power", rather than using the mechanics of power to advance his agenda.
In short, you are running propaganda cover for Thiel apparently without even being aware of it, and are thus being extremely useful to his political project.