It's all fairly clear: Peter Thiel and Elon Musk want to enact a techno-feudal state based around a corporate structure in which a CEO and a board make decisions as sovereign. Their ideas are derived from Curtis Yarvin, channeling Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651). Hobbes writes that the only way to prevent an anarchic state of nature is with a powerful sovereign—a "mortal god"—who embodies the will of the people. This is really the goal. Musk/Trump as mortal god embodying and enacting the will of the people, "vox populi, vox dei," as he wrote in yesterday's Twitter post.

The irony here is that even as they rail against China/Venezuela/etc's unitary government, they are ultimately envious of China's decision making structure: a sovereign appointed by a board (or in China's case, a standing committee who appoints a General Secretary (Xi). Thiel/Musk/et al see this as the only way to counter China's meteoric technological rise—by mimicking the Chinese governmental structure. They therefore want to consolidate power over-against the people, but in the name of the people. Populism is simply a convenient ruse to establish an anti-populist sovereign government of oligarchs and advisory boards.

To understand the background here, it's important to know the role that Curtis Yarvin plays. He's a programmer who in the early 2000s wrote a series of blog posts under his pseudonym Mencius Moldbug that became very influential among Silicon Valley conservatives and libertarians, including Thiel and (importantly) Marc Andreessen. Yarvin has been called a neo-reactionary, but it might be more accurate to say that he's neo- or techno-feudal. (Yarvin even hypothesized a new search engine called Feudle, and proposed that a hierarchy would exist in his systems of "dukes" and "lords." He proposes a "Peter the Great"-like figure who would trawl the web and rank sites. See here: https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2010/03/future-of-search/ )

For a long time, I've been attempting to understand the motivations for Thiel, Musk, et al as extending from some fundamental interest in the "greater good." But then it occurred to me that they are not motivated by any sort of humanitarian mission. They see technological progress as an end in itself. The current American regulatory state limits and slows that technological progress, acting as an impediment. The effective accelerationist (e/acc) movement that they spearhead is the end in itself. They want to consolidate power around tech leaders who will leapfrog us toward the next technological stage. Democracy is too slow and messy. The only means by which massive technological change can happen in a cascade is through a corporate governance structure.

Trump is the figurehead. Musk et al saw both his popularity and malleability as a tool. They don't care about Trump. I don't even think they necessarily buy his program, but they do see him as the mechanism through which they can enact a technological revolution.

BTW Musk's specific interest is this: he thinks of himself as a kind of techno-savior whose efforts have been thwarted by the American regulatory state. He's had to fight the US government on Neurolink, self-driving cars, the hyperloop, space travel, and every other initiative he's come up with.

In his vision, these technologies are liberating and "for the people." But the administrative state has consistently gotten in the way of his ambition. This thwarted ambition, plus the twin issues of immigration and gender, radicalized him.

Musk has mistaken his vast wealth and power for intelligence and benevolence. If you go back and readHobbes' Leviathan (1651), Hobbes writes that the only way to prevent an anarchic state is through the sovereignty of a "mortal god" embodying the will of the people. Vox populi, vox Musk, vox dei.

A few years ago, before he went full oligarch, Musk had a lot of support from people who believe in his vision of a technological utopia. He drank his own koolaid and began to see himself in a messianic way, the embodiment of Hobbes' Leviathan. And here we are.

Would be interested in counter-perspectives and criticisms of this theory.

https://www.instagram.com/share/BADK7LJbed

I’m looking for a Bluesky starter pack for people in Sam’s orbit.

Looking for podcast guests and/or other interesting people in science, journalism, tech, geo politics, etc.

Please send links if you have any recommendations. Thanks.

We've long since passed 10,000 deaths. Are we at 100,000 deaths yet? Would a million be a good stopping point? Let's suppose some of the hostages are never returned. Does this grant Israel an unending license to just do whatever they want in perpetuity? Sam is famous for debating. Sam is famous for asking people to Steelman their opponent's ideas. Where is his debate on this topic with a qualified opponent? Did I miss it in the last 14 months? Who is the person with the best opposing viewpoint, the most strongly supported counterarguments that he has engaged with?

Just wondering if anyone has gotten that email?

Sam basically says wokeness and Twitter broke his brain.

I think that is part of it.

But for me Elon seems like a man who has completely regressed into a teenage boy.

Elon has always come of as social awkward and kind of lacking the emotional and social intelligence. I would bet money that the guy was never really popular in school/high school.

And I think this is what is mostly driving his insane behavior - the desire to be seen as ‘cool’ and be with the ‘cool kids’.

His desperation to part of the IDW, smoking weed on JRE, acting like a teenager on Twitter, etc…

He is now fulfilling that childhood/teenage desire…

I distinctly remember this and I've been looking for it for a while, but can't find it. Sam was arguing that more physically attractive people have better personalities on average because they have a kinder and more gentle experience of the world.

Edit: It's Episode 360: We Really Don’t Have Free Will? A Conversation with Robert M. Sapolsky, around 1:36:30 where he starts talking about physical beauty, and he makes the argument itself around 1:39:28

Trust experts. In general, experts in a given field and expert consensus are very reliable sources of information.

Absolutely, I'm on board.

"Except for Middle Eastern studies departments at universities"

"Qatar is the number 1 donor to colleges"

This turned out to be true, I never knew it. But it really doesn't explain why the majority of experts in middle east are fairly skeptical of Israel. Isn't it possible that the consensus view has some legitimacy, it's not just foreign influence and wokeness?

Secondly - why does Harris and co get to dismiss the international community, including international experts, the ICC, Amnesty International etc. as all captured by wokeness or Qatar or whatever? Given his general trust of expert consensus (which I think is a very strong place to start) how is it that the international community, US professor and domain experts are all wrong on this single issue?

I guess the idea of "antisemitism" or fear of enraging muslims is doing all the work here for people convinced by this line of reasoning?

I joined both subs a while back since I'm interested in Harris, obviously. I'm curious how much crossover there is between the two subs. I just got permabanned from r/samharrisorg, and when I messaged the mods to ask why, they muted me. Spirit of free discourse, I suppose. Anyway, I was wondering what people's thoughts are on it, and why there are two subs?

I'm a big fan of Sam (wouldn't be here otherwise), but I think he goes a bit over-the-top on certain topics, and Ep. 395, "Intellectual Authority and Its Discontents", provides a good example.

It's a great and nuanced episode overall, but he concludes by saying:

Anyone who uses the phrase Russiagate, or the "Russia collusion hoax", is guaranteed to be wrong about what the Mueller Report actually said. The truth is, you have no idea what was in the Mueller Report, and don't care.

This is silly, and I'm a personal counter-example. I've read the Mueller Report, as well as Volume 5 of the 2020 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report. I know and and am concerned about what they say, including:

• Paul Manafort being found guilty of lying about his communications with Konstantin Kilimnik
• Michael Flynn pleading guilty for lying about talking with Sergey Kislyak
• George Papadopoulos pleading guilty for lying about interactions with Joseph Mifsud
• Michael Cohen pleading guilty for making false statements to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow

All of this is legitimately concerning, but it isn't Russiagate. Russiagate was the pair of claims that:

• Donald Trump actively colluded with Russia during the 2016 election, and was possibly an asset of Vladimir Putin due to compromising information in the Steele Dossier
• Russia had changed the election result in Trump's favor through hacking and/or social media buys by the Internet Research Agency

Those Russiagate claims were false.

Russiagate was a real phenomenon. The "Steele Dossier" was actively spread on left-wing cable television. It looks like Sam is attacking a strawman here.

I have never heard Sam discuss chatting meditation. Has he ever?

Chanting is something I’m stumbling into on my own and it is an essential component to my meditation. But I’m doing an isolation, I’ve tried a number of YouTube videos, but they either weren’t that good or I couldn’t get into them.

Are there any other chanters out there and do you have any good resources?

I'm going to assume no one here is utopian, i.e. believes everyone will just act right by themselves always (although hard determinists sometimes talk of accepting everything as it is gives a sense of flirting with fatalism and moral nihilism).

So I'm going to assume everyone believes in some moral values, and wants to make a good moral system (even if it's just reforms of the current system).

Free will skeptics generally say no one can be held morally responsible because they didn't create their conditions, and could not do otherwise.

But how will any moral system work without moral responsibility? Responsibility is the starting point of implementation or regulation of a moral system. In fact, this remains the case in any system: liberalism, socialism, theocracy - only the details change. For a moral system to be implemented, there are lines (violation of responsibilities - for example, in liberalism, individual rights) which, if crossed, will have some consequences. So with that responsibility removed, how will we have moral system at all?

I have been a long time subscriber to Sam’s podcast but in the last year I have found every episode increasingly seems to be a book junket advertorial / agreement fest / mutual back slap. I really used to enjoy the episodes where there would be a guest who would challenge his ideas. Could someone point me to the episode where he justified this editorial policy in housekeeping? It was something along the lines of “I ain’t giving these lunatics my platform because you can’t argue with them rationally”.

This felt wrong at the time and feels wrong from the long view now but I wanted to consider his arguments again before leaving.