Summary, my other summaries are here
Peter Thiel at Oxford Union, spoke at the 200th anniversary of the oldest student/debating club in the world in Oxford about the self-destruction of Western civilization, Youtube here.
– I am for anti-illiberalism – that is, I am for liberalism, the free Western world and universities. Ever since the late 80s, during my studies at Stanford, I have been thinking about the ways of Western civilization, and participated in stopping the victimization of Rigoberta Menchu, a human rights activist and feminist from Guatemala: my [niche] article was reprinted by the WSJ, and after 4 years she was given a Nobel Prize for defending the rights indigenous peoples
– Universities are bureaucratized and conservative. Now they will issue the same thing as in the 1980s? (yes, probably even in the 19th century, talk about Shakespeare?). But you also move string theory and other natural sciences. Francis Bacon also said: the role of universities is to initiate the important. What is progress for mankind? Manhattan project, flight to the moon etc. Physicist Bob Laughlin, after the Nobel Prize, decided to challenge other areas (evolution, genetics, intelligence) and came to the conclusion that this is an increasingly big scam on taxpayers’ money, and he was fired for an attempt on a taboo. It turns out that there is something wrong? Science is cut into narrow spheres (string theory is understood by 100 people in the world) and there is more corruption than in the humanities, because they evaluate themselves
– Outside of computer science, the world of bits, there has been a big stagnation for 40 years already: there are no breakthroughs in the world of atoms. We dreamed of a singularity according to Kurzweil, but in fact, for the first time in centuries in the US and UK, a new generation expects a life worse than their parents. Libertarians don’t like it, but it was the military who made the atomic bomb in just 3.5 years
– The reasons for stagnation are different, in my opinion – this is the perception rooted in the establishment that technologies are supposedly dangerous. They called it existential risks, the roots are from 1945 (made the nuclear bomb), and it was projected onto biotech (that’s why they don’t make the authors of mRNA vaccines stars – it’s unpleasant to remember Wuhan). 20 years ago in computer science, the narrative about AI was positive, not terrifying, but we turned into Luddism and became like escapist camps at Burning Man )) Eliezer Yudkowsky joked that it would not work to align AI with human values, so we have to “to die with dignity.” Climate, I generally keep quiet – is this some kind of crusade of autistic Greta Thunberg? Technological progress has been slowed down as much as possible =) what kind of zeitgeist is this?
– Nick Bostrom from here, from Oxford, writes, and in the most boring way, that it is necessary to: 1) limit progress, 2) make the sample of representatives of society as diverse / inclusive as possible, 3) enforce the policy of restrictions to the extreme, 4) create an effective world government . He doesn’t say the word totalitarian, but he fully implies it.
A
– I am a liberal, and this is absolutely cruel: even if existential risks turn out to be untrue, a single authoritarian state will still be built in the world?! This is already some sort of arrival of the Antichrist. It seems to me that instead of Armageddon, turning to the Antichrist is too much. And what about the liberal institutions of the last 200 years that have, in fact, brought us to the current level of development? Global totalitarian state is, as it were, also existential risk now
– The problem of narrow specialization (grew out of the successes of the industrial revolution and the division of labor of Adam Smith) is also that the public was thrown out of the discussion of issues of progress: what to do, why, how. This is the most key problem of stagnation. I am for the acceleration of progress, for technology, I am even for AI
– Political issues pop up everywhere: if crypto is libertarian (by the way, now I don’t really believe that crypto should be libertarian), then AI is communism, in the style of China – we give AI control over everything. Since the 60s, the level of satisfaction of societies has not been growing precisely because there is not much progress outside the Internet / computers. We will not build an interplanetary civilization of the future like that. If the Luddites continue and win in our country, then we will all lose in favor of China – both AI, and the exploration of the Moon, and everything in general. What is this program of self-destruction of the Western world? We need “Back to the future”