"These weren't fringe cranks."
I assert that Curtis Yarvin is absolutely a fringe crank. Peter Thiel is somewhat less so, but only somewhat. Being a billionaire doesn't change that.
I assert that Curtis Yarvin is absolutely a fringe crank. Peter Thiel is somewhat less so, but only somewhat. Being a billionaire doesn't change that.
Otherwise, Peter Thiel's company has billions of dollars of contracts with the government in completely non-trivial spaces (mass surveillance and military).
Calling one of the richest, most connected-with-power individuals on the planet a "fringe crank" is somewhat ridiculous.
That is totally wrong.
The far right believes people like Thiel and Yarvin and Elon are geniuses, special people, who only They can do The Necessary Hard Thing and only They can prioritize resources effectively.
Actual smart people recognize that they are low quality classic authoritarian petty nobility desperate to hold on to and rationalize power that they do not deserve. They are no different from the dumbasses in 1850 England insisting that the Irish are starving because they are lazy catholics, and they must be made to suffer for their "character", or the shithead Southern Baptist preachers in 1850 USA that insisted that slavery was the rightful place for the brutal negro as ordained by god himself.
These impotent, pathetic, egotistical losers fell into lucky power and money, and because they do not have the moral integrity to be honest even with themselves, are forced to invent an entire worldview that says they deserve what happened, the same way a housecat deserves their litterbox cleaned out. They have to build this insane and farcical worldview where it is right and just that they make billions of dollars as people suffer, that they get to control nations because they deserve to, as ordained by god I guess.
You can tell they are stupid because their worldviews are always that of a child. They have to be "strong", not just of will, but physically, in a world where war is fought through controllers and actuators. They have to be bullies because they are incapable of recognizing anything more substantial. They miss the important parts of scifi (like star trek's "Hey, isn't socialism just the best?") because they are incapable of (and do not respect) things like media literacy, which is why they spend such immense effort trying to ape the very surface level details like "Talking computer". They couldn't write a persuasive essay to get themselves out of a paper bag, but no they are definitely smart.
That's not even mentioning that these people are pretty open that they believe the important "Hard Thing" they have to do is totally unnecessary cruelty, like murdering your puppy that you have poorly trained, or keeping black people and women out of jobs they "don't deserve" or by siccing the temu-SS on people who make a fuss. People disparage grok for being racist, but it's intentional, because the followers of these people believe racism is objective. They believe an LLM that isn't forwardly racist cannot possibly be accurate because they believe that racism is true, and are trying to bring back scientific racism.