I agree with you re: antipopes, but I don't think it applies too well to how "Antichrist" is used in the Bible, which definitely is in a "good vs. evil" sense. Small-a "antichrists" is a somewhat generic descriptor used in 1 John 2 (one of the criterion being that they "[deny] that Jesus is the Christ"), and so it seems to refer to those who actively oppose Christ.

Separately, that passage also refers to "the antichrist" (emphasis mine), who is traditionally identified w/ the "man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians 2 and the "beast" in Revelation. And this figure is pretty unambiguously evil ("man of lawlessness"; "son of destruction"; makes himself out to be God; violently persecutes Christians; makes people have to worship him if they want to buy or sell anything; etc.)—even by secular standards, he's a megalomaniacal despot.

Sure ok. But to the true pope and his followers, the antipope is definitely evil and going to hell. It's a matter of perspective.

If the highest good is a belief in Christ, as is Christian doctrine, then an anti-Christ that is good in every other way is still evil by Christian doctrine.

Thanks for highlighting this - I won't be able to unsee how well this does in "x person is bad" clickbait headlines vs "Christ V2: A Revised Edition" which seems to be more accurate and honest. I admit I've fallen for this for trop for ages ...

The Christian conservative movement seems to really have that sort of an outlook. I mean, last year there were some that called out a priest for "the sin of empathy" when she was preaching about taking care of the less fortunate and not laying immigrants to the wayside. Because as we all know, one of the things that Big J disliked was checks notes empathy!

And it's not exclusive to the US. For example here in Finland, this sort of Christian conservatism has a lot of support alongside our far-right government. The Bible being used as a justification for intolerance and hate, which does seem rather ironic considering what Big J was all about.

It's Supercedes Ictus now

Anti ichthys?

When studying the psychology of criminals in prisons for extreme violent crimes what really surprised me was that, from the beginning until the end, most of them had an internal justification sort-of belief system about why they were actually the good guys and their violent and often brutal repeated acts were just to punish those they saw as the actual bad guys even indirectly (like sexually assaulting a person was just to punish all those "bad" people that never let them live peacefully their sexuality)

That is his stated position. His actions and words don't often support it.

My understanding is that he was raised evangelical. I don't think he's converted to Catholicism, but he is a fan of some Catholic authors on eschatology. I find a lot of his rhetoric around the end times distinctly more evangelical: ultimate fight against good and evil and all that jazz.

At the risk of getting too theological, the Catholic view would push back on the idea of the end times as being a battle. The Catholic faith views Christ as already the victor of history, and the end times as a trial to be borne, not a battle to be won. Whatever I've read from him or seen reported about his thoughts, it basically boils down to building one Antichrist to fight another Antichrist.

He is evangelical Protestant, not Catholic.

One of the key teachings of Catholicism is the spiritual leadership of the Pope and his infallibility when he speaks ex cathedra.

Thiel's views go directly counter to what the Pope wrote in Magnifica Humanitas.

He cannot be properly or deeply Catholic. He can only be a hypocrite that likes the aesthetics of Catholicism, or in slightly more theological terms, a heretic.

Do you really believe he’s honest? Are you being intentionally naive?

AFAIK He can't in US, at least legally. What I expect to happen is that he will eventually get his city-state with the right combination of people and structure and be the president of it. Just not sure if the ICBMs come first or after.

>it automatically buys you a whole clique of people who will defend you online (for free!)

It's wild how just having the facade of wealth will get you a following in the US, for free.

Americans blindly idolize the wealthy. It's crazy. Truly a "not get millionaire" mindset for a lot of this country.

> you probably dont know that once in the country it was acceptable to have differing political opinions

"acceptable to have differing political opinions" is not the same thing as "all political opinions were acceptable". The former was true, and still is. The later never was true, and never will be. But supporters of deeply unpopular opinions always try to pretend those two things are the same.

Gave up exploring space? Are we living in the same reality? Space exploration is well and alive. It’s just done with robots. We’d never have pictures of Pluto if we were hyper-focused on manned missions.

We even have samples returned from comets and Mars samples waiting to be picked up.

Science has progressed a lot in the last 57 years. And probably SpaceX can do what it does now also because of some of those progresses (computational, communication, materials, etc.). 50 years ago you would not have a need for a Starlink constellation, so nobody built enough capacity to make one.

..broad revaluation of rules based on outdated values such as morality, empathy, democracy, collective good of humanity..

His religious bullshit just amounts to a divine right to rule.

This is a curious bias you're pointing to.

What does "support" even mean? He's not up for election. My interaction with Peter Thiel has been listening to interviews he's given and reading essays he's written. I don't know much about his companies. While I don't agree with him across the board (for example, I strongly believe in liberal democracy), I think he's worth engaging with.

It's bizarre to read through threads like this and see all the vitriol. I'm open to critiques but I mostly just see lazy meme-level comments.

Imo, the right is experiencing an intellectual renaissance rn - but this is much more aligned w/ recovering normative morality, re-enchantment and multi-polarity than it is with the libertarian, anti-democracy strain of thought that you describe. I was stunned to find out that a friend was using the word "monarchy" in it's premodern sense, denoting distributism and strong practical limits to the enactment of power, which is totally opposite to how libertarians used the word. There's a lot going on that is interesting, useful and hopeful.

Thiel is very interesting, but not for good reasons. It's amazing to see someone who is simultaneously very proficient at what they do, yet also incredibly shallow, decorating himself w/ whatever bits of pieces of cultural material that allows him and others to confuse "good investment" with "good for people". Is it just me, or does this guy flake out entirely under pointed questioning?

As soon as I personally attained a modicum of financial security I automatically started giving fewer fucks about things than I used to. I assume the number of fucks given (about people, ideas, values) asymptotically approaches zero as your wealth increases. Or at least it does if you don't work at it.

It's not yes-men. Power and money tend to convince people they are successful in every aspect of life. Our society emphatically endorses this viewpoint and even idolizes it. Look at our celebrity/businessman worship.

Then, since they are rich, anything they do is now acceptable. Anything they do is what a successful person would do. That becomes their viewpoint.

As this phenomenon is so common, do we have enough science about it to make it a base for laws, so future generations could avoid this state of collective psychosis it seems to lead to?

That's the thing, with this mindset you are very unlikely to become a billionaire, you either need to shed it completely, like most, or sublimate it in such a way where achieving extremely high levels of wealth accumulation becomes part of your "good cause".

For the latter I think about SBF, with "effective altruism" as his example, i.e. "earning to give". Essentially a mental free pass to get as much wealth as possible, to be able to "help" as much as possible. Theoretically a good idea, as it's broadly known that your influence over... everything rises in direct connection to your net worth. Where a normal person can donate a few dollars, work in a soup kitchen, and vote for someone who esposes your beliefs, you with your billions can just buy your politicians, or "lobby" them, if "buying" is a little too on the nose for you, and wield power of levels unimaginable even if you gather thousands, if not millions, of people from the first type. However, I have never seen this work. Largely because if you have 10 billion, you could either go all out for "the cause", or you could be a little more ruthless, commit some more fraud maybe, and earn 100 billion to go all out on the cause 10x more "effectively". Essentially the desire of infinite accumulation persists unabated. Additionally, you're always working against the clock of wealth taking it's toll on your morality. While it's easy to care about inequality, death, war, while you're not sheltered from it, and possibly even have friends who are affected by it, wealth has the ability to completely isolate you from any adverse effects, even from the most trivial annoyance a middle class person goes through. Instead you get "rich people problems", your company has trouble with regulations, your well-earned money gets taxed too high, people are calling you bourgeois, or they ask for money (so you stop associating with people of lower monetary status). If you put a moral person in a completely different environment, their morals will change, it's extremely hard to avoid that from happening. If you go into becoming a billionaire thinking you'll make the world a better place, by the end of it, what you thought of as a better world might be completely different. Maybe you'll start a little foundation that helps you with taxes and gives a few million dollars to some people here and there's. Not enough to make a change, or to use up even a small percentage of your total net worth, but maybe it helps a few people. That's probably the best outcome.

Is that not what MacKenzie Scott (formerly Bezos) did?

Its what a normal person does with excess wealth, as opposed to sociopaths and megalomaniacs.

There's really only so much money a person even needs anyways

What the heck would I do with billions?

The answer for these guys is "hire armies of financial advisors to make even more"

The answer for me would be closer to "hire a financial advisor to work out how much I likely need for the rest of my life, double it just in case, then give the rest away"

You can argue that I wouldn't actually be that way if I got that much money, and you might be right. You can also argue that maybe people like me don't have a hope of getting that money precisely because of my mentality and you might be right about that too.

Either way it seems to point to something deeply broken in these people, imo.

It doesn't mean the money they have couldn't be put to better use serving others.

If there's a law of dimishing return on money owned, the only rational thing is to share with the less fortunate knowing that, say, $5,000 is not even a penny on the ground to you but could feed a family for a year in most parts of the world. Maybe you fed the next Einstein, or helped the next Peter Thiel develop empathy.

The only way Greta Thunberg can be the antichrist is if Peter Thiel thinks he's Christ.

Doesn't she want to help poor and oppressed people? That seems a pro-crist position.

Religious delusions.

Agreed

The author is not even attempting to sound impartial or objective

Is this supposed to be a "gotcha" type of comment or something?

Hindsight is always 20/20. And as an outsider to the administration, it costs him nothing to admit the obvious failure.

> i think at least he doesn't blindly support the admin and is true to his beliefs being opposed to neoconservative interventions.

And I never said or implied so, but I think he shares a lot of domestic political enemies with them.

> on a separate note, Anthropic has been having private meetings with religious leaders about Claude’s possible consciousness and moral status. I fear the anti-christ could just be an AI gone rogue.

IIRC, an AI not "gone rogue" could be an antichrist, too.