you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 19 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Effective altruism has more than its share of critics. But Peter Thiel, the billionaire cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, is unusual in that, when he describes us as the “Antichrist,” he does not mean this as a generic slur but rather as a specific claim that we oppose Jesus Christ in the Second Coming.

O-kay...

My attempted secular version of his argument:

But ... why?

  • source
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    With his all-consuming fear of death, Thiel is about as far from being a Christian as one can get. All his antichrist talk is a nakedly transparent attempt to gas up the rubes so they remain on the side of the billionaires even after Trump gives up the ghost. He doesn't believe a single thing he's saying.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Having spent too much time listening to his shit, i don't think it's purely propagandistic, what he describes is too esoteric to work as effective propaganda, I think some of it is Nazi-being-drawn-to-the-occult type of shit.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    @TinyTimmyTokyo All-consuming fear of death is not hardly antithetical to Christianity, merely to its self-presentation. For a great many Christians the whole point of Christianity is escaping death. Fred Clark, himself a Christian, points this out as a major theme in his highly-critical review of the Left Behind books. He's hardly the only one to notice it. https://youtu.be/tLd7BuiC5co?t=162

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Try not to steelman challenge: level EA (impossible)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Steelmanning is great. We can say whatever we want against them, and when they then get mad we can just go 'well you didn't properly steelman my argument', and have them spin around in circles while we do something important, like chores in the house.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Depends what you mean by "steelman". If you take their definition at it's word, then they fail to try all the time, just look at any of their attempts at understanding leftist writing or thought. Of course, it often actually means "entirely rebuild the opposing argument into something different" (because they don't have a basic humanities education or don't want to actually properly read leftist thought) and they can't resist doing that!

  • source
  • parent