EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,120 words- 0:00 – 3:00
Leaving California vs leaving the country: why Thiel feels “stuck”
- PTPeter Thiel
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)
- JRJoe Rogan
What's up, man? Good to see you.
- PTPeter Thiel
Glad to be on the show.
- JRJoe Rogan
My, my pleasure.
- PTPeter Thiel
Thanks for having me.
- JRJoe Rogan
My pleasure. What's cracking? How you doing?
- PTPeter Thiel
Doing all right. Doing all right.
- JRJoe Rogan
We were just talking about how you're still trapped in LA. (laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
I'm still trapped in LA. I know. It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're friends with a lot of people out here, have you thought about, uh, jettisoning?
- PTPeter Thiel
I, uh, I talk about it all the time and, uh, it's ... But, you know, it's always, talk is often a substitute for action. It's always, does it, does it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
... lead to action or does it-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
... does it end up substituting for action? And, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a good point.
- PTPeter Thiel
But I have endless conversations about leaving. I moved from San Francisco to LA back in 2018. That felt, uh, felt about as big a move away as possible. And, uh, I keep, I keep ... The, the extreme thing I keep saying, and here you're gonna have to keep in mind talk is a substitute for action, the extreme thing I keep saying is I can't decide whether to leave, uh, the state or the country.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, boy.
- PTPeter Thiel
And, uh, it-
- JRJoe Rogan
If you went out of the country, where would you go?
- PTPeter Thiel
Man, I, I've, uh, it's, it's, it's tough to find places, because, uh, you know, there are a lot of problems in the US and most places are doing so much worse.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's not a good move to leave here. (laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
But, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
As fucked up as this place is.
- PTPeter Thiel
But, but I keep, uh, I keep, I keep thinking I shou- I shouldn't move twice. So I should either ... I can't decide whether I should move to Florida or should move to, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Costa Rica.
- PTPeter Thiel
... New Zealand or Costa Rica.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- 3:00 – 6:11
America’s deficit, debt servicing, and why the math is getting scary again
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah, I mean, th- so there, there are a lot that are, that are pretty obvious to, to articulate, and, uh, they're much easier described than, than solved. Like we have a crazy, crazy budget deficit.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
And presumably you have to do one of three things. Um, you have to raise taxes a lot, you have to cut spending a lot, or, um, you're just gonna keep borrowing money.
- JRJoe Rogan
D- isn't there, like, some enormous amount of our taxes that just go to the deficit?
- PTPeter Thiel
It's, it's not ... It's, it's not that high, but it's gone up a lot. And, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like what is it? What is it? Did- I thought it was like 34%-
- PTPeter Thiel
No, it peaked-
- JRJoe Rogan
... or something crazy.
- PTPeter Thiel
It peaked at, it peaked at three point ... I wanna say it peaked at 3.1% of GDP, which is, you know, um, maybe, t- um, 15, 20% of the budget. It peaked at 3.1% of GDP in 1991 and then it went all the way down to something like one and a half percent in the mid-2010s. And now it's crept back up to 3.1, 3.2% and s- and so we are at all-time highs as a percentage of GDP. And the way to understand the, the basic math is the, uh, the debt went up a crazy amount, but the interest rates went down. And from, you know, 2008 to 2021, for 13 years, we basically had zero interest rates with, you know, one brief blip under, um, Powell, but it was basically zero rates. And then you could h- borrow away more money and it wouldn't show up in servicing the debt because you just paid 0% interest on the T-bil- T-bills.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- PTPeter Thiel
And, um, and the thing that's, that's very dangerous seeming to me about the current fiscal situation is, um, the interest rates have gone back to positive like they were in the '90s and early 2000s, um, uh, mid-2000s and, uh, and it's just this incredibly large debt. And so we now have a, we now have a real runaway deficit problem, but, you know, people have been talking about this for 40 years and, uh, crying wolf for 40 years, so it's, it's very hard for people to take it seriously.
- JRJoe Rogan
Most people don't even understand what it means. Like when you say, "There's a deficit. We owe money." Okay, to who? How's that work?
- PTPeter Thiel
Um, uh, it's, well, it's to, yeah, it's people who, who bought, uh, who bought the bonds and it's ... You know, it's a l- a lot of it's to Americans, some of them are held by the Federal Reserve, decent amount are held by, by f- by foreigners at this point because, uh ... And it's, it's, it's, it's in some ways it's the opposite of the, of the, um, trade current account deficits. The US has been running these big current account deficits and then the foreigners end up with way more dollars than they, than they wanna spend on American goods or services and so they have to reinvest them in the US. You know, some w- some put it into houses or stocks, but a lot of it just goes into, into government debt. So it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Psh.
- PTPeter Thiel
In s- in some ways it's a function of the, of the chronic trade imbalances, chronic trade deficits.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, if you had supreme power, if, uh, Peter Thiel was the ruler of the world and you could fix this, what would you do?
- PTPeter Thiel
Man, I always find, I always find that hypothetical ... It's, it's a ridiculous hypothetical. You ask-
- JRJoe Rogan
It is ridiculous.
- PTPeter Thiel
... ridiculous hypotheticals, you get ridiculous answers.
- JRJoe Rogan
I want a ridiculous answer. That's what I like. (laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
But what could be done? Like, what could be done- first of all, what could be done to mitigate it and what could be done to solve it?
- 6:11 – 9:20
Social Security as pension vs welfare—and the politics of “means testing”
- PTPeter Thiel
You know, I think, I think, I think my, I think my answers are probably all in the, in the, you know, in the, in the very libertarian direction, so I, it would be sort of figure out ways to have smaller governments, figure out ways, you know, you know, to, um, increase the age on Social Security, means test Social Security so not everyone gets it, just figure out ways to, to gradually dial back, uh, you know, a lot of these government benefits. Um, and then, that's, you know, that's insanely unpopular, so it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that-
- PTPeter Thiel
It's completely unrealistic on that level.
- JRJoe Rogan
That bothers people that need Social Security.
- PTPeter Thiel
Well, I s- I said means tested.
- JRJoe Rogan
Means tested. So people who don't need it don't get it.
- PTPeter Thiel
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
So is Social Security only good if you're very wealthy? I don't even know how it works. Do you still get it?
- PTPeter Thiel
Ye- Yeah, basically anyone who ... Pretty much everyone gets it because it was original- originally, um, rationalized as a, uh, as a, um, as sort of a pension system, not as a welfare system. And so the, the fiction was you pay Social Security taxes and then, um, you're entitled to get a pension out in the form of Social Security.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
And, um, and because it was, uh, we're told this fiction that it was a form of, uh, it was a pension system instead of an intergenerational Ponzi scheme or something.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
Something like that. Um, you know, the fiction means everybody gets paid Social Security because it's a pension system, whereas if we were more honest and said it's, you know, it's just a welfare system, maybe you could, you could start dialing, uh, you could, you could, you could probably rationalize in a lot of ways.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's d- it's not related to how much you put into it, right? Like, how does Social Security work in terms of-
- PTPeter Thiel
It's partially, I think it's partially related. So I think there is, uh ... Now, I'm not a total expert on this stuff, but, uh, I think, um, I think you, there's some guaranteed minimum you get, and then, um, and then, and then if you put more in, you get somewhat more and then it's, it's capped at a certain amount.
- JRJoe Rogan
And even that certain amount-
- PTPeter Thiel
And, and that's why, that's why, that's why Social Security taxes are capped at something like, you know, $150,000 a year.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
And then there's this, and this is one of the, this is one of the really big tax increase proposals that's out there, is to, is to uncap it, which would effectively be a 12.4% income tax hike, you know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- PTPeter Thiel
... on all your income.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, just to Social Security?
- PTPeter Thiel
Sure. Because, uh, the, the argument is, the argu- the, the, the sort of progressive left Democrat argument is that, uh, is that it's, you know, why should you have a regressive Social Security tax? Why should you pay 12.4% or whatever the Social Security tax is, which half of it gets paid by, by you, half gets paid by your employer. But then it, it's, it's capped at, like, 140, 150K, so s- some level like that. And why should it be regressive, where if you make 500K or a million K a year, you pay zero tax o- on your marginal income?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
And that makes no sense if it's a welfare program. If it's a, if it's a retirement savings program and your, your payout's capped, then, you know, if you, y- you don't need to put in more than you get out.
- 9:20 – 13:07
California’s paradox: high output, bad governance, and the ‘Saudi Arabia’ analogy
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, that's logical, but there's not a lot of logic going on with the way people are talking about taxes today. Like, California just jacked their taxes up to 14 what? Was it 14.4?
- PTPeter Thiel
Something like that, yeah. 14.3, I think.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is hilarious.
- PTPeter Thiel
Maybe even more, yeah. 49 some- Yeah. 48.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, you want more money for doing a terrible job and having more people leave for the first time ever in, like, the history of the state.
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah, but it ... Look, it, it gets away with it.
- JRJoe Rogan
I know.
- PTPeter Thiel
And, uh, and so-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, people are forced with no choice. What are you gonna do?
- PTPeter Thiel
Uh, it is, it is ... I mean, I mean, there are people at the margins who leave, but, uh, but the state government still collects more and more in revenue. So it's, you know, you get, I don't know, you get 10% more revenues and 5% of the people leave, you still, you still increase the amount of revenues you're getting. It's, uh, it's, it's, it's inelastic enough that you, you're actually able to increase the revenues. I mean, this is sort of the, the crazy thing about California, is, uh, you know, there, there's always sort of a right wing or libertarian critique of California that, you know, it's, it's such a ridiculous place, it sh- it should just collapse, um, under its own ridiculousness. And, uh, it doesn't quite happen, you know? Um, the, the macroeconomics on it are, are pretty good, you know, 40 million people, the GDP's around four trillion. It's about the same as Germany with 80 million or Japan with 125 million. Japan has three times the population of California, same GDP means one third the per capita GDP. So there's some level on which, you know, California as a whole is working, even though it doesn't work from a governance point of view, it doesn't work for a lot of the people who live there. And, uh, the, the rough model I have for how to think of California is that it's kind of like Saudi Arabia, and, uh, you have a crazy religion, wokeism in California, Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. You know, not that many people believe it, but it, it distorts everything. And then, um, and then you have, like, oil fields in Saudi Arabia and you have the big tech companies in California, and the oil pays for everything. And, uh, and then you have a completely bloated, inefficient government sector and, uh, and you have sort of all sorts of distortions in the real estate market, where, uh, people also make, uh, lots of money and sort of the government and real estate are ways you redistribute the oil wealth or the, uh, you know, the, the, the big tech, uh, the big tech money in, in California. And, um, and it's, like, it's, it's not the way you might wanna design a system from scratch, but it's, it's pretty stable. And people have been saying Saudi Arabia's ridiculous, it's gonna collapse any year now.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
They've been saying that for 40 or 50 years, but, you know, if you have a giant oil field, you can pay for a lot of ridiculousness.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
I think that's, that's the way to, that's, that's the way you have to think-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
... of California.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the other thing is, you're also-
- PTPeter Thiel
There are things about it that are ridiculous, but there's something about it that, you know-... it, um, it doesn't naturally self-destruct overnight.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there's a lot of kick-ass people there, and there's a lot of people that are still generating enormous amounts of wealth there, and it's too difficult to just pack up and leave.
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah, I think it's something like four of the eight or nine companies with market capitalizations over a trillion dollars are based in California, so it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's amazing.
- PTPeter Thiel
It's Google, Apple, now NVIDIA, Meta. Um, I think, yeah, I think, I think Broadcom's close to that.
- JRJoe Rogan
And there's no ideal place to live either. It's not like California sucks, so there's a place that's got it totally dialed in with also that has an enormous GDP, also has an enormous population. There's not like one big city that's really dialed in.
- 13:07 – 20:38
Where would you actually move? Cities, zero-tax states, and lifestyle tradeoffs
- PTPeter Thiel
Well, it's ... There are, there are things that, that worked. So I looked, I looked at all the zero tax states in the US, and, uh, and it's always ... You don't ... You know, I think the way you asked the question gets at it, which is you don't live in a ... You know, in theory, a lot of s- stuff happens on a state level, but you don't live in a state. You live in a city. And so, um, if you're somewhat biased towards living in at least a moderately sized city, um, okay, I can ... There are, I think there are four states where there are no cities, Alaska, Wyoming, um, South Dakota, New Hampshire. There's zero tax, but, um, no cities to speak of. Um, and then you have, um, then you have Washington state with Seattle, where the weather is the worst in the country. You have, um, Nevada with Las- Las Vegas, which I'm not that big a fan of.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
And then that leaves three, three zero tax states. You have Texas, which I like as a state, but I'm not that big a fan of Austin, Dallas, or Houston. And I ... You know, it's a sort of, um ... Houston is just sort of an oil town, which is good if you're in that business, but otherwise not. Um, Dallas has sort of an inferiority complex to LA and New York.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
You know, which is not, not the healthiest attitude. And then, um, you know, I don't know. Austin's a government town and a college town and a wannabe hipster San Francisco town. So, you know, in my, my book, sort of three strikes and you're, you're kind of out too. And then that leaves, um, that leaves Nashville, Tennessee, which was ... And was ... And then, uh, or Miami, South Florida. And those, those would be my two top- top choices.
- JRJoe Rogan
Miami's fun, but I wouldn't want to live there. It's a fun place to visit. It's a little too crazy, a little too chaotic, a little too cocaine-fueled, a little too party, party, party.
- PTPeter Thiel
I think it's, I think it's pretty, I think it's pretty segmented from the tourist- the tourist strip from everything else. It, it probably is ... You know, there probably is something a little bit paradoxical about any place that gets lots of tourists, where-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
... um, you know, it's, it's, it's in some sense a vaca- ... Uh, there's some things that are great about it because so many tourists go, but then in some sense, it's, um, it creates a weird aesthetic because, uh, the, you know, the, the day-to-day vibe is that you don't, you don't work and you're just having fun or some- something like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, 'cause so many people are going there-
- PTPeter Thiel
And-
- JRJoe Rogan
... just to do that.
- PTPeter Thiel
And that's, that's probably a little bit off with the South Florida, the South Florida thing. But, um, but I think it's, um ... And then I think, uh, and I think Nashville is, is, is also sort of its own real place.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nashville's great. Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
So those, those would be my ... Those are the top two I-
- JRJoe Rogan
I could live in Nashville. No problem. Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
I'm probably always ... I'm always, I'm always too, uh ... You know, I ... Fifth grade onward since, you know, '70, '77, I lived in California, and, uh, and, and so I'm just a sucker for the weather. And I think there is no place besides coastal California where you have really good weather year round in the US. May- maybe Hawaii is pretty good. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Coastal California's tough to beat.
- PTPeter Thiel
And, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
And you're two hours from the mountains.
- PTPeter Thiel
Man, it's like, you know, it's mid-August here in Austin. This is just, it's just brutal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it?
- PTPeter Thiel
I, I think so.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really? That was too hot for you?
- PTPeter Thiel
It was too hot for me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Today's mild.
- PTPeter Thiel
I ... Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
What is it out there, like 80?
- PTPeter Thiel
All right.
- JRJoe Rogan
85?
- 20:38 – 24:49
Remote work limits and tech clustering: Detroit cautionary tale + crypto vs AI geography
- PTPeter Thiel
Well, I, I, I, I, I somehow think Austin was linked to California, and Miami was linked a little bit more to, to New York.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- PTPeter Thiel
And, um, it was a little bit, you know... A- all these differences, but, um, Austin was kind of pa- You know, a big part of the move were people from tech, from California, that moved, um, moved to Austin. You know, there's a part of the Miami, South Florida thing which was people from finance in New York, uh, New York City, that moved, um, moved to, to Florida. And the finance industry is less networked on New York City, so I think it is possible for people, if you run a, you know, private equity fund or if you work at a bank, it's possible for some of those functions to easily be moved to, to a different state. Um, the tech industry is crazily networked on California. It... Like, there's probably some way to do it. It's, um, it's, uh, it's not that easy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm. Yeah, it makes sense. And it makes sense too it's just the sheer numbers. I mean, when you're talking about all those corporations that are established and based in California, there's so many. They're so big. Just the sheer numbers of human beings that live there and work there that are involved in tech.
- PTPeter Thiel
Um, sure. But it, if it wasn't, if it wasn't as networked, you know, you could, you could prob- probably just move. You know, and, and maybe these things are networked still they're not. You know, D- Detroit was very networked. The car industry was super networked on Detroit for decades and decades, and Michigan got more and more mismanaged and people thought the network sort of protected them, because, you know, the big three car companies were in Detroit, but then you had all the supply chains were also in Detroit. And then eventually, it was just so ridiculous, people moved, um, started moving the factories outside of that area and it sort of unraveled. So that's... You know, it can also happen with California. It, it'll just take a lot.
- JRJoe Rogan
That would be insane if they just abandoned all the tech companies in California. I mean, just look at what happened at Flint, Michigan when all the auto factories pulled out.
- PTPeter Thiel
Well, it's, it's, um... Look, I, I think you can... You know, it's always... There are all these paradoxical histories, you know? The, the internet, the point of the internet in some sense was to eliminate the tyranny of place, and that was sort of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- PTPeter Thiel
... the idea. And then one of the paradoxes about the internet, history of the internet was that the internet companies, you know, were... You know, were all, you know, were all centered in, um, in California. And then there, yeah, there probably... There have been different, different waves of, um, of how networked, how, how non-networked they were. I think, uh, I think probably 2021, uh, sort of the, the COVID moving away from California, the, the big thing in tech was crypto. Um, and, um, and crypto, um, had this conceit of a, you know, alternate currency, decentralized, away from the central banks, but also the crypto companies, the, um, crypto protocols, you could do those from anywhere. You could do them outside the US. You could do them from Miami. And so crypto was something where, um, the tech could naturally, um, move out of California. And, and today probably the, the, um... I don't know, the core tech narrative has completely flipped to AI. And, uh, and if... And then there's something about AI that's, you know, very centralized. You know, I always ha- I had this one-liner years ago where it was, you know, if, if we say that crypto is libertarian, can we also say that AI is communist? Or something like this where the, you know, the natural structure for an AI company looks like it's a big company and then somehow the AI stuff is, uh, is-... feels like it's going to be dominated by the, the big tech companies in, um, in the San Francisco Bay area. And so if that's-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a very good turning point for people.
- PTPeter Thiel
... that's the fu- that's the future of tech-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
... the, um, the s- the s- the scale, the natural scale of the industry tells you that it's, uh, going to be extremely hard to get out of, you know, o- out of the San Francisco Bay area.
- 24:49 – 34:57
AI after ChatGPT: Turing test as the real milestone and why AGI may be the distraction
- JRJoe Rogan
When you look to the future and you try to just make a, just a guess as to how all this is going to turn out with AI, what do you think we're looking at over the next five years?
- PTPeter Thiel
Man, I, I think I should start by being modest in answering that question and saying that nobody has a clue.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is true. They, which pretty much all the experts say.
- PTPeter Thiel
You know, I, I would say, uh, let me, let me do sort of a histor- I, th- the riff I always had on this was that I can't stand any of the buzzwords and, uh, I felt AI, you know, there's all this big data, cloud computing. There were all these crazy buzzwords people had, and they always were ways to sort of abstract things and get away from, um, from, uh, from reality somehow. And, um, were not good ways of talking about things. And I thought AI was this incredible abstraction, because it can mean the next generation of computers. It can mean the last generation of computers. It can mean anything in between. And if you think about the AI discussion in the 2010s, pre-, um, OpenAI, ChatGPT, and the, the revolution of the last two years, but the 2010s AI discussion, maybe it was- So, so I'll start with the history before I get to the future. Uh, but the, the history of it was, it was maybe anchored on two, uh, two visions of what AI meant. And one was, um, Nick Bostrom, Oxford prof, who wrote this book, uh, Superintelligence, 2014. And it was basically AI was going to be this super-duper, um, intelligent thing, way, way, godlike intelligence, way smarter than any, any human being. And, um, and then there was sort of the, the, I don't know, the CCP, Chinese Communist rebuttal, the Kai-Fu Lee book from 2018, AI Superpowers. And I think the subtitle was something like, the race for AI between Silicon Valley and China, or something like this. And, um, it, it was sort of, it defined AI as, it was fairly low tech. It was just surveillance. Um, you know, facial recognition technology. Um, we would just have this sort of totalitarian, Stalinist monitoring. It didn't require very much innovation. It just required that you apply things. And basically, the subtext was China's going to win because we have no ethical qualms in China about, um, applying this, this sort of basic machine learning to, uh, to sort of measuring or controlling the p- the, the population. And those were sort of like, say, two extreme, um, competing visions of, of what AI would mean in the, in the 2010s and it sort of, maybe were sort of the anchors of, of, of the AI debate. And then, um, and then, you know, what, what happened in some sense with, um, ChatGPT in late '22, early '23 was, um, was that, uh, the achievement you, you got, you did not get superintelligence. It was not just surveillance tech. But it was you, you, you actually got to the Holy Grail of what people would have defined AI as from 1950 to 2010 for the previous 60 years, before the 2010s. People have always said AI, the definition of AI is passing the Turing test. And the Turing test, it, it basically means that the computer can fool you into thinking that it's a human being. And, um, and, um, and it's a somewhat fuzzy test because, you know, obviously you could have an expert on the computer, a non-expert. You know, uh, it's, you know, does, does it fool you all the time or some of the time? How good is it? But to first approximation, the Turing test, you know, we weren't even close to passing it in 2021, and then, you know, ChatGPT basically passes the Turing test. At least for, like, let's say, an IQ 100 average person. Um, it can, uh, it can, um, it's passed the Turing test. And that was, that was the Holy Grail. That was the Holy Grail of, uh, AI research for the previous 60 years. And, and, and so there's, I don't know, there's probably some psychological or sociological history where we can say that this weird debate between Bostrom about superintelligence and Kai-Fu Lee about surveillance tech was like this almost like psychological suppression people had, where they were not thinking, they, they lost track of the Turing test, of the Holy Grail, of, because it was about to happen, and it was such a significant, such an important thing that you didn't even wanna think about. So I'm t- I'm tempted to give almost a psychological repression-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
... theory of, of the 2010s debates. But, um, be that as it may, the Turing test gets, uh, gets passed and that's, yeah, that's an extraordinary achievement. And then, you know, may- maybe, um, may- and then, you know, where d- where does it go from here? There, there probably are ways you can refi- ref- refine these. It's still gonna be, you know, a, a long time to apply it. There is a question. There's this AGI discussion. You know, will we get Artificial General Intelligence? Which is a hopelessly vague concept, which, you know, general intelligence could be just a generally smart human being, so is that just a person with an IQ of 130? Or is it superintelligence? Is it godlike intelligence? Uh, so it's sort of an ambiguous thing. Um, but I, I keep thinking that, uh...... maybe the AGI question's less important than passing the Turing test. If, if we got AGI, if we got s- let's say, super intelligence, if we got... That would be interesting to Mr. God, because, um, you'd have a competi- you'd have competition for being God. But, um, but surely, the Turing test is more important for us humans, because it's either a complement or a substitute to humans, and so it's... Yeah. It, it's gonna rearrange the economic, cultural, political structure of our society in extremely dramatic ways. And, and I think maybe what's already happened is much more important than anything else that's gonna be done.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
And yet, it's just... It's gonna be a long ways in applying it. One, one last thought. The, you know, the, the, um ... the analogy I'm always tempted to go to, and it's, these things are never... Historical analogies are never perfect, but it's, it's that maybe AI in 2023, '24 is like... It's like the internet in 1999, where on one level it's clear the internet's going to be big and get ver- a lot bigger, and it's gonna dominate the economy, it's gonna rearrange the society in the 21st century. And then, at the same time, it was a complete bubble and, um, people had no idea how the business models worked. Um, you know, almost everything blew up. It, it took, you know... It didn't take that long in the scheme of things. It took, you know, 15, 20 years for it to become super dominant. But, uh, it didn't happen sort of in 18 months as people fantasized in, in 1999. And, uh, and maybe, maybe, maybe what we have in AI is, is, is something like this. It's, um, figuring out how to actually apply it, you know, h- um, in sort of all these different ways is gonna take something like two decades. But, but that doesn't distract from it being a really big deal.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is a really big deal, and I think you're right about the Turing test. Uh, I... Do you think that the lack of acknowledgement or the public celebration, or at least, uh, th- this, like, mainstream discussion, like, which I think should be everywhere, that we've passed the Turing test, do you think it's connected to the fact this stuff accelerates so rapidly that even though we've essentially breached this new territory, it... We still know that GPT-5 is gonna be better, GPT-6 is gonna be insane. And then they're working on these right now, and the, and the change is happening so quickly we're almost, uh, a little reluctant to acknowledge where we're at.
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah. Uh, you know, I, I have, I've often... I've, you know, probably for 15 years or so, often been on the side that there isn't that much progress in science or tech, or not as much as Silicon Valley likes to claim. And, um, and even on the AI level, I think it's a massive technical achievement. It's still an open question. You know, is it actually gonna lead to much higher living standards for everybody? You know, the internet was a massive achievement. How much did it raise people's living standards? Uh, much, much trickier question. So, um, so I, I s- I... But, um, but in, in this world where not much has happened, one of the paradoxes of a, of an era of relative tech stagnation, um, is that when something does happen, we don't even know how to process it. So, you know, I think, I think Bitcoin was a... I mean, it was a big invention. We can debate whether it was good or bad. But it was a pretty big deal, and it was, um, systematically under-estimated for at least, you know, the first, uh, um, 10, 11 years. And, uh, y- y- you know, you could, you could trade it. It went up smoothly for 10, 11 years. It didn't get repriced all at once because, uh, we're in a world where nothing big ever happens. And, um, and so we, we have no way of processing it when something pretty big happens. The internet was pretty big in '99. Bitcoin was moderately big. The internet was really big. Bitcoin was moderately big. And I'd say, um, passing the Turing test is really big. It's on the same scale as the internet. And, uh, and because, uh, our, our lived experience is that so little has felt like it's been changing for the last few decades, we're, we're probably underestimating it.
- 34:57 – 40:54
Stagnation in ‘atoms’ vs progress in ‘bits’: why modern life can feel unchanged
- JRJoe Rogan
It's interesting that you say that s- so little, uh, we feel like so little has changed, because if you're a person... How old are you?
- PTPeter Thiel
Um, same age as you are.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- PTPeter Thiel
Born 1967.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, in our age, we've seen all the change. Right? We saw the, uh, end of the Cold War. We saw answering machines, we saw VHS tapes, then we saw the internet. And then where we're at right now, which is like this bizarre moment in time where people carry the internet around with them in their pocket every day. And these super sophisticated computers that are ubiquitous, everybody has one, there's, uh, incredible technology that's being ramped up every year. They're getting better all the time. And now there's AI. There's AI on your phone. You could access ChatGPT and a bunch of different programs on your phone.
- PTPeter Thiel
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I think that's a s- an insane change. I, I think that that's, uh, one of the most, uh... Especially with the use of social media, it's one of the most bizarre changes I think our culture's ever... The most bizarre.
- PTPeter Thiel
Well, it's, it can be a, it can be a big change culturally or, or politically. Um, but, uh, the... You know, the kinds of questions I would, I'd ask is, how do you measure it economically? Does it imp- how much does it change GDP? How much does it change productivity? Um, and, um ... and certainly, um, the, the story I would generally tell for the last 50 years, since the 1970s, early '70s, is that we've been not absolute stagnation, we've been in a relative stagnation where there has been, um, very limited progress in the world of atoms, the world of physical things.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
Um, um, and, uh, there has been, um, a lot of progress in the world of bits. Information, computers, internet, mobile internet, you know, now, now AI.
- JRJoe Rogan
What are you referring to when you're saying the w- the world of physical things?
- PTPeter Thiel
Um, you know, it's any... Um, it's... Well, if, if we had to find technology, if we were sitting here in 1967, th- the year we were born, and we had a discussion about technology, what technology would have meant? Would it... It would have meant computers. It would have also meant rockets. It would have meant super sonic airplanes. It would have meant, um, new medicines. It would have meant the green revolution, agriculture, maybe underwater cities. Um, you know, it, it sort of had bec- and it... Because technology simply gets defined as that which is changing, that which is progressing, and so there was progress on all these fronts. T- today, last 20 years, when you talk about technology, you're normally just talking about information technology. Technology has been reduced to meaning computers, and that tells you that the structure of progress has been weird. There's been this narrow cone of very intense progress around the world of bits, around the world of computers, and then all the other areas have been relatively stagnant. We're not moving any faster. You know, the Concorde got de-commissioned in 2003 or whenever, um, and then with all the low-tech airport security measures, it takes even longer to fly, to get through all, all of them fr- from, from one city to the next. You know, the highways have gone backwards because there are more traffic jams. We haven't figured out ways around those. So there's sort of... We're literally moving slower than we were 40 or 50 years ago. Um, and, um, and then, yeah, a- as su- some... Uh, and that's, that's sort of the, uh, that's sort of the... Um, and then, you know, the... And then of course, um, there's also a sense in which, uh, these, uh, the screens and the devices, you know, have, have this effect distracting us from this, so you know, when you're, you know, riding a hundred-year-old subway in New York City and you're looking at your iPhone, you can, you can look and wow, this is this cool new gadget, but you're also being distracted from the fact that your lived environment hasn't changed, you know, in a hundred years. And, and, and so there's, yeah, there's a question, how important is this world of bits versus, versus the world of atoms? You know, I would say, as human beings we're physically embodied in a material world, and so I, I would, I would always say this world of atoms is pretty important, and when that's pretty stagnant, you know, there's a lot of stuff that, that doesn't make sense. I, I was an undergraduate at Stanford late '80s, and at the time, um, in retrospect, every engineering area would've been a bad thing to go into, you know? Mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, all these engineering fields where you're tinkering and trying to do new things, because these things turned out to be stuck, they were regulated, you c- couldn't come up with new things to do. Nuclear engineering, aero astro engineering, people already knew those were really bad ones to go into. They were, you know, outlawed. You weren't gonna make any progress in n- nuclear reactor designs or, or stuff like that. Um, electrical engineering, which was the one that's sort of adjacent to making semiconductors, that one was still okay. And then the only field that, uh, was actually gonna progress a lot was computer science, and, um, and again, you know, it's, it's been very powerful, but that was not the felt sense in the 1980s. In the 1980s, computer science was this ridiculous inferior subject. Um, you know, I al- I always... The, the linguistic cut is always when, when people use the word "science," I'm in favor of science, I'm not in favor of "science" in quotes, and when... Th- it's always a tell that it's not real science, and so when we call it climate science or political science or social science, um, you know, you're just sort of making it up and you have an inferiority complex...
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- PTPeter Thiel
... to real science or something like physics or chemistry, and computer science was in the same category as social science or political science. It was, it was a fake field for people who found electrical engineering or math way too hard and, um, um, and, and sort of dropped out of, out of the real, the real science and real, um, real engineering fields.
- 40:54 – 48:30
‘Science’ as ideology: climate debate, policy incentives, and the case for nuclear energy density
- JRJoe Rogan
You don't feel that climate science is a real science?
- PTPeter Thiel
It's, it is, um, it's, it's, um, well, uh, uh... I mean, it's... I, I, I... There's several different things one could say. It's, uh, it's possible climate change is happening, it's possible we don't have great accounts of why that's going on, so I'm not, I'm not questioning any of those things, but, uh, but how scientific it is, um, I, I don't think, um, I don't think it's, it's a place where we have really vigorous debates. You know, may- maybe the climate is increasing because of carbon dioxide emissions, t- temperatures are going up. Maybe it's methane. Maybe it's people are eating too much steak. S- it's the c- cows flatulating or, and you have to measure, you know, how a- how much is methane a greenhouse gas versus, versus carbon dioxide. I don't think they're, I don't think they're rigorously doing that stuff scientifically, and, and I think the fact that it's called climate science tells you that it's more dogmatic than, than s- than anything that's truly science should be.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why does that-
- PTPeter Thiel
It doesn't mean... Dogma doesn't mean that it's wrong, but it is-
- JRJoe Rogan
But why is the fact that it's called climate science mean that it's more dogmatic? Because if you said nuclear science, who wouldn't question it, right? It's-
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah, but it's... No one calls it nuclear science, they call it nuclear engineering.
- JRJoe Rogan
Interesting.
- PTPeter Thiel
Because... So I'm, I'm just-
- JRJoe Rogan
I see what you're saying.
- PTPeter Thiel
The only, the only thing is, I was just making, I'm just making a narrow linguistic point.
- JRJoe Rogan
Is there anything called science that is legitimately science?
- PTPeter Thiel
Well, at this point people say computer science has worked, but...
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
In the 1980s, all I'm saying is, it was in the same category as let's say social science, political science. It was, it was, uh, it was a tell that the people doing it kind of deep down knew they, they weren't doing real science.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, there's certainly ideology that's connected to climate science, and then there's certainly corporations that are invested in this, uh, uh, this prospect of green energy and the concept of green energy and they're profiting off of it, and...... pushing these d- different things, whether it be electric car mandates or whatever it is. Like California, I think they, it's 30, 20-35, they have, uh, a mandate that all new vehicles have to be electric, which is hilarious when you're-
- PTPeter Thiel
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
... connected to a grid that can't support the electric cars it currently has. After he, they r- said that, within a month or two, Gavin Newsom asked people to not charge their Teslas, because it was summer and the grid was fucked. (laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah, look, it's, it, it, it was all linked into all these ideological-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
... projects in all these ways, and, uh, y- there's, you know, there's, there's an environmental project, which is, you know ... And m- and maybe, maybe it shouldn't be scientific, you know? There's the, you know, the hardcore environmentalist argument is, "We only have one planet and we don't have time to do science. I- if we, if we have to do rigorous science and you can prove that we're overheating, it'll be too late." And, um, and so if you're a hardcore environmentalist, you know, you don't wanna have as high a standard of science. Yeah, my, my intuition is certainly when, when you go away from that, you end up with things that are too dogmatic, too ideological. May- maybe it doesn't even work even if the planet's getting warmer. You know, maybe climate science is, is not ... Like, my, my question is, is car- like, maybe methane is a worse, um ... Is, is, is it more dangerous greenhouse gas than, uh, carbon dioxide? We're not, we're not even capable of measuring that.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, we're also ignoring certain things like regenerative farms that sequester carbon. W- that, that ... And then y- you have people like Bill Gates saying that planting trees to deal with carbon is ridiculous, that's a ridiculous way to do it. Like, how is that ridiculous? It's they literally turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. It is their fool, their food. That's what the food of plants is, that's, that's what powers the, the whole plant life and the way we have this symbiotic relationship with them, th- like ...
- PTPeter Thiel
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the more carbon dioxide, is the greener it is, which is why it's greener today on Earth than it has been in 100 years.
- PTPeter Thiel
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
These are all facts that are inconvenient to people that have a very specific narrow window of how to approach this.
- PTPeter Thiel
Sure. Although, you know, there probably are ways to steelman the other side too, where, um, where maybe, maybe, um ... You know, the, the original 1970s, uh, you know, I think the manifesto that's always very interesting from the other side was this, uh, book by the Club of Rome, 1972, The Limits of Growth, and it's, you can't have ... Y- we need to head towards a society in which there's 0%, there's very limited growth, because if you have unlimited growth, you're gonna run out of resources. If you don't run out of resources, you'll hit a pollution constraint. But the, um ... In the 1970s it was, um, you're gonna have overpopulation, um, you're gonna run out of oil. We had the oil shocks. Um, and then, um, and then by the '90s, it was, it sort of morphed into more of the pollution problem with, uh, with carbon dioxide, climate change, other, other environmental things. But, uh, but there is sort of, um ... You, you know, it's ... You know, there's been some, you know, some improvement in, in oil, carbon fuels with fracking, things like this in Texas. It's, um, it's not at the scale that's been enough to, uh, um, you know, give an American standard of living to the whole planet. You know, we consume 100 million barrels, um, of oil, um, you know, a day globally. Um, maybe fracking can add 10%, 10 million to that. If everybody on this planet has an American standard of living, it's something like three, 300, 400 million barrels of oil, and (Joe scoffs) I don't, I don't think that's there. So that's, that's kind of ... I, I always wondered whether that was the, that was the real environmental argument is, w- we can't have an American standard of living for the whole planet. We somehow can't justify this degree of inequality. And, um, and therefore, you know, we have to figure out ways to dial back and, you know, tax the carbon, restrict it, and, uh, and maybe, you know, maybe that's ... There's s- some sort of a Malthusian calculus that's more about resources than about pollution.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm. Um, how much of that could, th- the, the demand for oil could be mitigated by nuclear?
- PTPeter Thiel
Uh ... It ... You pro- you probably could mitigate it a lot. Uh, there's ... There's a question why th- why the nuclear thing has gone so wrong. It's ... Um, especially if you, if you have electric vehicles, right? If you-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
... you know, it's, uh ... Um, the combustion engine's probably hard to get nuclear to work, but if you, um, if you shift to electric vehicles, you can, you can charge them, you know, your Tesla cars at night. Um, and that, that would seemingly work. Um, and there's definitely, yeah, there's definitely a history of energy where it was always in the direction of, you know, more intense use. It went from wood to coal to oil, which is a more compact form of energy, and in a way takes up less of the environment. And then if we move from oil to uranium, that's even, you know, it, it, it, it, it's even smaller. And so in a sense, the smaller, the more dense the energy is, the less of the environment it takes up. And when we go back, when we go from oil to natural gas, which takes up more space, and from natural gas to solar or wind, we have to, you know, you have to pollute the whole environment by putting up windmills everywhere. Or you have to, you know-
- 48:30 – 55:36
Why nuclear power stalled: accidents vs dual-use weapons and global governance problems
- PTPeter Thiel
And so, um, and so there was a way, there was a way that nuclear was supposed to be the, uh, the, the energy mode of the, the 21st century. And then, yeah, there, there are all these, there are these historical questions. Why did it, why did it get stopped? Why did we not, uh, why did we not go down that route? The, um-You know, the, the standard explanation of why it stopped, um, was that, uh, it was, um, there were all these dangers. We had Three Mile Island, 1979, you know, Chernobyl in, um, in, uh, 1986, and then the Fukushima one in Japan, I think, uh, 2011. And, uh, you had these sort of- you had these various ac- accidents. Um, my alternate theory on why, uh, why nuclear energy really stopped is that it, um, it, it was, um, it was sort of dystopian or even apocalyptic because it turned out that it was all, um... it, it turned out to be very dual use. If you build nuclear power plants, um, uh, it's, it's only sort of one step away from, uh, building nuclear weapons. And, uh, and it turned out to be a lot trickier to, um, to separate those two things out than it looked. And I think the, you know, the signature moment was 1974 or '75 when India gets the nuclear bomb and I th- the US, I believe, had transferred the nuclear reactor technology to India. We thought they couldn't weaponize it, and then it turned out it was pretty easy to weaponize.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
And then the, and then sort of the geopolitical problem with, uh, with nuclear power was you either, you know, um, you need a double standard where we n- we have nuclear power in the US, but we don't allow other countries to have nuclear power because the US gets to keep its nuclear weapons. We don't let 100 other countries have nuclear weapons, and this, that's an extreme double standard, probably a little bit hard to justify. Um, or, um, or you need some kind of really effective global governance where you have a one world government that regulates all this stuff, which doesn't sound that good either. And, uh, and then sort of the compromise was just to, um, to, um, regulate it so much that, uh, you know, maybe the, the nuclear plants got grandfathered in, but it became too expensive to build new ones.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus.
- PTPeter Thiel
Like, even China, which is the country where they're building the most nuclear power plants, they built way less than people expected a decade ago because, um, you know, they, they don't trust, they don't trust their own designs. And so they have to copy the over safety, over-protected designs from the West and the nuclear plants. Nuclear power costs too much money. It's cheaper to do coal.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- PTPeter Thiel
So, um, so if I, you know, I'm not getting the numbers exactly right, but if you look at what percent of Chinese electricity was nuclear, it was- it wasn't that high. It was like maybe four or 5% in 2013, 2014 and the percent hasn't gone up in 10 years because, you know, they've maybe doubled the amount of electricity they use and maybe they doubled the nuclear, but the relative percentage is still, is still a pretty small part of the mix because it's just more expensive when you have these, you know, over-safety designed reactors. There are probably ways to build small reactors, um, that, that, that are, that are way cheaper, but then you still have this, you still have this dual use thing, you know? Do you, do you create plutonium? Do you, you know... are, are there ways you can create a pathway to building, uh, more nuclear weapons?
- JRJoe Rogan
And if there was innovation, if nuclear engineering had gotten to a point where, you know, let's say there wasn't Three Mile Island or Chernobyl didn't happen, do you think that it would've gotten to a much more efficient and much more effective version by now?
- PTPeter Thiel
Well, my, my understanding is there are... we ha- we have way, we have way more efficient designs. We have small... you can, you can do small reactor designs, which, which are... you don't need this giant containment structure, so it costs much less per kilowatt hour of, of electricity you produce. So I, I think we have those designs. They're, they're just not allowed. And then, but then I think the problem is that, um, if you were able to build them in all these countries all over the world, you still have this dual use problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
And I... and again, my alternate history of what really went wrong with nuclear power, it wasn't Three Mile Island, it wasn't Chernobyl, that's the, that's the official story. The real story was India getting the bomb.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. That makes sense. It completely makes sense. Geez, Louise.
- PTPeter Thiel
And then this is, you know, this is always, you know, this is always the question about, uh, um... there's always a big picture question people ask me, you know, uh, you know, if, if, if I'm right about this picture of, you know, this slowdown in tech, this, this sort of stagnation in many, many dimensions and then there's always a question, you know, wh- why did this happen? And, um, and my cop-out answer is always, uh, why questions are overdetermined. Uh, because, you know, um, it can be... there, there are multiple reasons, and so it could be... why it could be we became a more feminized, risk-averse society. It could be that, uh, the education system worked w- less well. It could be that we were just out of ideas. The easy ideas have been found, the hard ideas, the cupboard, nature's cupboard was bare. The low hanging fruit had been picked so that it can be overdetermined. But I think, I think one dimension that's not to be underrated for the science and tech stagnation was that, uh, an awful lot of science and technology had this dystopian or apocalyptic, uh, dimension. And, uh, and probably what happened at, you know, Los Alamos in 1945 and then, uh, with, with the thermonuclear weapons in the early '50s, um, it took a while for it to really seep in, but it had this sort of delayed effect where, you know, maybe, maybe a s- a stagnant world in which the physicists don't get to do anything and they have to putter around with DEI and, um, you're not... you know, um, but, uh, you don't build weapons that blow up the world anymore.... you know, is that a, is that a feature or a bug?
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
And so the stagnation was sort of, was sort of like this, this response. And so, it sucks that we've lived in this world for 50 years where a lot of stuff has been inert. But, um, if we had a world that was still accelerating on all these dimensions, with supersonics and hypersonic planes and hypersonic weapons and, you know, modular nuclear reactors, maybe we wouldn't be sitting here and the whole world would've already blown up. And so we're, we're in that, we're in the stagnant path of the multiverse because it had, it had this partially protective thing, even though in all these other ways I feel it's, it's deeply deranged our society.
- 55:36 – 1:17:31
Civilization collapse, pyramids, and Girard/Frazer: engineering mystery vs motivational mystery
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a very interesting perspective and it makes a lot of sense. It really does. And particularly, the dual use thing with nuclear power, and especially distributing that to other countries. When you talk about the stagnation in this country, like, I don't know how much you follow this whole UAP nonsense. I know we met ... What was that guy's name, at your place? The, uh, the guy who did Chariots of the Gods?
- PTPeter Thiel
Oh, uh, von Däniken.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yeah.
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah. You, you, you didn't li- you thought he was too crazy. You li- you like Hancock, but you don't like von Däniken.
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh, it's ... I didn't think he's too crazy. He just willfully, in my opinion, ignores evidence that would show that some of the things that he's saying have already been solved.
- PTPeter Thiel
Hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I think his, his hypothesis is all related to this concept that we have been visited and that that's how all these things were built, and that this technology was brought here from another world. And I think he's very ideologically locked into these ideas. And I think a much more compelling idea is that there were very advanced cultures, for some reason-
- PTPeter Thiel
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 10,000 years ago, whatever it was, whatever the year was where they, they built some of the insane structures. It's, uh, 45, a hundred years ago, they roughly think the pyramids were built. Like, what- whatever the fuck was going on there, I think those were human beings. I think those were human beings in that place, in that time, and I think they had some sort of very sophisticated technology that was lost. And things can get lost. Things can get lost in cataclysms.
- PTPeter Thiel
Mm-hmm. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Things can get lost in ... They can get lost in disease and famine and all ... There's all sorts of war, all sorts of reasons, the burning of the Library of Alexandria. There's all sorts of ways that technology gets lost forever. And you can have, today, someone living in Los Angeles, in the most sophisticated high-tech society the world has ever known, while you still have people that live in the Amazon that live in the same way that they have lived for thousands of years. So those things can happen-
- PTPeter Thiel
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in the same planet at the same time. And I think while the rest of the world was essentially operating at a much lower vibration, there were people in Egypt that were doing some extraordinary things. Um, I don't know how they got the information. Maybe they did get it from visitors. Maybe they did. But there's no real compelling evidence that they did. I think there's much more compelling evidence that a cataclysm happened. Um, when you look at the Younger Dryas Impact theory, it's all entirely based on science. It's entirely based on core samples-
- PTPeter Thiel
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and iridium content. And, and, uh, also massive changes in the environment over a very short period of time, particularly the, uh, melting of the icecaps in North America, and, uh, just impact craters all around the world that we know something happened, roughly 11,000 years ago, and probably again 10,000 years ago. I think it's a regular occurrence on this planet that things go sideways and there's massive natural disasters. And I think that it's-
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah. There's the-
- JRJoe Rogan
... very likely that-
- PTPeter Thiel
There's the, there's the Bronze Age civilization collapse somewhere in the mid-12th century BC.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
And, um, and probably the, um ... You know, in some ways, the, the one in which we have the best history is the fall of the Roman Empire-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- PTPeter Thiel
... which was obviously-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- PTPeter Thiel
... the culmination of the classical world. And, uh, it somehow, it somehow extrem- extremely unraveled. So my ... Yeah, I think, I think my, my view on it is probably somewhere between yours and the, um, the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Von Däniken?
- PTPeter Thiel
No, not von Däniken. I'm, I'm more-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PTPeter Thiel
... on the, uh, more on the, more on the, uh, prob- uh, the other side. But let me, let me s- let me try to define why this ... We probably agree on wh- why this is so important today. This is not just of antiquarian interest.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- PTPeter Thiel
And th- the reason it matters today is because the alternative. And if, if, if, if you say civilization has seen great rises and falls, it's gone through these great cycles. Um, you know, may- maybe the Bronze Age civilizations were very advanced, but someone came up with iron weapons, so there was just one dimension where they progressed, but then everything else they could destroy. And so, um, uh, or, you know, the fall of the Roman Empire was, again, this, you know, pretty cataclysmic thing, where it was ... There were diseases and, you know, and then there were political things that unraveled. But, uh, somehow, you know, it was, was a massive regression for, you know, four, five, 600 years into the, into the Dark Ages. And, um, the, um, the, the sort of naive, the progressive views, things always just got monotonically better. And, uh, there's sort of this revisionist, purely progressive history, where even the Roman Empire didn't decline. And even ... You know, this ... One, one d- one sort of stupid way to quantify this stuff is with pure demographics. And so it's the question, how many people lived in the past? And, um, and the rises and falls of civilization story is there were more people who lived in the Roman Empire because it was more advanced, it could support a larger population, and then the population declined. You know, city of Rome maybe had a million people at its peak, and then by, you know, I don't know, 650 AD, it's, maybe it's down to-... 10,000 people or less. It, you have this-
- 1:17:31 – 1:32:56
What made humans human: discontinuities, language, imitation, and the shadow of violence
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you seen Chimp Empire?
- PTPeter Thiel
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
Chimp Empire is a fascinating documentary series on Netflix where these scientists had been embedded with this tribe of chimpanzees for decades. And so because they were embedded, they had very specific rules. You ... Has to maintain at least 20 yards from you and any of the chimps. No food. You can never have food. And don't look them in the eyes. And as long as you do that, they don't feel you're a threat and they think of you as a natural part of their environment, almost like you don't exist.
- PTPeter Thiel
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
They ... And they behave completely naturally. Well, it shows in that, that sometimes it's not the largest strongest one, and that some chimps form bonds with other chimps and they form coalitions. And they do have some sort of politicking, and they do help each other. They groom each other. They do specific things for each other. And then one of the things that happens also, they get invaded by other chimps, and that chimps leave and they go on patrol and other chimps gang up on them and kill them, and they try to fight and battle over resources. So it's not nearly as cut and dry as the strongest chimp prevails, 'cause one of the chimps that was dominant was an older chimp and he was smaller than some of the other chimps, but he had formed a coalition with all these other chimps and they all respected him, and they all knew that they would be treated fairly. And being treated fairly is a very important thing with chimpanzees. They get very jealous if they think that things are not fair, which is why that guy was attacked. And, uh, you know that guy who had a, um-
- PTPeter Thiel
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... pet chimpanzee. He brought it a birthday cake. The other chimps weren't getting a piece of the cake and the ... Someone had fucked up and left a door open. They got out and they mauled this guy because he didn't give them some of the cake.
- PTPeter Thiel
Yeah. So I, I find all of that quite plausible, but I think-... both of us can be correct. So, there's some... The, the, the true story of hominization, of how we became humans, there's a way to tell it where it's continuous with our animal past, and where it's just, you know, there's things like this w- with the chimpanzees or the baboons, or, you know, um, other primates. And then, um, there is a part of the story that I think is also more discontinuous. Um, and, um, in my, my judgment is we probably, you know, in a, in a Darwinian context, we always stress the continuity. Um, you know, I'm, I'm always a little bit the contrarian, and so, um, I, I believe in Darwin's theory, but, uh, I think, uh, I think, uh, we should also be skeptical of ways it's too dogmatic. And, uh, and it... Darwin's theories make us gloss over the discontinuities. And I think, you know, the one, one type of in- and this doesn't have to happen overnight, but one type of fairly dramatic discontinuity is that, um, you know, is that humans have something like language.
Episode duration: 3:30:33
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