'Technology Is at the Center'

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter Thiel on liberty and scientific progress

Ronald Bailey from the May 2008 issue

(Page 3 of 4)

reason: But you’re betting that in fact there is a Singularity in the human future?

Thiel: By definition, these are one-time, nonrepeatable events. Assigning probabilities to them is not an easy exercise. There’s something about the idea of a Singularity that is kind of unscientific, because you can’t really do an experiment. We can’t say, “What’s the probability this is going to happen?” We can’t assign numbers to this, but falsifiability I think is a bit too strong a criterion. We couldn’t have assigned numbers to the probability of a communist revolution in the early 20th century, yet people would have done well to worry about that.

reason: There’s another popular narrative for the 21st century that says humanity is going to wreck the planet. Are the environmentalist doomsayers right?

Thiel: My sense is that they’re not right. I’m not an expert on it, but what I think is different from climate-change catastrophe vs. the Singularity is that climate seems like such a pedestrian thing to talk about. You talk about it every day. There’s a tendency to overdramatize the climate, and it’s something everybody can have opinions about. So I don’t think there’s a cognitive bias where people are incapable of imagining the world’s climate changing. That seems like a very easy thing for people to imagine, and maybe it’s also an easy thing for people to get hysterical about. On the other hand, computers running the world or this radical progress of technology —that’s something where I think there’s just no imagination at all.

reason: Why are you supporting the Singularity Institute?

Thiel: I think it’s a group of really smart people working on an important problem. I think that the basic rule on philanthropy that I have is that I want to donate money to causes that are worthwhile but where there are no market-based mechanisms for them. There is a category of things that would benefit all of humanity but where the benefits are very diffuse and the costs are concentrated. Maybe it’s very long-term. So I focused my philanthropy on things with a 20-, 30-, 40-year horizon. The horizons are too long for a for-profit company to take advantage of, and the government and universities are not pushing things because maybe it’s too unconventional or it doesn’t easily fit into a particular political agenda or vision of the future. Those areas are probably systematically underfunded. It may be the only area of philanthropy that’s underfunded.

reason: And you would think that the Singularity Institute is an example of that?

Thiel: I think it’s a great example. I also have been doing some work on radical life extension, which I think is similarly underfunded.

reason: What are you hoping to get out of the research? Do you want to benefit from it personally?

Thiel: I certainly think living longer is not a generally bad thing. I think that making sure the technology arc is positive rather than negative is not generally a bad thing. I think it probably would be somewhat mistaken to frame it in too narrowly selfish a way. It may be the case that the work being done on life extension is going to benefit people 100 or 200 years from now, but I think it still is a good thing to do it. My own guess is that I will live to age 100 to 120, so I’m frustrated that the technologies aren’t going as quickly as they should because of government interference.

reason: Leon Kass, the former chair of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, thinks 70 years is enough. Do you think that’s a respectable position?

Thiel: Criticizing Kass always feels like shooting a fish in a barrel. If people talk about living to 200, that’s kind of weird. But if you ask people if it’s a good or a bad thing to enable people to live healthily to 80, almost everybody will say that is a good thing.

The question’s not an abstract question about “Is it desirable for people to live X years?” It’s “Is it good to have a cure for this form of cancer? Is it good to do something where your bodies and minds stay younger and healthier for longer than they otherwise would?” The Kass approach encourages the rest of the society not to reflect about this. In the United States life is getting longer and longer, but we’re not thinking about it. If we’re actually going to live to age 100, the effect of Kass will be to encourage people to have a very unhealthy last 30 years because they will not have thought about and will not have prepared for it.

That’s the incredible disconnect we have between technology and the culture. In the culture, everything’s forced toward a shorter time horizon. As a libertarian, I tend to blame the government for a lot of this, because socialized welfare, socialized health care, and socialized retirement programs all encourage people not to think about the future.

reason: Do you consider yourself a transhumanist?

Thiel: The problem with the label is that it suggests that we should run away from being human. Take the question of aging. If you define that as the essence of being human, then transhumanists are anti-aging and therefore you try to transcend this human limitation. I don’t think that death and life are inextricably interconnected in some sort of Eastern mystical sense in which for everything white there’s something black and there’s always a yin/yang type of thing. Every myth on this planet tells us the purpose of life is death, and I don’t think that’s true. I think the purpose of life is life.

Comments

|5.1.08 @ 12:26PM|#

Paypal- those thieving cocksuckers! I hope that asshole gets run over by a garbage truck.

Rob W.|5.1.08 @ 12:27PM|#

Second Peter Theil story in a few days... weird how that happens.

|5.1.08 @ 12:48PM|#

excellent!

Bronwyn|5.1.08 @ 1:04PM|#

Although I'm still stuck with paypal for some of my online transactions, I've signed up with the beautifully fee-free Revolution MoneyExchange.

I am well pleased.

I'll send referrals if anyone wants to collect $25 and thank me with $10 for the tip :)

And now, I guess I'll RTFA...

Bronwyn|5.1.08 @ 1:06PM|#

Ah. Never mind, I read it in my paper copy.

I did have to wonder how someone just *decides* to be a venture capitalist. I suppose a big checking account helps... that would disqualify me.

Paul|5.1.08 @ 1:20PM|#

I did have to wonder how someone just *decides* to be a venture capitalist.

I have a funny feeling it's the same way people "decide" to take a couple of years off and do some kind of international, global hiking trek that lands them an interview with Terry Gross on NPR.

Bronwyn|5.1.08 @ 1:27PM|#

Paul, I went to boarding school with a bunch of kids who did that. In their case it required that mommy and daddy have a big checking account.

So yes, I think you're right that there's a common thread here.

|5.1.08 @ 1:54PM|#

My optimistic take is that even though politics is moving very anti-libertarian, that itself is a symptom of the fact that the world's becoming more libertarian. Maybe it's just a symptom of how good things are.

Damn, I wish I had his optimism. I always feel like I am in a canoe and I can hear the waterfall "somewhere" in front of me but can't see where it is, nor can I row away from it.

Tom|5.1.08 @ 2:05PM|#

Peter's last name is spelled "Thiel" not "Theil" as above.

Brandybuck|5.1.08 @ 2:11PM|#

FEE recently gave Thiel the Adam Smith Award, and you can find his acceptance speech online at www.fee.org. Very interesting listen.

Taktix®|5.1.08 @ 2:23PM|#

I always feel like I am in a canoe and I can hear the waterfall "somewhere" in front of me but can't see where it is, nor can I row away from it.

QTMFT

|5.1.08 @ 2:55PM|#

Man, I really hate guys like this... Rich, brilliant, head in the game... I coulda' been like that, but I discovered Motley Crue...

|5.1.08 @ 3:14PM|#

I really do love the dismissal "not even wrong". I predict you will be see the phrase a lot more over the next decade.

Kolohe|5.1.08 @ 3:32PM|#

I realy enjoyed this article on financial bubbles, globalization, and apocalypse, written by Thiel that marginal revolution linked to a few days ago. As a warning, however, many of the m-r commenters did not care for it.

Phillip Conti|5.1.08 @ 3:47PM|#

Is it just me or does anyone else find the concept of "singularity" on par with the resurrection of jesus christ? both are esoteric and give dreamers hope.

Paul|5.1.08 @ 4:04PM|#

Is it just me or does anyone else find the concept of "singularity" on par with the resurrection of jesus christ?

Yes.

JRD|5.1.08 @ 4:35PM|#

A point in the future at which artificial intelligence will outpace human intelligence? What's "esoteric" about that?

|5.1.08 @ 4:46PM|#

Now that GlaxoSmithKline has bought Sirtris, the Government will be inevitably sucked into acknowledging life extension an a legitimate field of research, and the fall-out of the steady progression in applying ever more powerful computers to like science will make radical life extension inevitable. Thank you Peter Thiel, Aubrey de Grey, and Ray Kurzweil: I enjoy hope. But it isn't just the glorious destination, it is the unfolding of the journey that will make the next several decades so wonderful. I like watching the steps being taken day after day, until after a year I find myself on an overlook with a clear view of where we have come from, the next overlook, with the view to the summit ever clearer. What a great time to be alive!

|5.1.08 @ 4:58PM|#

paypal has worked for me for 8 years now. regardless- all the things that suck about paypal are not the fault of the founders.

|5.1.08 @ 6:54PM|#

"I think the purpose of life is life."

Ah, such clarity.

I really appreciate his model for philanthropy, as well. I like this guy.

catfight catfight!|5.2.08 @ 8:27AM|#

What, no joe vs. Bailey bitchfest?

|5.2.08 @ 9:10PM|#

Not to be too nit picky, because I really liked the article and he seems like a super-bright and articulate guy, but I really dislike when people who've made no effort to understand religion claim that "eastern mysticism says that the purpose of life is death."

Actually in many religions, the idea of death is the reality of creative destruction. Death is necessary to evolve and move forward. (not unlike the business idea that certain industries and ideas die in order to move forward)

What is also interesting is how much the idea of the "singularity" is expressed in so many different religions. I know many libs completely dismiss religion, but it ain't all magic and hocus pocus, some of it is very interesting and provacative.

JLE|5.6.08 @ 8:18AM|#

I'm glad to see this here. It did seem too heavy in the buildup of a superhero and too easy on the questioning, but these ideas (life extension, singularity, less economic interference from government) are worth getting out there in the Great Conversation.

Ted Stalets|5.6.08 @ 9:46AM|#

Peter Theil - I would love to send you an advance copy of our new book coming out in September of this year (in 4 months), published by The Key Publish in Toronto, Canada. It is entitled Rescue Plan for Planet Earth - Democratic World Government through a Global Referendum. Many of the World Federalists are starting to see the Rescue Plan outlined in this "world's most necessary book" as a pragmatic, workable plan for political evolution as we move from the nation state to world governance.

For others who are interested, we have 3 free chapters from the book available at the book's website - Rescue Plan for Planet Earth dot com.

Please note - this is a bottom-up democratic world government - the opposite of a top-down world government which is envisioned by the world's money elite.

All the best!
Ted Stalets
VP - VoteWorldGovernment.org
Owner - StaletsLiteraryAgency.com

|5.9.08 @ 10:56AM|#

The definition of Singularity here appears to need some suspension of the laws of physics or economic behavior. A simpler explanation is that it will reach a critical mass where the cumulative efficiencies build on each other.

|5.10.08 @ 7:05AM|#

The whole point about the singularity, is thinking cleverly and creatively about the future. Those who wish to control humanity would like anybody to think too much about the future, and much less about a different future. Technology will help us to transform culture, and eventually evolve into a more mature intelligent specie. Peter Thiel is first and foremost an active optimist we need many like him.