There's a great deal here and your analysis is both interesting and somewhat compelling.
Please don't imagine that I have any interest in defending Peter Thiel. But there is a sense in which his ideas about the palantiri stones is directly from Tolkien. The palantiri (Seeing Stones) were created by the Noldor elves in Valinor, with some sources suggesting the master craftsman Fëanor himself forged them in the days of the Two Trees. These were later given to the men of Númenor, and seven were brought to Middle Earth after the island's fall, serving for centuries as a means of communication and a way to view distant events. But, of course, their use was deliberately perverted by Sauron, who perverted many creations of the elves - the rings of power being amongst those things turned toward his evil purposes. In Tolkien these matters are meant to serve as warnings against imagining that we should be "too proud of this technological terror you have built" to quote from a different serial. Technology is not going to protect us against evil.
Karp's description of how he wants Palantir to function, by improving the capabilities and efficiency of the institutions they serve, scare their enemies, and at times kill them, reminds me very much of the Mario Pujo look at the cosa nostra in the Godfather books, more or less captured by Coppola in the films. Karp proposes to help his masters make "an offer he couldn't refuse" to someone who needs to be forced into line. You are wise to view his intentions as severe and in the service of evil.
Karp does come out of a Marxist community. Karp and some of the professors he names, including those with whom he had "falling out" events, have a certain ... outlook. He is unmarried. You can reach your own conclusions about his preferences. Thiel is "married" to a man. So there are a number of communities to examine if you want greater insight into these people.
A fairly good translation of the title of his PhD thesis is, "Aggression in the life-world: The extension of Parsons' concept of aggression by describing the connection between jargon, aggression, and culture" and it is definitely focused on how to stimulate aggression with jargon, by influencing culture, and by making it socially acceptable under certain conditions. Yes, I do attribute the last fifteen years or so of violence against Christians, churches, candidates, public speakers, and children as deliberately planned and implemented. Palantir is clearly a part of this work. Karp's thesis focuses on how unconscious aggression is transferred through language and how jargon can serve to consolidate social identity.
Today's violent, aggressive, and evil Marxism is somewhat distinct from classical Marxism that was initially just Adam Weishaupt's 1776 manifesto cleaned up a bit by Karl Marx under a publishing contract with freemasons. There is an extent to which the re-working of Marxism we see around us was brought about by Lyotard and Derrida because they were so very unhappy that Marxism had failed everywhere, that communism was inept at bringing about more educated, healthier, happier, longer lived people, and that its centrally planned economics inevitably generated shortages all the time and all over the economy. What to do? Well, "post modernism" gets rid of the idea of standards. If the individual living standard is never better under communism, having any sense of a living standard must be wrong. If health is worse under communist dictatorships, the measurement of health must be mistaken; if longevity is less then longevity must not be desirable; if any thing that can be measured is regarded as "good" then goodness must be discarded. Communism makes everything worse, so reason and objective truth must be discarded. Communism prevents anyone from having the good in life, therefore meaning is unstable and culturally constructed, power, which operates through language and social structures is all that matters.
In my opinion the way to look at these matters is through the eyes of a follower of the teachings of Jesus, because I have no other way of looking at things. Marxism is not merely ungodly, but expresses active hatred of God, active hatred of God's greatest creation mankind, and seeks to demean, deride, abuse, torture, rape, and murder those humans that are not enslaved, and to enslave those who survive the other treatments. Freemasons have this same outlook and worship Lucifer, which they openly admit. Thus, the war between good and evil persists. Karp and Thiel and Palantir have chosen who to serve, and Sauron is how Tolkien depicted that one.
Choose ye this day who ye will serve. As for me and my family we serve the Lord our God.
Wow - very thoughtful comments, thank you for taking the time. I’m very eager to read his thesis.
Frankfurt Institute: Marcuse, dialectical nonsense, Habermas, Critical Theory, Angela Davis’ time mentored by Marcuse - this is endless.
The question I think people need to ask is what would compel anyone to concentrate the time for a PhD in Critical Social Theory. Karp claims he’s had a falling out but reading his book it’s clear that the authoritarianism required to enforce the Marxist principles in practice are still something he is comfortable with. I have a healthy fear but also a respect for Karp. He is masterful in communication, I’ve seen him restate technical jargon from his SVP of Tech & Dev (a brilliant guy as well) and relay it in clearer terms that crystallize the concepts in English. I think his training with analysis of language while at Frankfurt prepared him for his role. Karp is far better communicator than Elawn. And more dangerous because he commands greater respect when he speaks.
Yes, there’s no doubt that he’s competent. The answer I would suggest is that he wants to establish a powerful aristocracy that has its way in all things at all times. If you look at Plato’s The Republic and the contents of Plato’s other writings, especially his dialogues Timaeus and Critias you note a few things. First, this ambition to impose total dominance by an aristocracy goes back to Plato’s era, roughly 375 BC. Second, Plato views his ideas as derivative of the ways things were done on the island of Atlantis, and therefore about 9,200 years earlier still. In other words, “ante-diluvian.”
There is no nobility to the noble lie, there is only falsehood. Plato admits it, and mocks people who think lying isn’t needed to establish the dominant aristocracy he craves. Given the high level of alignment between the Pythagoreans and Plato, I think your title is spot on.
Do you know of David Nolan? He founded the Libertarian political party in 1971. The Advocates for Self Government continue to use David’s “Nolan Chart” to identify political orientations through their “world’s smallest political quiz” which is not entirely terrible. Bryan Caplan extended on that work a bit with his “libertarian purity” test which is still at his old web site from his George Mason university days.
Anyway, in 2010 I was in Illinois for their state Libertarian party convention and David spoke there. David’s speech was about how cities arose and how information technology made them work. He spoke about Egypt and scribes and priests and tax collections based on measuring each plot of ground watered by the Nile. He mentioned that literacy was taught but was exclusive, not taught to everyone, because peasants didn’t need to know how to read and write. He pointed out that cities arose to have places where records were kept. He talked about hydraulic empire which is where the records are examined to identify if there is a lot of rebelliousness in some town, and if so, their canals are cut and they are starved into submission. When famine hits the land, the food is all taken from the slightly more rebellious towns and given to the more docile and obedient. During the q & a, I mentioned that Aristarchus got the circumference of the earth too large by 10% because he relied on the records of the priests of the temple of the pyramid, and they had deliberately recorded every plot of ground 10% bigger east-west and 10% bigger north-south to collect 21% more taxes, and the corruption wasn’t caught until the British did their own survey two hundred years ago.
To me, yes, Karp and Thiel are dangerous. They are intelligent. They are devious. They hate everyone and want to enslave everyone they don’t murder, based on things they say and do that have come to my attention. I do not respect either one of them because they have placed their skills and talents in the service of evil.
And irony of ironies, the data center Manhattan Project 2.0 is in a sense a hydraulic empire in that so much water is needed to maintain the data centers, and the records of our online interactions.
Dang, you have done an excellent job on your story, and even though I don't often comment, that is why I hang out on your digital front porch. You consistently avoid resorting to the usual click-bait fear porn that chokes up so much of Substack these days. Bravo!
Well, he did say protestors should be sent to volunteer in North Korea for a year or something. I'm always a little anxious when thinking about this. However, it's going to happen one way or the other. I guess I'd rather these two people than some others. I don't love any of it.
Like I said I am trying to sift through the various ideas he expresses, and while there are things that he says I agree with, I am not down with collective identity and “we have to act and not deliberate”.
I think hesitation and it anxiety over this is actually instinct telling us to evaluate rather than merely react.
in an earlier discussion today someone commented about being paralyzed by fear to which I responded that I’ll make up my own mind for myself, and wanting to evaluate is not fear by any stretch.
There's a great deal here and your analysis is both interesting and somewhat compelling.
Please don't imagine that I have any interest in defending Peter Thiel. But there is a sense in which his ideas about the palantiri stones is directly from Tolkien. The palantiri (Seeing Stones) were created by the Noldor elves in Valinor, with some sources suggesting the master craftsman Fëanor himself forged them in the days of the Two Trees. These were later given to the men of Númenor, and seven were brought to Middle Earth after the island's fall, serving for centuries as a means of communication and a way to view distant events. But, of course, their use was deliberately perverted by Sauron, who perverted many creations of the elves - the rings of power being amongst those things turned toward his evil purposes. In Tolkien these matters are meant to serve as warnings against imagining that we should be "too proud of this technological terror you have built" to quote from a different serial. Technology is not going to protect us against evil.
Karp's description of how he wants Palantir to function, by improving the capabilities and efficiency of the institutions they serve, scare their enemies, and at times kill them, reminds me very much of the Mario Pujo look at the cosa nostra in the Godfather books, more or less captured by Coppola in the films. Karp proposes to help his masters make "an offer he couldn't refuse" to someone who needs to be forced into line. You are wise to view his intentions as severe and in the service of evil.
Karp does come out of a Marxist community. Karp and some of the professors he names, including those with whom he had "falling out" events, have a certain ... outlook. He is unmarried. You can reach your own conclusions about his preferences. Thiel is "married" to a man. So there are a number of communities to examine if you want greater insight into these people.
A fairly good translation of the title of his PhD thesis is, "Aggression in the life-world: The extension of Parsons' concept of aggression by describing the connection between jargon, aggression, and culture" and it is definitely focused on how to stimulate aggression with jargon, by influencing culture, and by making it socially acceptable under certain conditions. Yes, I do attribute the last fifteen years or so of violence against Christians, churches, candidates, public speakers, and children as deliberately planned and implemented. Palantir is clearly a part of this work. Karp's thesis focuses on how unconscious aggression is transferred through language and how jargon can serve to consolidate social identity.
Today's violent, aggressive, and evil Marxism is somewhat distinct from classical Marxism that was initially just Adam Weishaupt's 1776 manifesto cleaned up a bit by Karl Marx under a publishing contract with freemasons. There is an extent to which the re-working of Marxism we see around us was brought about by Lyotard and Derrida because they were so very unhappy that Marxism had failed everywhere, that communism was inept at bringing about more educated, healthier, happier, longer lived people, and that its centrally planned economics inevitably generated shortages all the time and all over the economy. What to do? Well, "post modernism" gets rid of the idea of standards. If the individual living standard is never better under communism, having any sense of a living standard must be wrong. If health is worse under communist dictatorships, the measurement of health must be mistaken; if longevity is less then longevity must not be desirable; if any thing that can be measured is regarded as "good" then goodness must be discarded. Communism makes everything worse, so reason and objective truth must be discarded. Communism prevents anyone from having the good in life, therefore meaning is unstable and culturally constructed, power, which operates through language and social structures is all that matters.
In my opinion the way to look at these matters is through the eyes of a follower of the teachings of Jesus, because I have no other way of looking at things. Marxism is not merely ungodly, but expresses active hatred of God, active hatred of God's greatest creation mankind, and seeks to demean, deride, abuse, torture, rape, and murder those humans that are not enslaved, and to enslave those who survive the other treatments. Freemasons have this same outlook and worship Lucifer, which they openly admit. Thus, the war between good and evil persists. Karp and Thiel and Palantir have chosen who to serve, and Sauron is how Tolkien depicted that one.
Choose ye this day who ye will serve. As for me and my family we serve the Lord our God.
Wow - very thoughtful comments, thank you for taking the time. I’m very eager to read his thesis.
Frankfurt Institute: Marcuse, dialectical nonsense, Habermas, Critical Theory, Angela Davis’ time mentored by Marcuse - this is endless.
The question I think people need to ask is what would compel anyone to concentrate the time for a PhD in Critical Social Theory. Karp claims he’s had a falling out but reading his book it’s clear that the authoritarianism required to enforce the Marxist principles in practice are still something he is comfortable with. I have a healthy fear but also a respect for Karp. He is masterful in communication, I’ve seen him restate technical jargon from his SVP of Tech & Dev (a brilliant guy as well) and relay it in clearer terms that crystallize the concepts in English. I think his training with analysis of language while at Frankfurt prepared him for his role. Karp is far better communicator than Elawn. And more dangerous because he commands greater respect when he speaks.
Yes, there’s no doubt that he’s competent. The answer I would suggest is that he wants to establish a powerful aristocracy that has its way in all things at all times. If you look at Plato’s The Republic and the contents of Plato’s other writings, especially his dialogues Timaeus and Critias you note a few things. First, this ambition to impose total dominance by an aristocracy goes back to Plato’s era, roughly 375 BC. Second, Plato views his ideas as derivative of the ways things were done on the island of Atlantis, and therefore about 9,200 years earlier still. In other words, “ante-diluvian.”
There is no nobility to the noble lie, there is only falsehood. Plato admits it, and mocks people who think lying isn’t needed to establish the dominant aristocracy he craves. Given the high level of alignment between the Pythagoreans and Plato, I think your title is spot on.
Do you know of David Nolan? He founded the Libertarian political party in 1971. The Advocates for Self Government continue to use David’s “Nolan Chart” to identify political orientations through their “world’s smallest political quiz” which is not entirely terrible. Bryan Caplan extended on that work a bit with his “libertarian purity” test which is still at his old web site from his George Mason university days.
Anyway, in 2010 I was in Illinois for their state Libertarian party convention and David spoke there. David’s speech was about how cities arose and how information technology made them work. He spoke about Egypt and scribes and priests and tax collections based on measuring each plot of ground watered by the Nile. He mentioned that literacy was taught but was exclusive, not taught to everyone, because peasants didn’t need to know how to read and write. He pointed out that cities arose to have places where records were kept. He talked about hydraulic empire which is where the records are examined to identify if there is a lot of rebelliousness in some town, and if so, their canals are cut and they are starved into submission. When famine hits the land, the food is all taken from the slightly more rebellious towns and given to the more docile and obedient. During the q & a, I mentioned that Aristarchus got the circumference of the earth too large by 10% because he relied on the records of the priests of the temple of the pyramid, and they had deliberately recorded every plot of ground 10% bigger east-west and 10% bigger north-south to collect 21% more taxes, and the corruption wasn’t caught until the British did their own survey two hundred years ago.
To me, yes, Karp and Thiel are dangerous. They are intelligent. They are devious. They hate everyone and want to enslave everyone they don’t murder, based on things they say and do that have come to my attention. I do not respect either one of them because they have placed their skills and talents in the service of evil.
Exactly.
And irony of ironies, the data center Manhattan Project 2.0 is in a sense a hydraulic empire in that so much water is needed to maintain the data centers, and the records of our online interactions.
Dang, you have done an excellent job on your story, and even though I don't often comment, that is why I hang out on your digital front porch. You consistently avoid resorting to the usual click-bait fear porn that chokes up so much of Substack these days. Bravo!
Thank you, glad this hit the mark - I struggle with how to pin him down. Good and bad signs and that makes me nervous.
There is so much supposition based who is associated with whom and that doesn’t serve us. And it’s boring too because it’s just repeated ad nauseam.
Well, he did say protestors should be sent to volunteer in North Korea for a year or something. I'm always a little anxious when thinking about this. However, it's going to happen one way or the other. I guess I'd rather these two people than some others. I don't love any of it.
Like I said I am trying to sift through the various ideas he expresses, and while there are things that he says I agree with, I am not down with collective identity and “we have to act and not deliberate”.
I think hesitation and it anxiety over this is actually instinct telling us to evaluate rather than merely react.
in an earlier discussion today someone commented about being paralyzed by fear to which I responded that I’ll make up my own mind for myself, and wanting to evaluate is not fear by any stretch.
I agree with you. I am extremely grateful someone is looking.
Perhaps I’ll title my follow up as “The Algebra of Aholes”.
My concern is that Karo is better at the sales pitch and policy pitch than Elawn or Zuckerberg. I can see him being more convincing to bureaucrats.