Peter Thiel on 'Anti-Anti-Anti-Anti Classical Liberalism' | Oxford Union

Individual satisfaction and well-being have not increased and in some cases decreased in the UK, America, and Canada since the 1960s despite huge increases in supposed ability or satisfaction of living and technological advances.

“repeated studies across the United Kingdom, uh America, Canada, Western countries have shown that levels of individual satisfaction uh have not really increased and in some cases decreased since the 1960s despite huge increases in um so um ability or satisfaction of living, supposedly, technological advances.”

The NHS is an iatrogenic institution—it makes people sick rather than healthy—and is subject to Stockholm syndrome where Britons defend it despite its poor performance compared to other healthcare systems.

“the first step is to just understand it as as as a as a very iatrogenic institution. You know, we sort of apply some formula where we can go through, you know, all the institutions in our society and think of them as more iatrogenic than healthy. You know, the highways create traffic jams and welfare creates poverty and the schools make people dumb. And the NHS makes people sick.”

Western military competition with China drives technological development, but stagnation in the West means the threat of Chinese military superiority (hypersonic weapons, space weapons, AI-armed robots) could force acceleration or lead to Western decline.

“even even if the Luddites are right about everything, you will you will always, you know, um you will you will lose to China on hypersonic weapons or space weapons or weapons in cislunar space or robots armed with AI. And so, uh so that probably there's something about the Luddite answer that's uh that's uh uh uh sort of um self-destructive and uh and parochial at the same time.”

The single antonym of diversity is university, because universities require unity of purpose around truth-seeking, which contradicts the relativistic multiculturalism now dominant in academia.

“What is the antonym of diversity? And university... I think it is such a great honor and privilege here to speak here at at the Oxford Union where for 200 years people have been thinking about the crisis of the university”

Modern universities achieve neither true diversity nor true universitas; they are a strange superposition of hyper-relativistic, hyper-nihilistic, and hyper-totalitarian characteristics that are logically contradictory but psychologically go together.

“the sort of you know, the the sort of multicultural multiversity, it's uh it's a strange superposition of um you know, hyper-relativistic, hyper-nihilistic, hyper-totalitarian. And you you will point out that those three things are all logically contradictory and uh and I can probably come up with some psychological analysis of why they go together, but that's again very complicated.”

The biblical New Testament's characterization of the Antichrist's slogan as 'peace and safety' suggests that there may be something worse than Armageddon, and societies should fear one-world totalitarian states perhaps more than nuclear apocalypse, supporting continued commitment to classical liberal ideals.

“I I should I should uh not need to remind you that in the you know, in the sort of quasi-mythological New Testament account, the the slogan of the Antichrist is peace and safety. And and that there is there is you know, which hold that there's nothing worse than Armageddon, but perhaps there is. Perhaps we should fear the Antichrist, perhaps we should fear the one-world totalitarian state more than Armageddon.”

Scientific fields become corrupt and prone to fraud to the extent they are specialized and insular, with narrow groups of experts controlling gatekeeping, and fields like string theory are likely more corrupt than the humanities despite their apparent rigor.

“If only 100 people in the world understand string theory and you have this sort of narrow group of guardians guarding themselves, shouldn't the a priori assumption be that string theory is actually more corrupt than the humanities or the sciences are in many ways more corrupt than the humanities.”

A question that starts with 'why did it stall?' is overdetermined—hard to answer because it's caused by many different things, including too much regulation, inadequate education, insufficient government funding, and the belief among society and establishment that science and technology are too dangerous.

“questions that start with why are always overdetermined. They're hard to answer. It's probably determined by a whole bunch of different things. And you know, you can say um there's too much regulation...There's sort of There's ways you can sort of blame education or government funding. Um but the um but this the single answer that I've I've come to believe um as to why why it is stalled out um and this is and I believe this is now actually become the the the argument um on the part of the universities, on the part of our zombie center-left establishment is something like um science and technology are just too dangerous.”

Despite the overall stagnation, Thiel believes there is human freedom and agency that make progress possible; stagnation is not a law of nature but a cultural artifact, and many different fields still hold potential for progress.

“I always believe in human freedom, um human agency. I I believe that a lot more can be done...I have the strong conviction that these are not it's not a law of nature that we've uh slowed down. Um and uh it's not that the cupboard has run out or the cupboard is bare. Um you know, the the argument I articulated was was at its core a cultural argument. It was the people are too scared.”

Classical liberalism—with its commitments to human freedom, individual rights, and technological progress—should be defended and extended for another 200 years as the only framework that avoids both stagnation and totalitarianism.

“we should we should stick with some of the tried and true ideas of classical liberalism this this organization and this institution has been supporting for 200 years and keep going for another another 200.”

Universities' technocratic defense against humanities critics—that flaky debates about Shakespeare and Rigoberta Menchú are irrelevant because the real progress happens in science and technology—has become exhausted, as science and technology have themselves stagnated since the early 1970s.

“The university is about progress, progress of knowledge, and this is especially true in the science and technology... we're working on string theory and science... the relief of man's estate... That's what the university is uh is really all about.”

Outside of the world of bits (IT/computers), there has been a story of general stagnation for the last 40-50 years, with no major breakthroughs and with younger generations now having lower economic expectations than their parents for the first time in modern history.

“for the last uh 40 or 50 years outside the world of bits, it has been a story of general stagnation uh and then uh not just in the fields, not just in terms of you know, no big breakthroughs, but of course also, you know, if we try to measure it economically, we have this very odd situation in the UK or the US where for the first time in um decades and centuries beyond count, the younger generation has lower economic expectations than and parents.”

The translation function from money to outcomes is shockingly weak—spending money does not reliably translate to solving problems like cancer, because the real constraints are regulatory and social, not financial.

“I would like it if um if you know, if you could translate things more if I again just not not just in politics but let's you know if I could if I could just spend some of my money and get cures for cancer or could you know overcome these things and unfortunately it's it's mainly not a financial problem. It's you know it's a regulatory problem. It's a social problem. It's it's these other kinds of things but you know the translation function is shockingly weak.”

Bob Laughlin, a Stanford physics professor and Nobel laureate, attempted to challenge what he believed was borderline fraudulent research at Stanford and was subsequently defunded and his graduate students could not complete PhDs, illustrating how dissent from scientific orthodoxy is suppressed in academia.

“a professor at Stanford, Bob Laughlin, who uh um got a Nobel Prize in physics in the late 1990s... he had this supreme delusion that now that he had a Nobel Prize in physics, he had complete academic freedom... he was convinced that most of the scientists, even at a place like Stanford University, were engaged in borderline fraudulent research.”

The mRNA vaccine, a potential scientific breakthrough, cannot be celebrated in public forums because it is mentally adjacent to the Wuhan lab's gain-of-function research, and this association contaminates the technology with fears of bioweapons.

“why can't we have a ticker-tape parade for the you know, one or two the key scientists who developed the mRNA vaccine? We're told this is this fantastic scientific breakthrough. Why can't we celebrate this? And um and my sort of cultural thesis is that uh it is immediately adjacent in people's minds to this great existential fear because the mRNA vaccines somehow remind us of um this thing going on in the Wuhan lab that's called had this Orwellian term gain-of-function research which sounds sort of like a bioweapons program in disguise.”

Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom's 'Vulnerable World Hypothesis' proposes that to mitigate existential risks, societies must implement extreme preventive policing and establish effective global governance, which amounts to a one-world totalitarian state.

“Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom... called the vulnerable world hypothesis... it outlines all these different existential risks, climate change, nuclear weapons, um runaway nanotechnology, the robots killing everybody, the the AI killing everybody, runaway bioweapons, etc., etc. And and there are four things that must be done to stabilize the world... number one, restrict technological development. Number two, ensure that there does not exist a large population of actors representing a wide and recognizably human distribution of motives. I I believe that's diversity, but um um but then uh he goes on to say that one and two sort of don't quite happen on their own and therefore you need number three, establish a extremely effective preventive policing. And number four, you need to establish effective global governance.”

Technological specialization creates conditions where a small cog in a big machine has no sense of agency or dignity; telling people they will become even smaller cogs in even bigger machines is profoundly uncharismatic and demoralizing.

“It's like the pin factory in Adam Smith, where you have 100 different people working on different parts of the pin. And this doesn't sound it doesn't sound very charismatic. It might be efficient. But but sort of if you tell people you're a small cog in a big machine and the future is you're going to become an ever smaller cog in an ever bigger machine. That's that's profoundly uncharismatic and there are problems with that.”

Free speech is under severe threat at universities, but even with perfect free speech, the core problem remains: people don't have much worth saying, and unlimited speech channels would only amplify this lack of substantive discourse.

“I think it's under I think it's under I I will not tell you anything that yeah, you haven't heard many times before that I I think it's under under a great deal of threat, under great deal of pressure. Uh I I I always do wonder though what what is it behind it? So even if we you know, even if you had perfect free speech, even if the even if the channels were all open, uh the pipes were not on not clogged, what would actually be flowing through it? And and I worry that the that the these very uh ridiculous restrictions on free speech that we have are are you know, they're bad, we shouldn't have them, but they're also distracting us from uh the fact that people actually don't have very much to say.”

Thiel wrote about these debates 30 years ago as narrow ideological disputes about curricula and Western civilization, but now understands them as deeply connected to questions of economic, scientific, and technological progress.

“the piece that I did not connect when I when I was involved in these debates 30 years ago is I I thought of these debates as um sort of narrow ideological debates about the curriculum or about um you know, even broader historical debates about Western civilization or or things like that. And um and I I now think of them as as somehow very very deeply connected to uh this question of um economic, scientific, and technological progress.”

The most mass-market version of catastrophic existential risk is climate change, represented by figures like Greta Thunberg and the 'autistic children's crusade', but the pattern across all existential risks is that proposed solutions never involve more technology—no fusion reactors, no better anti-missile systems, no accelerated biotech or AI research.

“Probably the uh the sort of the most uh mass market version of the sort of catastrophic existential risk is the climate change um the climate change one where um you know I I can just uh you know reference uh probably reference Greta and the the sort of autistic children's crusade. And um and uh and it is again this is uh this is how how the world is is going to end this sort of runaway technology. And of course you know um all these things I don't want to minimize don't want to say they're they're not real but it's striking how none of the solutions involve more technology.”

The problem of hyper-specialization is that there is no accountability; it has become a crazy racket where narrow experts propagandize for themselves without external evaluation of whether they're actually making progress.

“I worry that the problem of hyper specialization is just there's no accountability and it all just has become a a crazy racket.”

Thiel says he would measure political spending on inputs (dollars spent) rather than outputs (actual policy/social change), and even suggesting measuring inputs is wrong; it would be better to measure outputs but this is difficult.

“I I tend not to agree with the Marxist analysis of measuring input. So, I don't care whether the government's spending tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars. I I'd be interested in measuring output.”

Existential risk narratives (nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, bioweapons) represent a cultural inversion where progress became associated with danger; this fear justifies regulatory capture, which appears as caution but functions as suppression of technological development.

“existential risk, you know, there's all these ways that that uh that the this uh this this um these things sort of back around probably And again, you know, these timelines overlap in in in different ways. Probably the the original version of this was already um involved um nuclear power, nuclear weapons, thermonuclear weapons, the fear of fear of nuclear war.”

Rigoberta Menchú's autobiography was included in Stanford's curriculum as an exemplar of victimhood and revolutionary consciousness, and Thiel's critique of it as tendentious contributed to her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 through a mechanism of amplification rather than refutation.

“then sort of 4 years uh 4 years later, uh fall of 1992, I'm now clerking for for a judge... on the radio, it's uh you know, we we just have an announcement, we have someone who's just been uh selected for the Nobel Peace Prize. Someone nobody's ever heard of. It's Rigoberta Menchú.”

True diversity is not merely hiring people who look different and think alike (like 'extras from the space cantina scene in Star Wars'), but would involve genuine diversity of thought, ideas, and viewpoints combined with genuine unity toward truth.

“I I always like to say that you know, um you don't you know, diversity is not merely um hiring the extras from the space cantina scene in Star Wars. You want you know, you don't want just a group of people who look different and think alike. Um and then and then if you had you know, if you had you know, a genuine diversity of thought, of ideas, of viewpoints, um I don't think that's inimical to I don't know a classic idea of a university as some sort of integrated holistic search for truth.”

Stagnation itself is ultimately unstable; if a society has zero growth and becomes zero-sum, it will be pushed toward lockdowns and restrictive measures, as seen in the last 2-3 years and in science and technology for 40-50 years.

“the stagnation itself is, you know, ultimately unstable that, you know, we ultimately, you know, if we have a zero-sum society, that will ultimately push us towards um you know, the kind of lockdowns that we've seen the last 2-3 years and and that I would argue in some ways we've had with respect to science and technology for uh for 40 or 50 years”

In a zero-sum stagnant society, political correctness and Malthusian competition for scarce positions become weapons—if one postgraduate student gets the position, the other nine lose, so throwing off a politically incorrect person provides relief to the others.

“in a society where um you know, there is a lot of progress happening, where things are getting better, uh you can figure out some kind of a a way that uh you have win-win solutions, things don't need to be this Malthusian, this uh this adversarial. If you have, you know, 10 um postgraduate students in a chemistry lab where there's only job for one of them and you have people having fistfights over beakers and Bunsen burners or whatever they have to do in a Malthusian world, um then obviously um if somebody says one politically incorrect thing and they get thrown off that overcrowded bus, that's a relief to the other nine people.”

Thiel does not claim that his talks at venues like the Oxford Union are panaceas or sufficient to solve stagnation; talking alone is not enough—action and 'in the beginning is the deed' are required alongside discussion.

“forms of sophistry, forms of belief in the omnipotence of speech... we don't want to think that just um saying the magic words is enough to trigger things... I giving a talk at the Oxford Union is is a very small step towards it. If If I said that that was the panacea, well, that would be that would be insanely self-delusional.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky, a prominent AI futurist and thought leader at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, published a 'death with dignity strategy' in April 2022 arguing that humanity isn't going to solve AI alignment and should instead focus on 'helping humanity die with slightly more dignity', representing the complete inversion of accelerationist narratives.

“Eliezer Yudkowsky, who's one of the sort of thought leaders of the sort of futurist um AI um um and the it's a to uh a post from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and it's announcing a new death with dignity strategy. And so the and so uh the the short version of this it's obvious at this point that humanity isn't going to solve the alignment problem of how to get the AI aligned with humans or even try very hard or even go out with much of a fight. Since survival is unattainable we should shift the focus of our efforts to helping humanity die with slightly more dignity.”

Both Trump and Brexit may have actually delayed the needed discussion about stagnation and change rather than accelerating it, contrary to Thiel's original hopes.

“there's a worry that both Trump and Brexit actually delayed that much needed discussion more than they accelerated it.”

PayPal and computer technology were intended to decentralize power and empower individuals and small businesses, but instead the pendulum swung toward centralization of power in big tech companies and big government.

“I was super into financial cryptography back in 1998 when I when I started PayPal and and there's certainly um there was a sort of um a classical liberal hope, maybe someone say a fantasy, that the computer age would decentralize things. It would sort of have these decentralizing things that would give more power to small businesses, to individuals, to to all these all these different groups of people.”

Politics is toxic and unhealthy, yet it permeates everything and is all-important, making it paradoxically impossible to avoid or minimize; Americans actually spend surprisingly little on politics relative to its importance.

“I I don't think it's um I don't think it's healthy for either of our societies to be as um as enmeshed in politics as they are... it's shocking how little people spend on politics in the United States because uh um you know, it just permeates everything and you know, it is it is so all important even if it even it's not the not the only only vector for solving it.”

While supportive of acceleration and pro-technology generally, Thiel has more misgivings about AI than any other technology, despite being pro-AI.

“And while I am I am pro-acceleration, I'm pro-tech, I'm even pro-AI, um, it is probably the one technology that I have the most misgivings about.”

Thiel's response emphasizes that economic numbers (GDP, standard of living metrics) are more reliable than stories told by university presidents, bureaucrats, scientists, and tech companies about progress.

“I I believe the econ numbers more than the self-serving stories of the of the um university presidents and the bureaucrats and the the scientists and even the Silicon Valley Silicon Valley tech companies.”

The original existential risk narrative centered on nuclear weapons and thermonuclear war, which had psychologically deranged Western culture by the late 1960s-early 1970s, as evidenced by figures like Charles Manson who claimed the apocalypse justified murder.

“Probably the original version of this was already involved nuclear power, nuclear weapons, thermonuclear weapons, the fear of nuclear war. It didn't probably hit people right away in 1945, but by the time you get to the late '60s, early '70s, you get someone like Charles Manson, the crazed person on LSD goes around killing everybody in Los Angeles. If you ask, 'What did he see? What did he see on his psychedelic drugs?' Well, he figured out the world was coming to an end and therefore you could be like Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky and not everything was permitted in this crazy world.”

Political change is very difficult; it's not primarily about talk or speech but requires action, and the historical examples (Manhattan Project, Apollo, biblical transformation) show that political disruption alone cannot accomplish structural change without coordinated action.

“There's a way that politics isn't all about talk. In the classical world, sophistry is belief in the omnipotence of speech. We always want speech combined with action. People had conception that Trump or Obama giving a speech in Cairo were forms of sophistry, belief in omnipotence of speech. We don't want to think that just saying magic words is enough.”

Thiel backed President Trump in 2016 and would have backed Brexit in the UK because he had a deep conviction that societies were 'too locked down, too stagnant' and needed change, not because of specific policy positions.

“I backed Trump for the same reason that if I was in the UK, I would have been a pro-Brexit person. And and it was just this very deep conviction that uh that uh things were very off track. You know, our societies um they're too locked down, too stagnant. We need to change.”

If something is taboo in science or academia, it is worth at least asking questions about—the taboo itself is a signal that there may be important truth being suppressed, and this is the hermeneutic of suspicion Thiel applies to evaluate claims.

“my my suspicion is that if something is this taboo, this forbidden, you have to at least ask some some sorts of questions.”

Most engineering fields that were viable in the 1980s (aeronautical, nuclear, mechanical, chemical engineering) are now stagnant and considered mistakes to enter; only computer science and semiconductors continued advancing, with IT being the sole field that has achieved sustained progress over the last 40-50 years.

“almost all the engineering fields that one could have gone into would have been mistakes. It was a mistake to go into aero astro engineering. It was a mistake to go into nuclear engineering... These fields were stuck. They were outlawed. They weren't going to advance.”

Cancer researchers have been promising a cure for cancer within 5 years for 50 years, and string theorists claim to be the smartest people in the world with complete understanding of physics, yet despite these claims of imminent breakthroughs, technological progress has stalled.

“The cancer researchers tell us they're going to cure cancer in 5 years and they've been telling us that for 50 years and the string theorists say they're the smartest people in the world, they know everything about physics.”

Cryptocurrencies represent hope that technological pendulum could swing back toward decentralization, but this outcome is not guaranteed and Thiel has limited confidence in its probability.

“the cryptocurrencies represent the hope that that uh that things could uh could uh could go back the other way in in in various forms. But that's But yes, we're we're if I if I if I had a bet on it, I would say we are we're at at an extreme of um centralization of tech. And uh and the I I would have some hope, not sure how grounded it is, that that the pendulum could still swing swing back the other way.”

The naming of fields as 'X science' (computer science, political science, climate science) rather than simply 'X' indicates an inferiority complex, because physics is never called 'physical science' and chemistry is never called 'chemical science'.

“I always think that the that when you have fields that include science, that's always a tell that you have an inferiority complex because uh you don't need to call it physical science or chemical science. It's physics or chemistry. Uh but it's computer science like political science or climate science. It's sort of a like a deep sense of inferiority.”