A.I., Mars and Immortality: Are We Dreaming Big Enough? | Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
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Ross Douthat interviews billionaire entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel about technological progress, institutional decay, and civilization's trajectory. The conversation ranges across AI, space exploration, life extension, and political economy, anchored by Thiel's provocative thesis that the West has experienced severe technological stagnation since around 1970—not because innovation is impossible, but because regulatory and cultural machinery have been deliberately reconfigured to enforce caution. The episode opens with definitions of stagnation and moves through Thiel's assessment of whether current AI and longevity research represent genuine breakthroughs or incremental refinement within a broader period of creative exhaustion.
The discussion extends into territory both historical and speculative. Thiel argues that progress in atoms (transportation, energy, infrastructure) effectively halted after the Apollo program, while progress in bits (computation, software) continued; he attributes this divergence to top-down policy choices visible in the global off-ramping of nuclear power rather than bottom-up cultural shifts. On AI specifically, Thiel is skeptical that sufficiently smart algorithms will automatically unlock progress in the physical world, suggesting instead that conformist intelligence may deepen stagnation rather than break it. The conversation turns explicitly theological when Douthat and Thiel debate whether the gravest existential risk is uncontrolled technological catastrophe or, paradoxically, a mild, globally enforced "peace and safety" order that locks in permanent mediocrity—a scenario Thiel frames using apocalyptic Christian language as rule under the Antichrist. Douthat pushes back at several points, particularly challenging whether such permanent totalitarianism is reachable without first accelerating capabilities that might enable both surveillance and liberation.
Thiel argues that the West has been in deep technological and institutional stagnation since roughly 1970, that this stagnation is partly a top-down cultural and regulatory choice rather than mere exhaustion of ideas, and that the gravest risk is not runaway technology but a 'peace and safety' one-world order (the Antichrist) that permanently enforces stagnation under the banner of avoiding catastrophe.
- Progress accelerated 1750-1970 in the world of atoms but has slowed everywhere except bits/AI
- Institutions, budgets, and the middle class are all predicated on growth and unravel without it
- The political solution to existential risk (one-world governance, global compute/regulatory control) is itself the worst-case 'Antichrist' outcome
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Conventionally smart, conformist AI may itself deepen stagnation rather than break it—producing infinite mediocre output like a Netflix algorithm and displacing workers—because breaking stagnation may require heterodox, non-conformist smart people willing to run crazy experiments, whereas 'woke' (conformist) intelligence cannot make the difference.
“if you just define it as conformist, maybe that's not the kind of smartness that's going to make a difference.”
Thiel is skeptical of the superintelligence cascade theory—that sufficiently smart AI will automatically unlock progress in the world of atoms (curing dementia, building factories and rockets)—because the gating factor on progress has not been IQ; we have had many smart people and things stayed stuck for other, deeper societal reasons.
“people are really fixated on IQ in Silicon Valley and that it's all about smart people. And if you have more smart people, they will. Do great things. And then the economics antique argument is that people actually do worse. The smarter they are, the worse they do... that suggests that the gating factor isn't IQ, but something that's deeply wrong with our society.”
The middle class is best defined as the people who expect their children to do better than themselves; when that expectation collapses, a middle-class society ceases to exist, and because all our institutions and budgets are predicated on growth, sustained stagnation causes society to unravel.
“I would define the middle class as the people who expect their kids to do better than themselves. And when that expectation collapses, we no longer have a middle class society.”
The West entered a period of technological stagnation around 1970; the rapid accelerating progress of 1750-1970 (faster ships, railroads, cars, planes, culminating in the Concorde and Apollo) slowed dramatically in the world of atoms, with progress continuing only in the world of bits (computers, software, internet, crypto, AI).
“From 1750 to 1970, 200 plus years, were periods of accelerating change where we were, relentlessly. We're moving faster. The ships were faster, the railroads were faster, the cars were faster, the planes were faster. It culminates in the Concorde and the Apollo missions. And then that in all sorts of dimensions, things had slowed.”
Stagnation has two competing explanations: a bottom-up cultural transformation of humanity into a more docile species, or a top-down account in which the machinery of government was reconfigured to enforce stagnation—evidenced by nuclear power, which was supposed to be the power of the 21st century but was off-ramped worldwide.
“the cultural answer can be a bottom up answer, that it was just some transformation of humanity into the more docile kind of a species, or it can be at least partially top down that there is this machinery of government that got changed into this stagnation thing... nuclear power was supposed to be the power of the 21st century. And it somehow has gotten off, ramped all over the world”
The Christian view of history is anti-Calvinist: God is not behind or causing everything (citing John 15:25, 'they hated me without cause'), so attributing too much causation to God scapegoats Him; instead history leaves great scope for human freedom and action, and God will not abandon humanity eternally to stagnation under a mild Antichrist.
“The Christian view is anti-calvinist. God is not behind history. God is not causing everything... I'll give you John 1525 where Christ says, they hated me without cause... God will not leave us eternally staring into screens and being lectured by Greta Thunberg”
A society's dynamism can be measured by whether a 30-year-old's living standards exceed those their parents had at the same age, and by the returns to scientific research—which now show diminishing returns, requiring ever more investment for the same output, making research feel like a 'sociopathic, Malthusian' institution that eventually collapses.
“There certainly are diminishing returns to going into science or going into academia generally. And then maybe this is why I'm so much of it feels like this sociopathic, Malthusian kind of an institution, because you have to throw more and more and more at something to get the same returns. And at some point, people give up and the thing collapses.”
The New Dealers, whatever their faults, pushed science hard and scaled funding, whereas today an equivalent of Einstein's letter to the White House would get lost in the mailroom and the Manhattan Project would be unthinkable; the word 'moonshot' has degraded from meaning an achievable goal (going to the moon) to meaning something fictional that will never happen.
“if there was an equivalent of Einstein and he wrote a letter to the White House, it would get lost in the mail room, and the Manhattan Project is unthinkable. If we call something a moonshot... A moonshot now means something completely fictional. That's never going to happen.”
We are arguably already living under a moderate, mild rule of the Antichrist: the entire world has submitted for 50 years to a regime of 'peace and safety' in which the FDA de facto regulates drugs worldwide and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission effectively governs nuclear power globally because other nations defer to US regulators, off-ramping nuclear power and enforcing stagnation top-down.
“the entire world has submitted for 50 years to peace and safety. This is a first Thessalonians 5' 3. The slogan of the anti-christ is peace and safety... The FDA regulates not just drugs in the US, but facto in the whole world... The Nuclear Regulatory commission effectively regulates nuclear power plants all over the world.”
The default political solution to every existential risk (nuclear weapons, AI, climate) is one-world governance—a UN with real teeth, global compute governance logging every keystroke—but this 'cure' may be worse than the disease: a one-world totalitarian state is itself a 'bad singularity,' framed religiously as the Antichrist versus Armageddon dilemma ('one world or none').
“the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one world governance... we need global compute governance. We need a one world government to control all the computers, log every single keystroke... And the Christian framing... is Antichrist or armageddon? You have the one world state of the Antichrist, or we're sleepwalking towards Armageddon.”
The plot hole of how the Antichrist takes over the world (via demonic hypnotic speeches) is resolved by inverting the old model: rather than an evil tech genius inventing a doomsday machine, the modern Antichrist gains power by talking about Armageddon and existential risk non-stop and demanding we 'stop science'—so the figure with real political resonance today is a Greta Thunberg, not a Doctor Strangelove.
“The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon non-stop, you talk about existential risk non-stop. And this is what you need to regulate... The thing that has political resonance is we need to stop science... In our world, it's far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.”
Early modernity's promise of curing disease and achieving radical life extension or immortality was a competitive response to Christianity: because Christianity promised physical Resurrection, science had to promise the same thing to succeed, making the transhumanist project downstream of Christian eschatology.
“maybe it was downstream of Christianity. It was competitive. If Christianity promised you a physical Resurrection science was not going to succeed unless it promised you the exact same thing.”
The Judeo-Christian tradition is fundamentally about transcending and overcoming nature, not conforming to it—evidenced by the claim that the word 'nature' does not occur once in the Old Testament—so a properly understood Christianity is a friend, not an enemy, of scientific and technological ambition.
“I think the word nature does not occur once in the Old Testament. And so... the way I understand, the judeo-christian inspiration is it is about transcending nature. It is about overcoming things.”
Both Reagan-era 'consumer capitalism' (borrowing rather than saving) and Obama-era 'low tax socialism' are oxymoronic and deeply unstable; eventually either taxes must rise or the socialism ends, because such arrangements are predicated on unsustainable growth.
“Reagan was consumer capitalism, which is oxymoronic. It was borrow you don't save money as a capitalist. You borrow money. And Obama was low tax socialism, just as oxymoronic... At some point you either the taxes go up or the socialism ends. So it's deeply, deeply unstable.”
To escape decadence, society should take much more risk; in biotech specifically, there has been essentially zero progress on dementia and Alzheimer's in 40-50 years because researchers are stuck on the beta amyloid hypothesis, which is obviously not working and amounts to a self-reinforcing racket.
“If we look at biotech, something like dementia, Alzheimer's, we've made zero progress in 40 to 50 years. People are completely stuck on beta amyloid. It's obviously not working. It's just some kind of a stupid racket where the people are just reinforcing themselves.”
An accelerating AI military revolution could either deter China from invading Taiwan (because they have effectively already lost the race) or accelerate an invasion (because they realize it is 'now or never' before they fall irreversibly behind)—an under-analyzed but pivotal geopolitical consequence of AI.
“does it change the calculus for China invading Taiwan, where we have an accelerating AI revolution in the military... on the optimistic side, it deters China because they've effectively lost. And on the pessimistic side it accelerates them because they know it's now or never. If they don't grab Taiwan now they will fall behind.”
AI is roughly on the scale of the internet in the late 1990s—more than a nothing-burger but less than a total transformation of society; the internet added perhaps 1 percentage point to GDP growth for 10-15 years, so AI may create great companies and modest productivity gains but is probably not enough by itself to end the broader stagnation.
“my placeholder is that it's roughly on the scale of the internet in the late 90s, which is I'm not sure it's enough to really end the stagnation. It might be enough to create some great companies. And the internet added maybe a few points, percentage points to the GDP, maybe 1 percent to GDP growth every year for 10, 15 years.”
Rich, comfortable societies become risk-averse and decadent, and it is hard to escape decadence into something new without a crisis—which creates a dangerous incentive where those who want to break stagnation become eager for crises (e.g., post-9/11 neoconservative foreign policy) to justify radical redirection.
“in rich societies you hit a certain level of wealth. People become very comfortable, they become risk averse, and it's just hard. It's hard to get out of decadence, into something, into something new, without a crisis.”
Even if the internet did not deliver the cornucopian explosion of ideas libertarians fantasized about in 1999 (and arguably contributed to conformity and wokeness), it was counterfactually better than the alternative of having no internet at all—and the same logic supports pursuing AI despite its risks, because the alternative is total stagnation.
“counterfactually, I would argue that it was still better than the alternative, that if we hadn't had the internet, maybe it would have been worse. I bet it's better than the alternative. And the alternative is nothing at all.”
The built environment provides common-sense evidence of stagnation: someone time-traveling across the 80 years from 1890 to 1970 would find a completely transformed world, whereas the world of 1985 looks fairly similar to 2025 apart from phones and minor car differences.
“if you put someone in a time machine from various points, they would recognize themselves to be in a completely different world if they left 1860 or 18 90 to 1970... But the world just to my kids, even as children of 2025, looking at 1985, it's like the cars were a little different. And no one has phones, but the world seems fairly similar.”
If history were deterministic one might as well passively accept doom ('have some yoga and prayerful meditation and wait while the lines eat you up'), but because there is great scope for human freedom, the correct response to the threat of the Antichrist is active resistance with hope of success.
“If I thought these things were deterministic, you might as well maybe just accept it. The lines are coming. You should just have some yoga and prayerful meditation and wait while the lines eat you up. And I don't think that's what you're supposed to do.”
Silicon Valley consistently fails to grapple with the meaning of technology, retreating into microscopic technical debates (IQ/Elo scores of AI, the precise definition of AGI) while neglecting crucial intermediate-level questions—what AI means for the budget deficit, the macroeconomy, and geopolitics (e.g., whether it changes China's calculus on invading Taiwan).
“If I had to give a critique of Silicon Valley, it's always bad at what the meaning of tech is and the conversations, they tend to go into this microscopic thing where it's O.K, it's like, what are the IQ, Helo scores of the AI. And exactly how do you define AGI... what does it mean for the budget deficit. What does it mean for the economy. What does it mean for geopolitics.”
From an orthodox Christian standpoint, transhumanism is not too ambitious but pathetically unambitious—merely changing the body (analogous to a transsexual changing sex organs)—whereas the real demand is to transform the whole self: body, heart, mind, and soul, which only God's grace can accomplish.
“the critique is not that it's weird and unnatural. Man, it's so pathetically little. And we want more than cross-dressing or changing your sex organs. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole body and then orthodox Christianity... Transhumanism is just changing your body. But you also need to transform your soul, and you need to transform your whole self.”
The host counters that a 'peace and safety' Antichrist scenario requires a prior burst of frightening technological progress (akin to Los Alamos) to make the fear concrete, plus AI capable of solving totalitarianism's classic knowledge problem—so you cannot reach permanent stagnant totalitarianism from the present without first accelerating, and the resulting tools might be the very surveillance/military technologies Thiel builds at Palantir.
“you need one of the accelerationist apocalyptic scenarios to start to play out to get your peace and safety anti-christ, you need more technological progress. Like one of the key failures of totalitarianism in the 20th century was it had a problem of knowledge. It couldn't know what was going on.”
Trump 2.0 populism remains by far the best available option for technological dynamism, not because it will necessarily build the new (the Manhattan Project, the moonshot), but because the status quo institutions cannot make things worse and disruption is needed—populism's primary value is in tearing away the veils and illusions that hid the fakeness of institutional 'progress.'
“It's still by far the best option we have... Is Harvard going to cure dementia by just puttering along, doing the same thing that hasn't worked for 50 years... It can't get it, can't get worse. Let's do disruption.”
Silicon Valley figures like Mark Zuckerberg were not deeply ideological but defaulted to liberalism; when liberal approaches failed, the institutional response was always to 'up the dose'—spend more, go more woke—until the strategy's obvious failure forced a pivot, which explains the 2024 shift toward Trump rather than any genuine pro-Trump conviction.
“for year after year after year, it was do more if something doesn't work, you just need to do more of it. And you up the dose and you up the dose and you spend hundreds of millions of dollars and you go completely woke and everybody hates you. And at some point, it's like, O.K, maybe this isn't working. So they pivot.”
The 1970s stagnation can be dated to a specific cultural turning point: progress effectively stopped when the moon landing of July 1969 was followed three weeks later by Woodstock, marking the moment 'the hippies won' and Baconian science ended at Los Alamos.
“we landed on the moon in July of 1969. Woodstock started three weeks later. And with the benefit of hindsight, that's when progress stopped and the hippies won.”
In a declining Europe, the only three visions of a future different from the present on offer are green environmentalism, Islamic Sharia, and the Chinese-style Communist totalitarian state—and the green vision is by far the strongest and the only thing many Europeans still believe in.
“it's the only thing people still believe in Europe. They believe in the green thing more than Islamic Sharia law or more than in the Chinese Communist totalitarian takeover... The only three on offer in Europe are green, Sharia and the totalitarian Communist state. And the green one is by far the strongest”
Elon Musk effectively stopped believing in Mars as a political project in 2024—not as a science venture—because he came to believe the socialist US government and 'woke AI' would simply follow humanity to Mars, meaning escape via colonization is impossible and the political/cultural battles must be won on Earth first.
“2024 is the year where Elon stopped believing in Mars. Not as a silly science tech project, but as a political project. Mars was supposed to be a political project. It was building an alternative. And in 2024, Elon came to believe that if you went to Mars the socialist US government, the woke A.I., it would follow you to Mars.”
The very difficulty of determining whether we are in stagnation or acceleration—because hyperspecialization creates ever-narrower groups of experts who guard their own fields—is itself evidence of stagnation.
“the fact that it's so hard to answer that we have ever narrower groups of guardians guarding themselves is itself cause for skepticism”
The fact that AI is the only exception people can point to when discussing progress is itself an implicit acknowledgment that we are otherwise in almost total stagnation.
“The fact that we're only talking about I feel, is always an implicit acknowledgment that. But for we are like in almost total stagnation.”
Thiel's support for Donald Trump in 2016 functioned like venture capital for politics—backing a disruptive agent worth a calculated risk—but his realistic aim was modest: not that Trump would deliver positive progress, but that for the first time in 100 years a Republican rejected 'syrupy Bush nonsense' and could at least open a national conversation about American decline.
“I didn't have great expectations about what Trump would do in a positive way. But I thought, at least for the first time in 100 years, we had a Republican who was not giving us this syrupy Bush nonsense. And that was not the same as progress, but we could at least have a conversation.”
Belief in radical life extension and scientific immortality has itself declined as a symptom of stagnation: in 1999 there was still a fringe Boomer belief that science would cure all diseases (e.g., cryonics enthusiasm), but no millennial believes that anymore.
“in 1999, this was not a mainstream view, but there was still a fringe Boomer view where they still believed they could live forever. And that was the last generation... No one, no one who's a millennial believes that anymore.”
Political involvement is simultaneously incredibly important and incredibly toxic for everyone who gets involved, because in a zero-sum world the stakes feel extremely high and one acquires enemies one did not have before, which is why Thiel oscillates ('schizophrenic') on whether to fund politicians.
“I am schizophrenic on this stuff... It is it's incredibly important and it's incredibly toxic... It's toxic because it's in a zero sum world. The stakes in it feel really, really high. And you end up having enemies you didn't have before.”
Silicon Valley is recklessly ambitious.
“Is Silicon Valley recklessly ambitious?”