Peter Thiel on Progress and Stagnation

That's why I said, you have benevolent intentions, but the result of your comment's popularity has to do with deep rooted not-thinking-for-yourself culture in SV and the mob mentality that goes with it.

I see this with my own eyes and feel it living here in SV.

So it is groupthink over morality? Quite the hot take.

Also, I don't think backing a candidate and using their victory to enrich yourself is a particularly brilliant or unique move, at least not one that warrants "listen[ing] to everything he says."

Beyond that, backing a candidate that's (at least arguably) detrimental to a country simply for profit or to prove a point about how smart you are doesn't really engender a lot of respect from me. Leveraging your existing billions to make even more billions might be somewhat impressive but this brings me back to my original question: Why should I (or anybody) care what Peter Thiel thinks about The Enlightenment or whatever?

This whole thing reads as "here's a grand study of one of our greatest thinkers" despite his main qualification is being rich and litigious.

It's like if I painted a self portrait where I've got angel wings and Dwayne Johnson's physique. It might be fun and pleasing for me, but why would anyone else want to look at it? And why would it end up on the front page of HN?

Sorry I don't mean to be rude but I am still genuinely stuck on What is the purpose of this document? and Why would anyone necessarily care about its content?

Can someone flipping a non-biased coin 50 times have heads come up every flip? Yes. While theoretically possible, in reality it’s almost certainly a weighted coin.

Warp Drive (or equivalent) - String theory is largely a 30 year dead end and we have no idea what the link between QED and gravity is. Imagine we could unlock the graviton, it would be huge. Currently we have no unified theory and the quantum realm is still considered "spooky" meaning we don't fully understand the hidden substructure. The fact that 2 particles entangled can interact at ANY distance should tell you something. Eric Weinstein talks a lot about this in his podcasts, one of the reason I think he and Thiel are partners.

The Replicator (think star trek) - I know some will say "But what about 3D printers". That is not what I am talking about. That still requires atoms of a material to be fed into what is the incremental advance of the printer, just substitute the ink with X material. I'm talking about a machine that can both synthesize the material from ANY substrate, since its all just proton/neutron/electron arrangements anyways, and then arrange the material in specific placement to create just about anything on a tabletop. I'd even settle for the material part only. That would be mega leap. Equivalent to say the advent of the refrigerator or microwave.

Humanoid Robots - On this point I agree with you somewhat, that both AI and humanoid robots are starting to emerge now from incremental advancement. However Thiel loves to point to household objects likes Refrigerators, TV's, etc, so what would be the next step for the household that would be a large leap: IMO it would be a robot that could do all the trivial tasks that I don't care to such as dishes, laundry, general upkeep, etc. All the dystopian robot takeover stuff aside, that convergence of tech would be a quantum leap for humanity.

A air-ground/water/space ship personal vehicle - I would not agree that this would be an incremental advancement of the car since the car can only do ground (air in 2 dimensions on specific surfaces). You have vehicles that can traverse these mediums in the singular sense, even small 1 person versions, but NONE combine all 3 mediums with full degree of freedom. I'm not talking flying cars, I'm talking flying saucer that can dive into the ocean or take you to orbit.

Another way of thinking of it is, you have access to things now that only the uber rich had long ago, so what do only the uber rich have access to now that you do not: Access to resources (replicator), access to labor (cheap home robots), access to any point on the planet (personal space ships), even access to unlimited energy (fusion reactors, which I would argue are NOT incremental of nuclear). Lets start there. If you want to get outside the box, then you look for the star trek tech: Warp Drive, Tractor Beams (they can do this with sound waves to some extent), transporters, physical-real holographics.

So the counter arguments are "well all tech is incremental". From the point of view the 60's starting version 1 appliances most is, but you haven't got sufficiently outside the box IMO. Combinations of tech maybe (phone+computer=iphone, submarine+airplaine+space-pod=flying saucer, AI+Boston Dynamics Robot=humanoid home servant, 3D printer + ? = replicator), but not always incremental. Something like a warp drive or a star trek transporter would fall outside of that. The best we have is to look to sci-fi and ask what it would take to achieve that kind of breakthrough. Even fusion reactors or space elevators would be a huge leap even if there was only 1 on the planet within the next decade.

The next counter argument is "well we have reached the end of physics so there is nothing left to invent". Please explain the QED-gravity link and submit your unified theory to the journal Nature then, they are waiting. Until then we have not yet unlocked everything.