Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an engineer myself, this quote illustrates Thiel's ignorance of engineering progress over the past 40 years, and his disregard for the risks posed by industrial-scale experiments on the general public. People like him are precisely why we need environmental regulations in the first place, instead of simply relying on people's common sense and prudence.
You are assuming that those regulations lead to a better outcome. This is not very likely given that the amount of issues the world is facing is not going to be solved by alternative energy as we know it, nor by ignoring the very essence of progress. Reality don't care what way we do thing. It will judge us by our ability to survive whatever it throws at us. Whether that is astroids hitting earth, lack of resources o…
I'm satisfied by the evidence that they do. We don't have nearly the lead in our bodies that we did in the heyday of lead fuel additives, we don't have asbestos dust permeating our schools, and the ozone hole is shrinking. All of these positive outcomes were the result of regulation.
[Reality] will judge us by our ability to survive whatever it throws at us.
Or whatever we throw at us. The US has an obesity epidemic costing us billions in health care and lost productivity, and it is a problem entirely of our own making.
The engineering progress over the past 40 years have primarily been piggybacking on the 60 years that came before.
This is always true, whatever time period you look at. And looking at the history of technological progress objectively, it is simply absurd to maintain that it is slower now than it was 40 years ago.