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Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

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Re: Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

#171

Post by piva00 »

tarsinge wrote: post #167
gsf_emergency_4 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already edited to say "make moves counter to Altman's". You are right, but Thiel thinks about progress in a fundamentally different, I'd argue opposite, way from Zuck or Altman. More aligned with Elon or Karp. Or even some of the Chinese. To be concrete, he'd never consciously engage in the kind of circular financing or rentseeking that Altman/Zuck would be open to. (also he has enough social aptitude not to tak…

I don’t know, the biggest difference I see is Thiel and Elon are all about government/tax payer money (through contracts like Palantir or SpaceX, subsidies like Tesla, lobbying, influencing elections, or worst). In that way they align with China, as an autocracy directly financing their companies is their ideal business model. Altman and Zuck OTOH are more typical SV entrepreneurs.

There's also a difference in Thiel: an intensely heretic view of Christianity, he touts himself as a Christian while trying to make it his work of stopping the Anti-Christ (which in Christian theology is impossible since you'd be stopping the Apocalypse).

Peter Thiel is an interesting character mostly due to how bizarre he can be, a billionaire who is entranced in Christian mythology, afraid of death, using his power in capital to try to mold the world to his fractured mind. In a parallel world where he isn't rich he would be the town crazy spouting about the Anti-Christ at main square in some German village.

Re: Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

#172

Post by gsf_emergency_5 »

rstuart4133 wrote: post #168
gsf_emergency_4 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detailed perspective from someone with insight into Thiel's thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6LakOrqDL4&t=1s That watched, imho Thiel is interested in the post-Straussian tension between "thinking in the open" (ideal science) and "focussed value creation" (which is best done behind closed doors) AI as driven by premium mediocre Millennials combines the worst of both: lazy group-think promoted by stochastic p…

> "focussed value creation" (which is best done behind closed doors) And yet, it is the most open societies that do best at value creation. It's almost as if the degree of cooperation and coordination between the individuals is more important to success than the insights of any one individual, even if they are as smart as Mr Theil believes himself to be.

This suggests that things might not be as simple as that (it's a strong correlation, I admit)

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/iab8r7/social_trus...

(By the scale used here US is exceptionally mid)

Re: Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

#173

Post by [deleted] »

tarsinge wrote: post #167
gsf_emergency_4 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've already edited to say "make moves counter to Altman's". You are right, but Thiel thinks about progress in a fundamentally different, I'd argue opposite, way from Zuck or Altman. More aligned with Elon or Karp. Or even some of the Chinese. To be concrete, he'd never consciously engage in the kind of circular financing or rentseeking that Altman/Zuck would be open to. (also he has enough social aptitude not to tak…

I don’t know, the biggest difference I see is Thiel and Elon are all about government/tax payer money (through contracts like Palantir or SpaceX, subsidies like Tesla, lobbying, influencing elections, or worst). In that way they align with China, as an autocracy directly financing their companies is their ideal business model. Altman and Zuck OTOH are more typical SV entrepreneurs.

[deleted]

Re: Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

#174

Post by gsf_emergency_5 »

piva00 wrote: post #171
tarsinge wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, the biggest difference I see is Thiel and Elon are all about government/tax payer money (through contracts like Palantir or SpaceX, subsidies like Tesla, lobbying, influencing elections, or worst). In that way they align with China, as an autocracy directly financing their companies is their ideal business model. Altman and Zuck OTOH are more typical SV entrepreneurs.

There's also a difference in Thiel: an intensely heretic view of Christianity, he touts himself as a Christian while trying to make it his work of stopping the Anti-Christ (which in Christian theology is impossible since you'd be stopping the Apocalypse). Peter Thiel is an interesting character mostly due to how bizarre he can be, a billionaire who is entranced in Christian mythology, afraid of death, using his power…

There was an Orthodox ascetic that argued for physical immortality (and space colonialism):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Fyodorov_(philosopher)

Yes making things people want is not really in their book of values. If they're about things that almost nobody wants (transhumanism, triggering the Apocalypse) it makes sense that governments might have to step in.

Counterpoint-- Thiel and Musk, if you believe them, brought the "Open" to OpenAI

https://archive.ph/KFxhI

>Because of AI’s surprising history, it’s hard to predict when human-level AI might come within reach. When it does, it’ll be important to have a leading research institution which can prioritize a good outcome for all over its own self-interest. We’re hoping to grow OpenAI into such an institution.

--Musk, 2015

Re: Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

#175

Post by redwood »

djmips wrote: post #109
redwood wrote: post #7

Having heartburn after making a $100M bet on hucksters? https://www.wsj.com/tech/peter-thiel-backed-startup-secures-...

Have any juicy articles to back up your unsubstantiated claim?

From HN the other week https://foxchapelresearch.substack.com/p/i-think-substrate-i...

Re: Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

#177

Post by literalAardvark »

nurettin wrote: post #161
thrance wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wrote a long rant about Greta Thunberg being the antichrist. I think that places him more in the "insane" box than the "christian" one, but still.

The irony is killing me.

He misnomers a very special definition of antichrist that probably would include Greta (anyone who could encourage mass collectivism).

Which would make him hilariously unaware of the irony of the antichrist saying someone else is the antichrist.

Re: Peter Thiel sells off all Nvidia stock, stirring bubble fears

#178

Post by brador »

mondrian wrote: post #53
toxicdevil wrote: post #14

> Over 537,000 shares, which represent nearly 40% of the entire portfolio @190/share this is $102 million Also: > Vistra Energy, another 19% chunk, was wiped out as well. > Moreover, the fund’s turnover hovered over 80%, leaving just three holdings: Tesla, Microsoft, and Apple. Some would argue that tesla is a bigger bubble. > his personal net worth is an eye-popping $16.3 billion as of 2025.

So this 'portfolio' is <200M on a net worth of 16B? This is like someone worth 1M selling $600 worth of stock.

A 200M sale on a 16B net worth is like someone worth 1M selling about 12.5k of stock.
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