Peter Thiel

entrepreneur · 25 mentions across 4 readings

In this course

Peter Thiel is a tech entrepreneur and investor whose engagement with French intellectual traditions—particularly René Girard's mimetic theory—represents a crucial bridge between Silicon Valley capitalism and continental philosophy that the course uses to understand cyberlibertarian ideology. His figure exemplifies how venture capital thinking intersects with cybernetic and anthropological frameworks, as readings trace his influence through networks connecting Stanford academics to fintech platforms like Facebook. Thiel's presence in the course material illustrates the often-obscured philosophical genealogies behind contemporary AI and surveillance capitalism.

Mentioned in 4 readings

Geoff Shullenberger

Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection

15

Mimesis, Violence, and Facebook: Peter Thiel’s French Connection (Full Essay) (https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/08/13/mimesis-violence-and-facebook-peter-thiels-french-connection-full-essay/) Geoff Shullenberger on August 13, …As one examines the list of participants, one name stands out: Peter Thiel, not, like the rest, a university professor, but (at the time) the President of Clarium Capital. In 2011, the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/2…Thiel’s connection to the late René Girard, his former teacher at Stanford, is well known but poorly understood. Most accounts of the Girard-Thiel connection have described the common ground between them as “conservatism,” but this oversimp…

+12 more

Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

8

Influence and variants. The TESCREAL bundle of ideologies has become enormously influential, especially within certain powerful corners of the tech industry. Current and former billionaires who subscribe to, or are associated with, one or m…| | | | | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | | our current understanding and imagination” (Goertzel, 2010). | | | Rationalism | An ideology that emerged from the LessWrong website, founded by Eliezer Yudkowsky in 2009. Rationalists focus on …By 2007, when Pennachin and Goertzel co-authored and co-edited the first book on AGI, few organizations specified building AGI as their goal (Pennachin and Goertzel, 2007a). Six years earlier, in 2001, Goertzel co-founded the Artificial Gen…

+5 more

David Golumbia

from Bitcoin, Software as Rightwing Extremism

1

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Pandaemonium Architecture 6.0 syllabus Fall 2025

1

What’s the Deal with Birds? v. Birds Aren’t Real– predatory journals, internet hoaxing “Birds are very strange. Some people are like “whoa they’re flying around and stuff, what’s the deal with that?” This sentiment is shared by people acros…

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