Well, I suggest you search them on youtube to have an accurate representation. They all have multiple interviews available. I will probably butcher them and it's not going to be exhaustive, but from the top of my head:
Peter Thiel: His contrarian views enlightened me many many times, for example his views that higher education is not a temple of knowledge anymore, but a big elitist economic bubble. I also suggest you read his book Zero to One, I liked it a lot.
Elon Musk: One could argue he's not really a thinker, since he's working so much on his businesses. Even so, it's evident that he thinks a lot and very deeply. He's willing to figure out the big picture of what's good for humanity and go all-in on it.
Rand: Her philosophy and her system of values which is in a deep contrast with what is preached everywhere else. This would be a start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQVrMzWtqgU
What’s your view on Thiel supporting Trump? Why would a deep thinker support a charlatan, destructive and narcissistic person like Trump? Zero to one had some good ideas.
And Elon apparently isn’t really a deep thinker. A good hype person… yes. Most of his projects are vanity projects, e.g hyperloop, neurolink, self driving cars etc. He badly wants to be seen as a real life Tony Stark. He’s also a narcissist and a terrible leader… e.g. the hyperloop project was to derail a public transport project.[01]
There is also a good video series outlining Musk’s false claims [02]
And Rand’s ideas are toxic [03]… just look at the state of America… huge inequalities in the richest country of the world. Or UK also getting worse… thanks to a similar mindset. Dog eat dog world… self interest trumps helping others to maintain a stable society.
I didn't write my choices to start debating them with people. People are more than what you or I think of them. Be mindful of your reductionist view towards other people. You have done that 3 times in your reply.
2- Yeah, no. Elon has accomplished more than all of us and it will surely stay that way until we die. So I'm not going to tolerate you calling him a hype person, a narcissist and a terrible leader when he has a track record of immense success. He's aiming high with ambitious ideas, who cares if Hyperloop didn't work after all. Try to make a business successful and see how difficult it is.
3- You seem again, to rely on opinion hit pieces to forge your ideas.
I believe this forum exists so people like us can have a civilized debate. Hence why I wanted to find out more why you support the people you listed.
1) Supporting Trump - a populist - was a terrible idea. Thiel's rationale doesn't make sense in this context. If you support a known liar and narcissist who doesn't care about the country then you get what we have now - an ever more divided country and 6th of Jan insurrection attempt - where people died.
2) When experts in the field Musk has businesses in are calling him out on his false claims then I think it's not just opinion based but based on fact. When it comes to Hyerloop, he had no intention to make it a success. It was purely to benefit his business - Tesla. Selling Tesla as self-driving cars and people believing it has cost actual lives as well. Again - Elon doesn't care - he only cares about himself. Or what about calling a rescue diver a pedo. This alone tells you a lot about his character.
3) Look at the state of the US - do you think it's going well? A lot of those folks that are in power believe in Rand's ideas.
So it's not opinion based - but observational and listening to the expert and scientific community.
I agree with you - we need bold visionaries - but Thiel and Musk are not those people. Both are exploitative.
Montaigne once said that he often found himself listening to multiple perspectives and being convinced by all of them, even when they contradicted one another.
Yup, I think that his views on how governments and bigco operate are spot-on. Manufacture of Consent was eye opening for me. I disagree with him politically. Also, anarchy is not so far away from libertarianism.
I think if you agree with him on government, big corporations and manufacturing consent you pretty much just agree with him :D What do you disagree with?
> Also, anarchy is not so far away from libertarianism.
At some point I thought the same, but I think there are some core differences that would eventually lead to vastly different real world results. Mostly I think they stem from two ways of looking at people: either as primarily individuals who voluntarily form (contractual) bonds with others (this would be the libertarian take), or primarily as social creatures who try to carve out some room for their individual freedoms but always remain part of an organic whole (think of Kropotkin, mutual aid etc.).
If I remember correctly he's been advocating for socialism a lot in his late years, which I think would be even worse than what we have today and would naturally descend into totalitarianism like it happened so many times in the past.
I think he's been advocating for libertarian socialism consistently for his entire life. He's always careful to distinguish it from state socialism, as in, for example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr_Qp5k5zDY
What ideas from Rand, Musk and Thiel in particular?
Bach has interesting ideas - I enjoy listening to him.