书童按：本篇是彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）于2025年6月接受罗斯·多塔特（Ross Douthat）”有趣时代”（Interesting Times）播客采访实录。蒂尔是PayPal和Palantir的联合创始人，硅谷传奇投资人，唐纳德·特朗普和J.D.万斯政治生涯的早期资助者，亦是当代保守派知识分子中强调”反对共识”的极具影响力人物。其采访涉及技术停滞论、增长与环保的辩证、《回到未来》测试、医学研究中的风险承担、政治风险投资等深刻议题，言论犀利，思路深邃。初稿采用Claude API机器翻译及排版，书童仅做简单校对及批注，将分上下篇两个部分发布，以飨诸君。
罗斯·多塔特 硅谷是否过于野心勃勃？我们更应该担忧世界末日还是发展停滞？为什么世界上最成功的投资者之一会担心反基督的降临？
ROSS DOUTHAT Is Silicon Valley recklessly ambitious? What should we fear more, Armageddon or stagnation? Why is one of the world’s most successful investors worrying about the Antichrist?
罗斯·多塔特 我今天的嘉宾是PayPal和Palantir的联合创始人，也是唐纳德·特朗普和J.D.万斯政治生涯的早期资助者。彼得·蒂尔是科技右翼的核心人物，以资助各种保守派和逆流而上的思想著称。今天我们要谈的是他自己的想法，因为尽管身为亿万富翁略有劣势，但有充分理由证明他是过去20年最具影响力的右翼知识分子。彼得·蒂尔，欢迎来到”有趣时代”。
ROSS DOUTHAT My guest today is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and an early investor in the political careers of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Peter Thiel is the original tech right power player, well known for funding a range of conservative and simply contrarian ideas. But we’re going to talk about his own ideas because despite the slight handicap of being a billionaire, there’s a good case that he’s the most influential right wing intellectual of the last 20 years. Peter Thiel, welcome to Interesting Times.
彼得·蒂尔 感谢邀请。
PETER THIEL Thanks for having me.
罗斯·多塔特 非常欢迎。感谢你来到这里。我想先让你回忆大约13或14年前的事情。你为保守派杂志《国家评论》写了一篇名为《未来的终结》的文章。文章的基本论点是，那种充满活力、节奏快、瞬息万变的现代世界，实际上并没有人们所想的那么充满活力。
ROSS DOUTHAT You’re very welcome. Thanks for being here. So I want to start by taking you back in time about 13 or 14 years. You wrote an essay for National Review, the conservative magazine called “The End of the Future.” And basically the argument in that essay was that the dynamic, fast-paced, ever-changing modern world was just not nearly as dynamic as people thought.
罗斯·多塔特 实际上我们进入了一个技术停滞的时期。数字生活是一个突破，但并没有达到人们期望的那样巨大。归根结底，世界基本上陷在里面。你并不是唯一提出这种论断的人，但你向来是最有力支持这一论断的人，因为你是在数字革命中致富的硅谷人。所以我很好奇，在2025年，你认为这种判断仍然成立吗？
ROSS DOUTHAT And that actually we entered a period of technological stagnation. That sort of digital life was a breakthrough, but not as big a breakthrough as people had hoped. And that sort of the world was kind of stuck, basically. And you weren’t the only person to make arguments like this, but it had a special potency coming from you because you were a Silicon Valley insider who had gotten rich in the digital revolution. So I’m curious, in 2025, right, do you think that diagnosis still holds?
彼得·蒂尔 是的，我仍然大体上相信停滞论。它从来不是一个绝对的论断。所谓的主张并不是说我们完全绝对地陷入泥潭。某种程度上，这是一个关于速度放缓的论断——速度并没有降为零，但你看从1750年到1970年……（分明更快）
PETER THIEL Yes, I still broadly believe in the stagnation thesis. It was never an absolute thesis. So the claim was not that we were absolutely completely stuck. It was in some ways a claim about that the velocity had slowed, it wasn’t zero, but that we were, I don’t know, from 1750 to 1970.
彼得·蒂尔 两百多年是加速变化的时期，我们不断地、无情地前进。轮船更快了，铁路更快了，汽车更快了，飞机更快了。这在协和式客机和阿波罗登月任务时达到顶点，之后在各种层面上事情都放慢了。
PETER THIEL Two hundred plus years were periods of accelerating change where we’re relentlessly, we’re moving faster. The ships were faster, the railroads were faster, the cars were faster, the planes were faster. It culminates in the Concorde and the Apollo missions and then that in all sorts of dimensions things had slowed.
彼得·蒂尔 我们一直（仅仅）在数字世界例外。所以我们有计算机、软件、互联网和移动互联网。而且在过去10-15年里，我们有了加密货币和人工智能革命，我认为这在某种意义上确实很重大。但问题是，它是否足以让我们真正摆脱这种普遍的停滞感？
PETER THIEL There was, you know, I always made an exception for the world of bits. So we had, you know, computers and software and Internet and mobile Internet. And then, you know, the last 10, 15 years you had crypto and the AI revolution, which I think is, is, is in some sense pretty big. But, but the question is, you know, is it enough to, to really get out of this, this generalized sense of stagnation?
彼得·蒂尔 这里有一个认识论的问题，你可以从《回到未来》那篇文章（书童注：指2011年1月20日Peter Thiel受National Review邀约采访的通稿）谈起。我们怎么知道自己是处于停滞还是加速之中？因为晚期现代性的特征之一就是人们过度专业化。如果你没有花半辈子研究弦理论，你怎么敢说我们在物理学上没有取得进步？量子计算机呢？癌症研究和生物技术以及所有这些领域呢？而且你还得给这些事情分配权重——比如癌症研究的进步与弦理论的进步，该如何比较？所以从理论上说，这是一个极其、极其难以把握的问题。正因为它太难回答，我们只能依赖越来越窄的专家群体各自守护自己的领地，而这本身就值得质疑。所以是的，我认为我们大体上仍然处在一个相当停滞的世界里。但并非完全停滞。
PETER THIEL And there’s an epistemological question you can start with on the, you know, the, the “Back to the Future” essays. How do we even, how do we even know whether we’re in stagnation or acceleration? Because one of the features of late modernity is that people are hyper specialized. And so, you know, you know, can you say that we’re not making progress in physics unless you’ve devoted half your life to studying string theory? Or what about quantum computers or what about cancer research and biotech and sort of all these verticals and then how much does progress in cancer count versus string theory? And so you have to give weightings to all these things. So in theory, it’s an extremely, extremely difficult question to get a handle of because, yeah, the fact that it’s so hard to answer that we have ever narrower groups of guardians guarding themselves is itself cause for skepticism. And so, yes, I think broadly we’re in this world that’s still pretty stuck. It’s not absolutely stuck.
罗斯·多塔特 是的，你提到了《回到未来》（书童注：罗伯特·泽米吉斯于1985年导演的科幻电影，非常值得一看），我们刚刚给孩子们看了原版《回到未来》，就是第一部，有迈克尔·J·福克斯的那部，当然就像……
ROSS DOUTHAT Yeah, you mentioned “Back to the Future” and we just showed our kids the original “Back to the Future,” the first one with Michael J. Fox, and of course it was like.
彼得·蒂尔 从1955到1985，回了30年。然后《回到未来2》是，我想是从1985到2015，这距今已经过去十年了。那就是有飞行汽车的地方。而2015年的未来与现实截然不同。
PETER THIEL 1955 to 1985, 30 years back. And then the “Back to the Future Two” was I think 1985 to 2015, which is now a decade in the past. And that’s where you had flying cars. And the 2015 future is wildly divergent.
罗斯·多塔特 与美国不同。2015年的未来中确实有比夫·坦能（《回到未来》中的虚构人物）似的唐纳德·特朗普作为掌权任务，所以有一定的预见性。但是，最明显的事情就是建筑环境看起来多么不同。
ROSS DOUTHAT From the United States. The 2015 future did have Biff Tannen as a Donald Trump-like figure in some kind of power. So it had some kind of prescience. But yeah, the big noticeable thing is just how different the built environment looks.
罗斯·多塔特 所以关于停滞论最有力的论据之一就是，如果你把某人从历史的各个时间点放进一台时间机器里，如果他们离开了1860年或——
ROSS DOUTHAT And so one of the strongest cases for stagnation that I’ve heard is that, yeah, if you put someone in a time machine from various points, they would recognize themselves to be in a completely different world if they left 1860 or.
彼得·蒂尔 从1890年到1970年，如果你活了这80年，那大概就是你的一辈子。
PETER THIEL 1890 to 1970, if you lived, those are the 80 years of your lifetime, something like that.
罗斯·多塔特 但对于我的孩子们来说，即使他们是2025年的孩子，回头看1985年，就像汽车稍微有些不同，没有人有手机，但世界看起来基本上是一样的。所以这是一种非统计学的，但这是常识性的理解。
ROSS DOUTHAT But the world just to my kids, even, you know, as children of 2025, looking at 1985, it’s like the cars are a little different and no one has phones, but the world seems fairly similar. So that’s a kind of, that’s a kind of non-statistical. But that’s the common sense. It’s a common sense understanding.
罗斯·多塔特 但是，有什么东西可以让你相信我们正在经历一个起飞期？仅仅是经济增长吗？是生产率增长？你在看哪些停滞与活力的数据？
ROSS DOUTHAT But are there like, what, what would convince you that we were living through a period of takeoff? Is it just economic growth? Is it productivity growth? Like what are, are there numbers for stagnation versus dynamism that you look at?
彼得·蒂尔 当然，经济数据就是，你的生活水平与父母相比如何？比如说，如果你是一个30岁的千禧一代，你与你的父母——你的婴儿潮一代父母在30岁时相比，他们当时怎么样？
PETER THIEL Sure, it would be well, the economic number would just be how, you know, what are your living standards compared to your parents? You know, if you’re a 30-year-old millennial or you know, how are you doing versus when your parent, your boomer parents were 30 years old, how did they do at the time?
彼得·蒂尔 还有一些知识层面的问题，我们取得了多少突破？
PETER THIEL There are intellectual questions, how much, you know, how many breakthroughs are we having?
彼得·蒂尔 我们怎么量化这些事情？从事研究的回报是多少？从事科学或学术研究的回报确实在递减。也许这就是为什么其中许多领域给人一种反社会型的马尔萨斯式机构的感觉——因为你必须向某个领域投入越来越多的资源，才能获得同样的回报。到了某个临界点，人们就放弃了，整个体系便会崩溃。
PETER THIEL How do we quantify these things? Like, what are the returns of going into research? There certainly are diminishing returns to going into science or going into academia generally. And then maybe this is why so much of it feels like this sociopathic Malthusian kind of an institution, because you have to throw more and more and more at something to get the same returns. And at some point people give up and the thing collapses.
罗斯·多塔特 好的，我们就接上这个话题吧。为什么我们应该想要增长和活力？因为正如你在一些论据中指出的那样，在西方世界的1970年代——大约是你认为事情放慢、开始停滞的时候——发生了一种文化变化，人们对增长的成本变得非常焦虑——尤其是环境成本。
ROSS DOUTHAT Well, right, so let’s pick up on that. Why should we want growth and dynamism? Because as you’ve pointed out in some of your arguments on the subject, right, there is a kind of cultural change that happens in the Western world in the 1970s, around the time you think things slow down, start to stagnate, where people become very anxious about the costs of growth, the environmental costs above all.
罗斯·多塔特 而这个想法就是你最终会形成一种广泛共享的观点，即我们已经足够富有了，如果我们试图过度致富，地球将无法支持我们，会产生各种退化，我们应该满足于现在的状态。那么这个论点哪里出了问题？
ROSS DOUTHAT And the idea being you end up with a widely shared perspective that we’re sort of rich enough and if we try too hard to get that much richer, the planet won’t be able to support us, we’ll have degradation of various kinds, and we should be content with where we are. So what’s wrong with that argument?
彼得·蒂尔 好吧，我认为停滞的发生有其深层原因。这里总有三个问题。你问历史上发生了什么，还有一个问题是应该采取什么措施。但中间还有一个问题：为什么会发生？——人们的想法枯竭了。我认为在一定程度上，机构退化了，变得厌恶风险，还有我们可以描述的那些文化变迁。
PETER THIEL Well, I think there are deep reasons the stagnation happens. So there are always three questions. You ask about history, what actually happened, and there’s a question, get to what should be done about it. But there’s also this intermediate question, why did it happen? People ran out of ideas. I think to some extent the institutions degraded and became risk averse and sort of these cultural transformations we can describe.
彼得·蒂尔 但我也认为在一定程度上，人们对未来有一些非常合理的担忧。如果我们继续加速进步，我们是否会加速走向环境末日或核末日，诸如此类？
PETER THIEL But then I think to some extent also people had some very legitimate worries about the future. Where if we continue to have accelerating progress, were you accelerating towards environmental apocalypse or nuclear apocalypse or things like that?
彼得·蒂尔 但我认为，如果我们找不到回到未来的方式，社会就会——怎么说呢——瓦解，运转不下去。中产阶级，我对中产阶级的定义是那些期望子女比自己过得更好的人。当这种期望崩塌时，我们便不再是一个中产阶级社会。
PETER THIEL But I think if we don’t find a way back to the future, I do think the society, I don’t know, it unravels, it doesn’t work. The middle class, I would define the middle class as the people who expect their kids to do better than themselves. And when that expectation collapses, we no longer have a middle class society.
彼得·蒂尔 也许有某种方式可以拥有一个静态且停滞的封建社会，或者也许有某种方式可以转向某种完全不同的社会，但这不是西方世界、也不是美国在其前200年中运作的方式。
PETER THIEL And maybe there’s, maybe there’s some way you can have a feudal society in which things are always static and stuck or Maybe there’s some way you can shift to some radically different society, but it’s not the way the Western world, it’s not the way the United States has functioned for the first 200 years of its existence.
罗斯·多塔特 所以你认为普通人最终不会接受停滞，他们会起来反叛，并在叛乱过程中把周围的一切拉垮？
ROSS DOUTHAT So you think that ordinary people won’t accept stagnation in the end, it’s that they will rebel and sort of pull things down around them in the course of that rebellion.
彼得·蒂尔 他们可能会反叛，或者我们的制度就行不通了。我们的制度中（经济）增长是一切的预设条件。
PETER THIEL You know, they may rebel or our institutions don’t work. You know, all of our institutions are predicated on growth.
罗斯·多塔特 确实如此。我们的预算当然预设了增长。
ROSS DOUTHAT Right. Our budgets are certainly predicated on growth.
彼得·蒂尔 是的。比如对比里根和奥巴马——里根代表的是消费主义式的资本主义，这本身就是矛盾修辞。就是说，你靠借钱消费，作为资本家你不存钱，反而借钱。奥巴马则代表低税社会主义，和里根的消费主义式资本主义一样自相矛盾。
PETER THIEL Yeah. If you say, I don’t know, Reagan and Obama, you know, Reagan was, was sort of consumer capitalism, which is oxymoronic. It was, you know, you borrowed, you don’t save money as a capitalist. You borrow money. And Obama was low tax socialism just as oxymoronic as the consumerist capitalism of Reagan.
彼得·蒂尔 而且我喜欢低税社会主义远胜于高税社会主义。但我担心它不可持续。在某个时刻，要么税率会上涨，要么社会主义会终结。所以它是深层不稳定的。这就是为什么人们不乐观。他们不认为我们已经到达了某种稳定的——格雷塔（书童注：瑞典激进环保主义者）式的未来。也许那可以行得通。
PETER THIEL And I like low tax socialism way better than high tax socialism. But I worry that it’s not sustainable. At some point, either the taxes go up or the socialism ends. So it’s, it’s, it’s deeply, deeply unstable. And that’s, that’s why people are, they’re not optimistic. They, they don’t think we’ve hit some stable, you know, the Greta future. Maybe it can work.
罗斯·多塔特 这是指格雷塔·通贝里。为了清楚说明，这是对环保活动人士格雷塔·通贝里的引用，她以反气候变化抗议而闻名，在你看来，她代表着一种反增长、实际上是威权主义的、环保主义主导的未来的象征。
ROSS DOUTHAT This is the Greta Thunberg. Just to be clear, that’s a reference to Greta Thunberg, the activist best known for anti-climate change protests, who to you, I would say represents a kind of symbol of a kind of anti-growth, effectively authoritarian, environmentalist dominated future.
彼得·蒂尔 当然。但我们还没走到那一步。我们还没走到那一步。如果你——
PETER THIEL Sure. But we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. You know, it would be, it’d be like a very, very different society if you, if you, if you, if you.
罗斯·多塔特 真正生活在一种去增长的——你知道——小斯堪的纳维亚式的村落中。
ROSS DOUTHAT Actually lived in a kind of degrowth, you know, small Scandinavian villages.
彼得·蒂尔 我不确定它是否像朝鲜，但它一定是极度压迫人的。
PETER THIEL I’m not sure it would be North Korea, but it would be, it would be super oppressive.
罗斯·多塔特 有一件事始终让我印象深刻：当社会弥漫着停滞感、衰败感——借用我偏爱的那个词——你会发现一些人开始渴望危机。渴望某个时刻的到来，让他们可以彻底将社会从当前的轨道转向另一条道路。
ROSS DOUTHAT One thing that’s always struck me is that when you have this sense of stagnation, a sense of decadence. Right. To use, to, to use a word that I, I like to use for it in, in a society, you then also have people who end up being kind of eager for a crisis. Right. Eager for a moment to come along where, you know, they can, they can radically redirect society from the path it’s on.
罗斯·多塔特 因为我倾向于认为，在富裕社会中，当财富积累到一定程度，人们会变得非常安逸，厌恶风险，而要从衰败中走向某种新事物确实很难——没有危机就很难做到。对我来说，最典型的例子是9·11事件之后，外交政策保守派中弥漫着一种观念：我们此前一直深陷衰败与停滞，现在是我们觉醒并发动新十字军、重塑世界的时候了。显然那个结果非常糟糕。但类似的思潮——
ROSS DOUTHAT Because I tend to think that in rich societies you hit a certain level of wealth, people become very comfortable, they become risk averse, and it’s just hard, it’s hard to get out of decadence into something, into something new without a crisis. So the original example for me was after September 11, there was this whole mentality among foreign policy conservatives that we had been decadent and stagnant and now is our time to, you know, wake up and launch a new crusade and remake the world. And obviously that ended very badly. But something similar it was, it was.
彼得·蒂尔 小布什直接告诉人们去购物就好了。
PETER THIEL Bush 43 just told people to go shopping right away.
罗斯·多塔特 所以对他们来说并没有反衰败。
ROSS DOUTHAT So it wasn’t anti-decadent for them.
彼得·蒂尔 大部分情况下是这样。所以你看，也许在一些新保守派外交政策圈子里，有人在”角色扮演”以试图走出衰败。但最主流的态度是小布什告诉人们——你们继续去购物吧。
PETER THIEL For the most part. So you, there was, there was, maybe there was some neocon foreign policy enclave in which people were larping as a way to get out of decadence. But the, the dominant thing was Bush 43, people telling people just to go shopping.
罗斯·多塔特 那么，为了逃脱衰败，你愿意承担多大的风险？似乎这里确实存在一种危险，那就是想要反衰败的人必须承受大量风险。他们必须说，看，你们有这个好的、稳定的、舒适的社会，但猜猜呢？我们希望打一场仗，或者制造一场危机，又或者完全重组政府等等。他们必须倾向于冒险。
ROSS DOUTHAT So what risks should you be willing to take to escape decadence? It does seem like there’s a danger here where the people who want to be anti-decadent have to take on a lot of risk. They have to say, look, you’ve got this nice, stable, comfortable society, but guess what? We’d like to have a war or a crisis or a total reorganization of government and so on. They have to lean into, into danger. Right.
彼得·蒂尔 我不知道我能否给你一个精确的答案，但我的方向性回答是——多得多，我们应该承担更多风险。我们应该做得更多，而且我不知道，我可以举例说明所有这些不同的领域。
PETER THIEL I don’t know if I have to answer, you know, I don’t know if I’ve give you a precise answer, but my directional answer is a lot more, we should take a lot more risk. We should be doing a lot more and I don’t know, I can go through all these different verticals.
彼得·蒂尔 比如说，如果我们看生物技术，像痴呆症、阿尔茨海默症这种疾病，我们在40到50年间几乎没有任何进展。人们完全困在β淀粉样蛋白上。显然行不通。这只是某种愚蠢的勾当，人们只是在互相强化。所以是的，我们在这个方面确实需要承担更多风险。
PETER THIEL It’s, you know, if we, if we look at biotech, something like dementia, Alzheimer’s, we’ve made zero progress in 40 to 50 years. People are completely stuck on beta amyloids. It’s obviously not working. It’s just some kind of a stupid racket where the people are just reinforcing themselves. And so, yes, we need to take way more risk in that department.
罗斯·多塔特 好吧，我想问一件具体的事情，让我们保持具体，我想在这个例子上再停留一下，问一下好的，说”我们需要在抗衰老研究中承担更多风险”到底意味着什么？这是意味着FDA必须后退，说任何人只要有治疗阿尔茨海默症的新疗法就可以直接在开放市场上销售吗？医学领域中的风险究竟是什么样子的？
ROSS DOUTHAT Well, I want to ask, to keep us in the concrete, I want to stay with that example for a minute and ask, okay, what does that mean saying we need to take more risks in anti-aging research? Does it mean that the FDA has to step back and say anyone who has a new treatment for Alzheimer’s can, you know, go ahead and sell it on the open market? Like, what is, what is, what is risk in the medical space look like?
彼得·蒂尔 是的，你确实会承担更多风险。如果你有某种致命疾病，你可能可以承受更多的风险。研究人员也可以承受更多的风险。
PETER THIEL Yeah, you would take a lot more risk. You know, if you have some fatal disease, there probably are a lot more risks you can take. There are a lot more risks the researchers can take.
彼得·蒂尔 从文化层面想象一下，那就像早期现代时期，那时人们确实认为我们会治愈疾病。他们认为我们会实现根本性的延长寿命、甚至不朽。这是早期现代的项目，是弗朗西斯·培根、孔多塞的信条。也许这反基督教，也许是基督教竞争的下游产物。如果基督教承诺了你肉体的复活，那么科学就必须承诺同样的事情才能成功。
PETER THIEL Culturally, what I imagine it looks like is early modernity where people, yeah, they thought we would cure diseases. They thought we would have radical life extension, immortality. That was part of the project of early modernity. It was Francis Bacon, Condorcet. And maybe it was anti Christian, maybe it was downstream of Christianity was competitive. If Christ, if Christianity promised you a physical resurrection, you know, science was not going to succeed unless it promised you the exact same thing.
彼得·蒂尔 我不知道。我记得1999年、2000年，那时我在经营PayPal，我的联合创始人之一卢克·诺塞克（Luke Nosek）对Alcor和人体冷冻学很感兴趣，他认为人们应该在死后冷冻自己。有一天我们带着整个公司去参加了一个”冷冻派对”——你知道，就像特百惠派对一样。在冷冻派对上人们推销冷冻保单。
PETER THIEL But I don’t know. I remember 1999, 2000, when I was running PayPal, one of my co founders, Luke Nosek, he was into Alcor and cryonics and people should freeze themselves. And we had one day where we took the whole company to a “freezing party.” You know, Tupperware party. People sell Tupperware policies at a freezing party.
罗斯·多塔特 他们出售的——只是头部会被冷冻吗？
ROSS DOUTHAT They sell their. Was it just your heads what was going to be frozen?
彼得·蒂尔 你可以选择全身或者只有头部。
PETER THIEL You could get a full body or just the head?
罗斯·多塔特 只冷冻头部比较便宜。
ROSS DOUTHAT Just the head was cheaper.
彼得·蒂尔 当点阵打印机出故障、冷冻保单打不出来的时候，场面确实挺诡异的。但回想起来，这仍然是技术停滞的一个缩影。
PETER THIEL It was disturbing when the dot matrix printer didn’t quite work and so the freezing policies couldn’t be printed out. But in retrospect, this was still technological stagnation once again.
罗斯·多塔特 确实。
ROSS DOUTHAT Right.
彼得·蒂尔 但这也是衰落的一个症候。在1999年，这并不是主流观点，但仍然存在一种边缘的婴儿潮一代的信念——他们仍然相信自己可以永生。而他们是最后一代这样想的人。我一向反感婴儿潮一代，但也许我们连这种边缘的婴儿潮式自恋都失去了——至少那时还有几个婴儿潮一代相信科学能治愈他们所有的疾病。今天没有哪个千禧一代还相信这种事了。
PETER THIEL But it’s also a symptom of the decline, because in 1999, this was not a mainstream view, but there were still a fringe boomer view where they still believed they could live forever. And that was the last generation. So I’m always anti boomer, but maybe there’s something we’ve lost even in this fringe boomer narcissism, where there were at least a few boomers who still believed science would cure all their diseases. No one who’s a millennial believes that anymore.
罗斯·多塔特 我认为还有一些人相信另一种不朽——现在，我认为对人工智能的痴迷有一部分与超越极限的特定愿景有关。在问你这个之前，我想先问你一些关于政治的事情。
ROSS DOUTHAT I think there are some people who believe in a different kind of immortality, though. Right now, I think part of the fascination with AI is connected to a specific vision of transcending limits. And I’m going to ask you about that after I ask you about politics.
罗斯·多塔特 因为你最初关于停滞的论断——主要关于技术和经济——中让我印象深刻的事情之一是，它可以被应用到很广泛的领域。而当你写那篇文章时，你对海洋家园感兴趣——本质上就是建造独立于僵化的西方世界的新政治体。
ROSS DOUTHAT Because one of the striking things I thought about your original argument on stagnation, which was mostly about technology and the economy, was that it could be applied to a pretty wide range of things. And at the time you were writing that essay, you were interested in seasteading this ideas of essentially building new polities independent of the sclerotic Western world.
罗斯·多塔特 但后来你在2010年代做了一个转变。你是少数——也许是唯一——硅谷中最显眼的唐纳德·特朗普支持者。2016年，你支持了几个经过仔细筛选的共和党参议院候选人。其中一个现在成为了美国副总统。而我作为观察者的看法是，你基本上是在做政治风险投资。你在说，这里有一些可能改变政治现状的颠覆性代理人，值得承受一定风险。你是这么想的吗？
ROSS DOUTHAT But then you made a pivot in the 2010s. So you were one of the few prominent, maybe the only prominent Silicon Valley supporter of Donald Trump. In 2016, you supported a few sort of carefully selected Republican Senate candidates. One of them is now the Vice President of the United States. And my view as an observer of what you were doing was that you were basically being a kind of venture capitalist for politics. Right. You were saying, here are some disruptive agents who might change the political status quo and it’s worth a certain kind of risk here. Is that how you thought about?
彼得·蒂尔 当然。这有多重考量。一方面是——我们希望让泰坦尼克号避开它正驶向的冰山，或者换个比喻——真正地通过政治途径让社会改变航向。
PETER THIEL Sure. There were all sorts of levels. I mean, one level was, yeah, was these hopes that we could redirect the Titanic from the iceberg was heading to, or whatever the metaphor is, you know, really change course as a society through political piece.
彼得·蒂尔 也许更窄的、更聚焦的愿望是，我们也许至少可以让这个话题被谈论起来。当特朗普说”让美国再次伟大”时，好的，这是一个正面的、乐观的、有雄心的议程，还是仅仅是对我们现在所处状态的非常悲观的评估——我们不再是一个伟大的国家？
PETER THIEL Maybe a narrower, a much narrower aspiration was that we could maybe at least have a conversation about this. When someone like Trump said, “make America great again,” okay, is that a positive, optimistic, ambitious agenda, or is it merely a very pessimistic assessment of where we are, that we are no longer a great country?
彼得·蒂尔 我对特朗普能做出什么积极贡献并没有太大期望，但我认为，至少在一百年来第一次，我们有了一个不再给我们灌输那种甜腻虚伪的布什式废话的共和党人。这并不等同于进步，但我们至少可以开始对话了。
PETER THIEL And I didn’t have great expectations about what Trump would do in a positive way, but I thought, at least for the first time in a hundred years, we had a Republican who was not giving us this syrupy Bush nonsense. And that was not the same as progress, but we could at least have a conversation.
彼得·蒂尔 回顾过去，这简直是一种荒谬的幻想。我在2016年有这两个想法，而且你往往会有一些想法恰好在你潜意识中。但我当时有的两个想法是——第一，如果特朗普输了，没有人会因为我支持特朗普而生气。第二，我认为他有50%的获胜机会。（书童注：注意这两个想法，构成了一个严格遵循塔勒布“反脆弱”的杠铃策略）
PETER THIEL In retrospect, this was a preposterous fantasy. I had these two thoughts in 2016, and you often have these ideas that are just below the level of your sort of consciousness. But the two thoughts I had that I wasn’t able to combine was, number one, you know, nobody would be mad at me for supporting Trump if he lost. And number two, I thought he had a 50-50 chance of winning.
罗斯·多塔特 如果他输了为什么没有人会生气？
ROSS DOUTHAT Why would nobody be mad at you if he lost?
彼得·蒂尔 这实在太古怪了，而且也不会真有什么影响。
PETER THIEL It would just be such a weird thing and it wouldn’t really matter.
罗斯·多塔特 好的。
ROSS DOUTHAT Okay.
彼得·蒂尔 然后我认为，他有50%的获胜机会，因为问题是深层的，停滞令人沮丧。然后我的幻想就是——如果他赢了，我们就能开始这个对话。而现实是人们还没准备好。
PETER THIEL And then I thought, you know, he had more. He had, I thought he had a 50-50 chance because the problems were deep and the stagnation was frustrating. And then the fantasy I had was, yeah, if he won, we could have this conversation. And the reality was people weren’t ready for it.
彼得·蒂尔 而现在，也许到了2025年，特朗普崛起十年之后，我们终于可以进行这场对话了。当然你不是那种僵化的左翼人士，Ross。但这——
PETER THIEL And then, you know, maybe we’ve progressed to the point where we can have this conversation at this point in 2025, a decade after Trump. And of course, you’re not a zombie left wing person, Ross. But it’s, this is.
罗斯·多塔特 我被叫过很多名字，很多名字。
ROSS DOUTHAT I’ve been called many things, many things.
彼得·蒂尔 我愿意接受任何进步。
PETER THIEL I’ll take whatever progress I can get.
罗斯·多塔特 从你的角度来说。假设有两层。一层是社会需要颠覆，需要风险。特朗普就是颠覆，特朗普就是风险。第二层是特朗普愿意说一些关于美国衰退的真话。
ROSS DOUTHAT So from your perspective of. So let’s say there’s two layers, right? There’s sort of a basic sense of, you know, this society needs disruption. It needs risk. Trump is disruption. Trump is risk. And the second level is Trump is actually willing to say things that are true about American decline. Right.
罗斯·多塔特 那么你觉得你作为一个投资者、风险投资家，在特朗普的第一届任期中有没有获得什么？特朗普在第一届任期中做了什么让你觉得是反衰败或者反停滞的？如果答案是什么都没有的话，也可以。
ROSS DOUTHAT So do you feel like you as an investor, as a venture capitalist, got anything out of the first Trump term? Like what did Trump do in his first term that you felt was anti decadent or anti stagnation? If anything, maybe the answer is nothing.
彼得·蒂尔 好吧，我认为——我认为它比我想要的花了更长时间，也更慢。但我们确实取得一定进展：很多人认为出了问题。而这在2012、2013、2014年就不是我在进行的对话了。
PETER THIEL Well, I think we, I think it took longer and it was slower than I would have liked. But we have gotten to the place where a lot of people think something’s gone wrong. And that was not the conversation I was having in 2012, 2013, 2014.
彼得·蒂尔 我在2012年和Eric Schmidt进行了一场辩论，在2013年和Marc Andreessen进行了辩论，在2014年和Bezos也进行了辩论。我站在”存在停滞问题”这一侧。而他们三个人都是”一切进展良好”的版本。我认为至少这三个人——在不同程度上——已经更新了，调整了，（整个）硅谷——调整了。
PETER THIEL I had a debate with Eric Schmidt in 2012 and Marc Andreessen in 2013 and Bezos in 2014. I was on the “There’s a stagnation problem.” And all three of them were versions of “everything’s going great.” I think at least those three people have, to varying degrees, updated and adjusted Silicon Valley’s. Adjusted.
罗斯·多塔特 硅谷——尽管比”调整”更多——硅谷很大一部分——
ROSS DOUTHAT Silicon Valley, though, has more than adjusted a big part of Silicon.
彼得·蒂尔 在停滞问题上。确实。
PETER THIEL Valley on the stagnation. Right.
罗斯·多塔特 在停滞问题上。但然后硅谷的很大一部分在2024年选择了特朗普（一边），包括显然最著名的伊隆·马斯克。
ROSS DOUTHAT On the stagnation. But then a big part of Silicon Valley ended up going in for Trump in 2024, including obviously, most famously, Elon Musk.
彼得·蒂尔 是的，在我的叙事框架中，这与停滞问题深度相连。当然，这些事情总是超级复杂的。我的解读是——而且我非常不愿意代表所有这些人发言——但比如像扎克伯格或Facebook Meta，在某种程度上，我不认为他很意识形态化。他并没有真正深入思考过这些问题。
PETER THIEL Yeah, this is deeply linked to the stagnation issue in my telling. I mean, these things are always super complicated, but my telling is, you know, I don’t, and again, I’m so hesitant to speak for all these people, but, you know, someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook Meta, and, you know, in some ways, I don’t think he was, he’s very ideological. He didn’t think this stuff necessarily through that much.
彼得·蒂尔 默认的做法就是当一个自由派，而且一直以来的逻辑都是——如果自由主义不起作用，你该怎么办？年复一年，答案都是：加大力度。你不断加大剂量，花数亿美元，完全走”觉醒”路线，结果所有人都恨你。到了某个时刻你不得不想——好吧，也许这条路走不通。
PETER THIEL It was the default was to be liberal and it was always what, you know, if the liberalism isn’t working, what do you do? And for year after year after year, it was, you do more. You know, if something doesn’t work, you just need to do more of it. And you up the dose, and you up the dose and you spend hundreds of millions of dollars and you go completely woke and everybody hates you. And at some point it’s like, okay, maybe this isn’t working.
罗斯·多塔特 所以他们转变了方向。
ROSS DOUTHAT So they pivot.
彼得·蒂尔 是的，这不是一种亲特朗普的事情。
PETER THIEL Yes, it’s not a pro Trump thing.
罗斯·多塔特 这不是亲特朗普的事情，但确实，无论是在公开还是私下的对话中，都有一种感觉——在2024年——也许在2016年还不是这样，那时候Peter是唯一的支持者——但现在到了2024年，特朗普主义和民粹主义可以成为技术创新和经济活力的载体，等等。
ROSS DOUTHAT It’s not a pro Trump thing, but it is, you know, just both in public and private conversations, it is a kind of sense that Trumpism and populism in 2024, maybe not in 2016, when Peter was out there as the lone supporter. But now in 2024, they can be a vehicle for technological innovation, economic dynamism and so on.