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极具影响力的人物。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，以飨诸君。
| **彼得·蒂尔：人工智能、火星与不朽——我们的梦够大吗？ | 罗斯·多塔特”有趣时代”播客** |
| **Peter Thiel: A.I., Mars and Immortality: Are We Dreaming Big Enough? | Interesting Times with Ross Douthat** |
技术停滞论
The Case for Technological Stagnation
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。但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，世界基本上陷住了。你并不是唯一提出这种论断的人，但这个论断来自你特别有力量，因为你是在数字革命中致富的硅谷内部人。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。所谓的主张并不是我们完全绝对地陷住了。某种程度上来说，这是关于速度放慢的论断——速度并没有降为零，但从1750年到1970年。
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 我一直在数字世界有例外。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 这里有一个认知论的问题，你可以从《回到未来》那篇文章开始。我们甚至怎么知道我们是否处于停滞还是加速？因为晚期现代的特征之一就是人们过度专业化。那么，你能说我们在物理学上没有取得进步吗，除非你花了半辈子研究弦理论？量子计算机呢？癌症研究和生物技术以及所有这些领域呢？然后你还得给这些事情赋予权重。所以理论上来说，这是一个极其、极其难以把握的问题，因为它太难以回答了，我们有越来越窄的守门者在看守自己，这本身就是值得质疑的理由。所以是的，我认为我们大体上仍然处在一个相当陷住的世界里。它并没有完全陷住。
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.
《回到未来》测试
The Back to the Future Test
罗斯·多塔特 是的，你提到了《回到未来》，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·坦能作为一个类似唐纳德·特朗普的人物掌权，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？进入研究的回报是多少？进入科学或者进入学术界总体来说确实存在递减回报。也许这就是为什么其中很多感觉像这种变态的马尔萨斯式机构，因为你不断向某种东西投入越来越多的资源才能获得同样的回报。到了某个程度，人们放弃了，事情就崩溃了。
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.
反增长的环保论据
The Environmental Argument Against Growth
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，我认为停滞发生有深层的原因。所以总有三个问题。你问历史发生了什么，还有一个问题是应该采取什么措施。但也有一个中间问题：为什么会发生？人们没有想法了。我认为在一定程度上机构退化了，变得厌恶风险，以及我们可以描述的这些文化变革。
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——我不知道——会瓦解，就行不通了。中产阶级，我对中产阶级的定义是那些期望自己的孩子比自己做得更好的人。当这种期望崩溃时，我们就不再有一个中产阶级社会了。
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。所有我们的制度都预设了增长。
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。如果说，里根和奥巴马——里根是消费者资本主义，这本身就是矛盾的。就是说，你借钱消费，作为资本家你不存钱，你借钱。奥巴马则是低税社会主义，和里根的消费者资本主义一样矛盾。
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。所以它是深层的、深层的不稳定的。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。但我们还没有到那一步。我们还没有到那一步。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.
危机寻求的危险
The Danger of Crisis-Seeking
罗斯·多塔特 有一件事始终让我印象深刻，那就是当你有停滞感、衰败感——用我喜欢用的那个词来形容社会——你还会发现一些人变得渴望危机。渴望某个时刻的到来，在那里他们可以彻底地将社会从当前的轨道上转向另一条。
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，当你达到了一定程度的财富时，人们会非常舒适，他们变得厌恶风险，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，原始例子就是9·11事件之后，外交政策保守派中有一种观念，认为我们此前一直在衰败和停滞中，现在是我们醒来并发动新十字军、重塑世界的时候。而且显然那个结果非常糟糕。但类似的东西——
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。他们必须倾向于危险。
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.
医学研究中的风险
Taking Risks in Medical Research
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?