Is technology making you feel helpless? According to this analysis of the writings on Peter Thiel’s philosophy and the Pope Leo XIV, there is a reason why: Silicon Valley is trying to engineer power away from existing, often democratic, institutions.
Around 6.40 in the Google LLM Notebook generated dialogue, it discusses the Silicon Valley ideology that seeks to shift power away from physical stakes, institutions and governments.
Some quotes: “The Silicon Valley business strategy inevitably morphs into a profound political vision. The sources identify a fascinating generational tension at play here. Thiel and his cohort basically belong to Generation X, okay? They looked at the massive, rigid institutions built by the Baby Boomers, traditional banking, legacy media, government bureaucracies, and they didn’t attempt to reform them, because reform implies that the underlying human element can be improved….So can’t reform the humans running the institutions. You just bypass them entirely… You make them obsolete through computational power. PayPal bypasses traditional banking… Google bypasses legacy media.”
(Editor’s note: reform is the lifeblood of democracy).
The Google Deepdive also sets out some of the philosophy underpinning Thiel’s worldview and investment notions. This is contrasted against Catholic social views, which believes that true transcendence “isn’t technological, it’s anthropological”.
This is a first pass on this topic but it seems worthwhile to dig in.
Notes on composition: While I did use the sources listed below, like so much AI generated content, (in this case synthesized and analyzed), I still had to edit out parts where Mr and Ms Google had deviated too far from a usable narrative.
Reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s observation that to use AI, “you have already know enough about the subject matter in question that you know which 75% of the output should just be thrown away.”
“AI is great for those of us who don’t need it.”
In one case, the LLM’s talking heads made some wild conclusions, and in another just too breezily went down a rabbithole.
Sources below…
- https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/jd-vance-wrong-jesus-doesnt-ask-us-rank-our-love-others
- https://www.avvenire.it/rubriche/larmonauta/lanticristo-di-thiel-e-quello-di-giovanni-levangelista_105901
- https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/03/14/thiel-heresie-benanti/
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1lq751964mo
- https://www.osservatoreromano.va/it/news/2026-03/quo-063/per-il-cuore-dell-uomo-e-cristo-l-unico-vero-salto-possibile-da.html
- Summary of Catholic Social Teaching (Pasted text)
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