I don't know much about Thiel, but Vance does not seem like an "adherent" of rationalism in any way I recognize. I have trouble imagining Vance talking about "The Sequences" or "AI x-risk."
Mentioning Thiel and Vance together brings to mind a different thread of weird netizen philosophizing - one I don't really know much about but which I guess I'd sum up as the "Moldbug / Curtis Yarvin fandom." "Neoreactionaries" might be the right term?
I definitely recognize that the Venn diagram between those two "intellectual movements" (big scare quotes there) overlaps quite a bit, but it seems like a bit of stretch to lump what Vance, Thiel, and other right-wing tech bro types are up to under the rationalism banner.
Update: Having read through some of the other links in the thread, I have "updated" (as the rationalists say) my mental model of that Venn diagram to be slightly more overlapping. I still think they're distinct, but there's more cross-pollination between the Moldbugs and the ACX crowd than I initially realized.
Mentioning Thiel and Vance together brings to mind a different thread of weird netizen philosophizing - one I don't really know much about but which I guess I'd sum up as the "Moldbug / Curtis Yarvin fandom." "Neoreactionaries" might be the right term?
I definitely recognize that the Venn diagram between those two "intellectual movements" (big scare quotes there) overlaps quite a bit, but it seems like a bit of stretch to lump what Vance, Thiel, and other right-wing tech bro types are up to under the rationalism banner.
Update: Having read through some of the other links in the thread, I have "updated" (as the rationalists say) my mental model of that Venn diagram to be slightly more overlapping. I still think they're distinct, but there's more cross-pollination between the Moldbugs and the ACX crowd than I initially realized.