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Joe Lonsdale@JTLonsdale · Sep 26, 2026

I’m strongly aligned with Peter here: this is a rare and intellectual form of courage. Be willing to competently do…

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Summary

The thread discusses intellectual courage as the willingness to do competent, necessary work in areas branded as controversial or evil by default opinion, despite being genuinely beneficial to society. Examples include government efficiency platforms, defense technology, biomedical research, and accountability systems in social services—areas where real improvements are possible but feared due to reputational risk.

Summarized by ThreadOut AI from the full thread. May miss nuance — read the thread below.

  1. #1

    I’m strongly aligned with Peter here: this is a rare and intellectual form of courage. Be willing to competently do good work that’s needed, but that others won’t because it is branded by default as evil by the NPC’s, despite being hugely positive for our society. 🧵

    Eric Weinstein@ericweinstein · Sep 26, 2026

    Okay. I’ll take the bait. I went to work for Peter in 2013 with opposite politics. He sat me down right at the beginning. PETER: “I don’t want the (Thiel) Foundation to do good that the market can do. That is the job of the market. Likewise, I don’t want to do the good work that is seen as good. That work can be done by people richer, weaker and more needy of approval than we are. I want us to do only the work that is *deeply* good but somehow confused for being evil, because that is the work of the courageous and the strong. We strive to be both and that is where a small foundation can make the greatest positive difference. Go look for such good and let’s do that. But remember. Good has TWO different antonyms. What is “bad work”? It could be seen as shoddy work. Or it could be seen as evil work. And we can’t do shoddy work. Why? Because evil that isn’t competent never gets to be evil. It’s just pathetic. So we have to be exceptionally competent at the good work which we do to make sure it is always confused for evil.” I thought it totally logical. So that’s the argument. And that’s classic Peter. This is an old idea of his. And now you know.

  2. #2

    What are examples? Palantir for one, of course. Making government competent, saving lives of our operators and making collaboration work, creating audit trails - all positive but easy to brand wrongly. And Anduril et al - we were all attacked for deigning to work in defense.

  3. #3

    There are many other examples - * breeding monkeys to advance biotech with NHP tests, after China cut off a lot of our supply. Critical for children’s hospitals and otherwise * systems that hold homeless NGO’s accountable and require forced treatment, etc - all that area.

  4. #4

    A lot of the most important areas to work and fix things in our society are those that are broken, but that others are afraid to touch because they’re controversial. Other ideas: prisons, ability to fire ppl in govt, flaws in ethnic studies dept’s in state-run colleges, etc etc.

  5. #5

    What are your best ideas? What’s broken that we could fix if smart people confronted it, but everybody is afraid that it’s too controversial? These are great areas to consider for philanthropy or for-profit work!