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Peter Thiel was not saying that evil is morally good. In an interview with Mathias Döpfner, he distinguished moral judgment from functional competence: “evil” is the moral opposite of good, while “bad” describes something that performs poorly. He suggested that an immoral person can still be effective, then stressed that he thinks it is better to be good than evil.
What did Peter Thiel mean by “evil” and “bad”?
The remarks came during a discussion about whether technologies such as artificial intelligence should be judged as inherently good or bad, or by how people use them. Döpfner compared technology to a knife that can prepare food or kill. Thiel replied that people “moralize way too much” and proposed separating two questions that are often blurred together.
- Moral axis: Is a person or action good or evil?
- Functional axis: Does it work effectively, or is it bad at achieving its purpose?
Thiel illustrated the functional sense of “evil” with a Ferrari, which he described as bad in terms of fuel economy, and contrasted it with a Trabant that functions poorly. His analogy is about performance, not a claim that cars have moral character. He then applied the distinction to people: someone may be morally evil and still competent or effective.
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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →In the interview transcript, Thiel put it this way: “The moral antonym is evil. The functional antonym is bad.” He also said an evil person might be “kind of good” because they are “at least getting something done.” That phrasing is tentative in the transcript; the point is that competence on one axis does not make someone morally good on the other.
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Did Thiel say morals are overrated or that evil is preferable?
Thiel said society moralizes too much, but the same exchange includes a direct qualification: “I think it’s better to be good than evil. I want to be very clear.” So the headline-style summary that he considers evil people “actually quite good” can mislead if it is read as praise or as a reversal of ordinary moral judgment. He was distinguishing effectiveness from ethics, not arguing that wrongdoing is desirable.
His broader complaint was that public debate often concentrates on labeling people or actions good and evil, while overlooking incompetence. He said that many cases are “not even evil” or good, but “merely bad”—in his usage, ineffective or poorly executed.
What did Thiel mean by the “99%” figure?
Thiel claimed in the interview that 99% of businesses, companies, people, political leaders, and business leaders are “totally incompetent.” That is his estimate, not an established statistic: the transcript gives no method, evidence, or independent corroboration for the number. It should be understood as a sweeping rhetorical claim rather than a measured finding.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesHow does the Faust reference fit?
During the exchange, Thiel invoked Marlowe’s and Goethe’s treatments of Faust as he developed his comments about good and evil. The reference supports the moral framing of the conversation, but it does not change the central distinction he was making between ethical character and practical effectiveness. The transcript names the works, not particular editions: Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe and Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
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What was the wider interview context?
The conversation ranges across artificial intelligence, European politics, democracy, and technological progress. Later, Döpfner asks Thiel about his widely cited 2009 statement that freedom and democracy are incompatible. Thiel says he issued a correction two weeks after the original essay and says he meant a reduction or “de-intensification” of politics, not the removal of votes or the end of democracy. That is Thiel’s retrospective account of his own argument, rather than an independently settled interpretation of the essay.
The relevant exchange is available in a third-party transcript, not an official transcript. Quotations here are attributed to Thiel in his interview with Döpfner; wording and punctuation may vary among transcript copies.
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