I think Peter Thiel is smart, but exhibiting one of smart people’s most common modes of failure, overestimating one’s ability while not maintaining a healthy sense of skepticism about the correctness of one’s own beliefs.
Put simply, he (and many other tech bros) have galaxy brained themselves into some very stupid stuff.
As someone put it, “it turns out 4d chess is topologically isomorphic to checkers.”
This is about the most accurate description of many of the "thought leaders" in the tech industry I've ever read.