Billionaire Peter Thiel Mocked Online After Saying Evil Can Be 'Kind of Good'

Palantir co-founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel has faced online mockery after making remarks about evil, morality and competence.

Thiel sparked online criticism after saying that someone who was 'evil' could be 'kind of good' if they were competent and 'getting something done'.

The billionaire technology investor made the remarks during a conversation with German businessman Mathias Döpfner on the MD Meets podcast on 24 September 2026.

What began as a discussion about artificial intelligence and how people judge technology then moved into a philosophical discussion about good, evil and competence.

Thiel distinguished 'evil' as the moral antonym of good and 'bad' as its functional antonym.

Why Peter Thiel Said Evil Can Be 'Kind of Good'

Thiel's comments centred on the idea that people 'moralize way too much' when discussing whether something is good or bad.

He separated evil from bad, describing the former as a moral concept and the latter as a functional one.

The billionaire used a car analogy to explain the distinction.

Thiel described a Ferrari as an 'evil' car because it does not get many miles per gallon. He contrasted it with a Trabant, which he called a 'bad' car because it was less good than a Golf car.

He then applied that distinction to people, saying that if someone was 'evil', they were at least competent and therefore not 'bad' in the functional sense he had described.

'And so, if you're evil, you're at least competent. And if you're evil, you're not bad,' Thiel said.

He then continued, 'And therefore, you're actually maybe you're actually kind of good, because you're at least getting something done.'

The remark subsequently circulated online, prompting criticism and mockery from some users.

Social Media Users Mock Thiel's 'Evil' Argument

The reaction online included criticism and mockery of Thiel's argument.

One social media commenter described Thiel's argument as 'absurd', while another challenged his definition of evil.

Other users also criticised the distinction, with some questioning the suggestion that competence could make someone considered evil 'kind of good'.

One social media reaction summed up the criticism bluntly: 'Nope. Evil is evil.'

The responses came after excerpts of Thiel's comments were shared online, with users debating whether his distinction between moral evil and functional badness was convincing.

Peter Thiel Later Said It Was Better To Be Good

Thiel later clarified his position during the same discussion, saying, 'I think it's better to be good than evil. I want to be very clear.'

He then discussed different versions of the Faust story associated with Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Thiel described Marlowe's Faust as a 'fake scientist' and 'fake alchemist' whose work was 'bad science', while he said Goethe's Faust gains knowledge through morally dubious means before ultimately being redeemed.

Thiel argued that society spends too much time on 'good versus evil' debates while many problems are, in his view, simply failures of competence.

'Most of the time, those things are not even evil, they're not even good, they're just merely bad,' he said.

Thiel then claimed that '99%' of businesses, companies, people, political leaders and business leaders are 'totally incompetent', arguing that this was the problem society should be discussing.

The quotation was also reposted in multiple Reddit communities, where commenters debated Thiel's definition of evil and the wider context of his remarks.