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It's also insane that a PAC campaigning against Bores is funded by current Palantir employee Lonsdale. Their critical ads literally criticize him for working for Palantir.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
It's made me rethink my life and how I do the same thing and was the impetus for me leaving tech.
Also the funny tendency humans have to dislike the people who are most similar to them. Someone who is at least recognizing factory farming is bad and willing to even think that far is more similar to a vegetarian than the people who don't give a shit and never even think about where their food is coming from.
Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent.
I have no doubt whatsoever that half the people I know and love would have owned slaves or at least defended slavery if they were born into a time where it was commonplace. They easily would have bought into nonsense science or religious arguments about the intelligence or moral value of this race over that, like they do for animals.
However, I lead a morally imperfect lifestyle. I get around by driving or being driven in a car, even when it would only be moderately less convenient to walk or bike or take transit. A few dollars could feed children in poverty for weeks, and I spend on lot more than "a few" dollars on luxuries like travel. By my measure, knowingly choosing not to prevent human suffering on such a scale is massively worse than eating meat, but at the end of the day, I don't consider myself or others in my position to be monsters.
> The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal.
While I believe non-human animals generally have greater moral value than a single meal - the most widely consumed animals are clearly capable of suffering and IMO intelligent enough for most to instinctively empathize with - I don't think it's particularly strange for humans to view humans as sacred.
Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.
Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.
In fact, I've had the idea floating around my head for a while now for "fully ethical" meat, where you don't even kill the animal, just wait around for it to die of old age. Depending on your views on euthanasia, maybe if the animal gets like cancer or something and is evidently suffering, gently kill it to put it out of its misery because that might overall reduce suffering.
Also, pardon my asking a possibly stupid question out of ignorant curiosity, but if you're vegan for ethical reasons, why not eat eggs? My stepmom had some chickens a while ago, they lived lives that seemed pretty happy, they hung around the backyard eating stuff on the ground + the food we gave them, relatively free to move around (we did put up a small fence to keep them away from the dogs and cats, who did not exactly have a stellar track record of veganism, but they were free to roam inside that safe space) they laid eggs, because there was no rooster around to fertilize the eggs the eggs weren't going to go anywhere... did us eating those eggs hurt anyone?
Look up Mike Bisping, someone you would typically class as a tough man. Even he couldn't work in a slaughter house. So imagine what it does to your psyche day in and day out having to kill animals. Slaughterhouse workers suffer from PTSD. In one report one worker described how a pig came up to him and gently headbutted him (like a cat showing affection). He had to suppress his compassion to be able to kill it. How effed up is that?
We can vote with our wallet to reduce or stop all that.
In regards to eggs, I would say eating eggs from chickens you have in your garden is OK. There are folks who rescue chickens and let the roam in their garden and eat their eggs. There are certain vegans who complain about that. That is being dogmatic.
And what you suggested, eating meat from animals who died naturally and didn't have to be killed for you, I'd even class that as vegan, because no animal had to suffer. But it wouldn't be profitable as a business, so I don't see how it can work on a large scale or replace factory farming.
We need cultured meat or simply train ourselves to enjoy plant based foods. Dr Wareham said it will take a few weeks for your taste buds to 'like' other foods. And you get enough of nutrients and protein from those foods. Plenty of top athletes prove that point.
Or folks who eat road kill, I'd say that's also vegan. The animal died by accident. You didn't pay for it to be killed, i.e. you didn't contribute to the demand that keeps the meat & dairy industry running.
EDIT: typos & clarity.
ps. Im by no means a saint in this regard, but I have moved to soy milk and eat much less red meat generally, both out of self-interest for the health aspects, but also partially as I think its better for the environment generally. I suppose I should give up chicken, but its a habit hard to break in my social circle. My point is a gradual move by degrees is still improvement, when integrated over the whole population.
Clams. Clams and oysters and such. Sessile bivalves are the plants of the animal kingdom, the "genetically engineered brainless cow" of nature. They're also environmentally friendly even when farmed, and more healthy than any animal meat while addressing the same nutritional needs and more. They're almost comically ethical and healthy (and seafood dishes are great imo), they just don't produce bacon and burgers specifically.
If people were pragmatic instead, and the vegan community would quit alienating people the non-perfect, non-purists the world would be slightly better, too.
For example, in my country licorice is popular. Whether it contsins gelatin or not, not one pig less will be killed because it is a by-product.
10 years ago, I went to a workshop (with DIY) on how to make vegetarian and vegan sausages, and since you mention sausage, I'll use that as another example. A sausage contains herbs and vegetables (to develop taste) and certain chemistry (= cooking) techniques, for example salt and to keep the product together. It is relatively easy to make something akin to that yourself. Heck, one can sauté carrots and build something akin to a hotdog fairly easy.
Comparing it to gelatin is unrealistic, but to say sausages are made from the best meat of the animal? No, minced meat is not since then they wouldn't mince it (as rule of thumb). Frikadel is another example eaten a lot here (NL), the Germans also got their sausage culture.
Meanwhile, there's a much more dramatic example: chicken. There's a lot less meat on those birds per serving, so suffering per human/day on avg omni diet is much worse. But does that mean one should avoid free range chicken eggs? No.
And that is ignoring the environmental impact, since there too a vegan diet (with avocado and almonds requiring a plethora of water and movement of product to market) isn't ideal either (the latter might be less of issue for say Cali).
So in short, we should welcome those people who love bacon to 1) consume less bacon 2) try vegn alternatives. But it doesn't have to be either they're vegan or omni 24/7. Flexitarianism is much more reasonable for a lot of people, and also many situations can arise where such is desirable (such as gifted food, festivities, etc).
Written by someone who follows a pragmatic vegn diet.
What do you do now?
Personally I don't think I would recommend it. Not that it's necessarily a bad choice but I think that the people for who this is the right choice will feel compelled to make a change regardless of what I say (I know I had people trying to convince me to stay in tech). Fully changing careers like this and living the poor and overworked grad student life in my 30s has taken more commitment and stubbornness than I had expected but some fights are worth doing.
The only thing people will say that annoys me is the "but animals eat other animals" argument from otherwise intelligent people (no worries if children say it). I've yet to meet someone who sincerely thinks that what happens in nature is ethically okay (as a simple point, many animals will eat their own family when stressed and sexually assault each other constantly, which are very natural but obviously unethical for humans to do. I've seen animals torture and eat each other alive) so the whole argument is a waste of time. It's weird that the "it's natural" argument is probably the most common when many people will walk it back even before I point out the flaws.
Yes, animals have feelings and are intelligent (to varying degrees, but generally a lot more then most think). Modern meat factories are absolute shit shows and it's outlandishly bad our societies treat the animals like that.
However, it doesn't have to be that way. And killing an animal for food which lived a nice life is perfectly fine. We're all part of the physical reality in which the survival of the fittest reigns supreme. Even if you want to put your head into the sand and deny this, animals eating each other is perfectly normal. And yes, humans are animals too.
There’s an endless list of atrocities committed by our ancestors or our peers in the animal kingdom that we no longer tolerate. There’s no reason why eating another animal can’t someday become as abhorrent as cannibalism or slavery or whatever.
I can understand someone being vegan because they believe eating plants is healthier. I can understand being vegan because you don’t like the taste of meat. But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators
Considering that this is nowadays a substantially less common background, and probably trending that direction indefinitely, this reads more as you being desensitized. It's not like vegans are unaware that people could have a background like yours.
> But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators
Morals and religion aren't about what's natural, they're about what humans desire. Illness, violence, and deception are all perfectly "natural."
So how do you get from that to human cannibalism == bad?
The naturalism argument has a zillion counterexamples of things that used to be considered natural and now we arbitrarily consider bad.
> [after surviving a shark attack] why did this happen to me? If I survived against the odds, surely there had to be a reason? [...] After becoming an attorney, I ended up in the foreign service because it seemed like a way to change the world, and I wanted an adventure. I ended up at the UN because I genuinely believed it was the seat of global power. The place you go when you want to change the world.
> It seemed obvious that politics was going to happen on Facebook, and when it did, when it migrated to this enormous new gathering place, Facebook and the people who ran it would be at the center of everything. They’d be setting the rules for this global conversation. I was in awe of its ineffable potential.
> The vastness of the information Facebook would be collecting was unprecedented. Data about everything. Data that was previously entirely private. Data on the citizens of every country. A historic amount of data and so incredibly valuable. Information is power.
> After years of looking for things that would change the world, I thought I’d found the biggest one going. Like an evangelist, I saw Facebook’s power confirmed in every part of everyday life. Whatever Facebook decided to do—what it did with the voices that were gathering there—would change the course of human events. I was sure of it.
> This is a revolution.
> What do you do when you see a revolution is coming? I decide I will stop at nothing to be part of it. At the center of the action. Once you see it, you can’t sit on the sidelines. I’m desperate to be part of it. I can’t remember ever wanting anything more.
Sadly, terrifyingly, for every one of her, there are hundreds who might also self-reflect - but >choose< to be comix-book villains.
It can also have the opposite of the intended effect when it encourages beliefs that bad behavior is normalized in the industry. I've heard an executive try to drum up support for a program to sell customer data by saying that everyone does it, from Facebook to Google. When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it. They had read so much about big companies collecting customer data to sell that they thought everyone did it and therefore it was okay.
I'm not sure there's a significant meaningful difference between direct selling and what they actually do, which is to make it available to target and manipulate people with extreme granularity. This is a huge part of why a person may not want their data to be held much less purchased to begin with, meaning it's "doesn't sell your data... but does or facilitates all of the things you do not want a group, in buying it from them, able to do."
It's a distinction without much practical difference.
Also: They buy your data from other brokers who do sell it, vastly enriching the degree to which customers of their ad platforms can make use of the data you already know they have far, far beyond your ability to know their full capabilities and the profile they have on you.
Again, it's not actually selling your data, but it's worth noting that when "they didn't believe it", that misconception was possibly helped along by Facebook or Google being on of the potential customers for that data either directly or via the proxy of a data broker whose largest customers are companies like that.
Like a guy who has taken home office supplies from work is not on the same level morally as someone doing home break ins.
A (covert) investment in us today can make you seem like an angel tomorrow! Also, with this agenda we're probably going to make a fortune so you might as well get in on the ground floor. Why just fall into hell when you could take one of our luxurious express elevators and get there twice as fast?
Words are cheap, thoughts are cheap, and voting is cheap. A full-time job, on the other hand, is a substantial contribution towards something, and it comes with a huge opportunity cost. The job you have is a major factor in determining your moral character. Determining what kind of a person you actually are, as opposed to the kind of a person you believe to be, or wish you'd be.
Extrapolating that to Meta or Google is a fundamental misunderstanding of history and insenstive.
If you decide that your work is against your values, you're also deciding to separate yourself from the group, even if you don't actually leave the company. That's painful. It's not an excuse, but it is a powerful motivator.
This is equally true for leftist projects. If one is dedicated to the cause of improving the general welfare and creating economic and social opportunities for as many as possible, that's laudable, but you can't use it as an excuse to just ignore the human rights whenever you run into a problem or a tricky ethical situation.
It’s also a little funny to turn a thread about the blatant failures of a neoliberal “success” story into a weird criticism of the left.
But I also think that’s partly because it’s actually true. (I concede I work in defense and am biased.)
There’s certainly a necessary debate to be had about whether these companies are doing the right things, whether they’re going about it the right way, and whether the United States’ actions are moral and legal.
But it’s very hard to argue that national security itself isn’t necessary. Whereas you can much more easily argue that a social-media-based ad company has no reason to exist in the first place.
From either perspective, if the roles were reversed, wouldn't it look the same? Both parties thinking they are doing the right thing.
There are a lot of legitimate criticisms out there, they seem to be vastly outnumbered by illegitimate criticisms, no matter what position you hold. It's easy to hold your opinion when you are inundated with a constant stream of invalid arguments that say little more than "I don't like the tribe you chose". Any valid argument is easily overlooked without a sense of guilt in that environment.
The interviewer asked, "aren't you worried about this getting into the hands of the wrong people, and creating deepfakes for extortion and things like that?"
The engineer paused for a few seconds, and then said, "gosh I never even considered that." She created this monster and all she could think about was how neat it was technologically.
It didn't help that the workload was a joke. I believe the entirety of our assignments were 5 single page "essay" responses to some ethical scenarios, and the professor seemed to hand out As just for writing enough. It probably took me less than 2 hours of total writing. I imagine most of the students these days are just having ChatGPT write it for them. We absolutely need to take ethics more seriously though, even if it involves adding more/more rigorous courses to the curriculum.
“Push-button warfare... possible for a limited group of people to threaten the absolute destruction of millions, without any immediate risk to themselves.... Behind all this I sensed the desires of the gadgeteer to see the wheels go round.”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener
Ethics and laws are for chumps like us. Because we don’t have the financial and legal muscle to challenge the state.
Certainly it's true that the incentives of corporations push you to ignore ethics. But that's why they're ethics: they're precisely the things you should do that you don't have to do. That's what morality is. Sure, for the purposes of doing things about unethical companies, it might be best to view all corporations as fundamentally unethical because that implies that the right place to make society better is by opposing their behavior with laws. But at an everyday human level everyone is responsible for exactly the things that they do and being at a corporation in no way changes it at all.
It’s an irritating take. But personally I don’t move in the same circles as those making ethically dubious and partially legal decisions.
Do I want corporations to be ethical? Yes. Will I campaign for that and call my senator and congressman? Yes.
Are corporation lobbyists calling my congressman and senator with boatloads of money? You bet.
I don’t think everyone understands how disruptive privacy violations are. I think the best place to begin is start educating kids in high school about it, like they do for sex ed.
Am I willing to put money on the line and risk unemployment in the current market? Depends.
It is ok to harm another group of people financially and even personally because that’s what “business does”. Degradation being a ratchet that calcifies unethical behavior doesn’t help. Companies tend to get less ethical the older and larger they become.
https://xcancel.com/i/status/2045574398573453312
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification)
I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast. I and many others had enough of Silicon Valley.
Side note: I find it illuminating that one of the most popular social apps that birth social trends did not come from Silicon Valley, but China. I don't think Silicon Valley can drive social trends at all (anti-humanity types are too prevalent).
Can you clarify what you mean by "believes in"?
I believe Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field, that he was an expert convincer. Do you hate me or do you hate him or do you hate something else entirely?
Yes, because Wall Street is a paragon of ethical corporate behavior.
To seize power back, you need to relinquish their shackles by using technology that is designed with user freedom in mind, not "lock-in", and support businesses constituted of that ethos.
It's exactly this over reliance on companies to shape society that got us in this mess
I'm not an American, never set foot in the US for that matter, but I'd say I'm pretty sympathetic to the people actually living there. All this to say that I've recently had the same realisation as you when it comes to West Coast people vs East Coast people, by this point the SV automatons are way, way outside of "normal life", maybe that has always been the case but for sure back in those days SV didn't have the same power as it has now (I'm not talking money, even though that is important, I'm talking actual power to have control over people's lives), not by a long shot.
> Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism?
Their framing is wrong. The beliefs and internal politics of the people making the surveillance tools don't matter.
The fact is they're making tools to assist government overreach, and anyone with any political awareness (or maybe more importantly here, objectivity) could have seen that. They're just the enablers.
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
But there's something bigger that you allude to, which is that very few peoplel think of themselves as the bad guys. People separate themselves from the harm they contribute to or they dehumanize the targets of that harm and then argue they deserve it somehow or simply that this is necessary for some reason (eg lesser evil arguments).
I eschew the concept of "bad guys" in general because it's a non-argument. Philosophically and politically it's known as "idealism" [1][2]. It's saying "we are the good guys because we are the good guys" and everyone think they're the good guys.
The alternative to this is materialism [3] and historical materialism [4]. There is no metaphysical or inherent goodness (or badness). You are the sum of your actions and their impact on the world. Likewise you are a product of your material world.
So we don't really need to go down the rabbit hole of figuring out if, say, FB/Meta or Palantir is a "good" company or if the employees are or feel "good". We can simply look at the impact and whether that impact was intentional or otherwise foreseeable.
And that record for Meta really isn't good eg Myanmar and the Rohingya genocide [5] or FB's real world harm from spreading misinformation [6].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism_in_international_rela...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
[5]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
[6]: https://theconversation.com/facebook-data-reveal-the-devasta...
Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company.
I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.
We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company.
The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" the country.
> […] The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history. Harry Truman and the American leaders who destroyed the Axis, and who now were facing the Soviet empire, realized that national security had become a larger undertaking than the previous American tradition of moving, as needed, between discrete conditions of “war” and “peace.”
> These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies.
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...
The author is a retired professor from the US Naval War College:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Nichols_(academic)
It's not hard:
* They're trying to build nuclear weapons, and they're one of the worlds leading sponsor of terrorism (if not the sole leader).
* The country ran out of water, people started to protest their government, and were killed by the thousands (some say tens of thousands potentially more).
Water is one of the most basic human needs, if they're willing to kill their own people protesting for the most basic human need, what would they do with Nuclear to the rest of the world? I feel like people don't understand the gravity of Iran with nuclear.
Iran having nuclear will not end well for its citizens or the world.
* The worlds leading sponsor of and spender on terrorism (including financial aid to Hamas) is Israel, by a wide margin (2)
* Claims that “thousands” or “tens of thousands” were killed specifically over water protests are not supported by widely accepted evidence
Now I'm wondering which country is a bigger threat to us and peace in general.
A country on the brink of financial collapse, with a severe drought and one of the last remaining opponents of our greatest ally?
Or a country that "provides funding to both Democratic and Republican leadership teams, often supporting over 90% of targeted caucus members" (3) and constantly wants us to fight their wars?
1) https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_state-sponsored_ter...
3) https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
No, it is not, at least not technically. That would require an act of Congress, which hasn't happened. Despite what the idiots "in charge" seem to believe.
Politics aside, anyone in the supply chain shouldn't be surprised they have a role in illegal killings, because that's literally what they said they're doing.
No one likes war, everyone loves defense. Something something expanded surveillance under the guise of counter-terrorism post-9/11.
It was renamed after WWII. In part because smart minds realised that war between industrialised civilisations had ceased to be an accretive endeavour since sometime between Napoleon and the Kaiser.
The name change is a harsh truth.
Trump has issued an order to call it by "war" name, but it never actually change its name.
As a third party watching I just assumed it was a “dead cat”[1] to get people to stop talking about the Epstein files.
Obviously the Iranian government are not good guys either but the timing of this war… it just looks very odd.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
I'll believe this when it comes from someone other than the Epstein people. As it stands, the worst people in the world do not like Iran, so they're definitely doing something right.
The most sane reason for "why now" would be because Iran was in a relatively weak position (domestic unrest, severely weakened proxies due to Israel) and the hawks saw an opening
That and Trump was more easily moved now that he's developed a taste for military shows of force after the Maduro thing. He probably thought it would make great content.
The Iran hawks and Netanyahu probably didn't have to push him very hard
Palantir used to be an effective augmentation to counter-insurgency and international terrorism.
Karp has gleefully pivoted to enabling authoritarian pogroms in American cities, and if you keep working there you have blood on your hands.
the "department of defense" has been doing military actions against other countries forever.
I am aware of one obscure Democrat that spoke out against the action at the time. I believe that man is the only one that should be criticizing the decision, because he didn’t wait on the fence to see how things turned out.
If you know of more Democrats that spoke out—- especially big name ones—- please provide credible, contemporary sources. I’ll be glad to give approval to any that acted bravely at the time.
To think Trump did this war to save Iranian lives from its own government is hopelessly naive. It was not at all a leading factor.
'We' talk is how the pseudo-educated talk down to those other people who are the problem.
I hate the idea that it was ever the DoD. It was always a terroristic, offensive force.
(1) Nuclear proliferation.
We once had a deal that looked as though it was holding. Trump's nixing of the deal and the happenings in Ukraine accelerated Iran's desire to have nukes.
(2) Taiwan invasion postponement / CRINK disruption
As I've been reading, this might be a second order play to stall China's invasion of Taiwan. If China has to dip into strategic oil reserves to smooth out impact to its economy, it may forgo its Taiwan invasion plans for a bit longer.
It's also throwing a wrench into the CRINK alliance.
1) The deal was holding. And even if we take Trump's word for it that it wasn't, he told us that he destroyed their nuclear capability a year ago. So either he was lying about that, or there was no serious nuclear capability in the first place. Regardless of how that shakes out, there's no reason we should believe this justification today.
2) This is incredibly speculative, and no serious intelligence analyst or military strategist would suggest "war with Iran" as a solution there. And the joke is on us, anyway: China may be feeling an oil crunch, but we're depleting our stock of a bunch of materiel that we'll need if it comes time to defend Taiwan. On top of that, China's military leadership is seeing how incompetently the US is prosecuting this war, and is likely feeling a lot more confident about their ability to fend off a US defense of Taiwan.
I'll say them. The reasons are Trump, Vance, and Republicans.
They were articulated many times, maybe you didn't want to hear.
The action itself was poorly planned and executed, it's a different question.
Was the reason to open the Strait that was already open, prevent an attack, to prevent Iran from making a nuclear weapon, or to change a regime?
And, yes, on top of that, the action itself was poorly planned and executed, which just adds insult to injury.
We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) so we butchered 170 school girls and didn't apologize.
We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon and directly induced Iran to close the Strait.
Yeah. Articulated.
People read things like this and a switch flips in their brain, that they're being told to be more charitable to Palantir, and that's not at all where I'm coming from. Rather: the attention paid to Palantir does a very effective job of running cover for Oracle, IBM, and Cisco.
Obviously, the ludicrous marketing/communications operation Palantir is running doesn't make any of this any simpler to reason about. Imagine getting a manifesto from AWS alongside your S3 bill urging you to reconsider Apostolic succession in the traditional Catholic church; that's the vibe they've managed to create.
Every time this comes up, I find myself asking, "what do you think a secret phase conjugate tracking system is for?" Maybe it's just that I'm older than the median here, but when I was a kid, the mere concept of a relational database was something that stirred disquiet in the press; people were worried databases were going to take over society. It was not a completely crazy concern!
Apart from my own thoughts on the Ukraine war and autonomous weapons, that name makes me feel like the company's founders either haven't engaged with the moral questions of their technology, or want to mock them.
I can't imagine any of them are confused about this. I'd expect most are proud to support our military.
The line that's been crossed is the military being turned against Americans. Palantir helping ICE surveil and round up folks who turned out to be, in many cases, innocent American citizens, seems to be what's prompting–correctly, in my opinion–the crisis of faith.
Or really, it's not disguised at all. The company is named after Tolkein's palantíri, so they weren't being shy about it.
It's a company that exists solely to exploit a loophole that shouldn't have been upheld, effectively eliminating the fourth amendment.
If people feel threatened by this organization and the people who make it up they should start doing to them what they're doing to everyone else.
Who specifically works at Palantir? What do they look like? Where do they live? What kind of vehicle do they drive? How do they spend their free time? Who do they associate with?
These are all very interesting questions.
Questions that can be answered and answers that can be distributed online, forever.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
No secrets.
If the IRS uses Excel, that doesn't mean Microsoft is actively catching tax evasion. Microsoft is selling spreadsheet software, and one of the users of that software is the IRS.
This is true sometimes. But many times the companies and the government get together to kill people for money (The dead people's money or the taxpayers money - they don't mind which, money is money)
Offense, killing is not good.
Current department understands that and hence renamed to department of war
any time you're flying on a Boeing 737, 787, 777 etc you're doing the same. Just like every time you turn on a GE light bulb.
This was obvious from the start. Not sure why people "are starting to wonder", which I don't believe either.
You may think you are being even handed and neutral in some way. If you are actually, find me that part of Palantir that's doing good.
looks to be a computing tool used for purposes currently popular and not warcraft
People have a hard time admitting they’ve done bad things that caused pain. I’ve done bad things and I try to not do bad things now. Reconciled.
I don't work at defense contractor, but it would probably help to imagine the situation Ukraine is in. If no one in the West was comfortable working in this capacity, it would all be Russian territory now (and more besides).
Until recently, most of the population believed that the vast majority of America's military actions were somewhat just and legal, for noble reasons.
Dark stuff like Palantir was never like that.
Of course that was before the inexplicable adventurism in the Middle East.
The most weaponlike thing I worked on was a sniper rifle program, and to me precision weapons are one of those best you can do in an imperfect world kinds of things.
Edit: I honestly and directly answered the question and am getting downvoted for it? Lovely
Uh... don't you mean U.S. attack company?
But I also think we need to get more smart people interested and working in national security. That’s the way you get the best balance between effective security and the minimum negative side effects to civil liberties or collateral damage, by having the smartest people inside these companies coming up with the best tech while also shaping the conversation from the inside.
It’s easier to just dunk on the big bad company (and maybe they are bad!) but I don’t think that solves anything. National security should be something more people participate in, not less.
“Would you like the undercarriage coating for your new Abrams?”
I kid you not.
Wait, that's actually based as fuck. The 20th-century battleships were the pinnacle of human architecture, let him have this one.
like what are some examples of the kinds of people you mean -- what degrees are they getting, what causes are they applying their intellect to right now that are _not_ national security, etc.
I think it's sometimes hard to debate these issues in tech circles. In my experience something like 5-10% of techies are vocally critical of these companies or anything National Security related. This article headline is a great example, a serious debate is difficult when you compare people who disagree with you to Nazis
I was discussing resume screening with a jr engineer and unprompted he mentioned he would filter out anyone who worked at a defense contractor, not knowing I had worked at one. I tried to make sure he was removed from interviewing as he obviously wasn't mature enough for it.
You know that the Nazi comparison isn't because of the disagreement, but because of what that disagreement is based on?
It's really not hard to compare ICE to the Gestapo or SA, core Nazi institutions. They're kidnapping people off the streets in brutal manners, targeting them based on immutable visual characteristics, sending them to camps from where many are never heard of again. Including people who are citizens and thus not even "guilty" of the crime which is supposedly being targeted.
Palantir as a company enables that. In the same way we legitimately call out Dehomag (IBM's German subsidiary) for them enabling all Nazi atrocities, we can call out Palantir for enabling the current atrocities.
It's not "disagreement", it's "if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a fucking Nazi duck".
The smartest people don't get that choice. Oppenheimer, Teller and Ulam were all ignored in matters of policy, the Manhattan Project was not designed to integrate their political feedback. Conversely, the scientists at Peenemünde never got to question the effectiveness of V-1 bombs with a CEP measured in miles. Their participation in policy was deliberately severed, ultimately to the detriment of the Wehrmacht.
When you start seeing technologies that affront humanity - warrantless surveillance, civilian terror weapons, chemical/biological agents - that's when normal people step out. No amount of sanewashing will fix the underlying administrative issue, it only exacerbates the underlying moral dilemma.
Which might be also good: von Neumann advocated for a U.S. nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.
In the context of this thread my claim is simply that smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier. The choice to use those weapons still lies with our elected leaders.
> smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier.
That's conjecture, as far as I'm aware. Again, the earliest researchers of spacecraft were being forced to design a pitiful terrorist weapon. Those same scientists wouldn't meaningfully progress peaceful space exploration until decades later. There is no balance inherent to having good ideas or executing them well, the procurement process can (and frequently does) excise intelligent thought when tensions run high.
FWIW, I bear little ill-will towards the defense industry or US service members. I just think that "shaping the conversation" is a fool's errand when "the conversation" is warrantless surveillance, and "shaping" simply means finding the best way to do it. An intelligent humanitarian would be fired long before they instill an ounce of ethical change.
So Oppenheimer Teller and Ulam were not normal/sane people. In other words, they had the choice, and made a decision. Everything is political.
If you are capable of being hired at Palantir, there are thousands of non-evil companies who would be happy to have you.
Wasn't the the problem that Sauron had one so he could corrupt the other users through the orb, but the orb itself was not corrupting?
Surveillance has lots of good and bad uses, and is morally neutral itself. Powerful but neutral. The problem comes when the users use it for bad purposes, and in fact it is so tempting that they can't help using it for more and more bad purposes. If every palantir (either one) user was a "good guy" who refused to use it for bad purposes, it would be a potent force for good, and that's why they were created in the first place.
This is trivially true to most common moral understandings. If my neighbor installs a camera pointing through my window and into my shower, applying some fancy technique to see through clouded glass, most of us would justly think that was immoral of him, even in complete absence of any other immoral actions facilitated by that surveillance.
Your neighbor's surveillance of you is bad because they're violating your privacy, and using the tool of surveillance to do it. If you lived in a foggy area and they were monitoring their front walkway with a camera that was good at seeing through fog, and they happened to get a corner of your property in the camera's field of view, then you might have something to complain about but I wouldn't call it morally wrong.
I agree that surveillance is a tool of control. So are fences. It's ok to control some things.
I also agree that surveillance gets into sticky territory very, very quickly. I definitely don't have a clean dividing line between what I'd like the police to be able to see and what they shouldn't. (Especially when the temptation to share that data is so strong and frequently succumbed to.) I would probably say in some useless abstract sense, mass surveillance is also morally neutral. But given that it's proven to be pretty much impossible to implement in a way that doesn't end up serving more evil than good, I wouldn't object to calling it immoral.
In the LotR, Aragorn bends a palantir to his will and uses it for good with great difficulty. He manages to do that, because he is (in addition to everything else) the trueborn king and the palantiri are his birthright. Denethor, on the other hand, succumbs to corruption. While he is a powerful lord with good intentions, he is only a steward, not a king. The right to use the palantiri is not inherent in his being, because he only wields power in someone else's name.
you can't do surveillance and not learn the bad knowledge, and once youve created the bad knowledge its just a matter of time before it gets into nefarious hands.
a "bad guy" could still hack the "good guys" or palantir itself, and get access to all the bad data the "good guys" have created.
Tolkien's Palantirs let you see and communicate and influence across vast distances. That's no more immoral than a videophone. Of course, that's also not surveillance; that'd be a telescope. But surely telescopes aren't immoral?
[1] I mean, I would, but (1) you can't create a mass surveillance system from a morally neutral or positive place, and (2) it seems nearly impossible to implement a mass surveillance system without creating more harm than benefit. So it becomes a boring semantics argument as to whether mass surveillance is fundamentally immoral or not.
Interestingly enough, the stones could not lie. They only showed real things. Sauron's corruption was achieved through a lack of context. Just like Palantir (the company) can do with data. A dataset can be completely truthful, but lead to a false or manipulative conclusion.
But to the original point, yeah, the name Palantir is spot on for what the company intends to do, anyone who even has remote knowledge of Middle Earth wouldn't dare touch that company with a 10 foot pole.
It's worth noting that by the War of the Ring (the Lord of the Rings story) Sauron had possessed a palantir for around 1000 years. Anyone who knew what a palantir was should have known that they were not to be trusted.
As for how that relates to Palantir the real-life corporation, I'll leave that up to your interpretation.
https://youtu.be/ewvRS3NwIlQ?t=4629
I have no problem that they are doing what they’re doing. Someone was going to do it. But to be so oblivious to it is a problem. One would argue that it’s a national security problem.
Also, yes, they are.
Contrary to Karp’s fantasies, he will not have the capability to send fent-laced piss drones to every single person who’s ever criticized him.
In addition, the more data they have on us, the higher the odds they have something “bad”. So the irony of them increasing the volume of surveillance data is that it becomes pointless for people to “behave” in front of the camera once they’ve “crossed the line”.
And in addition to that, talking shit online lets others know they’re not alone. It increases the odds of coordinated action.
The best propaganda trick up the CIA etc.’s sleeve right now is the illusion of inevitability and learned helplessness. Online voicing of opinions is critical to fighting both of these tactics.
Even if some of the outcomes seem reprehensible, it's not really evil because we're good people. We do it in a responsible and caring way. We're truly sorry that your grandma is now hooked up on endless AI-generated slop, but shouldn't the media be talking about all the other grandmas whose lives are enriched by our AI? We have strict safety rules for the types of cryptocurrency ads that can target the elderly, too.
And you know what? there's a pervasive ideology in the place that justifies it all.
One day you wake up, and you realize that you see the tax payer as a cunning and evil adversary that needs to be reigned upon, and you see that all the jokes, the water cooler talk, the general ethos is toward this vision of the tax payer, even if the official documents say otherwise.
And we are talking about Tax Payers here. Now imagine an organization like Palantir that can de-humanize their targets marking them with the Terrorist label. It is easy to convince people that they are on the right side.
Any force employing threat of violence for control does the same. Police presence, military occupation, hell you even see it in the eyes of loss prevention folks.
Yes, there is.[1]
[1] https://archive.is/ngaj4
It can get pretty close at times. Witness Meta and Zuck being told, in clear terms, that there was clear material threats to Burmese dissidents with some of the asks of Facebook. "The features matter more."
With this "are we the bad guys" perspective, I wonder how much of the "evil" they are apparently doing is a result of the current view a majority of people globally have with the current administration?
Though we may find it difficult to separate the two, because it seems leadership and the founders of Palantir are supportive of, and in some ways responsible for, Trump getting elected, but with different leadership using the tools in different ways, would we still consider Palantir the bad guys?
> “Wether [sic] we acknowledge it or not, this impacts us all personally,” another worker wrote on Monday. “I’ve already had multiple friends reach out and ask what the hell did we post.” This message received nearly two dozen “+1” emoji reactions.
> “Yeah it turns out that short-form summaries of the book’s long-form ideas are easy to misrepresent. It’s like we taped a ‘kick me’ sign on our own backs,” a third worker wrote. “I hope no one who decided to put this out is surprised that we are, in fact, getting kicked.”
entirely possible they're phrasing their concerns on the corporate slack to be 'pro-company' so they don't worry about getting fired for their views but it doesn't actually sound like they're wondering anything, they're just bothered that it's being brought to light.
So one of the things I strongly look for when hiring is for people who have a high sense of personal responsibility. They're not going to just throw shit out there because it's easy or quick. They know they are responsible for what goes out and they really are going to own that responsbility.
In the same way, take a look at anything senior management says about their ICE or military contracts. It's not that I think they're doing something bad or that the military shouldn't have access to good technology. It's that at best they seem entirely disinterested in that what they're doing could be harmful or that they have any responsibility if it is.
It's not that I think Palantir is helping the US government bomb Iranian school chilren. It's that I don't think it would bother them if they were.
It was almost certainly everyone's first job.
It's not too hard to think of ways you can get a bunch of young folks do your bidding without them questioning the motives or what kind of moral challenges the job has.
Not quite as creepy as recently when Anduril sent an email saying I was "on their radar".
I'm pretty sure this is the same population of people who lost (and may still be losing sleep) over Roko's Basilisk. They're clever but not smart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
Unless it is being trained and applied to suppressing certain groups. Karp said a not-so-quiet goal out loud.
It doesn’t.
It's self-aggrandizing egos all the way down/up (to Alex Karp).
I think it has more to do with the fact that many of the products built for defense are never actually used against adversaries in their useful life. Just look at our nuclear weapon stockpile.
Palantir on the other hand is an invisible weapon. They could be reading my comment right now and identifying me with sentiment "adversarial" for all I know. What implications that has on my daily life is innumerable...and I'm a US citizen!
Or it's a lot more complicated and doesn't lend itself to blank-and-white answers. Say you're working on nuclear weapons technology: is your job building weapons to enable the genocidal destruction of another country, or to prevent that kind of thing through a credible MAD deterrent? Both things are simultaneously true.
And then there's no way to predict the future: what's true today when you build it may not be true tomorrow when it's used, because there's a different leader or political system in place.
Did I say it wasn't complicated? I'll admit I didn't say it was complicated, but you can't infer a sentiment from a non-existent statement in either direction.
Yes, it's complicated. But I stand by my statement that many people just don't think about it. They want to solve interesting problems or to get paid well, or both, and so they take jobs at places like Palantir without thinking through the consequences.
Many others do think it through and either find a way to justify it, or do work they don't like and live with the emotional consequences of it.
Imagine I came to know that ghosts exist with supernatural powers. My first reaction shouldn't be of fear. It should be of curiosity. What laws are prevailing in ghost realm which provides them with great powers over material world. Does one becoming a ghost suddenly know the truth of Rieman Hypothesis or P=NP?
The same could be asked of people who are supposed to know better by virtue of them close to knowledge and technology. Should they spend their improving lives of others or enslaving them for material gains?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_We_the_Baddies%3F
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Although it could be unintentional - the phrase is mainstream now and not hard to produce independently either.
1. https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBdBoWAtLNI
Everyone know what Palantir was. The name is a dead-give-away.
I think it is really time that the superrich are downsized. Certain companies that are working against the people also need to be removed. Key considerations in any democracy need to be consistent. Palantir (and others) create inconsistencies. Granted, none of this will be fixed while the orange king is having his daily rage-fits, but sooner or later this is an inter-generational problem, no matter which puppet is taking over.
When Sauron took Minas Ithil and captured the Palanir that was kept there the Kings of Gondor forbade the use of them. It is shown that Sauron can use them to corrupt and read the thoughts of the other users. We also see him use them for their intended purpose when he conspires with Saruman.
All to say Peter Thiel doesn't understand Lord of the Rings.
https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?is=ncWhlGOB3l721Lri
They are just annoyed Karp is breaking Kayfabe
You are not in defense contracting. You are in the business of war contracting.
Take from that what you will.
I would have trouble trusting the kind of person who would work at Palantir. It seems like it could be career-limiting in the long run.
I would have trouble working at the kind of place with those running jokes in the office.
Like why justify it if it economically isn't even that advantageous? Ya'll are laughable.
Desperate for some negative sentiment aren't we? The orbs were not "corrupting" in any way. Can we just have reporting anymore without everything being slanted?
The "manifesto" Palantir posted seemed pretty reasonable to me given their company mission and alignment. I don't get the backlash. It's much less worse than what they're already accused of, I think. It doesn't make me think worse of them at all.
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I would go further and argue that Palantir employees are just as valid military targets as occupation soldiers are.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
There are ~68 countries with mandatory military service in the world [1]. To say nothing of countries with some other form of mandatory public service. How many of them are fascist?
The U.S., with the backing of widespread public support, passed bipartisan immigration enforcement laws in 1996 with an aim of rapid and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and it was not viewed as "fascism". Those laws remained on the books since that time and were only recently under enforced with dramatic consequences.
I honestly feel like we're increasingly living in separate realities driven by media bubbles and wanton historical illiteracy and dishonesty.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
I think the real standard for “fascist” has to be - how similar is what someone is doing to what Mussolini did? If there’s a genuine similarity there, the term “fascist” may be appropriate; otherwise, it isn’t
Like your company is literally called Palantir, after the object from the Tolkien universe (if you're living under a rock), which allows the user to see things happening in other places, and allows "A wielder of great power such as Sauron could dominate a weaker user through the stone".
Not only that but your company's founder goes around the world doing lectures about the Antichrist.
And if that wasn't enough, you're working with governments around the world to oppress citizens and have been complicit in a literal genocide by partnering with Israel in the past years.
I mean if you're not the baddies, then maybe Voldemort is just misunderstood, and the Joker is the good guy, etc.
Palantir now has too many eyes to the average person on the street and its reputation is negative.
We will have the same conversation about OpenAI, Anthropic, Mechanize, Inc. and the rest of all the other AI labs just like we are doing with big tech companies.
...now it is complete
Thats all.
Time to load up on Palantir stocks?
I'll ride this thread with you to the bottom of the page.
But that's priced in.
Them featuring in conspiracy theories is just because there's a cultural treadmill for all these things, isn't there? You can't harp on about Raytheon forever. Those are the villans of the past. Back when Bush was the great evil, or something. To get engagement, you need to frame things in the current meta.
In high school, I had a visitor from West Point. My dad (Killing Fields survivor) was so excited. I (16 year old boy who only knew video games, porn and comics) later threw an impressive tantrum that defeated my father.
I threw away a golden ticket to see the world for what it is (instead of from within my cocoon in the suburbs of Los Angeles) and become a man at a more appropriate age.
Instead, I became an overpaid Peter Pan in San Francisco.
Theres some effect, I can't remember the name, where experts in one field (engineering) think they understand other fields (war) because they're so smart at their own field. I think this very much applies here.
If you're at Palantir and think you're the bad guy, first make the honest effort to convince yourself otherwise.
Failing that, leave and make room for patriots.
I don't like hurting others, but you really need to understand there are others that absolutely want to hurt you for basically no reason, and that hurting them first is highly effective, and as both firepower and intelligence (Palantir) improve, it becomes less fatal (clear historical trend).