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Weird. I worked near a Palantir office in 2017 and I remember thinking it would be "morally challenging" to work there. 9 years later, it's just becoming apparent?
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I have had an active hand in designing weapons at a defense contractor (I was at one time an expert in external ballistics simulation) and I'd feel uncomfortable with the morality of working at Palantir.
How do you reconcile having worked in this capacity mentally? Not being snarky or judgemental, genuinely curious as to the mindset of someone who has been in this position.
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.
I think this is a weird side effect of how we portray evil corporations in fiction and in journalism. We imagine that everyone working there is a moustache-twirling villain. And then we get a job at Meta or Flock or Palantir, look around, and don't see any moustache-twirling villains. There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys. Even if some of the outcom…
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."
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I have had an active hand in designing weapons at a defense contractor (I was at one time an expert in external ballistics simulation) and I'd feel uncomfortable with the morality of working at Palantir.
Don't they work for the same government you did?
Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. 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.
Yeah, for sure. Defense contracting is as good or bad as the policies of the government which is going to change over time. All else being equal, if we want to live in a safe and successful society we want good/talented people working in defense. The trick is holding the government accountable for its policies and profligate defense spending.
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> Or it's a lot more complicated and doesn't lend itself to blank-and-white answers. 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 the…
> Yes, it's complicated. But I stand by my statement that many people just don't think about it...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 Do they not think about it, or just not talk about it to you? I could totally see someone thinking about it in private, accepting some justification or reason, and the…
Though a lot actually just wouldn't even discuss it in the first place. I think, though, that if you're going to work on a weapon or a component for a weapon you owe it to yourself to think deeply about the topic. I've known too many people who thought about it too late and realized that they couldn't live with it. Better to figure that out at the start and change career paths than at the end and either kill yourself or drink yourself to death.
I look forward to all of these comments being Hoovered into their autonomous surveillance machine in short order. 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”.