Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 756 posts

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#51

Post by elzbardico »

chromacity wrote: post #29

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…

Let me tell you. I worked at a IRS equivalent service in another country, and a lot of what I did was not very different from spying in our own citizens.

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.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#52

Post by jmyeet »

When your product is used by a military occupation to target and kill civilians and their families [1][2], it's kind of shocking that there's any doubt. But as Upton Sinclair said:

> “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/

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#54

Post by palmotea »

Rooster61 wrote: post #21
colechristensen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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).

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#55

Post by therobots927 »

mdni007 wrote: post #42

[flagged]

I know exactly what you’re trying to say and you need to understand that it’s highly counterproductive.

The United States was built on genocide of the natives, slavery of captives from Africa, and multiple unecessary wars that have killed millions of innocent people. This is not a new thing.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#56

Post by convolvatron »

Rooster61 wrote: post #21
colechristensen wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have been in the same position. Maybe I was naive but I believed that weapons design wasn't the most moral thing in the world, but sadly necessary, and I actually trusted the military to .. I guess act in legitimate and legal ways. That if those weapons were used in a conflict, it would be defensive and defendable morally.

Of course that was before the inexplicable adventurism in the Middle East.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#57

Post by OkayPhysicist »

sfink wrote: post #39
palmotea wrote: post #24

> ...about working for a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb. 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?

It was, which is why it makes such a perfect analogy. 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…

I thoroughly disagree. Surveillance is an invasive tool of control, and as such intrinsically immoral. Just like a slew of other immoral actions, it may be a net positive when applied for a greater good, but if not used for anything, it's evil.

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.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#58

Post by giraffe_lady »

FireBeyond wrote: post #45
chromacity wrote: post #29

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…

> There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys. 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."

Or like, anything peter thiel says ever.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#59

Post by edaemon »

palmotea wrote: post #24

> ...about working for a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb. 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?

Sauron is the reason the palantiri are dangerous, yes, because his influence causes them to mislead and delude the viewer. That happens even when Sauron is not directly influencing the visions. Essentially, when the forces of evil are present, the seeing stones may show the truth but in such a profoundly misleading way that even those with the best intentions will misinterpret their visions and fall prey to misunderstanding. This even happens to Sauron himself.

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.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#60

Post by babymetal »

rconti wrote: post #38

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?

I was contacted by Palantir recruiters about 15 years ago. I found the name troubling along with the gov't contracts, as well as learning that spending one night a week at the office was encouraged.
Post reply on HN