Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by spwa4 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:56 PM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #242

throw0101d wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the changes to US military organization and thinking post-WW2 (and the name change): > […] 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 we…

Ah yes, the administration’s love of Axis of Allies, or is it allies of axis? They don’t know, they got distracted by the mustaches and the desire to conquer the world.

You do realize that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan) were attacking everyone with the explicitly stated goal of conquering the world (and subjecting it to the holocaust, we might add), and US stopped them, conquered Europe, North Africa, half the Pacific, and nothing has been able to stop the US military since.

And the US ... retreated.

We might add, the Soviets, the other axis, did not retreat. China did not retreat. Both of them started killing people to keep their conquests.

I mean, there's no shortage of stuff that the US did wrong and US made mistakes. This was not one of them.

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

#302

Post by notlenin » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

nickburns wrote: post #243

notlenin wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

aren't plants also sentient? Isn't all life sentient? If not, where do you draw the line? "It has eyes and bilateral symmetry and an endoskeleton looks vaguely human-like so I can anthropomorphize it"? "Only members of the animal kingdom are conscious"?

Do you think plants achieve the same degree of sentience as say, a pig? Or would drawing even that line be too arbitrary for you?

honestly, I don't know.

Sentience is consciousness. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a plant, the plants existence is too different from mine for me to imagine it.

It would be like trying to imagine life in a 12-dimensional space - I'm a human, with a human consciousness, living in 3-dimensional space, that makes sense to me.

I can empathize, and to a certain degree imagine what it must be like to be a dog or a cat or a cow, because they're very similar to me in how they work. They move, they eat, they poop, they reproduce sexually. They have similar mammalian feelings and similar DNA (well, more similar than the plant).

But for all I know a plant, say the spinach I had a few days ago, could be just as conscious, albeit in a way that I absolutely cannot comprehend, and my ripping off the plant's leaves to eat them may be, to the plant, every bit as painful as someone ripping out my lungs to eat them.

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

#303

Post by bigyabai » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

theturret wrote: post #283

As I said in another comment, I think it’s important to debate what these companies are doing, how they’re doing it, and whether the United States’ actions are morally and legally justified. 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 collate…

> by having the smartest people inside these companies coming up with the best tech while also shaping the conversation from the inside.

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.

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

#304

Post by tapland » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

alterom wrote: post #177

OneMorePerson wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's some kind of absolutism aspect tied into identity. 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 a…

>Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent. Not necessarily. I mean, the people who give out an uncomfortable laugh do exhibit signs of cognitive dissonance. I don't have an issue with accepting both statements: factory farming is awful, and I still eat meat. There is no cognitive dissonance. The logic is straightforward: I do not believe that me, an indi…

Yeah but tons of things are awful. For me I couldn't keep doing things I knew caused immense suffering in other beings, be it humans or animals. (Sourcing things from ethical whatever and reducing consumption in general the last two decades, I'm sad my iPhone 6 isn't supported for banking so have to go android 10 etc).

Vegetarian options got cheap, and I still eat locally produced eggs and some milk products.

But like, awful can be coped with. Everyone thinks factory farming is awful. Few give a shit.

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

#305

Post by adammarples » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:59 PM UTC

notlenin wrote: post #223

tdb7893 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that people will be able to justify anything that is "normal". I went vegan after learning too much of how the literal sausage is made and the amount of people who have unprompted (people are weird about it so I try to avoid talking about being vegan except for mentioning it quickly while declining food) said something along the lines of "factory farming is awful but I just love bacon" and laugh is l…

to be fair, you can get "good" meat - factory farming is awful, but not all meat is factory farmed. You can eat happy animals, for example pigs that spent their lives outside being pigs, hanging out with their pig friends, and near the end of their pig lives had to go be eaten. If you believe plants are conscious too, that's probably more ethical than eating Nutella made with palm oil from forests that were completel…

Palm oil comes from palm fruit, by the way, not from "massacaring" the trees. Fruits are, from an evolutionary perspective, meant to be eaten, it is their purpose. If plants are conscious of fruit being harvested at all it probably feels good.

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

#306

Post by zasz » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

babymetal wrote: post #60

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.

I visited the office near University Avenue, once, many years ago. I found the freezer full of ice cream, the fragrant gaming room, and the heavily used bunk beds very disturbing. I'm not surprised they encouraged employees to spend one night a week there.

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

#307

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:00 PM UTC

notlenin wrote: post #302

nickburns wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think plants achieve the same degree of sentience as say, a pig? Or would drawing even that line be too arbitrary for you?

honestly, I don't know. Sentience is consciousness. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a plant, the plants existence is too different from mine for me to imagine it. It would be like trying to imagine life in a 12-dimensional space - I'm a human, with a human consciousness, living in 3-dimensional space, that makes sense to me. I can empathize, and to a certain degree imagine what it must be like to be a dog…

[deleted]

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

#308

Post by amelius » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

Hey, it could have been worse; at least they're not working in ad-tech.

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

#309

Post by dudefeliciano » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #251

specproc wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reasons are very clear: Bibi owns Trump, Israel will unlikely have a US president as supportive again, they want as many facts on the ground as they can get whilst they have him.

[flagged]

Is he doing anything that is hindering Putin? That theory still very much holds. Both Putin and Netanyahu can realistically have kompromat on him, seeing how incredibly brazen and stupid he is.

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

#310

Post by Amezarak » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:01 PM UTC

stasomatic wrote: post #230

krapp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president isn't empowered to declare war, but as Commander in Chief he is empowered to send the military anywhere he wants and start whatever "conflict" he wants, for whatever reason he wants, including no reason whatsoever. After which Congress can retroactively declare it a war if they so choose. But the US hasn't fought a declared war since WW2, because declarations of war don't really mean anything when the m…

If that’s true, that’s insane. Forgive me, I’m not a PolSci scholar. Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? It always annoys me when the headlines are “Trump invaded this …” or “Trump slapped a tariff on…” while effectively it’s the US government that’s doing that, they are letting him to do as he pleases? Then the fault lies not with him. He’s not a king but surely seems to have absolute discret…

You sound like you’re from a country with a parliamentary system? In the US, the “cabinet” is simply the President’s handpicked subordinates, not MPs. The President is the head of the executive, the government, usually understood as the executive, answers to him. They are not in a position to legally stop him.

There are measures Congress could very easily take if they chose to, but modern Congresses are very much do-nothing and frankly regard the President taking unilateral actions as relieving them of accountability and the need to take action themselves on important matters.