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

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

#421

Post by Manuel_D »

tootie wrote: post #154
jimbo808 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a U.S. domestic surveillance operation, disguised as a defense contractor. 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.

Wrong. It does surveillance for multiple countries militaries. And also for private companies.

Also wrong. Palantir itself does not do surveillance. It sells software to government agencies, who use that software to conduct surveillance.

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.

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

#422

Post by pryce »

leonidasrup wrote: post #8

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.

This makes it sound as though doing business with Palantir is akin to doing business with Lockheed Martin, RTX Corp (Raytheon), Northrop Grumman etc. This ignores important, qualitatively different ways that Palantir is worse: eg intentional white supremacist goals from Karp (Oswald Mosley fan) and Thiel (dismantling of multiculturalism), as well as Palantir's role in the surge of surveillance capitalism that treats US citizens as the opponent, rather than the more classic statist-aligned goals of US Govt/US Capital whose contempt for human life and human rights was pointed externally - so, while harmful, was still esstentially compatible with democratic principles.

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

#423

Post by tokai »

decimalenough wrote: post #373
collingreen wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How many is the right number of personnel and materiel to lose for this war that isn't war and seems to have been either purchased for a few hundred million by political bribes or is just a distraction from the administrations involvement in a monstrous child sex ring? Also didn't we already win this war last year, last month, and last week? It is really easy to wave away our fellow dead citizens (and Iranians,…

I hate to interrupt a good rant, but we actually agree on this. To spell it out: the abject failure of the war is not a failure of the US military, it's a failure of its executive leadership, meaning Trump and his coterie of yes-men.

Are you one of those that claim the US won the Vietnam war?

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

#424

Post by cogman10 »

spwa4 wrote: post #396
coldtea wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that on a country that went on a genocidal rampage just before and lost the war after killing millions all around Europe, which was decided to be divided in several parts, of which USSR got to control one, and which still developed into an independent country less than a decade later?

Yes, but you're leaving out the other 9 countries the Soviet Union occupied, and immediately started killing the population to keep their conquests: Poland, Austria’s Soviet zone, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. By contrast, the US retreated. And also didn't start killing any population.

> And also didn't start killing any population.

Except for the populations in the global South. We spent a decade firebombing Vietnam and Cambodia.

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

#425

Post by austinjp »

chasd00 wrote: post #362
leonidasrup wrote: post #8

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.

> they are doing business with U.S. defense company. 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.

I'm unsure of how this information is being presented. But it's entirely possible for the majority of people on Earth to avoid all those things. And it's entirely possible for many people who are (perhaps unwittingly) funding U.S. defense companies to stop doing so.

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

#426

Post by adriand »

cogman10 wrote: post #355
spwa4 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done. Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, etc. US conquest was quiet similar to British conquest. They didn't make their conquered people citizens (that'd make things tricky for exploitation) so instead they make…

> The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done.

As much as I am critical of the US, until now the US did behave very differently from other superpowers. Consider the end of WWII. The US did not inflict reparations on the vanquished nations but rather, invested huge sums in their rebuilding, in the process making stalwart allies of them. These were not puppet governments, they became thriving democracies.

This is not to excuse the many bad things the US has done in Latin America, Vietnam, etc. But there is really no comparison between US behaviour and that of the USSR (or of colonial European countries, for that matter). People in Soviet-controlled East Germany were quite keen to go to the west and did not perceive the presence of US military bases there as evidence of American totalitarianism.

That, of course, has changed and now America is seen as a predatory hegemon. But that has not always been true.

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

#427

Post by Ritewut »

stasomatic wrote: post #324
Ritewut wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us. You are very wrong here by orders of magnitudes. The US produces about 5 billion bushes of soybeans. 1 bushel is around 60 lbs. Having made tofu myself, depending on the type of tofu you make 1 lb of dry soybeans is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 lbs of tofu(remember we are adding water to the…

Thanks for the math. Obviously not everyone will go for Soyfu, but I'll attempt to integrate it into my diet. I've had it, it's an acquired taste, but what isn't really. I remember hating black caviar growing up in Ua.

I'd recommend checking out Serious Eats for Kenji's "Vegan Experience" recipes. He has some tofu recipes for omnivores that I really endorse. His tofu banh mi is divine.

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

#428

Post by Ritewut »

tapland wrote: post #304
alterom wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 lik…

Few people can afford to give a shit. Most people are getting the cheapest meat and dairy they can get from Walmart.

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

#429

Post by adipose »

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…

can you be more specific about what you mean by "smart people"

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.

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

#430

Post by ericmay »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #395
ericmay wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I just don't agree with your assessment. Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". Trump, as despicable and annoying as he is certainly says a lot, but he's not doing anything from what I can tell that isn't at least poorly argued that he has a right or legal justification for doing. A king or queen needs no such justification, and if one is going through the motions and being forced…

> A king or queen needs no such justification Sure they do! Take the king that the US's predecessor governments rebelled against, King George III. He was very much bound to the dictates of Parliament. From his Wikipedia article: > Meanwhile, George had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the King's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of pri…

Donald Trump is also bound by the dictates of Congress and the courts. If that’s your criteria as to who is “acting like a king” and your reference is yet another king who is constrained by the Congress and Courts, I’m not really sure what point your trying to make here.

He isn’t a king nor does he act like one in the office of the President precisely because he is following the law (generally speaking, I don’t think it’s pertinent to get into specific details else we get into those same details with all presidents) and because he is constrained by Congress.

Your argument just makes “king” George out to be constrained in the way a president is. It’s a bad argument. Don’t let the reality TV fool you.

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