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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

#121

Post by Animats »

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"

Yes, there is.[1]

[1] https://archive.is/ngaj4

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

#122

Post by sleepybrett »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #57
sfink wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

the palantir weren't created for spying, they were created so that the various kingdoms of middle earth could stay in contact with each other. The palantir are a party line. It just got real sketchy when Minas Ithil fell (and became Minas Morgul) and Sauron got possession of the orb. After which the kings of gondor stopped using them.

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

#123

Post by michaelsshaw »

bastawhiz wrote: post #63
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 U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. 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" t…

The US has always used its military for global terrorism. Only just now, it is more in your face. There is no doubt: the US is responsible for some of the most sickening crimes against humanity the world has ever seen, including directly being the inspiration for the Holocaust, as well as US companies providing logistics for the Holocaust!

I hate the idea that it was ever the DoD. It was always a terroristic, offensive force.

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

#124

Post by pphysch »

stackedinserter wrote: post #111
bastawhiz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company. 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" t…

> for reasons that nobody can quite articulate 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.

Yeah, we didn't want Iran to have nukes, so we rugpulled the JCPOA and murdered the guy who declared a fatwa against nukes.

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.

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

#126

Post by guzfip »

favflam wrote: post #120
Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields". Over the last 10 years, I also have come away with an intense impression that Silicon Valley is full of the self-delusional type, as evidenced by Sara's book, Palantir's weird advertising and CEO, and the insane Nimbyism. I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech…

Silicon Valley must be destroyed to save America. Gladly more are waking up to this. There’s been a surge on both the right and left in my state of people wanting to reject the place and it’s disgusting “culture”.

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

#127

Post by IneffablePigeon »

ajkjk wrote: post #104
orochimaaru wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no “ethical” company. They will tend towards making money by means that can be interpreted as being legal. Sometimes they will do things not legal - but those are calculated decisions based on how much the profit from said actions is compared to how much they will pay out as fines. Ethics and laws are for chumps like us. Because we don’t have the financial and legal muscle to challenge the state.

this take is irritating because it implies that people at companies don't have to bother being ethical or holding the people around them accountable at a personal level for being ethical, as if it's somehow predetermined by the environment, being at a corporation, how you behave. 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 thi…

Thank you for putting into words what I dislike about that refrain so eloquently. It’s a cop out.

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

#128

Post by OneMorePerson »

Ritewut wrote: post #110
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…

They are letting perfect be the enemy of good. If they respond with "I love bacon" then tell them to eat plant-based + bacon. It's still a vast improvement environmentally than what they were doing previously.

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 aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent.

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

#129

Post by corky_buchek »

favflam wrote: post #120
Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields". Over the last 10 years, I also have come away with an intense impression that Silicon Valley is full of the self-delusional type, as evidenced by Sara's book, Palantir's weird advertising and CEO, and the insane Nimbyism. I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech…

> 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.

Yes, because Wall Street is a paragon of ethical corporate behavior.

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

#130

Post by jdgoesmarching »

ien24sdq wrote: post #84
Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

This is a really important thing that people on the left in particular seem to consistently overlook: local incentives, emergent corporate behaviors, and the unconscious need to believe you’re “right” have way more explanatory power than “X is actually evil”.

If your incentives and emerging behaviors land at an evil result, it is evil. I’d argue the problem is everyone who constantly generates these “well actually” reasons to excuse the consequences. Marx wrote about people being simultaneously perpetrators and victims of capitalism over 150 years ago, I assure you the left isn’t overlooking this very obvious mechanism.

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.

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