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How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

theintercept.com

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Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#131

Post by boomboomsubban »

api wrote: post #77
choxi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your opinion about the causes of this "mini Dark Age"? Do you still feel that we're in it?

Around the early 1970s, the great watch-word of the culture became "back." This came primarily in two forms: back to nature (left), and back to the Bible (right). Under the hood both embrace the naturalistic fallacy (natural equals good) and the idea that there is a proper order from which we have deviated (sin, redemption, reconciliation). This manifested as the Religious Right, the anti-development wing of the Gree…

>The primary drivers are deep philosophical and emotional currents. "..." Capitalism kept driving innovation, but not invention.

Capitalism drove very little of the invention in earlier times, it was largely driven by World War I and II. WWII saw a large chunk of Europe and America's top minds bind together to stop the Axis, and then after the war their work could be integrated too. This led to a tremendous amount of knowledge that led to computers and the space projects among so much more. By the 70's the main gains were already fleshed out,and the system was back to private competition.

If it's a change of philosophy and behavior, it's a change towards peace, removing the absolute need to invent new things and the unquestioned resources to be able to do so.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#132

Post by Chris2048 »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #127
Chris2048 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have said the first part of the sentence, without the mockery and insult of the second part.

People that make such transparently bad faith arguements need to be called out for what they are.

The first part adequately 'called out' the argument. If by 'need to be called out' you mean be uncivil, you are wrong - this isn't needed, and is explicitly disallowed on HN.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#133

Post by zzzeek »

consentist wrote: post #103
zzzeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we live in a democracy. In Ferguson, police were abusive and corrupt. Mass protests followed, media attention was gathered, changes were made. In libertarian land, mass protests against police corruption and abuse occur, the media is not allowed to enter, the protestors are all shot on sight. The end. The burden is on libertarians to explain exactly why this would not happen in the absense of any democratically elect…

> The burden is on libertarians to explain exactly why this would not happen in the absense of any democratically elected government. This is why libertarian constitution is designed to be simple and objective, as much as possible. Corruption can happen anywhere but libertarian governments would be among the last to have it. The philosophy also happen to rely on technology to enforce the constitution which rules out…

> Corruption can happen anywhere but libertarian governments would be among the last to have it.

which, as pointed out, is completely hypothetical and additionally defies common sense. burden is on libertarians to prove this extraordinary claim. unfortunately, most non-libertarians don't know/care enough about the whole issue to even demand such proof which is why we are stuck with all this "soft" libertarianism roaming about causing great damage.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#134

Post by equalarrow »

lightbyte wrote: post #20
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is blatant capitalism in conflict with libertarianism? I ask this question genuinely because I never know what Americans mean when they use the term libertarian with a small L. What specifically about this ideology is being broken here? I understand American libertarianism to be based in selfishness and greed to the collective benefit of society. So that if we're all greedy and act out of our own best interest so…

American libertarianism is about excluding the government from as much as you possibly can. Mass surveillance of a states citizens if practically the antithesis of that.

This is why I don't get Thiel. He's obviously smart, but his actipns are anything but libertarian in my mind. Just look at some of his biggest creations and investments:

1. Palantir - big database crunching and querying for some Of the worst parts of govt; NSA being the biggest offender. 2. Facebook - collects (and is sadly just given) massive amounts of consumer data for selling ads. 3. Paypal - a 'great equalizer' in payments as long as they decide your account is legit. If you get caught in their 'bad' filter, you loose access to your funds, which migjt take down your entire business. At least Musk is trying to better humanity.

If, as a libertarian, he wanted govt out of the common mans lives, then why invest and build tools/platforms that take away people's freedom to transact and live lives of true freedom?

He's done the opposite in my mind. Nothing he has built, in my mind, betters himanity like Musk has.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#135

Post by zzzeek »

consentist wrote: post #108
zzzeek wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nonsense. Let's go to libertarian land. There's no government for internal affairs. We live in a town. Are there any police? No police? Really? Of course there are police. The townspeople got tired of all the poors breaking into their houses and shops and whatnot, didn't feel like all individually standing outside holding guard all night, got together to pool their money and hired a police force to handle the issue a…

> ... hired a police force to handle the issue and built a jail to throw all the poors into Violates NAP. Cant Happen. But the state police does have constitution-granted right to confine you for repeatedly violating NAP such as by breaking into people's homes.

NAP by definition is an ethical stance. Your claim is that non-ethical behavior in all humans will vanish when governments no longer exist (going against literally all of written history). Burden of proof.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#136

Post by disantlor »

humanrebar wrote: post #95
disantlor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the thing about Obama is that even if he ultimately made a bad decision you got the feeling (a feeling that i would say is backed up by evidence) that he put thought and care and consideration into decisions. i'm not trying to apologize for any particular failing of his but i think that explains the huge difference in protest reaction between him and trump

I think there's truth in that, but how reliable are peoples' feelings? I think the "what about Obama?" questions are getting at this underlying point. Also, it's hard to accommodate protesters when the demands are nebulous concepts of "make me feel better about this". Post Tea Party politics and protests have been rife with this problem.

It's not really about people's feelings. It's a fact that Obama is intellectually curious, more educated in the constitution, more experienced in government, more honest (by any fact checking metric), and on and on. Again, that doesn't mean he always makes the right decisions.

As for the protests, having participated in some, I think the demands are generally clear "cancel the muslim ban", "release your taxes", "dont take away our healthcare", "stand up for the rights of the disenfranchised". I'm sure you can find examples that are less focused but that doesn't prove anything. They aren't all going to be effective, but it's important to show that we're watching and listening and ready to mobilize.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#137

Post by kalefranz »

api wrote: post #78
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That theory has a major blind spot: the increase in demand for a Western standard of living at an unprecedented global scale enables innovation to bring down costs. Example: Africa has dealt with underinvestment for a long time in many areas, like telecommunications infrastructure. But because of that, many African nations have leapfrogged hardline telecommunications in favor of mobile, resulting in less spending bef…

All of that is incremental and evolutionary. Here's a good example of what I mean. Fundamental invention: radio. Before radio communication via invisible waves over long distances was impossible. After radio it wasn't. This is a fundamental qualitative change in capability. Innovation and evolution: morse code keys to 4G/LTE and WiFi. This represents a quantitative change in capability (faster/better/cheaper), but qu…

I don't know if I agree that the 70s through SpaceX landing weren't inventive. It seems possible that we got all the low-hanging inventive fruit from "physics" by the 1970s. Through the 90s and 00s technological invention just wasn't of the physics variety. I'd consider software/AI/sans-human information synthesis--manifestly self-driving cars--as inventive. I'd also consider DNA manipulation, both construction and editing, inventive capabilities. In this regard it's more a matter of timing, and which fields are primed for inventive leaps at certain points in history.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#138

Post by beachstartup »

humanrebar wrote: post #105
beachstartup wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they deliberately conflate legal (skilled) immigrants and illegal aliens. to them, there is no difference. it is a hyper-egalitarian interpretation of the word 'immigrant' with no basis in law or social norms.

> no basis in law or social norms To push back a little... I'm generally pro immigration and didn't vote for Trump (partly for these reasons). But there are valid points to be made about: * what a healthy level of immigration is * what a healthy immigration process looks like * how much should family concerns affect immigration chances * how much should professional skills affect immigration chances * how to enforce…

wow, i must suck at writing because you just made the same point i did.

namely: legal and illegal immigration are completely different things and anyone who says otherwise is disregarding law and social norms.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#139

Post by solipsism »

Anderkent wrote: post #69
solipsism wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel thinks that globalization of development without massive technological advancement will lead to a kind of slow Malthusian catastrophe And yet he pretends to lack the sense to realize that there's nothing you can do about that! Globalism is the inevitable result of the capitalism and free markets which Theil purports to champion. He wants to have his cake (freedom from coercion) and eat it too (the ability to co…

Where does Thiel ever argue for or request the ability to coerce others? Adjusting the system so that other actions are incentivised is not coercion.

Supporting the governmental bureaucracies like the NSA is by definition participating in coercion.

Re: How Peter Thiel’s Palantir helped expand the NSA’s global spy network

#140

Post by throwaway2048 »

liquidise wrote: post #92
clydethefrog wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology in the first iPhone ten years ago also existed for many years. Look how much society has changed thanks to Apple strategy of combining technology with design and good usability. That's the real and in my opinion frightening innovation behind Palantir. It's selling mass surveillance that "just works".

They are selling data visualization, not mass surveillance. There is a key distinction here. If it had some out that MongoDB was being used as the underlying datastore for XKS or that Tableau was being used to visualize the data, would we be decrying those products too?

MongoDB developers arnt not writing said software in a way specificly targeted at government usage for surveillance.
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