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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#151
post #13

Since will come up, Thiels response to some of current geopolitical critiques of Palantir: https://youtu.be/bNewfkhhwMo?t=3755

Thiel is such a propagandist, his speech reminds me of Nazi propaganda where the Nazis claimed that Jews had declared war on Germany. This narrative was part of a broader anti-Semitic campaign to justify the persecution of Jews. The Nazis cited several instances as evidence of this purported declaration of war by Jews, most notably a headline from the British newspaper The Daily Express on March 24, 1933, which read "Judea Declares War on Germany." This headline was in response to a worldwide boycott of German goods organized by Jewish groups to protest against the early actions of the Nazi government, such as the boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany.

The Nazi regime used this headline and other similar international actions to claim that the global Jewish community was an enemy of Germany. This supposed declaration of war served as a convenient pretext for the Nazis to intensify their anti-Semitic policies, which eventually led to the Holocaust. The narrative fit into the broader Nazi ideology that portrayed Jews as an existential threat to the German nation and the Aryan race, and it was used to justify the systematic genocide that was to follow. This is akin to Thiel stating "well, if the jews had the power, they too would have committed a holocaust against the Germans", this is sheer insanity, he uses a similar argument to justify the Palestinian genocide. Stating "they didn't dresden Gaza", huh? What Israel did to Gaza is, by any measurable metric, much worse than what happened to Dresden. His defense of Israel's Genocide of Palestinians is not just factually wrong but filled with statements that are evidence of his denial of reality.

At 1:03:05 Thiel states: "the intent to commit a crime is where the crime gets committed". LOL, and the audience clapped - what absolute insanity. Legally and pragmatically, that statement is absurd. One can not judge people based on their "intentions", which can't be separated from personal bias and interpretation, but only on their concrete actions and not their perceived "thought crimes".

So Thiel dishonestly removes all context of a century of brutal colonialism and ethnic-cleansing to paint the crudest zionist propaganda of "they just want to kill all jews" instead of a colonized people whose children, in the same year - months before that event, were brutally murdered by the israeli occupation as they have done for decades: At least 507 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in 2023, including at least 81 children, making it the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began recording casualties in 2005. [https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/shocking-spik...]

Weaponizing antisemitism to disguise colonialism is extremely heinous and cheapens real antisemitism - would it make any difference if the occupiers were Scientologists? If you lose your land and property why would you care about the identity of your oppressor?

Even Ahmed Yassin the founder of hamas has a famous video shared across social media where he states: “We don’t hate Jews and fight them because they are Jews. Jews are people of a religion, and we are people of a religion. We love all people of religion. My brother even if he is my brother and he is a Muslim, If he steals my house and kicks me out, I will resist him.”

Although the zionist propagandists know very well that it is their oppressive occupation for which they are hated, they still prefer peddling a false narrative that their targets of colonization just "hate the jews", because it's a very potent narrative that plays into islamophobic and orientalist tropes which the western world finds appealing.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#152
post #112

> The combo of intellectual grandiosity and intense competitiveness was a perfect fit for me. It’s still hard to find today, in fact - many people have copied the ‘hardcore’ working culture and the ‘this is the Marines’ vibe, but few have the intellectual atmosphere, the sense of being involved in a rich set of ideas. This is hard to LARP - your founders and early employees have to be genuinely interesting intellectu…

I'm not sure most people would claim their success comes down to the intellectual stuff. It's just that a certain type of nerd who is also very competent at what they do likes hanging out around other nerds of a similar type. If you read the descriptions of the actual work, at least among the FDEs, it seems striking how much it sounds like a relatively normal consulting engagement — we're not really talking developing foundational new algorithms or infrastructure here. But the kind of person who enjoys working at and does well in places like Palantir probably wouldn't enjoy Accenture. I agree it can veer pretentious, but I think it's more about clustering a certain kind of person together, similar to what you hear about e.g. places like Jane Street.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On other hand, who are we defending from and why are spending all this money on world police when we have a ton of internal problems? Because someone has to be this if you want the continuation of the post-WWII rules-based international order that underpins the entire global economy. The Department of Defense and US hegemony are essentially overhead that is the Least Bad Option to stop WWIII from kicking off or the…

Great. So Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME. This country has a collapsing middle class, horrendously bad health outcomes, ever increasing amount of corruption and little chance to turn things around because of entrenched interests. I can just picture the thought process going in your head(and many others) right now. If you h…

> Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME

America benefited greatly from this position though, it's just the gains have not been equally distributed, and one can make an argument that Americans simply vote for that outcome. It is very unclear to me how the situation of the middle class in the US becomes any better if the US gives up its leverage for Chinese to dictate the terms. FWIW pre-WW1 the US had even worse inequality while not propping up anyone's lifestyle abroad.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#155
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. So Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME. This country has a collapsing middle class, horrendously bad health outcomes, ever increasing amount of corruption and little chance to turn things around because of entrenched interests. I can just picture the thought process going in your head(and many others) right now. If you h…

> Americans get to be the suckers propping up the decent lifestyles of the rest of the western world and much of Asia and the ME America benefited greatly from this position though, it's just the gains have not been equally distributed, and one can make an argument that Americans simply vote for that outcome. It is very unclear to me how the situation of the middle class in the US becomes any better if the US gives u…

I think there's some clarification that needs to happen, though: what would it mean for "China to dictate the terms", and does that necessarily happen if the US "steps back" (and what does that mean?) In a charitable interpretation, the US remains an important trading, industrial, technological, and educational world power. Perhaps it might even keep the spending on worldwide surveillance (e.g. spy satellites). Geopolitical influence allows for many strategies.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#159
post #13

Since will come up, Thiels response to some of current geopolitical critiques of Palantir: https://youtu.be/bNewfkhhwMo?t=3755

Thiel knows how to get rich and I’ll give him that, however I would never trust his reptilian takes on geopolitics or anything else outside of business strategy and even then I might limit it to stuff he’s working on in the past.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factually untrue. I'm going to quote ChatGPT here, just because finding links outside of that is hard (it's an obscure topic) and this summary is good enough. > The phenomenon of compensating wage differentials for working in "sin" industries is observed not just in the U.S., but internationally as well. About "sin" industries: > "Sin industries" (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography, miltech) can be seen as moral…

ChatGPT is not a valid source to substantiate a claim.

It’s veiled spam and i don’t know why HN isn’t outright prohibiting it
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