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Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

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Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#161

Post by javert »

asveikau wrote: post #160
javert wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such Randian nonsense What I said is my own opinion, didn't come from Rand. All the supposed refutations of Rand online are laughably ridiculous, including the popular one by Huemer. Until you provide a reasonable one, please don't dismiss people by linking them to Rand. (And please never dismiss ideas by _falsely_ linking them to Rand, as you did in this case.) As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set t…

> As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set tax rates unilaterally. If you had been following "negotiations" with Congress (take late 2010 as an example) you'd know that the president basically did a song and dance where he started out pretending he wanted higher taxes and proceeded to leave things exactly the same. He did not assert his strong position in that. If Congress literally did nothing, taxes woul…

For all I know, Obama traded advocating higher taxes for getting Obamacare through.

A short list of partial evidence for what I said about Obama: Blocking the keystone pipeline, his foreign policy, Obamacare, attending a church for many years where the evil of America was explicitly preached, involvement with Bill Ayers, his explicit pragmatism (i.e., denial of any valid principles), his election being the first day he was proud of America (according to his wife).

Anyway, the "egalitarian-nihilist" label needs much broader observations and analysis to validate than any list I could give you. But that's some stuff I have a problem with.

> the comment was very Randian, in the sense that it is Rand-like.

That's simply untrue. Rand said that nihilism and egalitarianism are bad (among many other things). But we simply do not know if she would apply those labels to Obama. As an Objectivist, I can tell you that there are some things where her applying her philosophy is more straightforward if you understand it, but this is not one of them.

(The reason it is tricky is because Obama doesn't come out and say what he believes, and chances are, he doesn't have any specific opinion on these kinds of abstractions. So we have to infer what's going on in his mind from what he says and does.)

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#162

Post by asveikau »

javert wrote: post #161
asveikau wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set tax rates unilaterally. If you had been following "negotiations" with Congress (take late 2010 as an example) you'd know that the president basically did a song and dance where he started out pretending he wanted higher taxes and proceeded to leave things exactly the same. He did not assert his strong position in that. If Congress literally did nothing, taxes woul…

For all I know, Obama traded advocating higher taxes for getting Obamacare through. A short list of partial evidence for what I said about Obama: Blocking the keystone pipeline, his foreign policy, Obamacare, attending a church for many years where the evil of America was explicitly preached, involvement with Bill Ayers, his explicit pragmatism (i.e., denial of any valid principles), his election being the first day…

> For all I know, Obama traded advocating higher taxes for getting Obamacare through.

He had already signed the healthcare bill 9 months prior to the events I am talking about. And again, one must understand that he was in a position where if nobody did anything, the person favoring higher taxes would win. It took effort to get the outcome that we did.

> As an Objectivist,

Thanks for confirming.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#163

Post by ryguytilidie »

Spooky23 wrote: post #57
potatolicious wrote: post #2

Not really a surprise. Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work. Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-lunch version of Blackwater.

Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.

How does this logic work? Because people in this profession 80 years ago contributed to those efforts we should somehow be grateful to them or something??

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#164

Post by ryguytilidie »

bane wrote: post #51
joezydeco wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems a quick run through the open positions at Palantir can tell you a lot more... http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPositionLanding "Embedded Analyst, Government: Canberra" "Embedded Analyst, Government: London" "Embedded Analyst, Government: New Zealand" "Engineer, Developer Support Team (McLean, VA)" "Forward Deployed Engineer: Singapore" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Government: Berlin" "Forward Depl…

Ugh, a quick review on glassdoor makes their hiring practices sound soul sucking http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-Int...

I have a friend who does recruitment at Palantir and he told me he has PERSONALLY hired 100 people in the past year. Sounds like quite the conveyor belt of new people coming in. He said it was mostly interns, so I guess they must have a strong college program.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#165

Post by jblock »

potatolicious wrote: post #20
Anderkent wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-lunch version of Blackwater. Is this because you would not like to work at a company handling such data, or because you think you are making a difference by not doing so? If the former, fair enough. If the latter, you might want to rethink the approach - refusing th…

I haven't talked to any such recruiters or entertained the thought because: - I'm uncomfortable working for a company that has this much power over private citizens but is not even nominally accountable to said citizens. - I'm uncomfortable with the (sadly popular) tactic of shoving ugly and disdainful things onto private contractors as a way of distancing and plausible deniability. In both the government and private…

I asked them about this in an interview.

Simply put, they said that if you don't feel comfortable working on a project, you just say so, and get moved elsewhere.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#166

Post by steveklabnik »

potatolicious wrote: post #89
Spooky23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.

Sure, but I wasn't alive then, and the work I've done personally hasn't contributed to nuclear war or anything of that sort. Through my college years I had a couple of opportunities to work in the defense industry, but chose not to. Which doesn't mean people aren't getting shot and blown up, it just means I'm not closely involved with it. My stance is not beating people over the head with morality, it's purely person…

> the work I've done personally hasn't contributed to nuclear war or anything of that sort.

You might find this interesting: https://gist.github.com/zmaril/5326884

TL;DR: if you've contributed to open source in some way, you've probably given Palantir the tools they need to do their work.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#167

Post by binarycrusader »

steveklabnik wrote: post #166
potatolicious wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I wasn't alive then, and the work I've done personally hasn't contributed to nuclear war or anything of that sort. Through my college years I had a couple of opportunities to work in the defense industry, but chose not to. Which doesn't mean people aren't getting shot and blown up, it just means I'm not closely involved with it. My stance is not beating people over the head with morality, it's purely person…

> the work I've done personally hasn't contributed to nuclear war or anything of that sort. You might find this interesting: https://gist.github.com/zmaril/5326884 TL;DR: if you've contributed to open source in some way, you've probably given Palantir the tools they need to do their work.

I don't agree with the post you're replying to, but your argument seems pretty specious to me.

Software developers are generally no more responsible for the misdeeds of others using their software than anyone else that produces almost any kind of tool.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#168

Post by bigiain »

w1ntermute wrote: post #11
dclowd9901 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can't deny that their developers probably take on some pretty novel and interesting challenges.

You could say that about a lot of immoral/unethical jobs.

Not just immoral/unethical jobs either - but sometimes other jobs which some classes of people consider "less desirable". It's the social network guys these days, but back in the late '90's I learnt more about large-scale highly-available and secure web development from people working in the porn industry than anywhere else. (I remember a long and fascinating/educational series of conversations with Sudicide Girls tech people at the Open Source Convention in San Diego back in 2000 or 2001.)
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