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

wired.com

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

#221

Post by JumpCrisscross »

_factor wrote: post #209
ajkjk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well. It is ok to harm another group of people financially and even personally because that’s what “business does”. Degradation being a ratchet that calcifies unethical behavior doesn’t help. Companies tend to get less ethical the older and larger they become.

> Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well

The phrase essentially describes subsuming individuality in favour of group interests. You see similar refrains in militaries, monarchies, non-profits and HOAs.

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

#222

Post by bee_rider »

tdb7893 wrote: post #101
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…

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…

It’s sort of interesting that “I love bacon” turns into “I must have bacon on a scale that can only really be satisfied inhumane farming practices.” I suspect we could raise meat humanely if we had it on a weekly or monthly basis.

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

#223

Post by notlenin »

tdb7893 wrote: post #101
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…

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…

to be fair, you can get "good" meat - factory farming is awful, but not all meat is factory farmed. You can eat happy animals, for example pigs that spent their lives outside being pigs, hanging out with their pig friends, and near the end of their pig lives had to go be eaten. If you believe plants are conscious too, that's probably more ethical than eating Nutella made with palm oil from forests that were completely massacred to harvest that oil (and even if you don't, the animals in those forests probably didn't enjoy their natural habitat being destroyed).

In fact, I've had the idea floating around my head for a while now for "fully ethical" meat, where you don't even kill the animal, just wait around for it to die of old age. Depending on your views on euthanasia, maybe if the animal gets like cancer or something and is evidently suffering, gently kill it to put it out of its misery because that might overall reduce suffering.

Also, pardon my asking a possibly stupid question out of ignorant curiosity, but if you're vegan for ethical reasons, why not eat eggs? My stepmom had some chickens a while ago, they lived lives that seemed pretty happy, they hung around the backyard eating stuff on the ground + the food we gave them, relatively free to move around (we did put up a small fence to keep them away from the dogs and cats, who did not exactly have a stellar track record of veganism, but they were free to roam inside that safe space) they laid eggs, because there was no rooster around to fertilize the eggs the eggs weren't going to go anywhere... did us eating those eggs hurt anyone?

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

#225

Post by GolfPopper »

alterom wrote: post #177
OneMorePerson wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

>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…

>Government regulation is how this problem would be solved (the only way it can get solved)

My cynical inner pedant compels me to point out that societal collapse will also solve "factory farming is awful". And we're probably closer to that than effective government regulation of it.

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

#226

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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.

> 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

I can't imagine any of them are confused about this. I'd expect most are proud to support our military.

The line that's been crossed is the military being turned against Americans. Palantir helping ICE surveil and round up folks who turned out to be, in many cases, innocent American citizens, seems to be what's prompting–correctly, in my opinion–the crisis of faith.

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

#227

Post by paganel »

sollewitt wrote: post #150
rconti wrote: post #38

Weird. I worked near a Palantir office in 2017 and I remember thinking it would be "morally challenging" to work there. 9 years later, it's just becoming apparent?

I had that reaction when they mailed me an offer to join a recruitment event sometime around 2013. Not quite as creepy as recently when Anduril sent an email saying I was "on their radar".

Seeing that type of email coming from a company like Anduril would honestly freak me the frick out, no ifs and no buts about it. Which probably means I'd never be part of their target audience.

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

#228

Post by amanaplanacanal »

floren wrote: post #146
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…

The very first chapter was actually excellent in setting my relationship to the book going forward, because stuff like this twanged against my brain and made me think, "Oh, she just really wanted to be powerful and influential and chased whatever she thought would give her that" > [after surviving a shark attack] why did this happen to me? If I survived against the odds, surely there had to be a reason? [...] After b…

She sounds horrifying.

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

#229

Post by Ritewut »

stasomatic wrote: post #211
bko wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think vegans should consider eating cows. If you care about sentient life and abuse, think about how much meat one cow produces. Killing a single cow can feed you for well over a year.

I’m gonna pull a Rogan and mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth? 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. In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.

> 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 mix so we increase weight). If 1 bushel is 60 lbs and we produce 5 billion then we have 136 million metric tons of soybeans which makes 272 million tons of tofu which is enough to feed the entire US several times over.

This doesn't even begin to touch the amount of food you can make from the byproduct of tofu, soy pulp which is itself a food in some countries.

I'm not suggesting we actually do it but to answer your question of "is tofu the answer," it could be. The vast majority of our soybean crop was sold to other countries until Trump tariffs made China switch from us to Russia. I'm not sure what the current status of our soybean production is but we have the crop production to feed the entire US.

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

#230

Post by stasomatic »

krapp wrote: post #139
blipvert wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not empowered to unilaterally declare war without approval from congress, either. But here we are.

The president isn't empowered to declare war, but as Commander in Chief he is empowered to send the military anywhere he wants and start whatever "conflict" he wants, for whatever reason he wants, including no reason whatsoever. After which Congress can retroactively declare it a war if they so choose. But the US hasn't fought a declared war since WW2, because declarations of war don't really mean anything when the m…

If that’s true, that’s insane. Forgive me, I’m not a PolSci scholar. Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? It always annoys me when the headlines are “Trump invaded this …” or “Trump slapped a tariff on…” while effectively it’s the US government that’s doing that, they are letting him to do as he pleases? Then the fault lies not with him. He’s not a king but surely seems to have absolute discretion if you believe the headlines.
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