Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by zem » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

notlenin wrote: post #223

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…

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 completel…

I'm pretty sure a lot of commercial egg farming involves keeping the hens in bad conditions

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

#232

Post by notlenin » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #186

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.

You say that like it's mandatory to kill sentient life to feed people. It isn't.

aren't plants also sentient?

Isn't all life sentient?

If not, where do you draw the line? "It has eyes and bilateral symmetry and an endoskeleton looks vaguely human-like so I can anthropomorphize it"? "Only members of the animal kingdom are conscious"?

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

#233

Post by specproc » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #108

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…

> We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate (1) Nuclear proliferation. We once had a deal that looked as though it was holding. Trump's nixing of the deal and the happenings in Ukraine accelerated Iran's desire to have nukes. (2) Taiwan invasion postponement / CRINK disruption As I've been reading, this might be a second order play to stall China's invasion of Taiwan. If China has to dip int…

The reasons are very clear: Bibi owns Trump, Israel will unlikely have a US president as supportive again, they want as many facts on the ground as they can get whilst they have him.

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

#234

Post by jgord » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:11 PM UTC

notlenin wrote: post #223

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…

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 completel…

I think we have almost "fully ethical meat" now - engineered from tofu and other plant material.

ps. Im by no means a saint in this regard, but I have moved to soy milk and eat much less red meat generally, both out of self-interest for the health aspects, but also partially as I think its better for the environment generally. I suppose I should give up chicken, but its a habit hard to break in my social circle. My point is a gradual move by degrees is still improvement, when integrated over the whole population.

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

#235

Post by jkubicek » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:12 PM UTC

ffsm8 wrote: post #206

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…

Eating meat is normal. Yes, animals have feelings and are intelligent (to varying degrees, but generally a lot more then most think). Modern meat factories are absolute shit shows and it's outlandishly bad our societies treat the animals like that. However, it doesn't have to be that way. And killing an animal for food which lived a nice life is perfectly fine. We're all part of the physical reality in which the surv…

I’m not a vegetarian and have no plans on becoming one but.. just because eating meat is normal doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way.

There’s an endless list of atrocities committed by our ancestors or our peers in the animal kingdom that we no longer tolerate. There’s no reason why eating another animal can’t someday become as abhorrent as cannibalism or slavery or whatever.

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

#236

Post by _DeadFred_ » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:13 PM UTC

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…

We used to have more humane farming. We used to have laws against child labor. We now eat pigs, animals smarter than dogs, that lived tortured lives while wearing clothing made by children.

You can easily chose 'not factory farmed' and still eat meat. You just don't. I'm guessing unless you grew up rich or very recently, you consume more meat now than you were accustomed too growing up. In that case you choose to actively benefit from the factory farming.

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

#237

Post by tlobes » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:14 PM UTC

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…

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair

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

#238

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:14 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #142

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…

From what I've seen the focus on a few big companies can have a backwards effect on some people's sense of morals. I've heard a few people justify their work for unethical companies as "At least it's not as bad as what Facebook does". It can also have the opposite of the intended effect when it encourages beliefs that bad behavior is normalized in the industry. I've heard an executive try to drum up support for a pro…

New Startup idea: Mordor is a company dedicated to doing evil. We actually plan to lay waste to the world, enslave everyone in it, enshittify anything in sight, and maximize the use of AI for the worst possible thing. Just negative externalities, all the way down.

A (covert) investment in us today can make you seem like an angel tomorrow! Also, with this agenda we're probably going to make a fortune so you might as well get in on the ground floor. Why just fall into hell when you could take one of our luxurious express elevators and get there twice as fast?

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

#239

Post by fragmede » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:14 PM UTC

zem wrote: post #231

notlenin wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 completel…

I'm pretty sure a lot of commercial egg farming involves keeping the hens in bad conditions

You can't know out at a restaurant the what eggs they use, but at home you can buy eggs from sources you trust that don't keep hens in bad conditions.

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

#240

Post by UltraSane » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 8:15 PM UTC

michaelsshaw wrote: post #123

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…

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, offensi…

"It was always a terroristic, offensive force." Even during WW2?