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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#301

Post by shiroiushi »

mistermann wrote: post #199
scottyah wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All deliberate actions to achieve certain outcomes are "force", it is a scale not a binary option.

I am skeptical, let's run an experiment and see what the response is: Is feeding the homeless so they are not hungry "force"? Is lending a compassionate ear to someone suffering so they may feel a bit better "force"? Is making myself a nice sandwich and watching a movie because I find it pleasant "force"?

>Is making myself a nice sandwich and watching a movie because I find it pleasant "force"?

To the chicken, turkey, pig, or cow that died to make the meat in your sandwich, definitely yes.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#302

Post by knowaveragejoe »

fnikacevic wrote: post #256
aidenn0 wrote: post #245

> Every time you see the government give another $110 million contract to Deloitte for building a website that doesn’t work, or a healthcare.gov style debacle, or SFUSD spending $40 million to implement a payroll system that - again - doesn’t work, you are seeing politics beat substance. Dismissing it as politics beating substance is not useful, since there is so little substance present. Figuring out which of the bi…

Hire internal software folks who can judge the signals better?

This is what the USDS is slowly but surely accomplishing. It's just a hell of a beast to tackle.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#303

Post by shiroiushi »

csomar wrote: post #271
itsoktocry wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You gotta think this rules-based order is designed to drive anyone decent crazy. All complaints, no solutions. Typical. So who does have the moral high-ground around the globe? It's unbelievable to me how many people think it'd be all peace and harmony if the US disappeared. I can imagine much worse, just by reading a history book.

That's like telling a woman with a beating husband that it's better to stay with him because the other men are worse.

If you live in a world where it simply isn't possible for some reason for the woman to not have a husband at all, it makes perfect sense.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#304

Post by BryantD »

saturn8601 wrote: post #249
avmich wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would also be interesting to hear thoughts on the company of somebody like Cory Doctorow. Edit: aha, found. https://doctorow.medium.com/how-palantir-will-steal-the-nhs-... "Palantir is one of the most sinister companies on the global stage, a company whose pitch is to sell humans rights abuses as a service. The customers for this turnkey service include America’s most corrupt police departments, who use Palantir’s…

Man his speaking and writing style get so annoying after a while and I speak as someone who has seen him talk at DEFCON and HOPE multiple times. He has got this god like reputation among the hacker community. Might there be someone who isn't as attention seeking and who isn't just trying to make catchy speeches talking about the same ideas?

I tend to agree with you on this, but it's kind of an amusing comment given the linked article's comment on memes:

"the most talented people tend to develop their own vocabularies and memes, and these serve as entry points to a whole intellectual world constructed by that person."

Doctorow is not one of the examples he provides, but I'm not sure that any of this negates the point.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#305

Post by jiggawatts »

kuhewa wrote: post #298
jiggawatts wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to watch these "talking points" bouncing around when there's a politically charged topic like the war in Gaza. (For reference: I have no skin in the game and support neither side.) Having said that: 65% killed being women and children is because of the demographics of Gaza , not because of any specific behaviour by Israel other than just "being at war" with their neighbours. It's a talking point used…

You appear to be making the case that the 65% statistic of Gazans killed by Israel shouldn't be alarming since it merely is converging on the demographic makeup of the population. I'd argue that it is very alarming when military casualties converge on the general populations demographics and not the demographics of actual combatants.

All I'm saying is that if any other country attacked Gaza using any normal means of war, they'd end up with the same statistic. Israel is not doing anything out of the ordinary for war. The statistics you quoted is a side-effect of Gaza's demographics.

Note that I don't condone Israel's actions in Gaza. I'm just saying that those actions are no worse than one would expect, but this statistic is purposefully deceptive and is being trumpeted across the Internet specifically to make Israel look worse than they are actually acting.

You support one of the two sides above the other. That's your right. But please don't support them through chosen talking points intended to deceive the audience.

PS: One of the two sides in this war targeted civilians on purpose and failed at doing so. The other site targeted combatants and failed at doing so. Which would you say is the more superior position?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#306

Post by shiroiushi »

ks2048 wrote: post #221
dralley wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a military enemy that blatantly hides itself within civilian areas and builds its underground infrastructure underneath civilian infrastructure, and that military enemy kills 1200 of your citizens in an attack, that creates a fair bit of moral ambiguity.

Imagine the reaction to Palestinians blowing up a residential Israeli apartment building with hundreds of civilians inside and justifying it by saying they wanted to kill an IDF member inside.

If the IDF member is shooting at them from the apartment building, then it becomes a valid military target. This is very clearly spelled out in the Geneva conventions.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#307

Post by hitekker »

vundercind wrote: post #287
hitekker wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right to group Data teams together. They seem to share a common plight. In my experience, internal employees outside Data have a funny relationship with Data. They hate to manage it but they love to blame it, especially in analytical / decision-making scenarios. Teams that "own" the data usually get the blame, on top of having to deal with a mass of rotting pipes and noncompliant teams, while also losing out o…

This is exactly what I thought TFA was getting at when it brought up politics being a problem at companies and in sectors Palantir engages with, but instead it went a much more general direction.

He talks about it a little:

> Why is data integration so hard? The data is often in different formats that aren’t easily analyzed by computers – PDFs, notebooks, Excel files (my god, so many Excel files) and so on. But often what really gets in the way is organizational politics: a team, or group, controls a key data source, the reason for their existence is that they are the gatekeepers to that data source, and they typically justify their existence in a corporation by being the gatekeepers of that data source (and, often, providing analyses of that data). [3] This politics can be a formidable obstacle to overcome, and in some cases led to hilarious outcomes – you’d have a company buying an 8-12 week pilot, and we’d spend all 8-12 weeks just getting data access, and the final week scrambling to have something to demo.

I think he's seen more companies without talented Data experts than companies with that talent.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#308

Post by amrocha »

jiggawatts wrote: post #305
kuhewa wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to be making the case that the 65% statistic of Gazans killed by Israel shouldn't be alarming since it merely is converging on the demographic makeup of the population. I'd argue that it is very alarming when military casualties converge on the general populations demographics and not the demographics of actual combatants.

All I'm saying is that if any other country attacked Gaza using any normal means of war, they'd end up with the same statistic. Israel is not doing anything out of the ordinary for war. The statistics you quoted is a side-effect of Gaza's demographics. Note that I don't condone Israel's actions in Gaza. I'm just saying that those actions are no worse than one would expect, but this statistic is purposefully deceptive…

There’s no deception done imo.

Your argument is that it’s ok that Israel has killed this many women and kids because they’re over represented in the population.

Most people’s perspective is that you shouldn’t kill kids and women and target civilians, regardless of anything else.

And you’re ignoring the mountain of evidence of israel deliberately targeting civilians. Just the other day the times published a thorough report on israeli snipers deliberately targeting toddlers. That truth does not square with your “it’s just collateral damage” argument.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#309

Post by arczyx »

jiggawatts wrote: post #281
botanical wrote: post #263

[flagged]

It's interesting to watch these "talking points" bouncing around when there's a politically charged topic like the war in Gaza. (For reference: I have no skin in the game and support neither side.) Having said that: 65% killed being women and children is because of the demographics of Gaza , not because of any specific behaviour by Israel other than just "being at war" with their neighbours. It's a talking point used…

> Specifically, every one of us who worked in an emergency, intensive care, or surgical setting treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head or chest on a regular or even a daily basis. It is impossible that such widespread shooting of young children throughout Gaza, sustained over the course of an entire year is accidental or unknown to the highest Israeli civilian and military authorities.

https://www.gazahealthcareletters.org/usa-letter-oct-2-2024

> Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities,

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/10/un-commissio...

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#310

Post by kuhewa »

jiggawatts wrote: post #305
kuhewa wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You appear to be making the case that the 65% statistic of Gazans killed by Israel shouldn't be alarming since it merely is converging on the demographic makeup of the population. I'd argue that it is very alarming when military casualties converge on the general populations demographics and not the demographics of actual combatants.

All I'm saying is that if any other country attacked Gaza using any normal means of war, they'd end up with the same statistic. Israel is not doing anything out of the ordinary for war. The statistics you quoted is a side-effect of Gaza's demographics. Note that I don't condone Israel's actions in Gaza. I'm just saying that those actions are no worse than one would expect, but this statistic is purposefully deceptive…

Just based on your comment, I can promise you I have payed attention to the conflict less than you and have less of a 'dog in the fight' in terms of supporting a side. I just noticed your comment begging the question regarding mortalities that reflect makeup of a civilian population being the null case in urban warfare that needs no explanation.

It's a positive claim that requires empirical support, which you aren't providing.

A quick squiz would suggest this women+children death toll is the greatest in some time by some margin, despite some quite bloody and urbanised conflicts in recent years [1]. Perhaps you have justified knowledge that this case is different than any other or just better-documented, and the deaths are unavoidable insofar as urban warfare is to be conducted.

But even if it is the case that urban warfare should be expected to be conducted quite inefficiently (to the point that combatants are successfully targeted at a rate barely greater than random members of the population), you are also taking it as a given that conducting it at all is justified and shouldn't be alarming.

That doesn't appear to be a given by military standards of developed countries:

> Destroying an urban area to save it is not an option for commanders. The density of civilian populations in urban areas and the multidimensional nature of the environment make it more likely that even accurate attacks with precision weapons will injure noncombatants.…If collateral damage is likely to be of sufficient magnitude, it may justify avoiding urban operations, which though tactically successful, would run counter to national and strategic objectives.

United States Army and Marine Corps 2017 Manual on Urban Operations, quoted in [2]

[1] https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/more-women-and-child... [2] https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2021/04/27/urban-warfa...

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