Reflections on Palantir • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#411

Post by throwaway19972 » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 12:48 PM UTC

clircle wrote: post #374

austinjp wrote: post #330

The article reveals depressing reasons why someone might choose to work for the lines of Palantir: lots of talented people working on hard problems. That's pretty much it. No problem with the business model, just intellectual hunger. I'm sure the pay didn't hurt. We need to teach our students that the employment they take doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your choice of employee can impact not only yourself but the wider wo…

> We need to teach our students... Teach your values to your own kids, man

Pretty much every dysfunction of this society can be traced back to this attitude. Social responsibility to other people beyond your own kin is necessary to produce a society worth living in. This necessarily includes taking up the burden of teaching you the values your parents refused to teach you.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#412

Post by elefanten » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 12:49 PM UTC

yoaviram wrote: post #377

austinjp wrote: post #330

The article reveals depressing reasons why someone might choose to work for the lines of Palantir: lots of talented people working on hard problems. That's pretty much it. No problem with the business model, just intellectual hunger. I'm sure the pay didn't hurt. We need to teach our students that the employment they take doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your choice of employee can impact not only yourself but the wider wo…

What a brilliant example of self-righteous post-rationalization. Maybe we all need to recalibrate our moral compasses. Yes, ethics is nuanced, but not in the case of Palantir, who directly enables the abuse of human rights on a massive scale. They are not in the grey, they are pitch black - arms dealers selling to the highest bidder[1][2]. Same as NSO but with better PR. The minimal standard we should teach our stude…

This is a pretty wild claim, you're gonna need better evidence than strident rhetorical posturing to back that one up.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#413

Post by acdha » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 12:51 PM UTC

next_xibalba wrote: post #404

moolcool wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's preachy at all to say "Hey, the work you do has impacts on the wider world"

[flagged]

If you think ethics is “bureaucracy” and “useless classes”, you’re pretty loudly shouting that you needed that instruction.

The problem with leaving it to parents is that parents are not uniformly qualified or interested in doing so, and it’s in society’s best interests not to leave important things to chance.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#414

Post by justmarc » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 12:56 PM UTC

swordsmith wrote: post #149

newprint wrote: post #2

Can someone explain to me what is the Palantir's business model ? I haven't heard any large, meaningful project they been involved in, but I keep hearing the company name & how hot they are and their stocks are going to blow-up any day (some of my friends kept their stocks for the last 4-5 years with very little gain compared to other software companies). I know of the smaller software companies that are less than 10…

I use Foundry for work. It makes data ingestion, cleaning, quality check and automation easy. After all the data is ingested, running analysis/RAG on them become extremely easy. Basically, it's end-to-end data engineering and analytics. And the more a company uses/invests into the platform, the more benefit and locked-in they are.

It certainly sounds like they've created an excellent product both for its value to the customer as well as value to their shareholders.

That's what companies should all be built and optimized to do. That's what it's about.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#415

Post by kombine » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 12:56 PM UTC

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…

> Yes, what Isreal is doing is bad, but not "murdering women and babies on purpose" bad!

They are murdering children on purpose. Check the recent NY Times article by American doctors who worked in Gaza. Nearly all of them dealt with children shot in the head or in the chest on almost a daily basis. It is impossible to deny at this point that Israel is carrying out an extermination campaign there if not outright genocide.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#416

Post by moolcool » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 12:59 PM UTC

gen220 wrote: post #196

km144 wrote: 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…

When you onboard at meta (circa 2020) the execs like to make vague references to this rare out of print book on media studies that they say presaged everything and explains a lot about how they think about their role in the media ecosystem. They liked to lift quotes from it to justify certain decisions or whatever. They encouraged you to buy the book “if you could find a copy”. I like reading old books and philosophy…

What was the book?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#417

Post by andsoitis » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:00 PM UTC

austinjp wrote: post #330

The article reveals depressing reasons why someone might choose to work for the lines of Palantir: lots of talented people working on hard problems. That's pretty much it. No problem with the business model, just intellectual hunger. I'm sure the pay didn't hurt. We need to teach our students that the employment they take doesn't exist in a vacuum. Your choice of employee can impact not only yourself but the wider wo…

> The article reveals depressing reasons why someone might choose to work for the lines of Palantir: lots of talented people working on hard problems. That's pretty much it. No problem with the business model, just intellectual hunger.

That seems like a very uncharitable take. For instance, don't you think the section on morality[1] addresses this head on?

[1] https://nabeelqu.substack.com/i/150188028/morality

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#418

Post by amrocha » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:02 PM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #340

funcrush wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/09/opinion/gaza-... https://www.nytco.com/press/response-to-recent-criticisms-on...

For reference, I'm willing to accept every factual statement of the article: the doctor worked in Gaza, he saw many children with bullet wounds to the head or chest, many were single shots, etc... A relative of mine is a nurse working in a hospital. I noticed a long time ago that her perspective on the statistics of illnesses is very skewed. She sees only very sick patients because -- duh -- she works in a hospital.…

Mate, idk, now you’re arguing that it’s ok for toddlers to be sniped during war as long as your government claims they were “human shields”.

I literally don’t know what to say to that.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#419

Post by webdood90 » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:02 PM UTC

next_xibalba wrote: post #404

moolcool wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's preachy at all to say "Hey, the work you do has impacts on the wider world"

[flagged]

This is a great example of the toxic individualism our society suffers from. There is no sense of community or doing what's right for the greater good because people think they always know better.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#420

Post by kombine » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:04 PM UTC

dralley wrote: post #217

pphysch wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what extent is repeated mass-murder of civilians, total destruction of healthcare and education systems, etc. part of the "moral gray area"? That's just not a serious argument. You can be pro-Israel without pretending to hold humanist values and so on.

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.

Do you know where the ministry of defense is located in Tel-Aviv? Right next to its biggest shopping mall, inside of which at any point you will find dozens of young soldiers wandering around in their military uniforms with automatic rifles hanging over the shoulders. I am saying this because I have been to this shopping mall many times. According to Israel's own doctrine that makes this shopping mall a legit military target, which, of course, is total bullshit. Just like the old and tired argument about "human shields" and "terrorists embedding themselves among civilians".