Reflections on Palantir • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#431

Post by yks » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:27 PM UTC

saturn8601 wrote: post #257

yks wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that the progress is achieved when the masses have it the worst, then the deteriorating condition of the American middle class will naturally help it. What's the point in this accelerationism with allies as casualties then?

>If you believe that the progress is achieved when the masses have it the worst, then the deteriorating condition of the American middle class will naturally help it. Thats what we have seen historically. People always demand improvements. The leadership of this country hasn't actually done it until they really have a pissed off populace at their doorstep. I wouldn't believe it if it weren't for the historical preced…

> the US government clearly does not have their citizens interests first and foremost

I disagree, Americans just vote for that. Yes, we can talk all day long about the two party system, winner takes all, the electoral college and unfairness of everything being decided on the margins, but when the rubber hits the road, talk is cheap, action is what matters and a solid half of Americans has been consistently voting for the US government to put the interests of rich people first. The US as a whole is a beneficiary of globalism and it's on the Americans to decide how to distribute the gains, allies are not at fault.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#432

Post by cambaceres » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:32 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…

Certain situations that are likely to occur in professional settings would be suitable topics for university education. For example, doctors will encounter many challenging decisions where it's crucial to understand what past generations of medical professionals have learned from similar situations.

However, this differs from universities teaching students which business areas are more moral to work in than others. Who would have the authority to decide which businesses are more ethical? Some argue that working in the defense industry is the least ethical career choice, while others claim it would be immoral not to support a country's right to purchase weapons for self-defense. These judgments are often subjective and could be heavily influenced by individual teachers' biases.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#433

Post by red-iron-pine » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:33 PM UTC

BryantD wrote: post #304

saturn8601 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

lol what? Doctorow created "enshitification" to describe rent seeking and its behaviors, and has been creating a technocratic journalist vocab since the BoingBoing days.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#434

Post by soulofmischief » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:34 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 comment is a great example of a straw man argument.

> leave moral instruction to parents and other institutions like it should be.

Should be, according to what doctrine? It certainly sounds like you're attempting to establish institutional moral instruction by imposing limits on when and where morality can be discussed.

Why are we allowed to teach students astronomy but not morality? Go back further and we couldn't even freely teach astronomy. Do you remember Galileo's trial for heresy? Or Socrates' condemnation to death for "corrupting the youth"? This war for teaching the ability to capably assess ethics and morality has been waging before you, I, Hacker News, universities, the internet, the printing press...

If you don't think it was right to kill Socrates for simply spreading the message of critical thinking, then you have to accept that adults can organize to teach whatever they wish at universities, assuming it doesn't run afoul of Constitutional protections.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#435

Post by tolerance » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:35 PM UTC

webdood90 wrote: post #419

next_xibalba wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

The sad thing is that there is some truth to the parent comment.

For the most part it's an accurate representation of how morals are appropriated into institutions like academia.

As important qualities like community and a shared notion of a common good in humanity are, the system as it stands will render them according to its own interests and students will exit none the wiser. Character becomes standardized into a set of "values" of an entirely different sort.

The problem is that Students inevitably become parents, and some inevitably branch out into "other institutions" professionally, espousing Moral Character® and we're left to figure out who contaminated what?

The baby or the bathwater?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#436

Post by dash2 » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:36 PM UTC

1oooqooq wrote: post #392

throwaway2037 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This: > I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd Sorry, my English is a bit weak. What is the meaning here? Did you buy shares post-IPO?

he invested into the company (that is, funded the immoral work he was disgusted by and caused him to leave) by paying them for stock options while (or shortly after) working there.

He wasn't disgusted, argues most of the work was good not bad, and did not leave for moral reasons.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#437

Post by red-iron-pine » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:38 PM UTC

lmz wrote: post #216

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…

[flagged]

Because American industry runs on illegal labor. They pick the fruit, they work in the slaughterhouses, they build the housing, they work in the kitchen prep lines.

Like go to any construction site, any restaurant -- you're gonna see a bunch of Mexicans, Salvadorians, etc.

As wages haven't gone up, Americans need cheaper and cheaper labor on the low end to be able to, like, eat, and lots of big business knows this. The GOP owned Congress under GW Bush could have locked this issue down, and if they felt so compelled they probably could have swung that during the Obama era if they were willing to push. Instead it's a boogyman they can use to rile up voters while keeping costs low.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#438

Post by thisisnotauser » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:42 PM UTC

whack wrote: post #421

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 guy spends an entire section talking about this. Just because he has different moral opinions doesn't mean he doesn't care about morality. To quote the author: Grey areas. By this I mean I mean ‘involve morally thorny, difficult decisions’: examples include health insurance, immigration enforcement, oil companies, the military, spy agencies, police/crime, and so on. Every engineer faces a choice: you can work on…

I love this discussion, and I think it's critically important for people to engage with it.

However, I cannot more strongly disagree with your implicit assumption of innocence for "category 1." Facebook alone is unquestionably more harmful than Palatir, and any purely for profit entity is by necessity intentionally unanchored to any ethical foundation at all. Facebook is known for explicitly supporting genocidal regimes abroad, and for intentionally ignoring white supremacy, child abuse and domestic terrorism here in the US, all while being very explicit about not cooperating with the government agencies responsible for combatting these issues.

To that end, I would extend your thesis to the effect that people who eschew category 3 for category 1 aren't simply abdicating social responsibility, but are hypocritically engaged in substantially more socially harmful behaviors.

Sure, Palatir leads to people dying, and sometimes those people are innocent bystanders, but those actions are the result of any engagement with the public sector. Facebook is a direct progenitor of genocide abroad and fascism stateside, and is wholly untethered from either conscience or consequence. Category 1 is worse.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#439

Post by soulofmischief » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:44 PM UTC

deltarholamda wrote: post #427

acdha wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You have just re-invented the priestly caste.

Surely you have the capability of making a distinction between doctrine established for hierarchical control and a teaching a basic system of deriving ethics or morality, with the exact intention of preventing such hierarchical control within an industry that has the power to make any extreme institutional system a reality. You've seen the effects of a generation of social media technologies and how it compared to the previous generation of internet communication such as BBS, forums, etc.

I assume you've lived long enough to witness an internet stewarded by those who place ethics or morality above purely capitalistic motivation, vs. an internet stewarded by a generation of new-age, fake-ethical "They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks" tech entrepreneurs.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#440

Post by gravitronic » Thu, Oct 17, 2024, 1:49 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…

In 2012 I was at a conference in Montreal for CS students that had Maciej Ceglowski (Pinboard, bed bug registry) do the closing talk, and he was giving advice to students about what to work on. He said it out loud, "or if you want to work for evil go into the hallway and talk to the Palentir booth". It was a great moment of one man speaking truth to power in a packed room of their target audience.