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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#471

Post by dh2022 »

samrus wrote: post #293
forgotoldacc wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interview somewhat recently where someone asked his connection to Israel's military, and he squirmed and rapidly stuttered in sheer terror for about 15 seconds before he finally put together a sentence where he said something like "I'm not allowed to criticize Israel." It was weird seeing one of the richest men on earth suddenly have absolute fear in his eyes and talking like he had a gun to his back. Tw…

Link to the interview https://youtu.be/q1asavnl_o8

Thanks for the link. Peter Thiel did not seem terrified at all. Surprised by the question? Maybe. It took him some time to find his words but I think the final point he made is valid (and he also had a bit of humor. Kinda the opposite of terrified)

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#472

Post by oceanplexian »

acdha wrote: post #422
lmz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Most Americans are not opposed to having immigration laws. The disagreements come from whether those laws are fair and the way “illegal immigration” is used as a bogeymonster by racists. For example, when Trump and Vance were doing the “Haitians are eating cats!!!” thing recently, note how often their supporters would throw the “illegal” term around even for people who are here legally. Their concerns were quite tran…

The reason they call asylum seekers illegal is because most asylum seekers are immigrating for improved economic opportunities, not because they are otherwise fleeing persecution from their government. If you want to immigrate somewhere for work you need to get in line for the correct visa. I would expect many legal immigrants here on HN would know this struggle. My parents did when they immigrated to the US.

The problem is that the asylum seekers are committing fraud if they are immigrating for economic reasons, and that fraud is being encouraged by the government and NGOs. JD vance, Elon, and Trump have talked about this several times but the media usually interrupts then or make a straw man argument about racism instead of covering the real issue, which is that these immigrants are being brought in as low wage, temporary laborers to undercut American workers.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#473

Post by Wytwwww »

yoz wrote: post #387
ArtixFox wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the other solution? create a separate state for palestine under the control of hamas would only legitimise them, allow them to easily get more weapons and go on another oct 7, which will again lead to the bombings currently happening. Bombing them to death would lead to deaths of many, many women and children cuz gaza is 75% children. You cannot have peace with hamas, only ceasefire, and even then they havnt…

My solution, if I was in charge of Israel, would simply be to NOT order the army to destroy most of Gaza and kill tens of thousands of people, and to instead just focus on preventing incursions into Israel. I would also focus on stopping Hamas missiles by using the hugely effective anti-missile system that, conveniently, already exists. I realise that this is not a perfect solution to the Israel/Palestine problem. It…

> to instead just focus on preventing incursions into Israel.

So after Hamas invaded Israel, massacred over a thousand civilians (and they don't have the "collateral damage" excuse they just gruesomely raped and murdered people because they were apparently subhuman...) and kidnapped hundreds of others, Israel should have just said "aw-shucks.. well they won't get us next time". Really?

That would have actually been worse than the US government doing nothing after 9/11 besides introducing stricter TSA checks.

Now one might legitimately argue whether the reactions in either were necessarily that effective. But not doing anything would have been insanely absurd. You just can't except any non entirely dysfunctional government to behave that way.

It's a horrible situation.. but any suggestion or proposed alternative that wouldn't result in the destruction or significant weakening of Hamas is just not particularly useful (long-term at least).

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#474

Post by lmeyerov »

worstspotgain wrote: post #299
MrLeap wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A week ago Alejandro Arcos was decapitated right after he took office as mayor of the city of Chilpancingo, a city of around 280,000 people. Some approximate stats: Mexico has 45,000~ murders a year. The United States has about 25k a year. The population of Mexico is 130m. The population of the US is 350m. One can't derive the distribution of motivations that bring immigrants from these statistics. That said, I'd cal…

Everything you wrote is correct. However, Mexico is actually an immigration success story. The net migration flow is around zero [1]. The big picture comes down to supply and demand. Today's supply is from specific countries: Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil, a few others. Each country has a different rationale, but generally it boils down to violence, poverty, and Putin. Not necessarily in that or…

Yep. 1-2 years is a judge. The official median is 7 years, which afaict is being quite generous. And agreed, it's gotten a lot harder even for folks most would say we should be fighting to attract.

One of the best things the US can do for its economy IMO is get back to being better at brain drain, and helping naturalize the people ready to work hard in general. They make jobs and help drive the American spirit because they basically have to. That's a tough message for people in struggling industries & towns, but it's hard to make a competitive & growing American economy when the job makers and doers are instead growing the economies of competing countries.

As a job maker, successful scientist, OSS supporter, & thankful refugee granted citizenship, immigration has become simultaneously one of the most American things to me... and one of the most bizarre.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#475

Post by moolcool »

deltarholamda wrote: post #455
soulofmischief wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

The post I was replying to explicitly said we couldn't leave the teaching of things like ethics and morality up to parents. That's a priestly caste. It's all well and good to say that your chosen priest caste won't exert hierarchical control, pinky swear, but history and human nature disagrees with you. It's also odd to suggest that we can teach a system of deriving ethics or morality. Philosophers have been hard at…

Have you taken a university level ethics course before?

They teach the different ethical frameworks, where they come from, and then get you to apply them to different situations. The classes don't tell you what's right and what's wrong, but rather, the different frameworks people can use to determine that.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#477

Post by snowfresco »

samatman wrote: post #193
ak_111 wrote: post #173

Note that Palantir's moral stature isn't as grey or debatable as made in the article, it is basically clearly complicit in the genocide in Gaza. In other words, if you read the article I would add one more bucket to the three categories the author provided to classify palantir's work - genocide assistance. from https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-jd-vance-peter-thiel-f... """ Not only did it provide information to…

[flagged]

Minimizing civilian casualties is a moral imperative. I am sure the engineers behind "Where's Daddy?" are losing sleep if they have any semblance of a moral conscience. Same goes for anyone who is aware of the true nature of Israel's conduct in Gaza yet still providing cover for it.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#478

Post by acdha »

oceanplexian wrote: post #472
acdha wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans are not opposed to having immigration laws. The disagreements come from whether those laws are fair and the way “illegal immigration” is used as a bogeymonster by racists. For example, when Trump and Vance were doing the “Haitians are eating cats!!!” thing recently, note how often their supporters would throw the “illegal” term around even for people who are here legally. Their concerns were quite tran…

The reason they call asylum seekers illegal is because most asylum seekers are immigrating for improved economic opportunities, not because they are otherwise fleeing persecution from their government. If you want to immigrate somewhere for work you need to get in line for the correct visa. I would expect many legal immigrants here on HN would know this struggle. My parents did when they immigrated to the US. The pro…

That’s a lot of unsourced claims which appear to be rehashing people who famously lie for political reasons (e.g. Vance admitting that he fabricated the Haitian cat story), and you’re certainly not building credibility by pretending that they’re somehow being “interrupted” from a serious conversation.

If you have a reliable source for the claim that large numbers of people are lying on asylum applications and that this is being encouraged by the government, you should edit your comment to cite that so there’s something to be objectively discussed.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#479

Post by scott_w »

crimsoneer wrote: post #386
scott_w wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion of Palantir in the NHS is not a question of whether "Palantir are good/bad for taking NHS work," it's actually "should the NHS contract out to (and share sensitive patient data with) a company with a reputation like Palantir?" The first question makes no sense at all. The latter question, however, is an important one for democratic governments to tackle.

I think the challenging question here is that while palantir obviously have a reputation, they're practically not that different to any of the big consultancies.

Specific to the NHS, Palantir not being a UK company was a big talking point, so yes, that's a tangible difference between Palantir and, say, Capita.

Your (and the sibling) responses also beg the question: must governments contract to big foreign consultancies? It's not illegal to do things in-house if they so choose, you know.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#480

Post by asoneth »

gnmlaxr wrote: post #405
bborud wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Biden administration had authoritarian, Russian style COVID policies. During the pandemic I read various descriptions of what disease outbreaks were like during various times. Including descriptions of the plague of 1665. What is interesting is that the approach to managing outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases hasn't really changed that much. Because we discovered relatively early on what helps. (Though w…

Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct. The virus was still there and does not care about presidential edicts and speeches. Given the the world still exists, I think the pre-2022 policies were a gross overreach and the cancellations of the likes of Malone are an eternal shame for the U.S. that is comparable to what happened in the Soviet Un…

> Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct

It's also possible that both instituting a lockdown and subsequently removing that lockdown were both essentially correct. While I believe the government waited far too long to remove lockdown restrictions I don't think instituting them in the first place was the wrong decision.

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