Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

bird.makeup

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 63 posts

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#51

Post by jmyeet »

rich_sasha wrote: post #47

Asking honestly, eli5 please: what does Palantir make that is so bad? They make software for the police (and military etc.). I get that maybe the police does horrible things with it (not an American, don't want to argue either way). And sure, you can't say "hey I only make the software that optimises waterboarding, I don't do it myself" - that would very much be complicity. My understanding of Palantir is it does thi…

Consider these examples [1]. There's absolutely no way to spin this:

> As an example of the evil nature of Palantir’s work, it appears that Palantir has been working with the Israeli military in so-called ‘targeted killings’. Reports have suggested such that these murders, probably in the thousands or tens of thousands, utilised social media information and cellphone tracking. According to a range of sources, over 150 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza and in numerous cases they appear to have been directly targeted. Using social media information to murder journalists using drone strikes is already dystopic, but this is likely to just be the beginning of the evil Palantir will facilitate.

More on Lavender [2].

[1]: https://politicaleconomist.substack.com/p/palantir-the-world...

[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#52

Post by ujkhsjkdhf234 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #47

Asking honestly, eli5 please: what does Palantir make that is so bad? They make software for the police (and military etc.). I get that maybe the police does horrible things with it (not an American, don't want to argue either way). And sure, you can't say "hey I only make the software that optimises waterboarding, I don't do it myself" - that would very much be complicity. My understanding of Palantir is it does thi…

This is not entirely right. Palantir is a company that pitches surveillance and AI everywhere in government. From their own product page, they want "AI-Powered automation for every decision." I think this is a poor idea in general but especially in policing and government. Palantir has been caught creating a "pre-crime" algorithm[0], because they seem to have thought Minority Report was an inspiring movie. You can read a former Palantir employee talk about all of the delightfully fun stuff they get involved in like using AI in autonomous warfare[2].

On top of that I have a severe distaste for the founders. Peter Thiel is a psycho who, among other things, is a big fan of Curtis Yarvin and wants to bring monarchy to the US. Creator of smash hits like "I no longer think freedom and democracy are compatible."[1] You may be familiar with his protege, JD Vance. I wouldn't want this person running a police state company. Do not mistake Palantir as Tableau but for government.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict...

[1] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-trump...

[2] https://zigguratmag.substack.com/p/the-guernica-of-ai-c4b?tr...

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#53

Post by jmyeet »

d1str0 wrote: post #5

Who would you prefer filling the ranks at a company like Palantir? 1. People who are sympathetic to these concerns, and more likely to change thinking from within or whistleblow if needed. 2. Everyone left over who are pro police state and fascism? OP’s post would only fill Palantir with the second group. This seems more dangerous than to fill it with a diverse crowd.

I would encourage anyone to familiarize themselves with the "banality of evil" [1]. Interestingly, there's this quote that's very apropos today:

> “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule,” she also says, “is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer holds”

Anyway, the idea of this is "evil" is an accumulation of small, otherwise inocuous actions.

Consider the recent movie "Zone of Interest" that was set outside Auschwitz and never showed any of the atrocities. The whole point was that even on the steps of mass murder, life still appeared in many ways "normal" [2].

[1]: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/hannah-arendts-less...

[2]: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/12/18/the-zone-of-in...

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#54

Post by analognoise »

jmyeet wrote: post #50
minimaxir wrote: post #3

The replies to the tweet itself ( https://x.com/paulg/status/1913338841068404903 ) are pretty much what you'd expect for modern Twitter/X.

Blue check reply guys are generally awful and almost always reactionary. I found this reply noteworthy [1]. For context, Gerry actively blocks many, many people on Twitter using some bot. This came up he became the CEO of YC as mahy people discovered they had seemingly been blocked [2]. Their crimes? Seemingly being in any way pro-affordable housing in California in general or San Francisco in particular. So this rep…

I’d rather have hundreds of drug dealers over one fascist. One is a threat to freedom, the other isn’t.

What a clown.

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#55

Post by nsxwolf »

bbqfog wrote: post #28
nsxwolf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

If the goal is to kill every Palestinian, don’t they have faster and more efficient methods? Also, why are they leaving the West Bank alone? They’re Palestinians too, aren’t they?

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#56

Post by ujkhsjkdhf234 »

jmyeet wrote: post #50
minimaxir wrote: post #3

The replies to the tweet itself ( https://x.com/paulg/status/1913338841068404903 ) are pretty much what you'd expect for modern Twitter/X.

Blue check reply guys are generally awful and almost always reactionary. I found this reply noteworthy [1]. For context, Gerry actively blocks many, many people on Twitter using some bot. This came up he became the CEO of YC as mahy people discovered they had seemingly been blocked [2]. Their crimes? Seemingly being in any way pro-affordable housing in California in general or San Francisco in particular. So this rep…

What is he saying in this reply? He wants ICE to use this to track drug dealers and send them to the concentration camp in El Salvador?

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#57

Post by ujkhsjkdhf234 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #55
bbqfog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If the goal is to kill every Palestinian, don’t they have faster and more efficient methods? Also, why are they leaving the West Bank alone? They’re Palestinians too, aren’t they?

Israel is not leaving the West Bank alone. The media has been focused on the Gaza strip because that is where most of the destruction is but Israel has operations in the West Bank[0].

You can't claim the moral high ground of just wanting to defeat Hamas if you use these faster more efficient methods. Israel is still trying to play the victim in the global narrative.

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

nsxwolf wrote: post #55
bbqfog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If the goal is to kill every Palestinian, don’t they have faster and more efficient methods? Also, why are they leaving the West Bank alone? They’re Palestinians too, aren’t they?

> If the goal is to kill every Palestinian, don’t they have faster and more efficient methods?

The goal is to eliminate the Palestinian identity (destroy the Palestinian people as a people, the definition of genocide) and displace the population from Gaza and the West Bank. But it is not the only goal; maintaining sufficient deniability/rationalizability that they can avoid active international intervention against themselves and retain certain sources of active international support (most notably from the US government) is also an important goal, and one that constrains how the first goal is pursued.

> Also, why are they leaving the West Bank alone?

They have never even pretended to leave the West Bank alone the way they pretended to do to Gaza during the for-show disengagement. And violent repression in the West Bank has also been escalated under the cover of the international media being focussed almost exclusively on the mass destruction in Gaza, with far less attention.

Re: YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state

#59

Post by archagon »

rich_sasha wrote: post #47

Asking honestly, eli5 please: what does Palantir make that is so bad? They make software for the police (and military etc.). I get that maybe the police does horrible things with it (not an American, don't want to argue either way). And sure, you can't say "hey I only make the software that optimises waterboarding, I don't do it myself" - that would very much be complicity. My understanding of Palantir is it does thi…

Well, for one, they saw the Slaughterbots[1] video and thought it was a great idea instead of a cautionary tale: https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1hexwjc/slaughterbo...

Alex Karp also tends to publish some extremely disturbing polemics about how 'The West' needs to remain dominant at all costs. For example: https://www.palantir.com/q4-2024-letter/en/

> We are still in the earliest stages, the beginning of the first act, of a revolution that will play out over years and decades... The unfortunate thing, either in business or politics, is that many of one’s adversaries and antagonists will never respond to anything but strength—that crude form of power that does not ask for but which requires compliance and deference... As Samuel Huntington has written, the rise of the West was not made possible “by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion . . . but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”

And that's an official letter to the shareholders. Like, what the fuck is that? You could tell people that these quotes came from a military dictator and they would not bat an eye.

Karp has a palpable savior complex and seems to relish the idea of applying violence against enemies of his desired world order.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterbots

Post reply on HN