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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#591

Post by arczyx »

jiggawatts wrote: post #587
arczyx wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is well known that Hamas set up command centres in or under hospitals This is patently false. Israel single-handedly claimed this without any evidence other than CGI render. Think about it, ALL hospitals in Gaza has been bombed by this point, but have you ever see the actual footage of Hamas command centres? Also pretty sure there was no Hamas involved in the case below: > In one of the most egregious cases, the…

US intelligence agencies agreed with Israel, journalists that have never stepped foot in a Gaza hospital disagreed. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle: just because injured combatants are taken to a hospital doesn’t necessarily mean that that hospital is a military command centre. However at least one hospital was more than likely (but not certainly!) used as such. The tunnels under the Al Haifa hospital…

The American medical professionals who served in Gaza certainly disagree with Israel. Do you believe them or do you believe the same Israel who made up "40 beheaded babies"?

> The 99 signatories to this letter spent a combined 254 weeks inside Gaza’s largest hospitals and clinics. We wish to be absolutely clear: not once did any of us see any type of Palestinian militant activity in any of Gaza’s hospitals or other healthcare facilities.

> We urge you to see that Israel has systematically and deliberately devastated Gaza’s entire healthcare system, and that Israel has targeted our colleagues in Gaza for torture, disappearance, and murder.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#592

Post by MrLeap »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #498
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…

I agree that's very bad, but shouldn't in this context "horrific violence" be kept for countries under actual war ? (And specifically the towns where most buildings have been destroyed and most people died or fled.)

Has our reservoir of kindness diminished so much that we have to ration it?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#593

Post by worstspotgain »

guappa wrote: post #371
worstspotgain wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're fleeing Putin's strategically-created crises in Syria, Venezuela and elsewhere. He gives you the flu, blames the aspirin, and sells you the Ivermectin.

Ah yes Russia is the only country creating crisis abroad. I couldn't really name any other country that constantly does that as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#594

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

tucnak wrote: post #397
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen the same from Marc Andreessen. They do not know the Faustian bargain they have struck. It will consume their very souls.

What does it have to do with Faust? Israel is not a superhuman thing of any kind, and it doesn't possess superhuman knowledge.

Oh you seem to misunderstand. They are all clamoring for a seat at the table. It is easy to buy seats from one side of the political sphere. They do not understand that they will be kicked to the ground, once they get what they need.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#595

Post by mistermann »

scottyah wrote: post #583
mistermann wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least there is a logical path in that claim (if we ignore that I didn't specify that there was meat in the sandwich...I do eat a lot of plain tomato sandwiches, but not exclusively , so I do to some degree drive demand for animal slaughter)! I think it's kind of neat that we got from Palantir to sandwiches... I wonder if Palantir's software supports mapping metaphysical causality like this, because bizarre metaphy…

You're the one who directly took us from Palantir to sandwiches, in a clear attempt to distract from the core subject of manipulating humans on a mass scale without using "force"

Guilty as charged.

Do you think this is necessarily a bad thing?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#596

Post by BryantD »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #433
BryantD wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, precisely.

The point is that we tend to think of jargon creators as particularly insightful when their biases/viewpoints match our own, and annoying when they don't.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#597

Post by BlueTemplar »

MrLeap wrote: post #592
BlueTemplar wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that's very bad, but shouldn't in this context "horrific violence" be kept for countries under actual war ? (And specifically the towns where most buildings have been destroyed and most people died or fled.)

Has our reservoir of kindness diminished so much that we have to ration it?

We're talking about immigration, and more specifically how a State might approach it.

There are situations where the situation is so manifestly bad, that a prima facie approach to granting refugee status to asylum seekers (aka "opening the floodgates") from a specific location is the kind thing to do.

We've for instance seen countries do this for Syrians in 2015, Rohingya in 2017, Ukrainians in 2022.

But of course this is only viable (among other reasons, politically) for specific groups at specific times, whereas for other groups or at other times the case-by-case treatment of asylum requests has to be done again.

BTW, looking this up I was surprised to learn that the right to asylum initially did NOT cover people fleeing war, and some countries still do not consider it a valid reason to get a refugee status, among them the USA.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#598

Post by ArtixFox »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #580
ArtixFox wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sooo israel should use time travel? the situation right now is a fucked up war between two bloodthirsty groups. I dont think this is the right time to think of inventing time machines...

You can start by removing from power the government officials who funded Hamas. After that, yes time travel could help: https://xkcd.com/209/

How will removing Benjamin change anything?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#599

Post by Aeolun »

scott_w wrote: post #479
crimsoneer wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think by the point you are ready to hire a big foreign consultancy you’ve generally tried in-house and failed.

Of course you can try with a local consultancy, but I wouldn’t know of any, and I assume the reason for choosing one over the other is mostly a matter of reputation.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#600

Post by subjectsigma »

aguaviva wrote: post #543
subjectsigma wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a government contractor that does quite a number of things for a diverse set of agencies. You would be amazed at the mental gymnastics people go through to convince themselves you are some sort of child-eating monster. 80% of the time they have absolutely no idea what my company does nor what working for the military is actually like. “Where do you work?” “Oh at $COMPANY.” “I hear they work in missile defe…

And yet, if $COMPANY is also providing munitions for "Gaza Israel blah blah", then by continuing to work for $COMPANY, you are also very much a part of that. It doesn't matter what department you are in, or the neat little Ansible scripts you get to write.

I suppose you’re also complicit in the deforestation of the Amazon, since humans did that and (I’m assuming) you’re human

The point is that we should constantly demand better of our governments and leaders, but that doesn’t require throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I don’t think anyone should want to completely defund the people working on maintaining radios for EMS and 911 if they happen to work in a building next to people that spend 10% of their time making missile guidance systems

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