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Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

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Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#591

Post by Dylan16807 »

antiframe wrote: post #541
UltraSane wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't really accurate to describe those bombings as terrorism when they happened during the largest war in human history.

While I agree there's not a universally agreed upon definition of terrorism, I want to hear more about why you think bombing with novel munitions expressly delivered to dense urban areas which killed 250k people 90% of whom were civilian, in an attempt to scare them into surrender, is not "terrorism".

Killing people while trying to scare them into surrender is a feature shared by both terrorism and wars. A big bombing campaign done by an army is a war, not a terrorism.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#592

Post by angry_octet »

polski-g wrote: post #454
angry_octet wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the missiles are being used in a civil war instead of against a foreign adversary.

The Confederacy was a foreign adversary the moment they seceeded.

I'mm referring to the present day.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#593

Post by kelipso »

tdb7893 wrote: post #476
1-more wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man look at everyone getting weird as hell about it under here. Good gravy!

This comment section is actually pretty good and it's generally well intentioned so I'm not mad but it's the same stuff every time. It's like how a tall person I know hears the same "how's the weather up there" joke over and over and got tired of it. The only thing people will say that annoys me is the "but animals eat other animals" argument from otherwise intelligent people (no worries if children say it). I've yet…

Carnivores need to eat other animals to live. If a living thing needs to do something to live, then almost all cases, there is a very defensible argument for it being moral.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#594

Post by strken »

tdb7893 wrote: post #101
Ritewut wrote: post #69

Everyone in this industry should be required to read Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams about her tenure at Facebook. Not because the book is about how evil Meta/Facebook is as a company but because you get to see the lengths people go to mentally convince themselves they are the good guy. Repeatedly in the book she tries to assure herself she's making the world better and that there's actually an ethical, positiv…

My experience is that people will be able to justify anything that is "normal". I went vegan after learning too much of how the literal sausage is made and the amount of people who have unprompted (people are weird about it so I try to avoid talking about being vegan except for mentioning it quickly while declining food) said something along the lines of "factory farming is awful but I just love bacon" and laugh is l…

This is terrifying even if you're not vegan. There are moral questions raised by animal products that people should think about. I am worried by people who eat cheese without understanding bobby calves or rennet.

Some people have thought about it and are just deflecting, of course, but not everyone.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#595

Post by kelipso »

DangitBobby wrote: post #566
Detrytus wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up watching my grandmother butchering a chicken for a Sunday dinner. Or my uncle butchering and skinning the calf. Knowing how the sausage is made does nothing for me. I can understand someone being vegan because they believe eating plants is healthier. I can understand being vegan because you don’t like the taste of meat. But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothi…

I don't find might is right to be a convincing moral argument. The only reason I was born a human instead of one of the 300 billion animals humanity consumes each year is the outcome of a lottery system, simple as that. Consider whether you'd feel the same way when applying a "veil of ignorance" test.

He’s not making a might is right argument.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#596

Post by tdeck »

mbesto wrote: post #98
Jtsummers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working in the aerospace (now space) arena my entire career, and there's a lot of overlap there with the defense industry. What I've seen is that it's very easy for people to look at their work as a narrow area and to forget about the consequences of it (how it's used, what it actually does when used). I think many (I won't say the majority but it wouldn't surprise me) in the defense and intelligence sector…

> I think many (I won't say the majority but it wouldn't surprise me) in the defense and intelligence sector don't think, either willfully or because of lack of introspection in general, about these things. I think it has more to do with the fact that many of the products built for defense are never actually used against adversaries in their useful life. Just look at our nuclear weapon stockpile. Palantir on the othe…

> I think it has more to do with the fact that many of the products built for defense are never actually used against adversaries in their useful life. Just look at our nuclear weapon stockpile.

One only has to look at what the US military has been up to for the last few decades to realize that this is like saying "I knew he would use the gun to mug people, but I hoped he wouldn't fire it."

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#597

Post by tdeck »

tristor wrote: post #262

I was once targeted for recruitment by Palantir. I looked into it, I decided not to apply. This was circa 2018. I think it'd be really difficult to justify to myself joining Palantir then, I can't even imagine doing it in 2026.

Fascism is one of the few market segments on an upward trajectory.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#598

Post by tdeck »

0x3f wrote: post #165
myth_drannon wrote: post #107

Palantir must be working on something amazing if they are constantly assaulted by Iranian/Chinese bots,Left fascists,"but GenOcide in HAZA" and others. Curiously not Boieng, not drone companies, but Palantir. Time to load up on Palantir stocks?

Relative to other government contractors, Palantir is pretty good. More so because the bar is typically so low, though. But that's priced in. Them featuring in conspiracy theories is just because there's a cultural treadmill for all these things, isn't there? You can't harp on about Raytheon forever. Those are the villans of the past. Back when Bush was the great evil, or something. To get engagement, you need to fra…

Americans who don't like Palantir think (correctly) that the surveillance might affect them. Far fewer seem to care about war crimes committed against people in other countries.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#599

Post by lotsofpulp »

strken wrote: post #594
tdb7893 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is that people will be able to justify anything that is "normal". I went vegan after learning too much of how the literal sausage is made and the amount of people who have unprompted (people are weird about it so I try to avoid talking about being vegan except for mentioning it quickly while declining food) said something along the lines of "factory farming is awful but I just love bacon" and laugh is l…

This is terrifying even if you're not vegan. There are moral questions raised by animal products that people should think about. I am worried by people who eat cheese without understanding bobby calves or rennet. Some people have thought about it and are just deflecting, of course, but not everyone.

I do a lot of damage to other species and humans now and in the future with the energy use caused by my large detached single family home and various leisure travels and imported toys.

The two paths I see would be giving up a lot, including my family since I doubt my wife would go along with it, and live a much less consumptive lifestyle, starting with less space. In the meantime, billions of people in China/India/Brazil/Nigeria are waiting to increase their consumption.

Or I stick my head in the sand and continue ignoring the problem and living the one life I have, and let nature take whatever course it will.

Re: Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

#600

Post by breppp »

throwaway173738 wrote: post #537
breppp wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a lot of dissimilarities, like the lack of mass executions of the disabled for example or a missing mass extermination plan of millions, maybe also kidnapping teenagers from the street and shipping them to brothels for soldiers, shooting babies? but apart from that exactly the same

The nazis did not start there. They started roughly where we’re at. They worked up to all of that.

It's been almost 6 years of Trump, when do you think it's going to start?
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