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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

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions of pigs cows and chickens will stop being massacred in grizzly ways? Yours is an extremely common and unfortunately ill-informed argument that I see a lot. If I was given the choice between end all suffering by killing all factory farmed animals right now vs perpetuate it, im choosing kill all animals right now

It sounds like you don't have a problem with killing animals. Is it just the living conditions? If we replaced factory farms with more ethical practices, would that solve the problem for you?

> would that solve the problem for you?

not the person you replied to, but it mostly would for me. Factory farms are among the closest things to hell on earth.

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

#602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even when they specifically target civilians? What would you call a bomb exploded in times square? What if it were placed there by Iranian soldiers? Is that war, or terrorism?

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

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And humans aren't obligate carnivores.

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

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent. Not necessarily. I mean, the people who give out an uncomfortable laugh do exhibit signs of cognitive dissonance. I don't have an issue with accepting both statements: factory farming is awful, and I still eat meat. There is no cognitive dissonance. The logic is straightforward: I do not believe that me, an indi…

We used to have more humane farming. We used to have laws against child labor. We now eat pigs, animals smarter than dogs, that lived tortured lives while wearing clothing made by children. You can easily chose 'not factory farmed' and still eat meat. You just don't. I'm guessing unless you grew up rich or very recently, you consume more meat now than you were accustomed too growing up. In that case you choose to act…

>We used to have more humane farming. We used to have laws against child labor.

So, you get the point of having legislation like laws prohibiting child labor instead of moral grandstanding calling on people to abstain from purchasing unethically produced goods, right?

>We now eat pigs, animals smarter than dogs, that lived tortured lives while wearing clothing made by children.

Which goes to show my point: the problem of child labor has only ever been resolved by having legislation against it.

Not by passing the (un)ethical choice onto the consumer.

>I'm guessing unless you grew up rich or very recently, you consume more meat now than you were accustomed too growing up.

I grew up in a communal flat in post-USSR-collapse Ukraine with five families to 1 toilet, in case you are wondering, and no, I don't consume any more meat now than I was accustomed to growing up.

I don't see how that is related to anything I'm saying, other than trying to go for another holier-than-thou ad hominem.

>You can easily chose 'not factory farmed' and still eat meat.

Pray tell how.

Let's be specific. I live in California, and while I consider myself well off, I'm not what you'd call rich.

I shop in stores like Lucky, Ralph's, and 99 ranch.

When I go to those stores, how do I tell which meat was "factory farmed", and which wasn't? Honest question, because that information isn't on the label.

Which is, again, a point I am making: it should be illegal to not put this information along with nutrition data.

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

#605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equating eating meat with martyrdom in the year 2026 is, in fact, the same cognitive dissonance you personally deny. I eat meat. And I'm highly, highly morally conflicted. I'll leave it at that to avoid sounding hypothetical—except to mention that the only logical reason I don't go vegetarian/vegan is the work and personal development that'd be required of me. (I'll take being called lazy over disingenuous any day, i…

>Equating eating meat with martyrdom in the year 2026 is, in fact, the same cognitive dissonance you personally deny You completely missed the point. In the context of picking battles, martyrdom is (self) sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, with no direct gain for the cause. Abstaining from meat, to me , will take away one of the not-so-many joys I have in my life, without possibly making a meaningful impact on unet…

Aren't vegetables cheaper than meat? I'd assume poor people also like the taste of meat, as was evolutionarily advantaged, not that it's the cheapest.

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

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I eat meat. And I'm highly, highly morally conflicted. I'll leave it at that to avoid sounding hypothetical—except to mention that the only logical reason I don't go vegetarian/vegan is the work and personal development that'd be required of me. (I'll take being called lazy over disingenuous any day, if we're ostensibly virtue signaling here.) But that is precisely acting as a martyr. You're "highly morally conflic…

You say I'm 'suffering inside', not me.

What is confliction if not suffering?

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

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Equating eating meat with martyrdom in the year 2026 is, in fact, the same cognitive dissonance you personally deny You completely missed the point. In the context of picking battles, martyrdom is (self) sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, with no direct gain for the cause. Abstaining from meat, to me , will take away one of the not-so-many joys I have in my life, without possibly making a meaningful impact on unet…

> In the context of picking battles, martyrdom is (self) sacrifice, with no direct gain for the cause. On the first clause, exactly. (The second clause appears to be a bit of ad lib.) > Abstaining from meat, to me, will take away one of the not-so-many joys I have in my life I don't think the concept of 'martyrdom' encompasses self-interest. It does however consider the cause/s of other beings. So I maintain, not a v…

>On the first clause, exactly. (The second clause appears to be a bit of ad lib.)

The original definition of martyr is: "a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty for declaring belief in and refusing to renounce a religion"[1].

It's suffering for the sake of being true to one's faith; impact of that decision on anyone else not being a factor in whether one is a martyr.

Abstaining from meat consumption when it's something you really enjoy is martyrdom in that sense: you are sticking to your moral principles while having no impact on the proliferation of unethical farming.

>I don't think the concept of 'martyrdom' encompasses self-interest

You think incorrectly. The concept of martyrdom means forgoing the self-interest of self-preservation and not being in pain. There's no martyrdom without sacrifice.

>It does however consider the cause/s of other beings.

It may, in the modern sense of the word, but it doesn't have to. See the linked definition. The causes for which one martyrs themselves may vary. The unifying factor is suffering in the name of the cause.

Not suffering with the effect of making something happen. It's choosing to suffer in the name of something that makes one a martyr.

Martyrdom is not an efficient way to bring the cause closer to reality.

> So I maintain, not a very cognitively consonant use of the term.

You can maintain it's not the correct usage of the term, dictionaries be damned, but cognitive consonance has nothing to do with that.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/martyr

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

#608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never forget this spot on NPR where they interviewed a machine learning engineer working on AI videos. The engineer was purely focused on how cool the technology is, how real it looks, etc. The interviewer asked, "aren't you worried about this getting into the hands of the wrong people, and creating deepfakes for extortion and things like that?" The engineer paused for a few seconds, and then said, "gosh I never…

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was in university, we used to have at least one engineering ethics class in undergrad. Have they stopped those? It sure seems like it, given how many engineers are out there who only seem to care about how technically cool and interesting their projects are.

They exist for the "college of engineering" majors such as mechanical, chemical, civil etc. Computer science is considered a natural science in many universities (and is in the corresponding college) and thus does not have an ethics course mandated like other engineering disciplines.

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

#609
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no “ethical” company. They will tend towards making money by means that can be interpreted as being legal. Sometimes they will do things not legal - but those are calculated decisions based on how much the profit from said actions is compared to how much they will pay out as fines. Ethics and laws are for chumps like us. Because we don’t have the financial and legal muscle to challenge the state.

this take is irritating because it implies that people at companies don't have to bother being ethical or holding the people around them accountable at a personal level for being ethical, as if it's somehow predetermined by the environment, being at a corporation, how you behave. Certainly it's true that the incentives of corporations push you to ignore ethics. But that's why they're ethics: they're precisely the thi…

An irritating take can still be largely true simply due to how the incentives are set up.

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

#610
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically this boils down to "I don't feel responsible for the meat I eat being factory farmed." Not that I'm in any position to criticize; I'm in the cognitive dissonance camp. Have you considered consuming "ethical" animal products (e.g. free range eggs or whatever?) That doesn't seem like martyrdom; compared to what you want (government mandated livestock welfare) it only costs you marginally more (due to missing…

I’m in the same camp. On the other extreme, I find it darkly funny that eating plants is supposed to be okay… Aren’t they alive too? What if they were conscious? If they aren’t but still a lifeform, that makes it perfectly okay? No answers, just makes me wonder at times if common ethics is all it’s cracked up be. Is eating plants not required for sustenance or nutrition really justifiable? (Chocolate, sugar, spices,…

> What if they were conscious?

Well, they're not.

> If they aren’t but still a lifeform, that makes it perfectly okay?

According to Jains: No. Violence against plants, insects, and possibly even certain microorganisms is considered unethical.

IMO as an irreligious person: Yes. Life is just a particular form of self-sustaining and self-propagating system. Those properties are of little to no moral value.

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