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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#611

Post by rudnevr »

jiggawatts wrote: post #603
amrocha wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mate, idk, now you’re arguing that it’s ok for toddlers to be sniped during war as long as your government claims they were “human shields”. I literally don’t know what to say to that.

There is no way for a doctor to know from a bullet wound that someone got "sniped". All bullets lodged in the body look the same, whether they just happened to run in the path of fire, or if a a sniper targeted them on purpose. This -- this -- is precisely the emotion-laden but evidence-free language that I'm trying to warn people from avoiding. It doesn't help your cause (whatever it is) to misrepresent, assume, or…

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#612

Post by jiggawatts »

rudnevr wrote: post #609
aguaviva wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way for a doctor to know from a bullet wound that someone got "sniped". All bullets lodged in the body look the same, whether they just happened to run in the path of fire, or if a a sniper targeted them on purpose. This just doesn't make any sense. On one hand, it's trivially correct in that no forensic information can ever tell us anything about the intent of the person who fired the bullet. But otherwi…

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The point that I'm trying to make is that the point of view of a trauma surgeon in a war zone is biased, not because they're bad people trying to spread propaganda but because they have a filtered view of the war: They're seeing a subset of the casualties.

You don't treat dead people in a hospital during a war. They don't get taken to hospital. You treat people "just hurt enough" to require surgery, but not so much that they definitely won't make it with or without surgery...

... such as single gunshot wounds to the head, which are surprisingly non-fatal. There's many(!) stories of people trying to kill themselves by shooting themselves in the head and failing.

The stories told by the people in the article are anecdotes by a select group with a strongly statistically biased view of the world on top of a personal bias against a literal enemy at war with them.

They're probably not wrong and they're probably not lying, they just can't see the whole picture and can't possibly know what an Israeli soldier is thinking our doing at the front line far from the hospital.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#613

Post by jiggawatts »

kombine wrote: post #415
jiggawatts wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to watch these "talking points" bouncing around when there's a politically charged topic like the war in Gaza. (For reference: I have no skin in the game and support neither side.) Having said that: 65% killed being women and children is because of the demographics of Gaza , not because of any specific behaviour by Israel other than just "being at war" with their neighbours. It's a talking point used…

> Yes, what Isreal is doing is bad, but not "murdering women and babies on purpose" bad! They are murdering children on purpose. Check the recent NY Times article by American doctors who worked in Gaza. Nearly all of them dealt with children shot in the head or in the chest on almost a daily basis. It is impossible to deny at this point that Israel is carrying out an extermination campaign there if not outright genoc…

Please see my other comments in my comment history. During times of war, doctors in trauma centres see a filtered (biased) sampling of injuries because of triage, prioritisation of kids over adults, etc...

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#614

Post by lioeters »

tucnak wrote: post #442
lioeters wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Thiel is enriching himself, fully aware that he's participating in ethnic cleansing, violence, and mass murder. If you see the video in the sibling comment, it's clear that he knows the evil he's working for, he is trading in the suffering of humanity for his own profit. And he knows we know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_with_the_Devil

You, too, don't appear to understand what the Faustian is about specifically. Guys, you should read up on something other than Wikipedia, & not embarrass yourself with dimwit attempts at allegory. Allow me to suggest Faust by Goethe!

We've all read it, thanks.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#615

Post by pbronez »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #467
andsoitis wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing..." ICE does ethnic cleansing? That sounds like an outrageous claim. Examples of ethnic cleansing includes the Turkish massacre of Armenians during WWI, the forced displacement and mass killings in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 90s, the Novia Scotia colonial gove…

I'm not sure the ICE does/did, but remember that "ethnic cleansing" doesn't have to involve (direct) mass murder (even if it often does), for instance the expulsion of millions of Germans after WW2 from their homes (even when they were already living there before Nazis came to power) : https://theconversation.com/postwar-forced-resettlement-of-g... Also, Hitler's first planned "initial solution" was, as incredible as…

I agree with this take. Securing a free society is serious, nuanced, and essential challenge.

The state needs powerful capabilities to provide credible defense. Unchecked, those capabilities can be used to reduce freedoms. The essential work is to build institutions and tools that can systematically navigate that nuance.

Personally, I think this all comes down to building high-quality democracy. The people constrain the leaders at the ballot box. The leaders constrain the institutions via policy. For a practical example, look at Sen Ron Wyden’s work.

If you care about this stuff, support things like FairVote.org

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#616

Post by tucnak »

lioeters wrote: post #614
tucnak wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, too, don't appear to understand what the Faustian is about specifically. Guys, you should read up on something other than Wikipedia, & not embarrass yourself with dimwit attempts at allegory. Allow me to suggest Faust by Goethe!

We've all read it, thanks.

Evidently not; if only to unsatisfactory effect! Faust is one of these stories that you don't just "read" once, but revisit rather—at many different moments in one's life. Better yet there's a pragmatic aspect to it beyond the poetic: actually grasping the Faustian will equip you to use all the clever words and devices that you wish (and yet, currently fail miserably) to use adequately.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#617

Post by rudnevr »

sofixa wrote: post #556
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I think the ICJ is better placed to decide what is or what isn't a genocide than random people on HN, and the fact that they're still deliberating means that you can't say it's "nonsensical, ignorant, offensive". If it were that, the case would have been thrown out a long time ago. https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#618

Post by kubami »

nodesocket wrote: post #237
melling wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock has blown up. It has more than doubled for me. Almost tripled. It’s quite expensive now. I would encourage you to do your own research. For some reason, HN has very little depth in stock market understanding. HN passed on META at $100. I know there are some very knowledgeable people here. Wish there was a way to create a “subreddit “ here without all the Reddit noise.

HN has always lacked economic and stock market knowledge and instincts generally speaking. Most comments tend to say it’s rigged, evil capitalist, etc. Guessing because hackers generally tend to swing far left and socialist though weird as a lot of founder and entrepreneurs are active on HN as well. There is a long tradition of show HN were the comments poo poo startups and ideas which end up being huge and the oppos…

Are there any good forums where people do have good market knowledge and share it?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#619

Post by ethbr1 »

dingnuts wrote: post #520
ryandrake wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think it's always about "line go up". I've talked to real life engineers who evidently have no ethical bar whatsoever--if the technology is cool and complex and an interesting technical problem, they'll work on it, regardless of the real-world application. "Whether my code is used ethically is someone else's problem. I just love technical challenges!" You absolutely see this mentality on HN as well.

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Ethic judgement becomes simple when you outsource the decision of who is and isn't a terrorist.

Is everyone in Gaza a terrorist, in your opinion?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#620

Post by scott_w »

Aeolun wrote: post #599
scott_w wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you’re giving the British government far too much credit. Between 2010-2024, the governing party had a religious belief in the power of outsourcing to the point that former ministers (Rory Stewart being one) have spoken out about how many problems they caused by pushing the model to its extremes, irrespective of whether it makes sense or not.

Where it comes to organisational complexity and the barriers it creates, bear in mind that the British state is vastly more centralised than the USA. Fragmentation in the NHS was massively exacerbated by the Lansley Reforms which also forced trusts to outsource a lot of work.

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