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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

#701

Post by TheCoelacanth »

stasomatic wrote: post #366
Amezarak wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like you’re from a country with a parliamentary system? In the US, the “cabinet” is simply the President’s handpicked subordinates, not MPs. The President is the head of the executive, the government, usually understood as the executive, answers to him. They are not in a position to legally stop him. There are measures Congress could very easily take if they chose to, but modern Congresses are very much do-…

No, I am from the states, just been ignorant until it started bugging me. I'm sad that one geezer can turn the rest of the world against us without our say so and now we are wholesale opted in as villains. Not that the past was rosy, but it was more gentleman-ish? I am out of my depth here, just frustrated.

This is a problem that has always existed in presidential systems. The US is extremely unusual in having made it work for this long.

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

#703

Post by amanaplanacanal »

hnhn34 wrote: post #601
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe we need a certification for ethical animal raising. I know we can buy free range eggs and chicken, and grass fed beef, but I know know if that really means anything.

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

#704

Post by PearlRiver »

card_zero wrote: post #646
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…

I'm disconcerted from the opposite direction, because it seems people feel uncritical compassion for anything with a face, and they want to prevent suffering but instead of caring about the complexities of human anguish they seem to define it as "pain signals in vertebrates", and they call this ethics, but they just base it on vibes, and so maybe all their morality is incoherent intuition.

Everything humans believe is based on vibes- which happen to change with the centuries.

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

#705

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

RickJWagner wrote: post #691
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem fair to require people to speak out publicly about every random, crazy things communicated by Trump and his regime. In my view, it gives legitimacy to his ramblings and certainly feeds into his narcissism to have people react. It seems more reasonable and practical to speak out against his war once action has actually been taken. (As a UK citizen, I don't even understand why Trump is being allowed to…

I can’t imagine that. Politicians are supposed to lead . To present courses of action. Not to criticize other politicians after some event has already occurred and outcomes are visible. It’s as if you were riding in a car with a friend, speeding. If you tell the friend “slow down, this is dangerous” then you are acting a little bravely and this is virtuous. Waiting to see if you get to your destination or have a cras…

I'd liken it more to regularly getting a lift from a friend, but they are often speeding, tailgating, using their phone etc. You could complain every single time, but after a while, you have to just treat that friend as very unreliable and you should stop getting a lift from them.

With the Iran war, there didn't seem to be an opportunity to provide leadership before the event from other countries as the decision wasn't exactly well considered. There still doesn't seem to be a strategic objective to it that makes sense to me.

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

#706

Post by eudamoniac »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #693
eudamoniac wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really, because I read the whole thing and I don't see what you're saying at all. Like not even the worst one could I interpret as anti human. I don't get it.

"21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful." This is incredibly racist, ending thinking at "well, some types of people…

[flagged]

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

#707

Post by ericmay »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #697
ericmay wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, you see a resemblance between the current president and an actual king No, I don't. An actual king isn't constrained by checks and balances, or the law, for the most part. You're just adjusting the definition of king here to fit your argument. For example, you refer to King George being stymied or frustrated by some act of Parliament. Is he a king or president? Our president today (and since the founding of A…

> An actual king isn't constrained by checks and balances, or the law, for the most part. This is demonstrably false: King George, who was an "actual king" , was constrained by some checks and balances, yet he was still a king. We know that much is correct. Therefore your personal definition here must be what is incorrect. And indeed, it is. You're just adjusting the definition of king here to fit your argument. It s…

Ok then all presidents were acting as kings or King George was just acting more like a president.

> It seems like people are so hung up on the Twitter reality TV sports of politics that they've forgotten what a king is.

Yes I agree that you are doing that here. And now you've reached the point to where you're shifting definitions and cherry-picking various historic world leaders to draw inane conclusions and comparisons.

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

#708

Post by asdfman123 »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #686
asdfman123 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote immediately stood out: > Are you tracking Palantir’s descent into fascism? Their framing is wrong. The beliefs and internal politics of the people making the surveillance tools don't matter. The fact is they're making tools to assist government overreach, and anyone with any political awareness (or maybe more importantly here, objectivity) could have seen that. They're just the enablers.

lol what? "it's not that corporations could be evil, it's the gubermnt!" meanwhile large corporations literally bribe trump -- they're the ones calling the shots, and the government is just the organ

Nah, it's not like that. It's not defending them.

I'm more saying they never DESCENDED into fascism -- their ideas about how things should go in the world don't really matter. They are merely enabling fascism, regardless of their attitudes towards politics or their work, and they should have known that from the beginning.

They're literally saying "people are using the weapons we make to hurt people." No shit, what business did you think you were in?

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

#709

Post by Ritewut »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #228
floren wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very first chapter was actually excellent in setting my relationship to the book going forward, because stuff like this twanged against my brain and made me think, "Oh, she just really wanted to be powerful and influential and chased whatever she thought would give her that" > [after surviving a shark attack] why did this happen to me? If I survived against the odds, surely there had to be a reason? [...] After b…

She sounds horrifying.

She is but in a way that's what makes the book fun. She is very flawed protagonist.

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

#710

Post by nyantaro1 »

smag wrote: post #662

When your mortgage, everything you eat, the clothes your wife and children wear all come from one company, it is not hard to convince yourself that "this company might not be moral, but if I weren't here, someone else would be." And most people never even consider the ethics and morals of their workplace.

Unfortunately, "If I don't steal your house, someone else will" at scale, will lead to a very dark place for humanity
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