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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#81

Post by tsimionescu »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #45
tsimionescu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deliberate killing or displacement of a significant part of a population, typically on ethnic or religious grounds. As some examples, Nazi Germany's slaughter of Jewish, Romani, Armenian, gay and other minority people. Serbian slaughter of Muslim people in Kosovo, most notably at Srebenica. Israeli slaughter of Arabic people living in Gaza.

[flagged]

What ethnic cleansing of the Arab world's entire Jewish population are you talking about, specifically? Just like in Europe, there have been many waves of better and worse relationships, from relative acceptance to Nazi-like persecution, in various places and at various times, even looking just at the last hundred years.

Still, to a great extent, the biggest contributing factor to the current extremely low Jewish populations in the Middle East outside Israel has been migration or flight to Israel. For example, in Iran, even before the Islamic Revolution and the wave of antisemitic persecution that followed it, which could be described at least as ethnic cleansing if not outright genocide, there had been significant migration of Iranian Jews to Israel.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#82

Post by tsimionescu »

Manuel_D wrote: post #50
dagw wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 180k number people cite includes deaths from starvation, disease and other causes that can be attributed to secondary effects of the military campaign.

You do remember what event kicked off this military campaign just over a year ago, right? The blockade is part of the effort to press Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. If the bulk of the deaths are due to starvation and disease stemming from the blockade, then the culpability of this "genocide" lies with Hamas.

Israel saying "we're going to kill and starve civilians until you give us what we want" does not make Hamas responsible for the civilian deaths any more than Hamas saying "we did October 7th and we'll do another unless you stop occupying us" makes Israel responsible for the murders perpetrated on that night.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#83

Post by Manuel_D »

tsimionescu wrote: post #79
Manuel_D wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The deliberate killing or displacement of a significant part of a population, typically on ethnic or religious grounds. As some examples, Nazi Germany's slaughter of Jewish, Romani, Armenian, gay and other minority people. Serbian slaughter of Muslim people in Kosovo, most notably at Srebenica. All of these conflicts saw large (upwards of 30% of the population) killed. > Israeli slaughter of Arabic people living in…

> Even if we trust the Palestinian government's own estimates, the death toll in Gaza has been under 2% of the population. In one year, and only counting direct deaths. By your logic, Hitler wasn't a monster in the first year or two since the beginning of the Holocaust, since not that many people had died yet, right? We should have kept selling arms to Germany, since it wasn't yet a genocide, only 2% of the populatio…

[flagged]

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#85

Post by Manuel_D »

tsimionescu wrote: post #82
Manuel_D wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do remember what event kicked off this military campaign just over a year ago, right? The blockade is part of the effort to press Hamas into releasing the remaining hostages. If the bulk of the deaths are due to starvation and disease stemming from the blockade, then the culpability of this "genocide" lies with Hamas.

Israel saying "we're going to kill and starve civilians until you give us what we want" does not make Hamas responsible for the civilian deaths any more than Hamas saying "we did October 7th and we'll do another unless you stop occupying us" makes Israel responsible for the murders perpetrated on that night.

If someone kidnaps people and holds them hostage in a building, it's totally within the realm of reasonable response for the police to surround and isolate the building. If one of the kidnappers does of dehydration during the standoff, the police did not kill him. His own stubbornness and refusal to surrender is what killed him.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#86

Post by mistermann »

nxobject wrote: post #71
dantyti wrote: post #66

[flagged]

I just... how did that culture coexist with the buttoned-down ex-defense and law enforcement types?

"I’m not sure if they still do this, but at the time when you joined they sent you a copy of Impro"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impro:_Improvisation_and_the...

It's quite clever.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#87

Post by NegatioN »

orochimaaru wrote: post #46
tdeck wrote: post #15

> During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse. Lots of people still see it in exactly this way. The fact that Palantir IPO'd and is a magnet for investors doesn't contradict this. Palantir always had a reputation for champagne and surveillance.

So does AT&T and Verizon which would fall in the morally neutral category. Even big tech - Google/meta are probably classified as morally neutral but in reality gray areas. The US government probably has access to all that data - with our without warrants. I also agree with his premise. There is really no gray area working for defense tech in the US. In my opinion people have a rather lopsided view of that. You would…

"Right now there's this thing where ethics aren't what they used to be. This idea that people are trying to replace the ideas of good and bad, with better or worse." -Dave Chappelle

What you're writing should naturally lead to the conclusion that working for Google, Meta, Verizon, AT&T etc are all in the category of companies one shouldn't strive to use their hard earned talents for. For some reason I cannot fathom, you seem to land on the idea that Palantir is okay, because all these others somehow have snuck under the radar of many people?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#88

Post by tsimionescu »

Manuel_D wrote: post #33
tsimionescu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this historical population trend have to do with the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza in retaliation for October 7th, 2023?

[flagged]

First of all, this is just the beginning of the war. Israel has been very explicit that they have no intention whatsoever to negotiate any kind of peace (at most a temporary reprieve in exchange for the hostages that they haven't already buried with their own bombs), so this will continue. And the 45k number is almost exclusively confirmed casualties. Before the Ministry of Health was completely decimated itself, around the time the number was 30k, these were all people whose names were known.

But there are many, many more people buried in the rubble or otherwise missing, who are almost certainly dead, but are not included in this. And then there are indirect deaths, from starvation, injuries, lack of medicine: those already amount to some 100k+, almost 10% of Gaza's population.

Not to mention, virtually the entirety of the population of Norther Gaza has been displaced by now, which is another form of genocide, especially if they will not be permitted to return. This is already being planned by some in Israel, with some coveting parts of Gaza as prime real estate.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#89

Post by julianeon »

orochimaaru wrote: post #46
tdeck wrote: post #15

> During the 2016-2020 era especially, telling people you worked at Palantir was unpopular. The company was seen as spy tech, NSA surveillance, or worse. Lots of people still see it in exactly this way. The fact that Palantir IPO'd and is a magnet for investors doesn't contradict this. Palantir always had a reputation for champagne and surveillance.

So does AT&T and Verizon which would fall in the morally neutral category. Even big tech - Google/meta are probably classified as morally neutral but in reality gray areas. The US government probably has access to all that data - with our without warrants. I also agree with his premise. There is really no gray area working for defense tech in the US. In my opinion people have a rather lopsided view of that. You would…

Factually untrue.

I'm going to quote ChatGPT here, just because finding links outside of that is hard (it's an obscure topic) and this summary is good enough.

> The phenomenon of compensating wage differentials for working in "sin" industries is observed not just in the U.S., but internationally as well.

About "sin" industries:

> "Sin industries" (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography, miltech) can be seen as morally contentious by some workers. As a result, individuals may seek higher wages to compensate for any discomfort or societal stigma attached to their work in those sectors.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#90

Post by airstrike »

jgalt212 wrote: post #56
airstrike wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are trailing P/E numbers, so they are just plain wrong and should be disregarded. Also P/E doesn't matter for companies that have not been profitable for long. Any PE number above 100x is very likely just noise. I wouldn't look at anything too far above 30x, maybe 40x to account for the craze behind NVDA today

Fine, but it is notable / extremely notable that there is only one large cap more expensive than Palantir on a PE basis. I'm not splitting hairs here, I'm talking about extreme outliers.

It isn't really notable because those PE multiples are literally just noise. There are many companies with negative PE on that list too, even though that makes no sense.

To take that even further, imagine ACME Corp.'s stock price is $1.00 today. You're a research analyst and built a very robust model based on your understanding of the company, the market in which it operates, corporate guidance, competitor performance, your experience, phone checks with the sales channel, etc. Your model currently says the company will have negative ($0.01) EPS over the next 12 months. Based on this information, its implied forward P/E multiple is -100.0x.

The next day, you come to work and update your model based on some new information like the Fed cutting rates by 25 bps or revised labor market assumptions, what have you, such that your expected next twelve months EPS is now positive $0.01. The implied trading multiple is now 100.0x.

Do you think a $0.02 change in the expected EPS should result in a 200.0x P/E difference? No, it shouldn't. The P/E ratio for a company with negative or near-zero earnings has no meaning.

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