If you haven't listened/read it, I think the Ezra Klein interview with Alex Bores (who formerly worked at Palantir) and how he talks about how it was in 2014 vs now.
It's also insane that a PAC campaigning against Bores is funded by current Palantir employee Lonsdale. Their critical ads literally criticize him for working for Palantir.
Joe Lonsdale left Palantir in 2009 and moved on to Formation 8 and then 8vc. He was vocally pro-Palantir and used his co-founder status in the press a lot, but was off the board by 2010 and operationally had nothing to do with them since then.
> It's also insane that a PAC campaigning against Bores is funded by current Palantir employee Lonsdale. Their critical ads literally criticize him for working for Palantir.
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, positive company inside Facebook and she just had to navigate the politics to make it known despite all evidence to the contrary.
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 legitimately terrifying. It seems like if it's normal enough people will say something is bad and will happily do it anyway.
It's made me rethink my life and how I do the same thing and was the impetus for me leaving tech.
They are letting perfect be the enemy of good. If they respond with "I love bacon" then tell them to eat plant-based + bacon. It's still a vast improvement environmentally than what they were doing previously.
Yeah there's some kind of absolutism aspect tied into identity.
Also the funny tendency humans have to dislike the people who are most similar to them. Someone who is at least recognizing factory farming is bad and willing to even think that far is more similar to a vegetarian than the people who don't give a shit and never even think about where their food is coming from.
Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent.
>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 individual, abstaining from meat is going to do much to factory farming, while it will make a huge, adverse impact on my life.
Government regulation is how this problem would be solved (the only way it can get solved), and I'm all for voting for bans on factory farming, heavy taxes on meat products, etc.
One's gotta pick their battles.
I pick ones where my participation won't amount to martyrdom.
Yeah but tons of things are awful. For me I couldn't keep doing things I knew caused immense suffering in other beings, be it humans or animals. (Sourcing things from ethical whatever and reducing consumption in general the last two decades, I'm sad my iPhone 6 isn't supported for banking so have to go android 10 etc).
Vegetarian options got cheap, and I still eat locally produced eggs and some milk products.
But like, awful can be coped with. Everyone thinks factory farming is awful. Few give a shit.
It's still not cheaper to have a very meat rich diet then to have one that is mostly plant based; or entirely vegetablebased plus milk and eggs from local production - which wouldn't get you in some of the difficulties vegsns have to desl with, where they need to take some nutrients in the form of supplements if they don't absolutely optimize their diet (which again becomes expensive - would be interesting to be corrected here)
All that is to say: some people act less ethical then others, and should have to accept that fact - instead of trying to produce an image of the self (to themselves mostly but also to others) that conceals it; be it through normalization ("guess we all do that"), rationslization ("if i wouldn't do it someone else would"), or blame shifting (if someone would do this and that i would behave like that, so it's up to them to provide me with xyz)
edit: I apply that to myself. I know that I don't act as ethical as I could regarding the consequences of my diet.
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 economies of scale.)
> 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.
About as sure as one can be. It's neither logically nor physically impossible, but the claim that trees are conscious is practically unfalsifiable and is not supported by any substantive evidence. It has nothing to do with "fast" or "slow," no matter how you poke or prod or slice or dice a tree, there's nothing that suggests a capacity for consciousness. I would be less surprised if my friend's dog started speaking perfect Chinese with an American accent.
If anyone cares about plants suffering they should go vegan, as many more plants are consumed to raise animals than would be if there was a direct plant intake in humans for the same amount of calories and nutrients. Ditto for land use, water, CO2 emissions, etc. but let's assume our friend cares strictly about reducing suffering short of starving themselves to death.
Just FYI, the designation "free range" on eggs means essentially nothing. It means the hens have access to the outdoors, but that could still mean a tiny, packed space, just missing a roof.
"Cage free" and "no antibiotics" are probably the only USDA-regulated terms worth caring about, but they're fairly low bars. "Certified Humane" designation is a higher, well-audited bar, but many farms that might qualify forgo it due to the costs associated.
Factory farming is a consequence of a post-industrial economy where 95% of the population isn't directly involved in farming. Few people would want to reset the clock back to where most are attached to the land with limited options. The only reliable source of B12 before the modern era was to consume some animal derived products. Other basic nutrients are hard to attain through plants alone. It is necessary for us to engage in animal husbandry in the absence of technological interventions that we never evolved to depend on.
To the extent that I can, I do try to pick ethical products (like the aforementioned free-range eggs).
It's not an all-or-nothing thing indeed; there's a huge spectrum between veganism and not at all thinking (or caring) about where the animal products come from.
But yes, I, as a consumer, am not responsible for what is already heavily regulated in favor of factory farmers. Heard of the ag gag laws? You can't vegan them away.
It's not a free market, see.
It's as delusional to blame people for eating the availableunethically produced meat as it is to blame them for starving during the Holodomor (..or Great New Leap, or the Irish Potato Famine, or...).
Radium-based snake oil "medicine" didn't disappear because the consumers boycotted an unethical product. It was because we have FDA.
I really do not feel responsible for what would amount to trying to enforce regulation that doesn't exist.
I am responsible for voting, so when it comes to the ballot, ethical farming does get my vote.
I noted this in another comment, but the "free-range" designation means almost nothing. Hens have access to the outdoors, but that can mean a packed coop with no grass where part is missing a roof.
Look for "Certified Humane" or research the farm directly.
Well of course. Free market (even as a theoretical concept) is only possible with regulation that prevents monopolies and ensures some sort of fairness.
The agricultural market is perhaps the furthest thing from it, given the importance of, well, having food. Farmers get subsidies. Nation-states get involved in the circulation of food around the planet. Geopolitics comes into play.
In some markets, individual choices of consumers matter a lot in shaping them.
Agricultural products are as far from that as it's possible.
I am not convinced that not buying unethical meat does any more than not buying unethical weapons of mass destruction, or not using Palantir's products.
Few of us are hoarding stashes of chemical weapons or signing contracts with Palantir, and yet Palantir still thrives.
Perhaps simply not buying it isn't always the most effective way to end something.
>Government regulation is how this problem would be solved (the only way it can get solved)
My cynical inner pedant compels me to point out that societal collapse will also solve "factory farming is awful". And we're probably closer to that than effective government regulation of it.
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, if we're ostensibly virtue signaling here.)
> 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 conflicted", which means you suffer inside. You could stop that suffering by either 1) going vegan, so you don't have to worry about it, or 2) deciding to continue eating meat and no longer worry about it. Right now, you're picking the strictly worse combination of continuing to eat meat and remaining conflicted indefinitely.
I'm starting to realize that internal moral conflicts are a lot like physical pain - it's an important signal from the body, and you should pay attention to it, but in the end, if you know you're not going to do anything about the underlying cause, then there's no point in continuing to suffer - you just make it go away with painkillers, and carry on living. This does not mean denying the problem - quite the opposite. Constant pain makes it hard to think rationally, and suppressing it puts you in a much better position to address its underlying cause.
Do what you like and as you like, but my two cents: if you want to make something that seems hard, start with one step and continue step by step at your own peace. Big goals are accomplished by proudness of small gaps instead of shame and desires of the missing ones.
During 10 year I gently removed some ingredients of my diets/habits and added others in the meantime. It was longer but way easier than I imagined.
Hey, at my ripe, old age, I only started learning how to properly feed myself more recently than I'd like to admit. So I take your point about acknowledging one's baby steps once you successfully string a few together.
>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 unethical farming.
I'm well off. You might be. Most people in the US are not.
And in the end of the day, poor people are going to buy the cheapest products in the grocery store.
So, there's always be a demand as long as there's supply.
More than that. We don't really have a choice for where meat comes from anyway. There's no requirement to put that on the label, along with nutritional data.
That, by the way, is another example where legislation can make a lot of difference.
My point is that abstaining from meat is about as useful as that young man setting himself of fire in the US to help children in Gaza.
Same goes about feeling bad about eating meat (while eating it).
The impact on the cause is zero.
Your energy would be better spent fighting the ag-gag laws, requiring disclosures on the labels, making ethically farmed products cheaper (and factory farmed produce more expensive), and so on.
You having morally conflicted feelings doesn't help anyone.
And it's simple, really: you are complicit in doing a bad thing. But the complicity is not in doing the thing, it's in supporting the system where in doing it is the rational choice for the majority of people.
Your choice in doing or not doing the thing has very little impact on whether the thing happens.
The comparaison of chicken and tomatoes is a strawman.
First off: people don’t swap them in their diet, a better exemple would be wheat or soy - which are what the 0.99/p chicken eat [edit: and it's closer in term of nutrients].
Second: the shelf price you mention includes gouvernement subsidies and economy of scale.
The grains price should be the one paid by the fermer, adjusted for smaller packaging.
Your comparaison may stands where you live because of political choices and societal evolution. It doesn’t in a more liberal and non regulated juridictions, does it?
>The comparaison of chicken and tomatoes is a strawman.
It's a direct answer to the question asked by the parent.
The answer is: no, vegetables are not cheaper than meat in the US.
It is perverse. Which is my point: what enables the low, low price of chicken isn't merely the laws of supply and demand.
>First off: people don’t swap them in their diet, a better exemple would be wheat or soy
Those are not vegetables. Those are grains and legumes, respectively.
>Second: the shelf price you mention includes gouvernement subsidies and economy of scale.
No shit.
Which is my point exactly: the problem is addressed by government regulation, and exists because of government regulation, including, but not limited to, subsidies to particular forms of farming, and ag gag laws.
>Your comparaison may stands where you live
Well of course I can speak about where I live.
And yeah, we're talking in English on a US-based website (specifically, a Silicon Valley one). I am talking about the US, a country of about 350M people.
It's not like I'm talking about a small state few people have heard of with no impact on anything. The situation in the US matters because it influences a lot.
Canada isn't that different from the US food-wise, for that matter.
Ah I might be confused by my low english skills but it seems grains and legumes are vegetable. I was curious and a quick search returned several sources confirming that however I'd be pleased to learn other usages.
> a plant or part of a plant that is eaten as food. Potatoes, beans and onions are all vegetables.
I'm don't want to argue on definitions though but the chicken/tomatoes comparaison hardly make sense in an answer to satvikpendem: he mentioned vegatable in comparaison to meat in a poor people diet. In that situation one would certainly aim mainly for cheap and nutritious staples AKA grains and legumes instead of tomatoes.
At least we agree on the regulation impact! I wish you a pleasant Californian day :-)
If you are going to be that literal then I'm not sure what to say. By vegetables yes I meant a plant based diet (including legumes and grains which are vegetables technically speaking) vs one with meat, not literally tomatoes versus chicken. You might have given a direct answer but it's not what was implied in the context of the thread. I do agree that there is a big problem with the current regulations and subsidies artificially pushing down the price of meat, yet even still it is cheaper to not eat meat. And I say this as someone who does eat meat.
Aside, I'm not sure why you're being so aggressive in your comments, it doesn't make for good discourse when one says things like "you've completely missed the point" or "no shit" or the oft seen pattern of quoting and rebutting each line. If I were to speak to my friends that way I'd quickly lose friends.
> 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 very cognitively consonant use of the term.
>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.
Many individuals independently making the choice has made a difference, both in harm reduction on the demand side and choice on the supply side. It's never been easier or more accessible to be vegetarian/vegan.
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 actively benefit from the factory farming.
>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.
To add a data point, I've reduced my meat consumption from "whenever I can" to "once a day" to "normally once a day, but some days none at all". It's really not that big a deal. I have no idea what this is doing to the environment, but I can confirm that I'm saving some scratch (bacon is expensive!), my hunger and tastebuds are just as sated, and my routine bloodwork has improved somewhat.
I personally think vegans should consider eating cows. If you care about sentient life and abuse, think about how much meat one cow produces. Killing a single cow can feed you for well over a year.
If not, where do you draw the line? "It has eyes and bilateral symmetry and an endoskeleton looks vaguely human-like so I can anthropomorphize it"? "Only members of the animal kingdom are conscious"?
Sentience is consciousness. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a plant, the plants existence is too different from mine for me to imagine it.
It would be like trying to imagine life in a 12-dimensional space - I'm a human, with a human consciousness, living in 3-dimensional space, that makes sense to me.
I can empathize, and to a certain degree imagine what it must be like to be a dog or a cat or a cow, because they're very similar to me in how they work. They move, they eat, they poop, they reproduce sexually. They have similar mammalian feelings and similar DNA (well, more similar than the plant).
But for all I know a plant, say the spinach I had a few days ago, could be just as conscious, albeit in a way that I absolutely cannot comprehend, and my ripping off the plant's leaves to eat them may be, to the plant, every bit as painful as someone ripping out my lungs to eat them.
sorry for the stupid question, but what is "the former" and what is "the latter"?
Did you mean I acknowledge the sentience of plants but not animals?
I believe that all life might be conscious, but life that is "very different" from me I have a hard time imagining what that consciousness might be like. For animals, especially mammals, I can easily imagine what they must be feeling and empathize with them. I can understand that a cow feels pain when hurt, because the cow is very similar to me. A plant might also feel pain when hurt (even the grass I step on might not appreciate me walking on it), but I'd have a harder time empathizing with that.
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?
Somewhat. I think we are still quite a long way from ethical practices even in the "good" cases.
I eat meat, but try to limit it to once a week and have replaced milk with oat and soy in a lot of places. I still love cheese but it does give me conflict when I spend even a second thinking about what it takes to actually get cheese. (Cows dont lactate without pregnancy). That said, my own personal philosophy is that we have likely evolved to consume animal products so I cant dismiss it fully, just reduce my own consumption. ~75% of all agricultural land is used to feed livestock, yet livestock produces only 18% of the world's calories and 37% of its protein, which just seems insanity to me.
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.
I’m gonna pull a Rogan and mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth?
What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us.
In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.
> mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth?
Loads of small field animals are killed when eating vegan. Loads more are killed when eating omnivore, because you have to plow even more field to also feed the factory-farmed animals.
> In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.
Assuming you stick with it, I think that could be a good idea.
The deer are full of Chronic Wasting Disease and we've half given up trying to stop it. Many states have stopped their targeted culling programs because they're ineffective once incidence is above 5%. You're suicidal if you eat meat that you know comes from an animal with a prion disease.
I've never hunted (yet). Have fished plenty but that doesn't count.
I lived for a year in a suburb of Charlotte NC a couple of years ago, and there were herds of whitetails on my dog walks.
I'd like to learn more about "Chronic Wasting Disease" if you have any resources, because on podcasts or r/Archery and the like, "harvesting your own food" is par for the course. Thank you.
> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us.
You are very wrong here by orders of magnitudes. The US produces about 5 billion bushes of soybeans. 1 bushel is around 60 lbs. Having made tofu myself, depending on the type of tofu you make 1 lb of dry soybeans is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 lbs of tofu(remember we are adding water to the mix so we increase weight). If 1 bushel is 60 lbs and we produce 5 billion then we have 136 million metric tons of soybeans which makes 272 million tons of tofu which is enough to feed the entire US several times over.
This doesn't even begin to touch the amount of food you can make from the byproduct of tofu, soy pulp which is itself a food in some countries.
I'm not suggesting we actually do it but to answer your question of "is tofu the answer," it could be. The vast majority of our soybean crop was sold to other countries until Trump tariffs made China switch from us to Russia. I'm not sure what the current status of our soybean production is but we have the crop production to feed the entire US.
Thanks for the math. Obviously not everyone will go for Soyfu, but I'll attempt to integrate it into my diet. I've had it, it's an acquired taste, but what isn't really. I remember hating black caviar growing up in Ua.
I'd recommend checking out Serious Eats for Kenji's "Vegan Experience" recipes. He has some tofu recipes for omnivores that I really endorse. His tofu banh mi is divine.
Tofu is amazing when it's used for things tofu is made for instead of as a sad meat substitute. Miso soup isn't miso soup without tofu, and mapo tofu is one of the most amazing flavors in existence. (It's sichuan, so it's not for people who can't tolerate flavor.)
I just want to chime in and say it's a rather nice to see an earnest and pleasant response like this.
To your first point about the small animals in the fields that are harmed by agriculture, I think that's worth having concern about overall, certainly. But many of the animals that people currently consume are fed large quantities of crops that incur that same cost. The average beef cattle is eating such things for 18 months prior to being slaughtered, breeding sows do the same for 3-5 years, and their offspring 5-6 months on average.
If there are advances in things like cultured meat that can be produced in a sort of industrial setting at a competitive price it might be possible to drastically limit both the conscious and inadvertent harm to animals.
There's a case to be made for wild/hunted meat. But the majority of meat production worldwide relies on feeding those animals farmed plants, and that entails a lot more plowed fields than farming plants for direct human consumption does.
> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times?
It's much more efficient to use land to grow food crops for people to eat directly than it is to grow food for livestock and then have people eating the livestock.
It's one of the reasons that I've been pescetarian for a few decades - it's unsustainable for everyone to eat substantial amounts of meat and there's a lot of deforestation just to sate people's desire for burgers.
to be fair, you can get "good" meat - factory farming is awful, but not all meat is factory farmed. You can eat happy animals, for example pigs that spent their lives outside being pigs, hanging out with their pig friends, and near the end of their pig lives had to go be eaten. If you believe plants are conscious too, that's probably more ethical than eating Nutella made with palm oil from forests that were completely massacred to harvest that oil (and even if you don't, the animals in those forests probably didn't enjoy their natural habitat being destroyed).
In fact, I've had the idea floating around my head for a while now for "fully ethical" meat, where you don't even kill the animal, just wait around for it to die of old age. Depending on your views on euthanasia, maybe if the animal gets like cancer or something and is evidently suffering, gently kill it to put it out of its misery because that might overall reduce suffering.
Also, pardon my asking a possibly stupid question out of ignorant curiosity, but if you're vegan for ethical reasons, why not eat eggs? My stepmom had some chickens a while ago, they lived lives that seemed pretty happy, they hung around the backyard eating stuff on the ground + the food we gave them, relatively free to move around (we did put up a small fence to keep them away from the dogs and cats, who did not exactly have a stellar track record of veganism, but they were free to roam inside that safe space) they laid eggs, because there was no rooster around to fertilize the eggs the eggs weren't going to go anywhere... did us eating those eggs hurt anyone?
Veganism is about being pragmatic. It's not a dogmatic mindset. The main goal is to not harm another sentient being. Both factory farmed or 'happy' farmed animals usually end up in the same slaughterhouse. Pigs are being gassed and have a terrible death. And in general, animals feel when they are about to die and then start to panic. In the words of Carl Sagan 'they are too much like us'.
Look up Mike Bisping, someone you would typically class as a tough man. Even he couldn't work in a slaughter house. So imagine what it does to your psyche day in and day out having to kill animals. Slaughterhouse workers suffer from PTSD. In one report one worker described how a pig came up to him and gently headbutted him (like a cat showing affection). He had to suppress his compassion to be able to kill it. How effed up is that?
We can vote with our wallet to reduce or stop all that.
In regards to eggs, I would say eating eggs from chickens you have in your garden is OK. There are folks who rescue chickens and let the roam in their garden and eat their eggs. There are certain vegans who complain about that. That is being dogmatic.
And what you suggested, eating meat from animals who died naturally and didn't have to be killed for you, I'd even class that as vegan, because no animal had to suffer. But it wouldn't be profitable as a business, so I don't see how it can work on a large scale or replace factory farming.
We need cultured meat or simply train ourselves to enjoy plant based foods. Dr Wareham said it will take a few weeks for your taste buds to 'like' other foods. And you get enough of nutrients and protein from those foods. Plenty of top athletes prove that point.
Or folks who eat road kill, I'd say that's also vegan. The animal died by accident. You didn't pay for it to be killed, i.e. you didn't contribute to the demand that keeps the meat & dairy industry running.
I think we have almost "fully ethical meat" now - engineered from tofu and other plant material.
ps. Im by no means a saint in this regard, but I have moved to soy milk and eat much less red meat generally, both out of self-interest for the health aspects, but also partially as I think its better for the environment generally. I suppose I should give up chicken, but its a habit hard to break in my social circle. My point is a gradual move by degrees is still improvement, when integrated over the whole population.
You don't need to give up anything just reduce. I don't drink alcohol at home but I'll have a few drinks socially. If having a burger socially is what you want to do then do it.
Clams. Clams and oysters and such. Sessile bivalves are the plants of the animal kingdom, the "genetically engineered brainless cow" of nature. They're also environmentally friendly even when farmed, and more healthy than any animal meat while addressing the same nutritional needs and more. They're almost comically ethical and healthy (and seafood dishes are great imo), they just don't produce bacon and burgers specifically.
Palm oil comes from palm fruit, by the way, not from "massacaring" the trees. Fruits are, from an evolutionary perspective, meant to be eaten, it is their purpose. If plants are conscious of fruit being harvested at all it probably feels good.
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.
Maybe it's a cultural thing but I've never met anyone like you describe at all (certainly none of the vegans I've met). What you describe is obviously a dumb way to think about ethics but I'm also skeptical any significant amount of people think that way
Can we please get back to the topic of palantir? The whole eating meat discourse is interesting but also distracts from the topic at hand: do people working at palantir pose themselves question what it means for them to work for palantir? What do we think should be a proper ethical norm regarding people working at palantir?
I agree. It's easier to change your morals than your behavior, or contort your thinking around your own behavior until you can imagine it fits into the shape that you've decided your morals are, reality notwithstanding. I think that explains a lot of it, for unabashed meat-eaters. The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal. Most acknowledge that animals lead internal lives while a small minority don't, but in both cases humans are the center of the universe around which the earth and the sun orbits, and we and our convenience and comfort is all that really matters.
I have no doubt whatsoever that half the people I know and love would have owned slaves or at least defended slavery if they were born into a time where it was commonplace. They easily would have bought into nonsense science or religious arguments about the intelligence or moral value of this race over that, like they do for animals.
First off, I believe veganism is, probably, morally correct.
However, I lead a morally imperfect lifestyle. I get around by driving or being driven in a car, even when it would only be moderately less convenient to walk or bike or take transit. A few dollars could feed children in poverty for weeks, and I spend on lot more than "a few" dollars on luxuries like travel. By my measure, knowingly choosing not to prevent human suffering on such a scale is massively worse than eating meat, but at the end of the day, I don't consider myself or others in my position to be monsters.
> The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal.
While I believe non-human animals generally have greater moral value than a single meal - the most widely consumed animals are clearly capable of suffering and IMO intelligent enough for most to instinctively empathize with - I don't think it's particularly strange for humans to view humans as sacred.
Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.
Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.
I didn't say it any of it was unusual. Your observation that humans place themselves at the center of the moral universe and have the agency to enforce it is in line with my thoughts.
> Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.
Ironically making us the only animals capable of moral evil.
> Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.
Is this due to a internally consistent moral value system apart from a view of humans as sacred? If on the other side of the trolley were some of a race of aliens, smarter, better, faster, younger, and more emblematic of the human ideals by way of virtue than the humans on the other side, would you save the aliens? Probably not. Your preference to preserve other people is very natural and probably hard-wired into your brain. That doesn't mean it isn't human chauvinism.
It’s sort of interesting that “I love bacon” turns into “I must have bacon on a scale that can only really be satisfied inhumane farming practices.” I suspect we could raise meat humanely if we had it on a weekly or monthly basis.
I always think that this sort of culture and interaction was exactly was it was like to live during a time when slavery was legal and permitted. I hope in 100 year meat eating will be seen as similar.
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 nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators
> Knowing how the sausage is made does nothing for me.
Considering that this is nowadays a substantially less common background, and probably trending that direction indefinitely, this reads more as you being desensitized. It's not like vegans are unaware that people could have a background like yours.
> But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators
Morals and religion aren't about what's natural, they're about what humans desire. Illness, violence, and deception are all perfectly "natural."
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.
Weaker animals can eat stronger animals. Pack animals, carrion feeders, bugs, animals feeding their offspring, etc. So almost entirely an appeal to nature argument.
I started a master's in ecology with the hope of doinh a PhD after. Academia honestly sucks and has pretty bad culture issues (and like 10% of the pay) but I genuinely really like animals and it feels good to have my job be helping them.
Personally I don't think I would recommend it. Not that it's necessarily a bad choice but I think that the people for who this is the right choice will feel compelled to make a change regardless of what I say (I know I had people trying to convince me to stay in tech). Fully changing careers like this and living the poor and overworked grad student life in my 30s has taken more commitment and stubbornness than I had expected but some fights are worth doing.
Eating factory farmed meat is seen as very low-class and irresponsible in my immediate vicinity. I have a hard time imagining any of my work colleagues admitting to eating factory farmed meat, even if they do due to cost reasons.
But farmers also enjoy high societal standing here, maybe that helps.
Have you ever reflected on the legitimacy of your sentinents? As in, you find “terrifying” that people find factory farming bad, but choose to consume its products anyway. But have you considered that perhaps the moral severity that is causing your reaction of horror is actually miscalibrated and unwarranted?
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.
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 to meet someone who sincerely thinks that what happens in nature is ethically okay (as a simple point, many animals will eat their own family when stressed and sexually assault each other constantly, which are very natural but obviously unethical for humans to do. I've seen animals torture and eat each other alive) so the whole argument is a waste of time. It's weird that the "it's natural" argument is probably the most common when many people will walk it back even before I point out the flaws.
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.
The argument is over whether a certain thing is moral or not. I argue that it is because carnivores need to do that to survive. Humans don't but does that affect whether that thing is moral or not?
Then you would have to argue that an omnivore eating meat is immoral while a carnivore eating meat is moral. I wouldn't enjoy defending that statement.
Veganism is a terrible example in this context because that community is riddled with all or nothing dogma.
If people were pragmatic instead, and the vegan community would quit alienating people the non-perfect, non-purists the world would be slightly better, too.
For example, in my country licorice is popular. Whether it contsins gelatin or not, not one pig less will be killed because it is a by-product.
10 years ago, I went to a workshop (with DIY) on how to make vegetarian and vegan sausages, and since you mention sausage, I'll use that as another example. A sausage contains herbs and vegetables (to develop taste) and certain chemistry (= cooking) techniques, for example salt and to keep the product together. It is relatively easy to make something akin to that yourself. Heck, one can sauté carrots and build something akin to a hotdog fairly easy.
Comparing it to gelatin is unrealistic, but to say sausages are made from the best meat of the animal? No, minced meat is not since then they wouldn't mince it (as rule of thumb). Frikadel is another example eaten a lot here (NL), the Germans also got their sausage culture.
Meanwhile, there's a much more dramatic example: chicken. There's a lot less meat on those birds per serving, so suffering per human/day on avg omni diet is much worse. But does that mean one should avoid free range chicken eggs? No.
And that is ignoring the environmental impact, since there too a vegan diet (with avocado and almonds requiring a plethora of water and movement of product to market) isn't ideal either (the latter might be less of issue for say Cali).
So in short, we should welcome those people who love bacon to 1) consume less bacon 2) try vegn alternatives. But it doesn't have to be either they're vegan or omni 24/7. Flexitarianism is much more reasonable for a lot of people, and also many situations can arise where such is desirable (such as gifted food, festivities, etc).
Written by someone who follows a pragmatic vegn diet.
Yes, animals have feelings and are intelligent (to varying degrees, but generally a lot more then most think). Modern meat factories are absolute shit shows and it's outlandishly bad our societies treat the animals like that.
However, it doesn't have to be that way. And killing an animal for food which lived a nice life is perfectly fine. We're all part of the physical reality in which the survival of the fittest reigns supreme. Even if you want to put your head into the sand and deny this, animals eating each other is perfectly normal. And yes, humans are animals too.
I’m not a vegetarian and have no plans on becoming one but.. just because eating meat is normal doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way.
There’s an endless list of atrocities committed by our ancestors or our peers in the animal kingdom that we no longer tolerate. There’s no reason why eating another animal can’t someday become as abhorrent as cannibalism or slavery or whatever.
If eating plant-based didn't make me sick (and I could tolerate gluten and cereals and carb-heavy foods), I'd do it. Now, one might go on a tirade that I'm doing it wrong, but from my research, it's pretty clear the body and the brain evolved for a high-fatty diet; or at least that's how I feel the best.
So here's the conundrum: should I be sick and avoid the food that makes me feel really good, because of ethical concerns? Self-preservation, I believe, should be the top-most concern.
Whenever I hear vegans preaching, I think of the quote "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" — if veganism works for you, I'm glad, but I wish most vegans would be a bit more empathetic and scientifically-minded rather than making people feel bad because, for many reasons, they live their life another way. A way, must I say, that is completely natural.
Honestly I'd rather have a discussion about nutrition with a vegetarian, than a preachy vegan that first insults me, shames me, before trying to hear my reasons.
And a corollary to that: when considering historical figures, before condemning them wholesale, consider how history would judge you if--for example--eating meat is considered in the future the way slavery is considered today
I disagree it was implied. Not to mention that in an honest conversation, I shouldn't have to point out that you've cherry picked a quote (which on its face doesn't mean what you apparently think it does) from its actual context.
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 becoming an attorney, I ended up in the foreign service because it seemed like a way to change the world, and I wanted an adventure. I ended up at the UN because I genuinely believed it was the seat of global power. The place you go when you want to change the world.
> It seemed obvious that politics was going to happen on Facebook, and when it did, when it migrated to this enormous new gathering place, Facebook and the people who ran it would be at the center of everything. They’d be setting the rules for this global conversation. I was in awe of its ineffable potential.
> The vastness of the information Facebook would be collecting was unprecedented. Data about everything. Data that was previously entirely private. Data on the citizens of every country. A historic amount of data and so incredibly valuable. Information is power.
> After years of looking for things that would change the world, I thought I’d found the biggest one going. Like an evangelist, I saw Facebook’s power confirmed in every part of everyday life. Whatever Facebook decided to do—what it did with the voices that were gathering there—would change the course of human events. I was sure of it.
> This is a revolution.
> What do you do when you see a revolution is coming? I decide I will stop at nothing to be part of it. At the center of the action. Once you see it, you can’t sit on the sidelines. I’m desperate to be part of it. I can’t remember ever wanting anything more.
Consider that she's one of 'the good guys'-- someone who self-reflected on her ambition, saw the 'evil' in hers and other's, called it out publicly, and assumedly regrets hers, and is trying to do better.
Sadly, terrifyingly, for every one of her, there are hundreds who might also self-reflect - but >choose< to be comix-book villains.
From what I've seen the focus on a few big companies can have a backwards effect on some people's sense of morals. I've heard a few people justify their work for unethical companies as "At least it's not as bad as what Facebook does".
It can also have the opposite of the intended effect when it encourages beliefs that bad behavior is normalized in the industry. I've heard an executive try to drum up support for a program to sell customer data by saying that everyone does it, from Facebook to Google. When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it. They had read so much about big companies collecting customer data to sell that they thought everyone did it and therefore it was okay.
"When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it"
I'm not sure there's a significant meaningful difference between direct selling and what they actually do, which is to make it available to target and manipulate people with extreme granularity. This is a huge part of why a person may not want their data to be held much less purchased to begin with, meaning it's "doesn't sell your data... but does or facilitates all of the things you do not want a group, in buying it from them, able to do."
It's a distinction without much practical difference.
Also: They buy your data from other brokers who do sell it, vastly enriching the degree to which customers of their ad platforms can make use of the data you already know they have far, far beyond your ability to know their full capabilities and the profile they have on you.
Again, it's not actually selling your data, but it's worth noting that when "they didn't believe it", that misconception was possibly helped along by Facebook or Google being on of the potential customers for that data either directly or via the proxy of a data broker whose largest customers are companies like that.
Selling your data means that anyone can have access your data forever. On the other hand, anyone can turn off ad personalization and delete their data on Google and Facebook.
New Startup idea: Mordor is a company dedicated to doing evil. We actually plan to lay waste to the world, enslave everyone in it, enshittify anything in sight, and maximize the use of AI for the worst possible thing. Just negative externalities, all the way down.
A (covert) investment in us today can make you seem like an angel tomorrow! Also, with this agenda we're probably going to make a fortune so you might as well get in on the ground floor. Why just fall into hell when you could take one of our luxurious express elevators and get there twice as fast?
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 even considered that." She created this monster and all she could think about was how neat it was technologically.
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.
I took one back in 2018 or so, and I assume it's still a degree requirement. If most are like the one I took, however, very few people seriously engaged with the class, and it's just viewed as a filler class.
It didn't help that the workload was a joke. I believe the entirety of our assignments were 5 single page "essay" responses to some ethical scenarios, and the professor seemed to hand out As just for writing enough. It probably took me less than 2 hours of total writing. I imagine most of the students these days are just having ChatGPT write it for them. We absolutely need to take ethics more seriously though, even if it involves adding more/more rigorous courses to the curriculum.
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.
Yeah engineering as a discipline tends to be pretty naïve to the consequences of what they build, and sociopaths take advantage of it. Norbert Wiener [1] observed this about the engineers working on nukes in the 1940s-1950s:
“Push-button warfare... possible for a limited group of people to threaten the absolute destruction of millions, without any immediate risk to themselves.... Behind all this I sensed the desires of the gadgeteer to see the wheels go round.”
I'm in the middle of this book right now, and I agree. It's a fantastic read to get inside the psychology of the folks that are making huge decisions about how society works.
This is a really important thing that people on the left in particular seem to consistently overlook: local incentives, emergent corporate behaviors, and the unconscious need to believe you’re “right” have way more explanatory power than “X is actually evil”.
The banality of evil is a well-known idea. That evil is often done by people who are just doing their jobs and see themselves as decent people.
Words are cheap, thoughts are cheap, and voting is cheap. A full-time job, on the other hand, is a substantial contribution towards something, and it comes with a huge opportunity cost. The job you have is a major factor in determining your moral character. Determining what kind of a person you actually are, as opposed to the kind of a person you believe to be, or wish you'd be.
I don't think its reasonable to use the whole "banality of evil" for people working FAANG jobs unless they are on trial for war crimes and genocide. The Nazi officers were not standard grunts but rather key executives of the regime and then they tried to throw Hitler under the bus by claiming they were just following orders. When in reality, they were all pyschopaths and truly believed in what they were doing to minorities was right.
Extrapolating that to Meta or Google is a fundamental misunderstanding of history and insenstive.
Yes, but once you're aware of these factors and leverage them for personal gain anyway, it's evil. It's not like it's impossible to make out the bigger picture on many issues, or to ask oneself if the upsides are really so great that it's worth being responsible for the downsides.
This is equally true for leftist projects. If one is dedicated to the cause of improving the general welfare and creating economic and social opportunities for as many as possible, that's laudable, but you can't use it as an excuse to just ignore the human rights whenever you run into a problem or a tricky ethical situation.
The need for belonging is also really powerful, and companies actively try to fulfill that need. Not, generally speaking, for nefarious purposes, but because people do better work when they feel a sense of belonging.
If you decide that your work is against your values, you're also deciding to separate yourself from the group, even if you don't actually leave the company. That's painful. It's not an excuse, but it is a powerful motivator.
Yeah but keep in mind what Zuck specifically has done. He copied Snapchat multiple times, Facebook overwrote people's public-facing emails, "dumb fucks" in IMs
Zuckerberg is awful person but he alone is not "Meta." It is a company made up of thousands of employees and each of those people play their role in enshittifying the internet. Some of do it gleefully and others do it because they think the battle is better fought in the company than out of it. The large salary also doesn't hurt.
If your incentives and emerging behaviors land at an evil result, it is evil. I’d argue the problem is everyone who constantly generates these “well actually” reasons to excuse the consequences. Marx wrote about people being simultaneously perpetrators and victims of capitalism over 150 years ago, I assure you the left isn’t overlooking this very obvious mechanism.
It’s also a little funny to turn a thread about the blatant failures of a neoliberal “success” story into a weird criticism of the left.
You’re probably right about the book either way, but I think the comparison has an obvious limitation. At best, Meta’s mission is “social connection.” Held up in an equally charitable light, a defense contractor is “protecting American interests.” The positive case is so much more stark that it’s probably easier to convince yourself of.
But I also think that’s partly because it’s actually true. (I concede I work in defense and am biased.)
There’s certainly a necessary debate to be had about whether these companies are doing the right things, whether they’re going about it the right way, and whether the United States’ actions are moral and legal.
But it’s very hard to argue that national security itself isn’t necessary. Whereas you can much more easily argue that a social-media-based ad company has no reason to exist in the first place.
How do you determine if they are mentally convincing themselves they are the good guy, when in fact it is you who is the good guy.
From either perspective, if the roles were reversed, wouldn't it look the same? Both parties thinking they are doing the right thing.
There are a lot of legitimate criticisms out there, they seem to be vastly outnumbered by illegitimate criticisms, no matter what position you hold. It's easy to hold your opinion when you are inundated with a constant stream of invalid arguments that say little more than "I don't like the tribe you chose". Any valid argument is easily overlooked without a sense of guilt in that environment.
Confessions of an Economic Hitman is a book with a similar theme. A guy trained by NSA to be sent to poor countries, making deals through false projections with the goal to extract their natural resources.
I got very far into this book, but didn’t finish it, in large part because the author clearly needed to work through her problems a little more before publishing it. The biggest “I’m not ACTUALLY like them” complex ever.
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 things you should do that you don't have to do. That's what morality is. Sure, for the purposes of doing things about unethical companies, it might be best to view all corporations as fundamentally unethical because that implies that the right place to make society better is by opposing their behavior with laws. But at an everyday human level everyone is responsible for exactly the things that they do and being at a corporation in no way changes it at all.
I’ve seen this time and again. The more money that a corporation or the leaders in there make, the less they’re worried about ethics.
It’s an irritating take. But personally I don’t move in the same circles as those making ethically dubious and partially legal decisions.
Do I want corporations to be ethical? Yes. Will I campaign for that and call my senator and congressman? Yes.
Are corporation lobbyists calling my congressman and senator with boatloads of money? You bet.
I don’t think everyone understands how disruptive privacy violations are. I think the best place to begin is start educating kids in high school about it, like they do for sex ed.
Am I willing to put money on the line and risk unemployment in the current market? Depends.
It's not about true or false. The point is that it's true if you're conceptualizing corporations as enemies to be handled and false if you're conceptualizing them as something you're part of that you're responsible for and you're trying to hold people accountable. The truth value is relative to your moral goal.
Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well.
It is ok to harm another group of people financially and even personally because that’s what “business does”. Degradation being a ratchet that calcifies unethical behavior doesn’t help. Companies tend to get less ethical the older and larger they become.
> Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well
The phrase essentially describes subsuming individuality in favour of group interests. You see similar refrains in militaries, monarchies, non-profits and HOAs.
I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields". Over the last 10 years, I also have come away with an intense impression that Silicon Valley is full of the self-delusional type, as evidenced by Sara's book, Palantir's weird advertising and CEO, and the insane Nimbyism.
I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast. I and many others had enough of Silicon Valley.
Side note: I find it illuminating that one of the most popular social apps that birth social trends did not come from Silicon Valley, but China. I don't think Silicon Valley can drive social trends at all (anti-humanity types are too prevalent).
> I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields".
Can you clarify what you mean by "believes in"?
I believe Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field, that he was an expert convincer. Do you hate me or do you hate him or do you hate something else entirely?
That power, today, is expressed through technology, and these overlords hold their control via proprietary software and anticompetitive business practices.
To seize power back, you need to relinquish their shackles by using technology that is designed with user freedom in mind, not "lock-in", and support businesses constituted of that ethos.
We don't need to support business. We need to support political institutions that oppose proprietary software and support people's right to general purpose computing
It's exactly this over reliance on companies to shape society that got us in this mess
The fact that they're at least honest about what they care about (money) makes them far simpler to deal with than these entities (both private and public) that spin complex webs of half truths about how they're making the world better by implementing 1984.
> I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast
I'm not an American, never set foot in the US for that matter, but I'd say I'm pretty sympathetic to the people actually living there. All this to say that I've recently had the same realisation as you when it comes to West Coast people vs East Coast people, by this point the SV automatons are way, way outside of "normal life", maybe that has always been the case but for sure back in those days SV didn't have the same power as it has now (I'm not talking money, even though that is important, I'm talking actual power to have control over people's lives), not by a long shot.
Silicon Valley must be destroyed to save America.
Gladly more are waking up to this. There’s been a surge on both the right and left in my state of people wanting to reject the place and it’s disgusting “culture”.
Everybody need to be a hero of their own story. Even concentration camp guards had this mental model, apart from outright sadists (I know I know, Godwin is cheap but it fits so well when talking about sociopathic traits and/or lack of morality when convenient).
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
But there's something bigger that you allude to, which is that very few peoplel think of themselves as the bad guys. People separate themselves from the harm they contribute to or they dehumanize the targets of that harm and then argue they deserve it somehow or simply that this is necessary for some reason (eg lesser evil arguments).
I eschew the concept of "bad guys" in general because it's a non-argument. Philosophically and politically it's known as "idealism" [1][2]. It's saying "we are the good guys because we are the good guys" and everyone think they're the good guys.
The alternative to this is materialism [3] and historical materialism [4]. There is no metaphysical or inherent goodness (or badness). You are the sum of your actions and their impact on the world. Likewise you are a product of your material world.
So we don't really need to go down the rabbit hole of figuring out if, say, FB/Meta or Palantir is a "good" company or if the employees are or feel "good". We can simply look at the impact and whether that impact was intentional or otherwise foreseeable.
And that record for Meta really isn't good eg Myanmar and the Rohingya genocide [5] or FB's real world harm from spreading misinformation [6].
> 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.
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?
I'm sure this is especially true of Palantir employees, but I feel like everyone in big tech is increasingly wrestling with this. (Don't ask me how I know.)
I am paid far less than what I'm worth to work at a company that is as close to ethically neutral as I could find. The next step would be nonprofits, but there aren't many and a lot of times they can't justify my pay, understandably.
Good luck convincing people to not just take the money.
I can understand why. In the 50s-60s, tech was highly military, or corporate. The NASA people came from building ICBMs to the space program and joined a similarly staid, regimented culture. The IBM guys were notoriously square. Silicon valley was also started and funded by these types (e.g. Shockley from Bell Labs), but then at the same time there was the LSD-influenced counter-culture developing around Stanford and Berkeley. Eventually these people, with desires of consciousness-expanding, world-changing, even revolutionary outcomes, started to populate the labs and develop new companies. Apple wasn't alone among companies that thought they were doing something with counter-cultural and utopian ideas. "Digital Research" of CP/M fame was originally called "Intergalactic Digital Research". Many of these types were highly influenced by science fiction and probably had a little adjacent experience with the hippies.
Many people envisioned a future where there wasn't a phone company intermediating a long-distance call, where you could participate in a virtual economy without government interference, and where many more products were not much affected by capital and scarcity. After all, once you have the computer, the software possibilities are unlimited, even if the hardware might not be ready yet. People could extrapolate from dial-up modems to neural linkages and participation in a virtual or holographic universe which was free from physical constraints.
What we have in the 2010s and beyond is people coming to terms with the reality that what they developed is actually a more effective straight-jacket than the previous constraints of physicality, and at the same time it is hollowing out traditional human relationships and social constructs. The fact that things like MAGA, Qanon, Ziz, and 764 are transnational and transcultural now is bizarre. These are all disappointing developments from the dystopian side of 70s-80s science fiction, not what people thought they were building when they were creating the first addictive smartphone apps.
Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company.
Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company.
I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.
> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company.
We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company.
The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" the country.
On the changes to US military organization and thinking post-WW2 (and the name change):
> […] The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history. Harry Truman and the American leaders who destroyed the Axis, and who now were facing the Soviet empire, realized that national security had become a larger undertaking than the previous American tradition of moving, as needed, between discrete conditions of “war” and “peace.”
> These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies.
Ah yes, the administration’s love of Axis of Allies, or is it allies of axis? They don’t know, they got distracted by the mustaches and the desire to conquer the world.
You do realize that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan) were attacking everyone with the explicitly stated goal of conquering the world (and subjecting it to the holocaust, we might add), and US stopped them, conquered Europe, North Africa, half the Pacific, and nothing has been able to stop the US military since.
And the US ... retreated.
We might add, the Soviets, the other axis, did not retreat. China did not retreat. Both of them started killing people to keep their conquests.
I mean, there's no shortage of stuff that the US did wrong and US made mistakes. This was not one of them.
The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done.
Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, etc.
US conquest was quiet similar to British conquest. They didn't make their conquered people citizens (that'd make things tricky for exploitation) so instead they make sure the "democracies" they spread elected the right leaders who just so happen to align with US interests.
There's a reason the US has military bases across the globe. It's not because they've retreated from their subservient states.
> The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done.
As much as I am critical of the US, until now the US did behave very differently from other superpowers. Consider the end of WWII. The US did not inflict reparations on the vanquished nations but rather, invested huge sums in their rebuilding, in the process making stalwart allies of them. These were not puppet governments, they became thriving democracies.
This is not to excuse the many bad things the US has done in Latin America, Vietnam, etc. But there is really no comparison between US behaviour and that of the USSR (or of colonial European countries, for that matter). People in Soviet-controlled East Germany were quite keen to go to the west and did not perceive the presence of US military bases there as evidence of American totalitarianism.
That, of course, has changed and now America is seen as a predatory hegemon. But that has not always been true.
The US did not keep bases in all of West Germany though.
There were different sectors. The US had essentially the South. There were also the British sector and French. The Soviets were the fourth sector but we all know how that one was quite different from the other three.
While the French and British have mostly left, the US stayed. Though to be fair even the British still do have some bases it seems as NATO troups. But no more large garrison in many larger cities.
The US on the other hand is still there with much larger force. Like think back to "Air Force One" (the movie with Harrison Ford) which used Ramstein Airbase in the movie (though they didn't actually film there) and that airbase has come up in the Iran conflict as a conflict of its own. Meaning Germany didn't want the US to use it as a hub for US operations (supply logistics) for the Iran war.
> The US on the other hand is still there with much larger force.
To provide for European security! That’s the deal in terms of Europe and NATO and also specifically to handle Germany. The idea was that America would provide security to Europe including the nuclear umbrella, and one benefit - among many others - was that Germany would not need to have a powerful military.
Can you perhaps guess why people might be concerned about a heavily armed Germany in the postwar period? Those same concerns are bubbling up in European capitals right now, as Germany rearms due to the loss of the US as a reliable partner.
And yes I definitely remember Colbert quite some time ago quipping about exactly that (paraphrased from memory): US no longer reliable NATO partner and nuclear deterrent. So Europe needs to step up. Let's have Germany have nukes. What could possibly go wrong!
The obviously funny thing being, that the US has, for a long time and Trump doubled down, asked Europe including Germany to spend more on military. And the "moderate forces" in Germany are not an issue in that regard. Those are the ones not wanting Trump to use Ramstein airbase in a war he started.
But would you want the AfD to come to power and wield those ramped up, potentially now nuclear, forces? The party that was ruled as "definitely extremist right wing aka neo nazi" in some federal states by Germany's own "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution". Oh and also was that not the party a certain Elon Musk and Trump were trying to prop up? Which is doubly funny because of the AfD's alleged ties to Putin (sometimes more than alleged).
> But would you want the AfD to come to power and wield those ramped up, potentially now nuclear, forces?
Totally! That’s what makes the situation doubly maddening. It would be one thing if these actions were bad for the world and good for the US. But they’re bad for the US too!
I forget who it was that said this, and I’m sure my paraphrasing is bad, but I listened or read something I found chilling. It was something like, ordinary Americans are totally unprepared for the level of danger they will experience over the coming decades.
The only reason Trump is able to destroy global institutions so easily is because Americans take their security for granted. But that security is the result of institutions developed in the aftermath of an utterly devastating war. Now those institutions are damaged and America’s friends are alienated, right when they are most needed to deal with China, Russia, AI, drones, cyber, nuclear, climate…talk about bad timing.
> As much as I am critical of the US, until now the US did behave very differently from other superpowers. Consider the end of WWII. The US did not inflict reparations on the vanquished nations but rather, invested huge sums in their rebuilding, in the process making stalwart allies of them.
That is also how Rome routinely dealt with the border tribes that it defeated. It's not a new idea. That's just what superpowers do.
Spain, France, the entire iron curtain following 1992 dissolution of USSR, Taiwan, Phillipines, Costa Rica, Panama ... and speaking of central America, Venezuela isn't doing so bad either. Perhaps more expansive lists could be produced once the definitions of "meddled with" and "treated well" are more refined.
I generally take the word "conquest" to mean some outside force coming in and taking over. That didn't happen in either Vietnam or Korea. You could argue that the USSR used conquest to take over territories for the soviet union. However, that's not something really arguable about Vietnam or Korea. Vietnam, in particular, was the native population overthrowing their conquerors, the french, and then deciding they wanted to be communists. They got support from both the USSR and China, but they weren't ultimately under the umbrella of either regime.
Now, I'd agree that Vietnam and Korea both had civil wars supercharged by the US, China, and Russia. But I disagree that these were wars where the US was stopping conquest. We see that in the modern state of Vietnam and North Korea. Vietnam, funnily, became a closer ally to the US than China after the war.
Cuba is very much the same way. It wasn't conquered by an outside force. Yet they did ally with the USSR once the dust settled. They were still an independent nation from the USSR.
The Communists. Would you rather live in North or South Korea?
Vietnam is interesting in that they're still politically authoritarian but willing to be more economically open; see also China. (Just don't say the wrong thing about the wrong people.)
Today obviously the South. In 1950, probably the North. Throughout the Korean war, it's a wash. The US obliterated the north, but the south was completely insane towards their own civilian population. The ROK was not a "nice" government to live under during the korean war.
If you lived in the north there was a good possibility that you were getting bombed. It was best to live near china.
If you live in the south, there was a good chance you would be conscripted and sent to the meat grinder as a man.
The subsequent cease fire, the south has rebuilt and become the better place to live. The north has mostly struggled due to international sanctions. They have never fully recovered.
"The Communist" were a faction in a civil war, that's not an invasion. And the split in both cases (Vietnam and Korea) was recent and artificial, in the sense of no tradition of there being two countries. It wasn't one country invading another country, but two halves engaged in a civil war.
Where one wants to live is irrelevant. It wasn't about stopping an invasion, which was the initial claim. The US was meddling.
> Vietnam and Korea were technically wars to stop conquest, no?
No.
For example, the US got involved in Vietnam to help the colonizer (France) stop an independence movement. Yes, because they feared the resulting Vietnam may become communist and USSR aligned (something they helped happen, since Ho Chi Minh quite admired the US and expected them to help him at first), but even if this was the case, it's still not about stopping an invasion, because commie Vietnamese are still Vietnamese.
> Russia has 12, mostly in former Soviet countries. China has 3
To be fair, you're comparing land powers–that tend to annex their holdings–with a maritime power, who tend to trade with and maintain favourable ports at their conquests/allies. So yeah, China doesn't have any foreign bases in Tibet. But that's because it annexed it in the 1950s.
Put together, America obviously has a larger military than China or Russia. But before Russia became a rump, the Soviet Union could marshall military resources comparable to–and for one decade, in excess of–those of the United States for much of the post-War era.
How many "foreign" bases did Russia have a few years after WW2, before revolutions kicked them out? Before Russia annexed countries and destroyed the populations?
Because that's, of course, the real question.
It's literally thousands.
You need thousands of military bases if you're going to do "thought police". Because that's what you'll never read here. Russia HAD a (military) thought police. It was Putin's job when he got started, by the way.
To be fair, if you stand in the middle of The Netherlands, 260km in any direction and you end up outside of the country. Which base are you talking about?
Was that on a country that went on a genocidal rampage just before and lost the war after killing millions all around Europe, which was decided to be divided in several parts, of which USSR got to control one, and which still developed into an independent country less than a decade later?
Yes, but you're leaving out the other 9 countries the Soviet Union occupied, and immediately started killing the population to keep their conquests: Poland, Austria’s Soviet zone, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
By contrast, the US retreated. And also didn't start killing any population.
"Killing their population" as in executing some Nazi collaborators, of which there was no shortage in all, down to full cooperation? Like the ones involved in the Axis alliance and in the eastern front offensives that caused the deaths of millions of their own people?
>And also didn't start killing any population.
Yes, just Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and anybody who leaned national sovereignity/left in the Latin America and later the middle east.
> Very much the same as the USSR and China have done.
The expressed goal of Communism (USSR, later China) was to spread its ideology to the entire world. The US chose at its goal the containment of Communism:
This is what drove Korea, Vietnam, Cuba/Castro, and many other countries with left-leaning governments. In many cases this ended up with the US supporting the right-wing people, e.g.:
> There's a reason the US has military bases across the globe. It's not because they've retreated from their subservient states.
Yes, containment and power projection to keep the sea lanes open for trade (which benefits the US financially and life-style-wise, but also benefits countries who export things, to the US and other places):
If you don't think having peaceful sea lanes is useful, see Houthis/Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz. What we're seeing with Trump's worldview is a return to how things tended to be earlier in history:
US did not stopped Axis alone, Allies did. Even in Pacific Soviet participation was very important in defeating Japan.
And the US did not retreat, it kept its military all across Europe (and the world), brought its nuclear weapons to Europe (not for the Europe, but for the US to be used with Europe as a launching pad).
The Allies stopped them. The US was one of the major contributors, but they were far from alone. The Soviets, Britain, Canada, India, Poland, France, Netherlands, Kenya, etc etc all contributed to various extents. The Indian army was one of the biggest by number of men. The Poles and French were crucial in setting the ground work for the British decrypting Enigma, alongside their purely military contributions.
Japan did not take part in the Holocaust. Not the goal of Germany nor Italy was the holocaust. Their objective was not to conquer the world. They were empire builders, plain and simple, and they were trying to expand their trade networks, like Britain had done and monopolized. They took over each European state and replaced its leadership with one that benefitted themselves. Their objective was policy frameworks for the purpose of trading. The holocaust was a later addon (1940).
No one calls the japanese persecution of the Chinese a holocaust.
For generalplan ost, “The plan, prepared in the years 1939–1942, was part of Adolf Hitler's and the Nazi movement's Lebensraum policy and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten” which still makes it a later development.
They didn’t even retreat from places like Italy because... the communists might be successful. So the CIA backed fascists to sabotage them.
And the US ... retreated. harumph And interferred, and supported right-wing militias, and invaded countries by themselves, and supported coups, and so on.
Most simplistic would be _Divide and Conquer_ (Axis) vs _United we stand, divided we fall_ (Allie). This administration is going down the divide and conquer path.
I recommend _Culture in Nazi Germany_ by Michael H Kater. [0] The current US administration has numerous similarities to 1930s Germany. The way they support banning books and the treatment of the LGBT+ community. Working to take over media organizations with proponent operatives, financial corruption, and _please the leader_ are also present in both. There are more ... read the book for them.
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
Are you looking for and only accepting isomorphism between the two?
There are no governing bodies in history that have ever been isomorphic. Only similarities exist between them. Japan never assisted with extermination of Jews and they are in the Venn diagram of Axis and authoritarianism.
I have high confidence that Adolf Hilter, Bentio Mussolini, and Emperor Shōwa never were part of a child trafficking ring that catered to the wealthy and assisted them with raping and torturing of youths on a privately owned island. There are simulates though with _human trafficking_ between all parties.
Didn't Donald Trump state that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country? Didn't Adolf Hitler say Jews are poisoning the blood of the country? Aren't both simulates?
There never can be two states that are exactly the same; from policies to events. Iceland and Germany are classified as democratic countries and they have dissimilarities.
> Didn't Donald Trump state that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country? Didn't Adolf Hitler say Jews are poisoning the blood of the country? Aren't both simulates?
That is actually something that is pretty popular with anti-immigration rhetoric before and after Hitler, although there are probably over a hundred such politicians who used that rhetoric, not many have killed millions, that's hardly enough to think you have found Nazism.
> I have high confidence that Adolf Hilter, Bentio Mussolini, and Emperor Shōwa never were part of a child trafficking ring that catered to the wealthy and assisted them with raping and torturing of youths on a privately owned island. There are simulates though with _human trafficking_ between all parties.
As far as I can tell apart from guilt by association, there is no definitive proof about Trump being part of their pedophile ring, nothing that can't be said about Clinton, Chomsky or Gates or many others for example. The relation to Hitler in any case is no relation at all, so this segue is confusing
In any case, this examples are redundant as similarities are not enough to establish a category, as I could establish similarities between Hitler and Gandhi (Vegetarianism, cult following, theatrical rhetorics and meta-narratives) to say Hitler is actually a pacifist. That's of course absurd.
Ignoring the Nazi anti-morality and national scale paranoid schizophrenia which are major missing points, the rapid takeover of a single party of the state, destroying the parliament, making the Executive into the law, creating a party's army and using state violence against political enemies are some of the hallmarks of the beginning of third reich germany. This is simply not Trump USA after 6 years, not close.
I am sorry but these false comparisons are simply a social media convention of getting engagement by turning the volume to 11, and nothing works better than misusing categories through superficial comparisons
My point was that this administration seems to like the axis plan more than the original US/Allied plan. I'm fully aware of which side was which. Tell that to Hegseth and Miller.
> The Department of Defense is the Department of War
No, it is not, at least not technically. That would require an act of Congress, which hasn't happened. Despite what the idiots "in charge" seem to believe.
But those idiots "in charge" are what matters, right? Since they set the tone for the department, and lately they sure are acting more like a DoW than a DoD.
Even Hitler's army, which attacked large parts of Europe in WW2, was called the Wehrmacht ("defense force" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht). But, as a famous German who was almost 150 years older than Hitler already knew, "Namen sind Schall und Rauch" ("names are but sound and smoke").
> nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" the country.
It's not hard:
* They're trying to build nuclear weapons, and they're one of the worlds leading sponsor of terrorism (if not the sole leader).
* The country ran out of water, people started to protest their government, and were killed by the thousands (some say tens of thousands potentially more).
Water is one of the most basic human needs, if they're willing to kill their own people protesting for the most basic human need, what would they do with Nuclear to the rest of the world? I feel like people don't understand the gravity of Iran with nuclear.
Iran having nuclear will not end well for its citizens or the world.
* Their nuclear program was obliterated in June 2026, says even the White house (1)
* The worlds leading sponsor of and spender on terrorism (including financial aid to Hamas) is Israel, by a wide margin (2)
* Claims that “thousands” or “tens of thousands” were killed specifically over water protests are not supported by widely accepted evidence
Now I'm wondering which country is a bigger threat to us and peace in general.
A country on the brink of financial collapse, with a severe drought and one of the last remaining opponents of our greatest ally?
Or a country that "provides funding to both Democratic and Republican leadership teams, often supporting over 90% of targeted caucus members" (3) and constantly wants us to fight their wars?
Should also keep in mind the secretary of war publicly stated the department's aim is "maximum lethality, not tepid legality".
Politics aside, anyone in the supply chain shouldn't be surprised they have a role in illegal killings, because that's literally what they said they're doing.
> No one likes war, everyone loves defense. Something something expanded surveillance under the guise of counter-terrorism post-9/11
It was renamed after WWII. In part because smart minds realised that war between industrialised civilisations had ceased to be an accretive endeavour since sometime between Napoleon and the Kaiser.
It went hot in proxy wars. It only didn't go to total war because of threat of nuclear war and even then nuclear incidents nearly happened on multiple occasions.
I originally discussed "war between industrialised civilisations." "Korea, Vietnam, etc" were not that.
The World Wars drove home the argument that direct confrontation between industrialised socieities is a lose-lose proposition. Since WWII, what I think we've been experimenting with is whether industrialised civilisations can wage war by proxy and still come out ahead. ("Ahead" here measured in relative and absolute power and wealth.) The answer appears to be no–unless you can bog down another who was stupid enough to engage without a proxy. But I don't think it was obviously no until somewhere between the Iraq War and now.
What law are you thinking of? Some tools used in riot enforcements would be illegal to use in wars, so it actually seems to be the other way around to me.
I was being sarcastic clanker and/or throwaway account.
It’s obviously the law but this admin doesn’t respect the law, as they believe we’re in a post Constitutional era. It’s looks like they are manifesting their beliefs since so many people support them, both sides them, or decide it’s not that big a deal when the executive branch of the American government starts executing American citizens and trying to EO away the 14th amendment on farcical grounds.
War and defence are the same thing in the US, so the naming doesn't really matter. To go after enemies, real or otherwise, with overwhelming force (to also the scare the ones not bombed this time), is to "defend" the US. That is how they justify it to themselves.
the current administration is using the war name, it doesn't matter what it technically is because they are using it to plainly state their ambitions for it
I was under the impression the name was not actually formally changed, just like how the “Department of government efficiency” was never actually a department but was just a rebranding of an existing department done totally by mouth (like a lot of nonsense this administration does)
Regardless of what the Trump administration will tell you, that's not it's name. The executive branch is not empowered to unilaterally change the name of a department.
As a Russian emigrant, I feel this whole war is a severe case of déjà vu. It's as if the US government is going through a stolen Russian playbook, appropriating everything.
"Special operation"? Check. "$EnemyCapital in 3 days"? Check. "We haven't even started yet"? Check. "Goodwill gestures"? Check.
(It's actually a common joke on the Russian Internet. So common, in fact, that it has already stopped being funny.)
The president isn't empowered to declare war, but as Commander in Chief he is empowered to send the military anywhere he wants and start whatever "conflict" he wants, for whatever reason he wants, including no reason whatsoever. After which Congress can retroactively declare it a war if they so choose. But the US hasn't fought a declared war since WW2, because declarations of war don't really mean anything when the missiles have already been fired and the bombs have already been dropped.
I hate Trump as much as anyone with a moral core should, but the President's capacity for creating arbitrary military violence and expenditure has always been unchecked.
If that’s true, that’s insane. Forgive me, I’m not a PolSci scholar. Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? It always annoys me when the headlines are “Trump invaded this …” or “Trump slapped a tariff on…” while effectively it’s the US government that’s doing that, they are letting him to do as he pleases? Then the fault lies not with him. He’s not a king but surely seems to have absolute discretion if you believe the headlines.
There was a widespread belief that U.S. government has an elaborate system of checks and balances but it was not evidence-based. Kind of Flat Earth period of American political science.
The checks and balance are between the 3 branches of government. If congress wanted to stop the war, they could. If the supreme court wanted to hand the power to start wars back to congress they could.
Just because they don't, doesn't mean they aren't able. The real flat earth theory is thinking that unwritten rules and institutions were protected from a president that insists on pulling every lever of power at once, but that's separate from the checks and balances.
If one person in executive position is able to effectively override the nation's rules and institutions it sounds awfully close to saying there are no checks and balances.
Its because the president used to have a modicum of respect for the house and the Senate.
So the president did have the sole right to send military anywhere on the planet and even launch nukes without any need for congressional permission. This is by design. But the other presidents were a bit less crazy so we never noticed.
The system relies on people acting in good faith. It is impossible to make a constitution that can deal with people at all levels of power not acting in good faith.
In this case, Congress has completely abdicated their duties.
No it doesn’t. Checks and balances is explicitly setting branches against each other because it is assumed everyone is a greedy abusive MF’er only out for their own benefit.
The challenge is all 3 branches are owned by the same group right now.
> Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy?
Who will be overruling that "someone in the cabinet", when things start going the wrong way again? There is always someone on top, and in the US it's the sitting President.
This is simply not true and it's disappointing fear-mongering from Vice (or anyone else who publishes this stuff). The reason you know it's true is because Trump doesn't care about precedent, yet in court case after court case that he or his administration lose they follow the law, even if it is imperfect or later attempted to be argued under a different standing.
The same thing that is true for Donald Trump now was true for pretty much all past presidents. Nothing has meaningfully changed here, yet we did not have these same articles before, nor did we have folks who are so caught up in political fervor that they are happy to go along with any ole' article or reporting that aligns with their current beliefs.
In other words, articles like those are click-bait, and their sole intention or at least their effect is to cause chaos and doubt in the American government.
> The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent.
Now if we're talking reality, the realty is that new precedents were set (president acting like a king) which revealed that there are not effective legal checks on US presidents acting like kings (or else we would not have a president acting like a king).
Sorry, I just don't agree with your assessment. Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". Trump, as despicable and annoying as he is certainly says a lot, but he's not doing anything from what I can tell that isn't at least poorly argued that he has a right or legal justification for doing. A king or queen needs no such justification, and if one is going through the motions and being forced to respect the law (again there are shades of gray here) than there is no "acting like a king".
But if your focus is on whatever he tweets and therefore he acts like a king, sure. Whatever. I mostly care about what actually happens, actual policy, actual laws and rules, not the theater around it which so many seem to want to indulge in instead of watching reality TV.
Sure they do! Take the king that the US's predecessor governments rebelled against, King George III. He was very much bound to the dictates of Parliament. From his Wikipedia article:
> Meanwhile, George had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the King's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of prime minister.[45]
Does this sound like something that would be said of an absolute monarch?
Donald Trump is also bound by the dictates of Congress and the courts. If that’s your criteria as to who is “acting like a king” and your reference is yet another king who is constrained by the Congress and Courts, I’m not really sure what point your trying to make here.
He isn’t a king nor does he act like one in the office of the President precisely because he is following the law (generally speaking, I don’t think it’s pertinent to get into specific details else we get into those same details with all presidents) and because he is constrained by Congress.
Your argument just makes “king” George out to be constrained in the way a president is. It’s a bad argument. Don’t let the reality TV fool you.
> Your argument just makes “king” George out to be constrained in the way a president is.
Your placing of King in quotes is bizarre. Like, you see a resemblance between the current president and an actual king, and your takeaway is to try to retcon history and claim the king was not a king?
Your argument that someone can't act like a king unless they're breaking laws is a bad argument (and ignores the fact that this one is doing both). Don't let your reality tv fool you.
If that's your criteria as to who is "not acting like a king", I’m not really sure what point you're trying to make here.
> 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 America) is similarly stymied and frustrated by some act of Congress. Are the presidents kings or are the kings presidents?
It seems like people are so hung up on the Twitter reality TV sports of politics that they've forgotten what a king is.
> 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 seems like people are so hung up on the Twitter reality TV sports of politics that they've forgotten what a king is.
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.
> Ok then all presidents were acting as kings or King George was just acting more like a president.
You're confusing how someone acts with which laws they are subject to, and as a result, you've been reduced to inane wordplay as your only argument.
Previously, even though a US president theoretically had the power to act like a king, they have mostly maintained a precedent of not doing so*.
Now, a new precedent has been set: A president acting like a king*.
Hope that clears things up.
* - I realize you may personally disagree with this. That's okay. I'm open to hearing arguments otherwise, but the ones you've put forth so far were unsuccessful at swaying people from the consensus stated above.
Sorry, but I just can't agree with your assessment:
> Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen".
This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false. If many folks are saying a thing, there is more evidence of it being true than if "anyone" says it. The consensus here seems to be that the current USA president is acting like a king. To alter the consensus, make a successful argument to that effect.
To wit:
- "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."
- "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance."
- "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
- "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power."
- "For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us"
- "For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States"
- "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world"
- "For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent"
- "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury"
- "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences"
For someone in the USA, some of this might ring a historical bell.
> This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false.
You're right, it doesn't mean that. But it belittles the accusation. Folks sometimes refer to their children as little tyrants. Conservatives would say Obama or Biden were acting like kings issuing edicts.
If you want to argue about this because you're interested in the mudslinging, that's fine but that's a separate discussion: a discussion about reality TV, not reality in offices of the government.
> The consensus here seems to be that the current USA president is acting like a king.
Current consensus is usually wrong, doubly so in this case. He might tweet a bunch of things, yet he's still constrained by the rule of law and the Congress, and the Court.
>> This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false.
> You're right, it doesn't mean that. But it belittles the accusation.
Does it? I don't think so. Like we should refrain from ever saying it when it is appropriate, because there will always exist at least 1 person in the world who disagrees and thus the accusation is belittled in their eyes alone? Pass.
> Conservatives would say Obama or Biden were acting like kings issuing edicts.
Sure, and they can say whatever they want! It's not like people would agree with them if they said it, unlike in this example, in which they would.
> Current consensus is usually wrong
This nonsense sounds like a slogan of somebody who is usually both wrong and against consensus.
> yet he's still constrained by the rule of law and the Congress, and the Court
Yep, totally irrelevant, as we've already covered: someone being theoretically "constrained by the rule of law and the Congress, and the Court" does not mean "cannot act like a king", as we've now seen.
This is demonstrably false. In the case of removing migrants, the court ordered the practice halt and flights get turned around. The court also found evidence of contempt from the federal government due to noncompliance, although another appeals court stopped the contempt investigation.
In the Kiyemba decision, the court identified a pattern of 96 violations across 75 or so cases. Detainees were held despite release orders
In family separation cases, courts have required legal representation reinstated and the government refused to comply.
In the case of NY vs Trump, courts ordered funds to be unfrozen and the administration refused to comply.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but can you cite the specific court cases or provide an up to date article discussing them so we have somewhere to start? The reason I am asking for this (and no worries if you don't want to dig any of this up) is because each case has specific nuance that is worthy of discussion, and in some cases (pardon the pun) the court order wasn't the final say pending appeal or actual Constitutional authority arguments were pending or legitimate.
Separately, if you want to claim that the Trump Administration is acting like a king because they've refused to comply with a single court case, then of course you have to extend that same categorization to any president who has ignored or circumvented a court order. But why stop there? Why not governors or private persons? Why do some have the luxury of seemingly ignoring Congressional subpoenas?
The Trump Administration has also lost quite a number of court cases and he has failed to prosecute his political enemies. If he were a king he would be ignoring much more than just a few court orders, folks would be in jail, &c.
The rate is different but at the end of the day they still go through the process and when his administration loses cases they just shut up and lose the case. You mostly don't hear about the, I believe hundreds, of cases that the administration has lost. As long as they follow the rule of law (obviously there are at times gray areas and he is expert at identifying and challenging those) I'm not too concerned. Again the media just whips people up into a fervor because it's really good advertising business.
Why would you think it’s not that way? Virtually all of the power of the executive branch of the US Goverment is in the Office of the President. There are mechanisms in the Constitution to remove the sitting president, but it requires the other branches to act in the best interests of the nation instead of their own personal interests.
Look at the history of every single war we’ve been involved in since WWII, no declaration of war. Korean War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Balkans, GWOT, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Iran.
I’m not a fan of the president, but Trump only started two of those. Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama, and the last two were Trump. That’s 7 total presidents, add in Bay of Pigs and JFK for 8 and the only two presidents who didn’t start a war are Nixon, who fucked up negotiations with the NVA that may have prolonged the war to win an election, and Jimmy Carter, who tried to rescue hostages in Iran with military assets.
> Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama
I think this is at least a little misleading. How many of these conflicts were started by that president/the US (as opposed to "joined")?
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-nothing and frankly regard the President taking unilateral actions as relieving them of accountability and the need to take action themselves on important matters.
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.
It’s not just one geezer, Congress also agrees with him (at least in the sense that they aren’t willing to take advantage of any of the leverage they have to stop him). The midterm elections will be the people’s chance to express how they feel about it all.
It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions.
This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civilian commander of the military and regardless of whether it is a Democrat or Republican we, like in other cases, give the President the discretion to make these choices. You may not like their exercise of power, but it is legal, Constitutional, and intentional and even if it is Donald Trump (much to my displeasure) we as a society trust him and his office to use this power responsibly and for the good of the American people. Even in the case of Iran and Venezuela, frankly, I think he has used power responsibly (if less effective than it should be) and for the good of the American people. We can't have a nuclear Iran in the Middle East, nor can we or should we accept thugs like Maduro running a country into the ground and causing mass migration to the US and causing problems here and breaking our laws.
There are folks in the cabinet that can take action, or resign, &c., but as the Executive the president selects his cabinet and they serve at his pleasure, once they are confirmed by the Senate. This is true for all presidents and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
I think sometimes we forget, these are just people. We give them broad authority and they get to, by virtue of being elected, exercise that power as they see fit though ideally if or when a law is broken we deal with it through the judicial system.
What's the recourse when they fall into a natural senile abyss like with the previous POTUS? Wait and see? I naively lived under an assumption there was a system of checks and balances that's not a coup d'état.
It's just up to those that we elected to make a decision or enact legislation. If they decide tat the president isn't senile enough, then that's just what they get to decide. Sometimes I think folks are expecting there to be an ever increasing system of accountability or authority to appeal to, but no it's just those people and they get to decide. If you don't like their decision, outside of the ballot box or whatever other means you have available to protest their decision, then you just have to live with what they say or decide. They are the authority. They decide to invoke the 25th Amendment or not. Not you.
I'll bite. What's in it for them ("They are the authority")? Weathering the weather until the next election? I'm prone to assuming that people higher on the totem pole are smarter, more experienced, more nuanced, better educated, that's on me.
The POTUS is funny /s. Read his remarks about Tim Apple, pure comedy if was intended as such. He needs to take an ESL course. "3 or 4 "BIG HELPS". "I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’”
He's surrounded by the creme de la creme of our society, at least in terms of influence. Many of these folks come from old money, West Point, Ivy League, whatever. No matter how egomaniac one has to be to raise through the ranks of our the political system, they are still highly intelligent and connected tribe and should be able to read the future we are leaping into. Am I giving them too much credit? Why isn't their horizon decades long?
> What's the recourse when they fall into a natural senile abyss like with the previous POTUS?
Congress should tighten up the War Powers Act, including but not limited to making the Secretary of Defense personally liable for breaches. (We do this with CFOs under Sarbanes-Oxley.)
It's not, and the evidence for that at least partially rests in the War Powers Act as Congress itself realized it wasn't enough. Who am I to argue with Congress? :)
Just "doing war" and calling it something else because you find the "right" way inconvenient or impractical is ridiculous, immoral, and illegal.
If the government acts on behalf of and derives its authority from the will of the people then do it according to our shared governance. If not then the people claiming autocracy or oligarchy or techno-feudalism has supplanted our democracy are probably on to something.
Tl;dr - no shit following the law is less convenient than just doing whatever you want
Is there something about the War Powers Act that's unconstitutional? If so, what specifically? I'm struggling here to understand what is being alleged to be unconstitutional.
Separately, I actually think Congress has been dysfunctional and has been outsourcing its power to the Executive and Judicial branches, but these claims about constitutional breaches seem to be, at best, wrong.
Because soft power is a real phenomenon and by going along with the illegal name change, we are giving legitimacy to an illegitimate act. Its anticipatory obedience.
Do not obey in advance. It signals to the regime how much power they actually have.
I'd agree in principle, but they're already killing people. The worst-case scenario has been happening for a while; treating this as a procedural stance rather than a description of reality is blinkered.
If we adopt their language because things are already bad we are saying that their power is now the only reality that matters, we are giving up any form of resistance. We killed people under the name of Department of Defense too.
Giving them the name is giving them the legitimacy to continue to justify the violence, and signals to the rest of the population that no one is coming to help and the new order is absolute. Mind you, this is mostly the fault of complicit media going a long with the name change rather than individuals here on HN, but whether its a true description of reality or not isn't important, whats important is any form of resistance to stop giving legitimacy to the regime.
As a non-American, I think that Americans treating concrete problems as less important than linguistic games does an awful lot more to legitimise the violence.
I don't think parent claimed that simply using certain words is more important than dealing with the real problems.
You sound frustrated with the American situation. I am too but that doesn't mean someone saying "resist" is somehow condoning or ignoring the important issues.
I think the message of "don't submit in advance" is a great one and it actually makes sense to me to include that ethos in all things, including your speech. I think we all agree that speech alone is not enough.
Controlling language changes the way people think, and therefore act. Both of the things you mentioned are bad, glossing over real problems and the attempt to control language, they are not mutually exclusive.
Just (re)read 1984 and focus on Newspeak, controlling language controls the way people think and act.
The body of water that borders Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and other states along with Mexico is the Gulf of Mexico. The US cabinet-level department responsible for the military is the Department of Defense.
As a third party to your discussion, I observe that you are both engaged in exactly the same "linguistic game" with each other, if you prefer to use that dismissive terminology, and I'll add that writing is not mutually exclusive with action.
it's far more than that. By giving into the television like hyper-reality they create you're giving up base reality. That power and legitimate institutions are derived from the people and due process.
To surrender to the rhetoric is the entire point of the obscenities. War department, thugs with badges pretending to be police etc. The provocations are intentional and the offensiveness is the point, if you're just opposed to the concrete violence you're missing the forest for the trees. You have to reject their entire grammar they're trying to impose on you.
It's as if I put on a robe, went to Rome and claimed I'm the Pope (taking bets on this happening in the US too). You shouldn't then try to argue with me if I'm a good or bad pope or if I'm committing bad acts, but you should reject the entire non-reality circus I'm trying to pull you in.
> To surrender to the rhetoric is the entire point of the obscenities.
No, this is what I am complaining about. The obscenities are the point, the rhetoric is cover. Ignoring the rhetoric does not stop the obscenities, and treating the problem as 'they are using the wrong name' rather than 'they are doing the wrong thing' dismisses the real harm being done.
If you claim to be the pope, rejecting your constructed reality is the way to help you out of your delusion. If you do so while leading a crusade to sack Jerusalem, it's not the priority.
Let's clarify further that they are working for the clown Gestapo known as ICE, and they are enabling them to violate judicial directives and Constitutional protections for an adminstration speed running American anarcho-fascism.
Palantir used to be an effective augmentation to counter-insurgency and international terrorism.
Karp has gleefully pivoted to enabling authoritarian pogroms in American cities, and if you keep working there you have blood on your hands.
There's the "hilarity" of Operation Epic Fury. E.F. Epstein Files. It's either someone's private joke or the most clueless name you could imagine (not to mention sounding like it was taken straight from a COD Lobby).
> Obviously the Iranian government are not good guys
I'll believe this when it comes from someone other than the Epstein people. As it stands, the worst people in the world do not like Iran, so they're definitely doing something right.
It's not really a distraction, it's just it's own stupid, horrible thing.
The most sane reason for "why now" would be because Iran was in a relatively weak position (domestic unrest, severely weakened proxies due to Israel) and the hawks saw an opening
That and Trump was more easily moved now that he's developed a taste for military shows of force after the Maduro thing. He probably thought it would make great content.
The Iran hawks and Netanyahu probably didn't have to push him very hard
The Iran war started to provide a distraction from the Epstein files. Let's not pretend we don't know why, or more absurdly, can't quite articulate. It's very simple.
Why is this getting downvoted? How is this any less ridiculous sounding than the multitude of other, ever-shifting reasons Trump gave for starting the war.
Trump publicly mulled about going to war with Iran for weeks before it started. Iran had been killing its own citizens by thousands, stopping the massacre was a leading factor.
I am aware of one obscure Democrat that spoke out against the action at the time. I believe that man is the only one that should be criticizing the decision, because he didn’t wait on the fence to see how things turned out.
If you know of more Democrats that spoke out—- especially big name ones—- please provide credible, contemporary sources. I’ll be glad to give approval to any that acted bravely at the time.
Right, but Trump has stated he can accept working with the regime without consequence, like in Venezuela, as long as they cooperate on key issues e.g. oil and Israeli security concerns. He couldn’t care less that the regime is killing its own people. Like he couldn’t care less about Israel’s illegal occupation and murder.
To think Trump did this war to save Iranian lives from its own government is hopelessly naive. It was not at all a leading factor.
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 unilaterally start wars without Congress agreeing)
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 crash before opening your mouth is definitely not virtuous.
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.
The US has always used its military for global terrorism. Only just now, it is more in your face. There is no doubt: the US is responsible for some of the most sickening crimes against humanity the world has ever seen, including directly being the inspiration for the Holocaust, as well as US companies providing logistics for the Holocaust!
I hate the idea that it was ever the DoD. It was always a terroristic, offensive force.
Sure. The unnecessary nuclear bombing of two civilian population centers is proof enough. Do you know the ratio of civilians to military deaths in those bombings? Nagasaki is particularly bad: 0.25% military personnel, 99.75% civilian deaths, and that's the most generous count. Not to mention Tokyo, or the numerous other cities which were firebombed. The idea that nuking civilians saved lives is a statement so stupid that only an American could believe it.
Let me ask you a question, directly, UltraSane. Is killing 60,000(minimum) civilians in an instant not terrorism?
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?
If those soldiers are in full uniform bringing in an unconcealed bomb, and it's part of a broader campaign that's also going after military targets, I would not call that terrorism.
There is no distinct line between war and terrorism. Even before World War II, leaders would proudly and openly call for terrorism against their enemies and civilians. Most notably communist leaders like Lenin, who didn't shy away from using the word "terror" and "terrorism" to describe their own campaigns.
As for allied bombings, there is a chapter here on the term "Terror bombings":
The war was won by systematic, deliberate terror bombings, these weren't accidents or rare incidents.
From the great general Patton:
"We then went to the town hall and saw the Mayor, the Chief of Police, etc. I told Truscott to do the honors as he had captured Messina. The town is horribly destroyed – the worst I have seen. In one tunnel there were said to have been 5,000 civilians hiding for over a week. I do not believe that this indiscriminate bombing of towns is worth the ammunition, and it is unnecessarily cruel to civilians."
As for the Germans, they were among other things conducting terror attacks on civilan ships with their submarines, and openly calling their population to "total war".
The allies won the war by conducting terrorism of the largest level in human history. That might have been the only way for them to win. I don't think anybody here is a better general than Eisenhower or McArthur was, to be able to suggest a better way.
All sides of WWII were conducting outright terror attacks on the civilians of their enemies, with the allied terror bombings of German cities and terror nuclear bombings of Japanese cities being the most devastating of these.
Senate Democrats have made at least 5 attempts to stop this. Every Democrat voted in favor except Fetterman. Every republican opposed the attempt except Ron Paul.
The Republicans are entirely responsible for the war in Iran - they started it and have opposed every attempt to reign the administration in. Don't play this "both sides" game when one side is clearly causing the issue here.
I mean. The side voting while knowing they can't stop it that way, the definition of optics, thought this was worth it to not cater to their anti-war voters, no?
Both side bad yeah, you seem to think the solution is still to cling to the lesser of two evils. Hell, dem presidential candidates were praising Trumps Iran policy up until the bombs started falling. There is no evidence they _actually_ care about a war with Iran outside of, just as you do, saying OH this is THEIR doing.
Look, I would love to reply to this but you don't even articulate a coherent position here.
It seems like you trying to claim that the democrats actively opposing and trying to stop the war are somehow just as culpable as the republicans who are actively supporting the war just because the democrats don't have enough power to actually stop it? I want to be generous in my interpretation here, but I can't make heads or tails of your statement.
No-one supports the war now. But Palestine just had to go? It can't be about _war_ or loss of life, and the people caring can get f-ed we don't need your votes.
But sure one side is extremely against anything like this but unfortunately only get to demonstrate it when in opposition and unable to do anything.
The difference might be there in regards to Iran, with it's global market impact. But it's not there in regards to human life or suffering. That was made _very_ clear during the electoral campaign. But now it's _very different_ because it's "them" doing it and we can say we were always against this.
We have to say "us good, them bad" because we're voting the same way next time, and we're not planning to vote for something bad, right?
> But it's not there in regards to human life or suffering. That was made _very_ clear during the electoral campaign.
I don’t know what to say but to call this retarded at best or evil at worst.
Trump ran on a platform that included purposefully harming people. He continues with it. Look at his response to Mueller’s death for instance.
Inb4 you mention something about a genocide in Guzah, and ignore how Trump is backing everything Netanyahu wants done in the region compared to the democrats attempts at holding him back.
> We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate
(1) Nuclear proliferation.
We once had a deal that looked as though it was holding. Trump's nixing of the deal and the happenings in Ukraine accelerated Iran's desire to have nukes.
As I've been reading, this might be a second order play to stall China's invasion of Taiwan. If China has to dip into strategic oil reserves to smooth out impact to its economy, it may forgo its Taiwan invasion plans for a bit longer.
It's also throwing a wrench into the CRINK alliance.
Those are incredibly thin justifications that don't really hold up to scrutiny.
1) The deal was holding. And even if we take Trump's word for it that it wasn't, he told us that he destroyed their nuclear capability a year ago. So either he was lying about that, or there was no serious nuclear capability in the first place. Regardless of how that shakes out, there's no reason we should believe this justification today.
2) This is incredibly speculative, and no serious intelligence analyst or military strategist would suggest "war with Iran" as a solution there. And the joke is on us, anyway: China may be feeling an oil crunch, but we're depleting our stock of a bunch of materiel that we'll need if it comes time to defend Taiwan. On top of that, China's military leadership is seeing how incompetently the US is prosecuting this war, and is likely feeling a lot more confident about their ability to fend off a US defense of Taiwan.
The US military is prosecuting the war just fine, US losses of materiel and personnel have been minimal (not zero, but close enough). China's takeaway from this is not going to be that the US military is incompetent.
The fundamental problem is that the declared objectives of regime change and securing control of the Strait of Hormuz cannot be achieved through air power alone. And this is the fault of the president, not the military.
How many is the right number of personnel and materiel to lose for this war that isn't war and seems to have been either purchased for a few hundred million by political bribes or is just a distraction from the administrations involvement in a monstrous child sex ring? Also didn't we already win this war last year, last month, and last week? It is really easy to wave away our fellow dead citizens (and Iranians, including a school full of children!) from an internet comment form but damn, real people are dead here and it's an actual tragedy.
For me, zero deaths seems like the right answer for these objectives and anything else is egregious abuse of power.
I'd love it if everyone stopped being happy with people lying to them. When you catch people lying to you, be angry and stop trusting them!
I hate to interrupt a good rant, but we actually agree on this. To spell it out: the abject failure of the war is not a failure of the US military, it's a failure of its executive leadership, meaning Trump and his coterie of yes-men.
> the abject failure of the war is not a failure of the US military, it's a failure of its executive leadership
It's a bit of both. Our lack of mine-clearing and anti-drone technology is a legitimate weakness, as are our defence-production gaps. The damage done to our system of alliances, moreover, directly weakens our military standing.
Even if we destroyed it, RU would be happy to resupply. What has this war that nobody wanted cost just at the gas pumps all over the world and who stood to benefit? I really do think I’d be better off having had been born a century or two ago reading books under a candle and digging outhouses when needed.
The reasons are very clear: Bibi owns Trump, Israel will unlikely have a US president as supportive again, they want as many facts on the ground as they can get whilst they have him.
I don't know if Trump could walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, but he sure seems able to screw Ukraine and bomb Iran at the same time. He just finished sending Vance to Hungary to stump for Orban, too. The love affair between far-right authoritarian leaders is not a 2 person relationship.
Is he doing anything that is hindering Putin? That theory still very much holds. Both Putin and Netanyahu can realistically have kompromat on him, seeing how incredibly brazen and stupid he is.
Do you mean the replacing of the old Khamenei with a younger, more vigorous and extreme Khamenei? Utterly destroying the world economy (as well as the environment, but who cares about that) for what gain specifically? Or do you mean decimating the US allies in Europe and the West?
Yeah, we didn't want Iran to have nukes, so we rugpulled the JCPOA and murdered the guy who declared a fatwa against nukes.
We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) so we butchered 170 school girls and didn't apologize.
We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon and directly induced Iran to close the Strait.
> We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon
Consider this hypothetical situation. Iran funds a terrorist group operating in Tijuana to fire rockets across the border into San Diego. Assume the Mexican government is not organized enough to stop the terrorists from firing rockets.
What do you think the response of the US Government would be? Please recall what we did after 9/11 before answering.
Israel isn’t invading Egypt and Jordan, I wonder if it’s because there’s no Iran-funded terrorist groups firing rockets from those countries or if there’s some other reason.
Israel definitely has blood on their hands, but how do you suggest they deal with terrorist groups funded by Iran operating in lawless areas of neighboring countries that are firing rockets at civilians in Israel?
Israel has been invaded by all of its neighbors simultaneously more than once, it’s a pretty complex situation that spans over a hundred years. Europeans and Arab nations (aside from the Ottomans) treated Jews like shit for centuries, pogroms and holocausts and expulsions and forced migrations. No wonder they want to keep the nation of Israel around, everyone else has tried exterminating them. Just try not to be so reductionist and polarizing about it, it’s a complex historical situation with many shades of gray.
I know my opinion is probably unpopular around here, but it’s how I see it. Israel has done some horrible shit, but they aren’t just rampaging against any non Jew in sight, there were Hezbollah operatives constantly firing rockets into northern Israel for years. What’s happening in Lebanon (and Syria and may other places) sucks, and that massive pier explosion certainly didn’t help.
> Israel definitely has blood on their hands, but how do you suggest they deal with terrorist groups funded by Iran operating in lawless areas of neighboring countries that are firing rockets at civilians in Israel?
What they do is stop raping and murdering people, settling on their land and then acting shocked that the country they are taking over is reacting in a violent way in response.
Israel are the terrorists who invaded Palestine and have committed crimes against humanity all across the Middle East. Your hypothetical situation is nothing at all like what's going on in reality. Iran is our ally against Zionist occupation of our own government.
Yes, an aggressive regime that develops nuclear weapons (otherwise why all this enrichment?), stockpiles missiles and drones that, funds terrorists like hezbolla, hoothis and hamas, should be stopped.
Yes, when you apply military force, civilians die. Nobody is happy about it, at least in US.
Yes, Iran closed the strait, because Trump taco'ed again and can't use force against it.
Yes, Israel bombs hezbolla, because what else should they do to people that shoot rockets at Israel? Send them fresh water and electricity? They tried it with Gaza, didn't help.
Nitpick: the analogy is an open-air prison. Because prisons usually have ceilings. Open-air concentration camp is just a concentration camp, which doesn't really appropriately describe a siege.
It's (was) neither prison nor concentration camp. It wasn't even "occupied" by Israel. Last Israelis were forced to move out 20 years ago, and never came back.
That piece of land could be heaven on earth with all support that they received.
Many reason were articulated, including the threat on an immediate attack on the US. That reason ran counter to defense assessments. Also, the reasons and goals stated by Trump (“President of Peace” and inaugural awardee of the FIFA peace prize), Rubio, and Hegseth have not been consistent.
Was the reason to open the Strait that was already open, prevent an attack, to prevent Iran from making a nuclear weapon, or to change a regime?
I believe Rubio stated the reason at the very beginning of the war. The US learned that Israel was going to attack and jumped in. Everything after that is bullshit.
The reasons given were complete bullshit. So maybe it's not true that they weren't articulated, but the reasons that were articulated don't hold up to scrutiny.
And, yes, on top of that, the action itself was poorly planned and executed, which just adds insult to injury.
> Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company
I can't imagine any of them are confused about this. I'd expect most are proud to support our military.
The line that's been crossed is the military being turned against Americans. Palantir helping ICE surveil and round up folks who turned out to be, in many cases, innocent American citizens, seems to be what's prompting–correctly, in my opinion–the crisis of faith.
They're defense contractors the same way IBM and Oracle are. Palantir has a huge USG business, but they're also widely used across the Fortune 500. From the coverage of Palantir online you'd think the company actually manufactured Palantirs, but they are in fact a database consultingware company; one person described them to me as "Oracle but with the benefit of the Web 2.0 technology stack".
People read things like this and a switch flips in their brain, that they're being told to be more charitable to Palantir, and that's not at all where I'm coming from. Rather: the attention paid to Palantir does a very effective job of running cover for Oracle, IBM, and Cisco.
Obviously, the ludicrous marketing/communications operation Palantir is running doesn't make any of this any simpler to reason about. Imagine getting a manifesto from AWS alongside your S3 bill urging you to reconsider Apostolic succession in the traditional Catholic church; that's the vibe they've managed to create.
Palantir also deliberately choose a name with sinister overtones, they're just short of calling themselves "torment Nexus builders Inc" or something. I used to think their logic was that someone would build it so it might as well be people who saw the moral hazard, but now I think they're just going all in on the evil overlord brand. Summer kind of pied piper thing maybe.
We all get that Oracle has literally the same naming provenance, right? Actually more so: they took the name from the Central Intelligence Agency project they started the company with.
Every time this comes up, I find myself asking, "what do you think a secret phase conjugate tracking system is for?" Maybe it's just that I'm older than the median here, but when I was a kid, the mere concept of a relational database was something that stirred disquiet in the press; people were worried databases were going to take over society. It was not a completely crazy concern!
One throughline of history is database-ization. Some of our older writings are records of ownership and tax liabilities. We keep moving information from the real world into a database. We have done it so much that the database is sometimes more important than the real world. Someone marked “dead” in a database can have a hard time living!
There's at least one company that straight-up reverses a pacifistic cultural reference: a Ukrainian autonomous weapons company called The Fourth Law, as in Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics to prevent humans from coming to harm.
Apart from my own thoughts on the Ukraine war and autonomous weapons, that name makes me feel like the company's founders either haven't engaged with the moral questions of their technology, or want to mock them.
A reference to "The Fourth Law" in that context is quite ambiguous, because not only did Asimov introduce a "Zeroth Law" that is sometimes also called the Fourth, but also subsequent fanfic introduced "Fourth Laws" that had different texts and different objectives, including one by a Bulgarian author. So there is no singular or canon "Fourth Law of Robotics".
The way I see it is that sousveillance is the correct response to surveillance.
If people feel threatened by this organization and the people who make it up they should start doing to them what they're doing to everyone else.
Who specifically works at Palantir? What do they look like? Where do they live? What kind of vehicle do they drive? How do they spend their free time? Who do they associate with?
These are all very interesting questions.
Questions that can be answered and answers that can be distributed online, forever.
Also wrong. Palantir itself does not do surveillance. It sells software to government agencies, who use that software to conduct surveillance.
If the IRS uses Excel, that doesn't mean Microsoft is actively catching tax evasion. Microsoft is selling spreadsheet software, and one of the users of that software is the IRS.
Yeah, for sure. Defense contracting is as good or bad as the policies of the government which is going to change over time. All else being equal, if we want to live in a safe and successful society we want good/talented people working in defense. The trick is holding the government accountable for its policies and profligate defense spending.
> Defense contracting is as good or bad as the policies of the government which is going to change over time.
This is true sometimes. But many times the companies and the government get together to kill people for money (The dead people's money or the taxpayers money - they don't mind which, money is money)
I don't agree with this. Just because the DOD says it is ethical doesn't mean it is so contractors have a duty to maintain ethical standards in the face of changing DOD standards. To me this means a DOD contractor decides before they go in that they will have limits and sticks to them. I think anyone working for Palantir right now should be considering the limits they have and if the company is going beyond them or not. I know that I for one do not consider their work ethical and would not work for them even though the DOD says it is ok. Understand before you sign.
To a large degree you can't choose how the DoD or other letter agency uses what they buy from you. Obviously you can set some contractual guardrails but realistically if you build drones that can mount hellfire missiles you have to know that it can be misused by some 22 year old. Its tempting to believe that software is different, but once its on-prem its out of your hands.
The difference is scale and accountability. Surveillance tech is impacting everyone and is part of every kill chain but its not what people see so there is very little accountability for it. Building a drone that launches something has far less scale and far more accountability since its effects are visible. I personally think there is a big difference between being part of something with at least some accountability and limited scale compared to unlimited scale and no accountability. Of course many people would disagree and set their levels lower (mine are actually lower than this now) but I think that DOD contractors can think in at least this level of terms and decide to be apart of some things and not others in a meaningful way. No matter what though, a problem being hard isn't an excuse for throwing your hands up and saying 'I'm good because the DOD says it is ok'
In isolation your clarification is right, but considering that US department of War actually kills hundreds of thousands of people, there should be no question about negativity of that department
I have had an active hand in designing weapons at a defense contractor (I was at one time an expert in external ballistics simulation) and I'd feel uncomfortable with the morality of working at Palantir.
How do you reconcile having worked in this capacity mentally? Not being snarky or judgemental, genuinely curious as to the mindset of someone who has been in this position.
> How do you reconcile having worked in this capacity mentally? Not being snarky or judgemental, genuinely curious as to the mindset of someone who has been in this position.
I don't work at defense contractor, but it would probably help to imagine the situation Ukraine is in. If no one in the West was comfortable working in this capacity, it would all be Russian territory now (and more besides).
Reading this, I was surprised to learn that I now consider the idea of working on old-school conventional weapons almost, like, quaint.
What with all the ways our new military/techno-industrial complex is working to automate murder, surveillance and terror at scale ... it makes me nostalgic for that old-fashioned artisanal state-sanctioned murder, made in small batches by real humans.
That reminds me of a sci-fi quote, where one of the main characters is discussing a murderous antagonist, putting their evil into a broader context:
> "He was just a little villain. An old-fashioned craftsman, making crimes one-off. The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real."
You may have gotten caught up in the hype. It's still intelligence, logistics, bullets, missiles, and airplanes (etc.)
The beginnings of "automated murder" were anti-aircraft weapons that implemented a kind of mechanical computer that beat humans in predicting where aircraft were going to be (you have to shoot at where the plane is going to be when your bullets get there). Look up Norbert Wiener.
For a century it's been automation assisted, none of this is new, it's just been improving consistently. They had UAVs in WWI for gods sake. (flying things without people in them, used in war)
I have been in the same position. Maybe I was naive but I believed that weapons design wasn't the most moral thing in the world, but sadly necessary, and I actually trusted the military to .. I guess act in legitimate and legal ways. That if those weapons were used in a conflict, it would be defensive and defendable morally.
Of course that was before the inexplicable adventurism in the Middle East.
There's usually a bit more accountability in using a missile than using palantir systems. At least legally, a missile could only be used in defense or in a war authorized by the congress.
Until recently, most of the population believed that the vast majority of America's military actions were somewhat just and legal, for noble reasons.
> At least legally, a missile could only be used in defense or in a war authorized by the congress.
Some Iranians might disagree with you on that point. They can't, though, as they're dead, killed by missiles used not in defense and not in a war authorized by Congress.
> Until recently, most of the population believed that the vast majority of America's military actions were somewhat just and legal, for noble reasons.
That's naive. The US has been using its military for unjust actions (of dubious legality, often "made legal" after the fact) longer than I've been on this Earth.
"At least legally" It doesn't matter if this is true for this situation, as an employee you only need to have been convinced this is true.
"Most of the population believed" - Again, even if they were mistaken, if they believed it, and let me tell you, a lot of the people STILL believes it, that belief is enough to enure you'll have a good night of sleep after a shift in a Lockheed office or factory.
Pragmatism. We live in the real world, one where threat of violence and actual violence is indeed sometimes necessary. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was peaceful and we could all get along happy and free? Sure, but that's not the world we live in and sticking my head in the sand and leaving the necessary dirty work to other people would bring me no more peace than helping do the necessary things as well as possible.
The most weaponlike thing I worked on was a sniper rifle program, and to me precision weapons are one of those best you can do in an imperfect world kinds of things.
Under the name of the* same government. You can’t equate 1940s US govt with today’s government. Different people different priorities different actions. Not necessarily saying good or bad one way or the other. But ‘same’ is reductionist way of interpreting the situation. There’s plenty of nuance.
I'm unsure of how this information is being presented. But it's entirely possible for the majority of people on Earth to avoid all those things. And it's entirely possible for many people who are (perhaps unwittingly) funding U.S. defense companies to stop doing so.
This makes it sound as though doing business with Palantir is akin to doing business with Lockheed Martin, RTX Corp (Raytheon), Northrop Grumman etc. This ignores important, qualitatively different ways that Palantir is worse: eg intentional white supremacist goals from Karp (Oswald Mosley fan) and Thiel (dismantling of multiculturalism), as well as Palantir's role in the surge of surveillance capitalism that treats US citizens as the opponent, rather than the more classic statist-aligned goals of US Govt/US Capital whose contempt for human life and human rights was pointed externally - so, while harmful, was still esstentially compatible with democratic principles.
As I said in another comment, I think it’s important to debate what these companies are doing, how they’re doing it, and whether the United States’ actions are morally and legally justified.
But I also think we need to get more smart people interested and working in national security. That’s the way you get the best balance between effective security and the minimum negative side effects to civil liberties or collateral damage, by having the smartest people inside these companies coming up with the best tech while also shaping the conversation from the inside.
It’s easier to just dunk on the big bad company (and maybe they are bad!) but I don’t think that solves anything. National security should be something more people participate in, not less.
We had a few smart people in national security, but they're getting fired. The Navy Secretary was just forced out. There's nothing that can help when the problem is upper management.
Yes, and the same can be said for the civilian workforce. The Pentagon’s labs and technical expertise are being hollowed out, and I worry we’re being left with an acquisition corps that’s incapable of holding its own in technical conversations with profit-maximizing contractors.
“Would you like the undercarriage coating for your new Abrams?”
But FYI, Phelan was just a private equity guy installed by Trump. The reason he was fired is because he wasn't building the "Trump class" battleships Trump wanted. Which were supposed to have WW1 era appearance because Trump is an "aesthetics guy" and doesn't like the look of modern stealth ships.
Not autistic, but if that's what autism is I certainly wouldn't want a cure for having a personality. God forbid somebody find something visually appealing, wouldn't that be a crime against the raw efficiency of making everything on the planet a drab grey box. It's a stupid vanity project with no practical purpose, if billions are going to be wasted on it anyways why not let it be eye-pleasing?
> by having the smartest people inside these companies coming up with the best tech while also shaping the conversation from the inside.
The smartest people don't get that choice. Oppenheimer, Teller and Ulam were all ignored in matters of policy, the Manhattan Project was not designed to integrate their political feedback. Conversely, the scientists at Peenemünde never got to question the effectiveness of V-1 bombs with a CEP measured in miles. Their participation in policy was deliberately severed, ultimately to the detriment of the Wehrmacht.
When you start seeing technologies that affront humanity - warrantless surveillance, civilian terror weapons, chemical/biological agents - that's when normal people step out. No amount of sanewashing will fix the underlying administrative issue, it only exacerbates the underlying moral dilemma.
Fair point. I don’t think that simply working at a defense-tech would or should give someone sway over political decisions.
Which might be also good: von Neumann advocated for a U.S. nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.
In the context of this thread my claim is simply that smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier. The choice to use those weapons still lies with our elected leaders.
I guess that's what I'm confused by, then. Americans don't have a duty to prevent their government from descending into crony capitalism. As long as the Fed undervalues intelligent labor, the smartest Americans are incentivized to go the private ownership route and extort the defense industry themselves. Protecting DARPA and preserving valuable Pentagon assets is the federal government's job - nobody else is paid to care about it, nobody else can fix it.
> smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier.
That's conjecture, as far as I'm aware. Again, the earliest researchers of spacecraft were being forced to design a pitiful terrorist weapon. Those same scientists wouldn't meaningfully progress peaceful space exploration until decades later. There is no balance inherent to having good ideas or executing them well, the procurement process can (and frequently does) excise intelligent thought when tensions run high.
FWIW, I bear little ill-will towards the defense industry or US service members. I just think that "shaping the conversation" is a fool's errand when "the conversation" is warrantless surveillance, and "shaping" simply means finding the best way to do it. An intelligent humanitarian would be fired long before they instill an ounce of ethical change.
The trendy SV defense companies (Palantir, Andruil) seem to be all "killing is fun and good, actually" with an underlying current of white nationalism. We might need defense technology, but not like this. Super fucked up.
At first I thought their marketing was some sort of tongue-in-cheek satire of themselves. But no, they are genuinely white supremicists.. odd since their CEO is a black-ish Jew
can you be more specific about what you mean by "smart people"
like what are some examples of the kinds of people you mean -- what degrees are they getting, what causes are they applying their intellect to right now that are _not_ national security, etc.
> As I said in another comment, I think it’s important to debate what these companies are doing, how they’re doing it, and whether the United States’ actions are morally and legally justified.
I think it's sometimes hard to debate these issues in tech circles. In my experience something like 5-10% of techies are vocally critical of these companies or anything National Security related. This article headline is a great example, a serious debate is difficult when you compare people who disagree with you to Nazis
I was discussing resume screening with a jr engineer and unprompted he mentioned he would filter out anyone who worked at a defense contractor, not knowing I had worked at one. I tried to make sure he was removed from interviewing as he obviously wasn't mature enough for it.
> This article headline is a great example, a serious debate is difficult when you compare people who disagree with you to Nazis
You know that the Nazi comparison isn't because of the disagreement, but because of what that disagreement is based on?
It's really not hard to compare ICE to the Gestapo or SA, core Nazi institutions. They're kidnapping people off the streets in brutal manners, targeting them based on immutable visual characteristics, sending them to camps from where many are never heard of again. Including people who are citizens and thus not even "guilty" of the crime which is supposedly being targeted.
Palantir as a company enables that. In the same way we legitimately call out Dehomag (IBM's German subsidiary) for them enabling all Nazi atrocities, we can call out Palantir for enabling the current atrocities.
It's not "disagreement", it's "if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a fucking Nazi duck".
It was, which is why it makes such a perfect analogy.
Surveillance has lots of good and bad uses, and is morally neutral itself. Powerful but neutral. The problem comes when the users use it for bad purposes, and in fact it is so tempting that they can't help using it for more and more bad purposes. If every palantir (either one) user was a "good guy" who refused to use it for bad purposes, it would be a potent force for good, and that's why they were created in the first place.
I thoroughly disagree. Surveillance is an invasive tool of control, and as such intrinsically immoral. Just like a slew of other immoral actions, it may be a net positive when applied for a greater good, but if not used for anything, it's evil.
This is trivially true to most common moral understandings. If my neighbor installs a camera pointing through my window and into my shower, applying some fancy technique to see through clouded glass, most of us would justly think that was immoral of him, even in complete absence of any other immoral actions facilitated by that surveillance.
That depends on the definition of "surveillance". Should a foreman not pay close attention to his workers? Should a hospital not track its patients' locations and vital stats while within the hospital? Are cameras in a jewelry shop morally wrong?
Your neighbor's surveillance of you is bad because they're violating your privacy, and using the tool of surveillance to do it. If you lived in a foggy area and they were monitoring their front walkway with a camera that was good at seeing through fog, and they happened to get a corner of your property in the camera's field of view, then you might have something to complain about but I wouldn't call it morally wrong.
I agree that surveillance is a tool of control. So are fences. It's ok to control some things.
I also agree that surveillance gets into sticky territory very, very quickly. I definitely don't have a clean dividing line between what I'd like the police to be able to see and what they shouldn't. (Especially when the temptation to share that data is so strong and frequently succumbed to.) I would probably say in some useless abstract sense, mass surveillance is also morally neutral. But given that it's proven to be pretty much impossible to implement in a way that doesn't end up serving more evil than good, I wouldn't object to calling it immoral.
IMHO surveillance is a problem when it is asymmetric ; which is obviously the case here. Governments for example are watching everyone inside and outside, but the people that are being monitored simply cannot really watch the people watching them. Don't you agree ?
In this view, maybe an ultra radical solution to privacy issues is : no privacy at all, for no-one. Complete and total transparency of everyone to everyone. Now the question is how to implement that ? That's obviously impossible, because someone in power will always have something to hide. So maybe if true democracy where everyone holds exactly the same amount of power that could work ? Same issue, because it is impossible to implement too. Oh well.
That is a "justifies extreme violence to prevent" type suggestion. Privacy is a basic human right. The problem is power. No one should be in a position to spy on everyone.
if its ok for the foreman to control the workers, you would then say its ok for the foreman to hold the workers at gun point while they work?
id say the control is immoral, in all forms. Voluntary agreement and consent are fine but then its not surveillance, its people saying where they are. the patient wants the doctor to know where they are and what they are doing, and not just letting the doctor decide on their own what to know.
the worker wants the foreman to know that they are present and working, in fulfilment of their contract together. its not surveillance either.
the jewelry store itself is immoral, but private property and control thereof is a tradeoff we've made
Again, there are plenty of instances where enough good comes from surveillance that it outweighs the intrinsic negative, but denying that it is, in of itself, intrinsically negative suggests that some creepy dude monitoring everyone's every move is just fine, as long as he's not doing anything else.
A more obvious parallel is violence. To trip over Godwin's law, shooting Hitler would have been a moral action, but not because "shooting people" is amoral. Shooting a random person is definitely immoral. We constantly do immoral things for the greater good, but it is a mistake to thusly assume those actions are amoral.
the palantir weren't created for spying, they were created so that the various kingdoms of middle earth could stay in contact with each other. The palantir are a party line. It just got real sketchy when Minas Ithil fell (and became Minas Morgul) and Sauron got possession of the orb. After which the kings of gondor stopped using them.
There are morally neutral technologies, but the unique quality of surveillance data containing PII (and tools to correlate across time and space) means that it's only morally neutral until it is used in any capacity. Which is to say, it is not morally neutral.
You've already made a pretty big leap from surveillance to storing surveillance data persistently, and another to the tools. I'm not going to argue that mass surveillance is morally neutral.[1]
Tolkien's Palantirs let you see and communicate and influence across vast distances. That's no more immoral than a videophone. Of course, that's also not surveillance; that'd be a telescope. But surely telescopes aren't immoral?
[1] I mean, I would, but (1) you can't create a mass surveillance system from a morally neutral or positive place, and (2) it seems nearly impossible to implement a mass surveillance system without creating more harm than benefit. So it becomes a boring semantics argument as to whether mass surveillance is fundamentally immoral or not.
The palantiri were created by Fëanor. The kinslayer whose pride, rage, and desire for vengeance drove most of his people to their doom. The potential to corrupt was always present in them.
In the LotR, Aragorn bends a palantir to his will and uses it for good with great difficulty. He manages to do that, because he is (in addition to everything else) the trueborn king and the palantiri are his birthright. Denethor, on the other hand, succumbs to corruption. While he is a powerful lord with good intentions, he is only a steward, not a king. The right to use the palantiri is not inherent in his being, because he only wields power in someone else's name.
I think that's also one of those problems in stories like this, that there's a powerful tool with the power to corrupt but only those chosen few by right can wield it without becoming corrupted.
It implies that there will always be people ordained through some manner which are incorruptible and therefore can use these things to "fight evil". The usual suspects in our world are people in Government, and by extension in military and law enforcement.
One example of someone actually destroying such a device after they finished using it rather than letting themselves be corrupted by it was Batman after he finished using it to locate the Joker. But of course this was in a fictional movie, and in no way represents the real world.
surveillance creates leverage over people. its not neutral if it creates a power imbalance, especially since its used by the wealthy on the poor.
you can't do surveillance and not learn the bad knowledge, and once youve created the bad knowledge its just a matter of time before it gets into nefarious hands.
a "bad guy" could still hack the "good guys" or palantir itself, and get access to all the bad data the "good guys" have created.
> he could corrupt the other users through the orb, but the orb itself was not corrupting?
Interestingly enough, the stones could not lie. They only showed real things. Sauron's corruption was achieved through a lack of context. Just like Palantir (the company) can do with data. A dataset can be completely truthful, but lead to a false or manipulative conclusion.
But to the original point, yeah, the name Palantir is spot on for what the company intends to do, anyone who even has remote knowledge of Middle Earth wouldn't dare touch that company with a 10 foot pole.
Sauron is the reason the palantiri are dangerous, yes, because his influence causes them to mislead and delude the viewer. That happens even when Sauron is not directly influencing the visions. Essentially, when the forces of evil are present, the seeing stones may show the truth but in such a profoundly misleading way that even those with the best intentions will misinterpret their visions and fall prey to misunderstanding. This even happens to Sauron himself.
It's worth noting that by the War of the Ring (the Lord of the Rings story) Sauron had possessed a palantir for around 1000 years. Anyone who knew what a palantir was should have known that they were not to be trusted.
As for how that relates to Palantir the real-life corporation, I'll leave that up to your interpretation.
The Elephant Graveyard video that went viral a while back, that was a comedic troll of Rogan, Musk, Theil, etc (also a half-serious commentary) - had an entertaining sequence at the end about Palantiri/LOTR
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.
I’m not being facetious when I say: are they that slow or really suffering from Messiah Complex?
I have no problem that they are doing what they’re doing. Someone was going to do it. But to be so oblivious to it is a problem. One would argue that it’s a national security problem.
I remember seeing postings for "Forward Deployed Engineers" and thinking that this naming convention targets folks who don't like to work out but still have a military fetish and want to feel important.
It's self-aggrandizing egos all the way down/up (to Alex Karp).
The anti Palantir / anti AI / anti tech / anti billionaire sentiment is just way too strong. Far, far to many people post inflammatory things for the data collection to really matter.
Contrary to Karp’s fantasies, he will not have the capability to send fent-laced piss drones to every single person who’s ever criticized him.
In addition, the more data they have on us, the higher the odds they have something “bad”. So the irony of them increasing the volume of surveillance data is that it becomes pointless for people to “behave” in front of the camera once they’ve “crossed the line”.
Doesn't really matter if you talk shit online, it's just passive aggressive pressure relief. What matters is you not being able to effectively protest or do anything about it.
Well actually it does make a difference. Precrime only works if they can separate signal from noise. Much like how the more users there are on the Tor network, the easier it is to blend in, overriding the system with “threat signals” just adds noise to their predictive models.
And in addition to that, talking shit online lets others know they’re not alone. It increases the odds of coordinated action.
The best propaganda trick up the CIA etc.’s sleeve right now is the illusion of inevitability and learned helplessness. Online voicing of opinions is critical to fighting both of these tactics.
> I'm going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don't get distracted by that; I didn't know at the time.
— Caleb Hearth
Everyone know what Palantir was. The name is a dead-give-away.
I think it is really time that the superrich are downsized.
Certain companies that are working against the people also
need to be removed. Key considerations in any democracy need
to be consistent. Palantir (and others) create inconsistencies.
Granted, none of this will be fixed while the orange king is
having his daily rage-fits, but sooner or later this is an
inter-generational problem, no matter which puppet is taking
over.
The palantir of the novel weren't surveillance tools. They were a party line, the Gondorians used them to talk to their various outposts throughout middle earth, the three we see in the movies (there may be more in the books, it's been a long time) were at Isenguard, Minis Tirith and the Palantir of Minis Ithil (now Minis Morgul) that Sauron took to Baradur.
When Sauron took Minas Ithil and captured the Palanir that was kept there the Kings of Gondor forbade the use of them. It is shown that Sauron can use them to corrupt and read the thoughts of the other users. We also see him use them for their intended purpose when he conspires with Saruman.
All to say Peter Thiel doesn't understand Lord of the Rings.
This is exactly the kind of ethical tension big‑tech workers need to talk about more: you can build “cool” systems, but if the use case is harm, is it still worth it? Wonder how other engineers in the room would act in the same position.
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 don't think, either willfully or because of lack of introspection in general, about these things.
> 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 other hand is an invisible weapon. They could be reading my comment right now and identifying me with sentiment "adversarial" for all I know. What implications that has on my daily life is innumerable...and I'm a US citizen!
> 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."
> 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).
Or it's a lot more complicated and doesn't lend itself to blank-and-white answers. Say you're working on nuclear weapons technology: is your job building weapons to enable the genocidal destruction of another country, or to prevent that kind of thing through a credible MAD deterrent? Both things are simultaneously true.
And then there's no way to predict the future: what's true today when you build it may not be true tomorrow when it's used, because there's a different leader or political system in place.
> Or it's a lot more complicated and doesn't lend itself to blank-and-white answers.
Did I say it wasn't complicated? I'll admit I didn't say it was complicated, but you can't infer a sentiment from a non-existent statement in either direction.
Yes, it's complicated. But I stand by my statement that many people just don't think about it. They want to solve interesting problems or to get paid well, or both, and so they take jobs at places like Palantir without thinking through the consequences.
Many others do think it through and either find a way to justify it, or do work they don't like and live with the emotional consequences of it.
> Yes, it's complicated. But I stand by my statement that many people just don't think about it...so they take jobs at places like Palantir without thinking through the consequences.
> Many others do think it through and either find a way to justify it
Do they not think about it, or just not talk about it to you? I could totally see someone thinking about it in private, accepting some justification or reason, and then moving on to their work and not discussing it.
I'm the sort who asks. Many who answered just didn't think it through, they didn't think about what the thing they were working on actually did within the larger system. I won't generalize this to the whole population (why I won't claim it's the majority of all people in the field) but the majority I did discuss this with had, at best, a hand-wavey "national defense" justification but did not think about what the thing they worked on did. Its effectiveness for its job, or its ultimate purpose.
Though a lot actually just wouldn't even discuss it in the first place. I think, though, that if you're going to work on a weapon or a component for a weapon you owe it to yourself to think deeply about the topic. I've known too many people who thought about it too late and realized that they couldn't live with it. Better to figure that out at the start and change career paths than at the end and either kill yourself or drink yourself to death.
Imagine I came to know that ghosts exist with supernatural powers. My first reaction shouldn't be of fear. It should be of curiosity. What laws are prevailing in ghost realm which provides them with great powers over material world. Does one becoming a ghost suddenly know the truth of Rieman Hypothesis or P=NP?
The same could be asked of people who are supposed to know better by virtue of them close to knowledge and technology. Should they spend their improving lives of others or enslaving them for material gains?
I think this is a weird side effect of how we portray evil corporations in fiction and in journalism. We imagine that everyone working there is a moustache-twirling villain. And then we get a job at Meta or Flock or Palantir, look around, and don't see any moustache-twirling villains. There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys.
Even if some of the outcomes seem reprehensible, it's not really evil because we're good people. We do it in a responsible and caring way. We're truly sorry that your grandma is now hooked up on endless AI-generated slop, but shouldn't the media be talking about all the other grandmas whose lives are enriched by our AI? We have strict safety rules for the types of cryptocurrency ads that can target the elderly, too.
Let me tell you. I worked at a IRS equivalent service in another country, and a lot of what I did was not very different from spying in our own citizens.
And you know what? there's a pervasive ideology in the place that justifies it all.
One day you wake up, and you realize that you see the tax payer as a cunning and evil adversary that needs to be reigned upon, and you see that all the jokes, the water cooler talk, the general ethos is toward this vision of the tax payer, even if the official documents say otherwise.
And we are talking about Tax Payers here. Now imagine an organization like Palantir that can de-humanize their targets marking them with the Terrorist label. It is easy to convince people that they are on the right side.
> you see the tax payer as a cunning and evil adversary that needs to be reigned upon, and you see that all the jokes, the water cooler talk, the general ethos is toward this vision of the tax payer
Any force employing threat of violence for control does the same. Police presence, military occupation, hell you even see it in the eyes of loss prevention folks.
> There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys.
It can get pretty close at times. Witness Meta and Zuck being told, in clear terms, that there was clear material threats to Burmese dissidents with some of the asks of Facebook. "The features matter more."
55% Palantir revenue comes from government contracts and 50% from the US govenment.
With this "are we the bad guys" perspective, I wonder how much of the "evil" they are apparently doing is a result of the current view a majority of people globally have with the current administration?
Though we may find it difficult to separate the two, because it seems leadership and the founders of Palantir are supportive of, and in some ways responsible for, Trump getting elected, but with different leadership using the tools in different ways, would we still consider Palantir the bad guys?
personally yes, i've considered them the bad guys from day one. they have always publicly portrayed themselves as enabling mass surveillance so i'm not even sure why this sudden crisis of conscience, unless the trump administration has finally made it clear to even the thickest-headed of them that mass surveillance is not a good thing.
> “I’m curious why this had to be posted. Especially on the company account. On the practical level every time stuff like that gets posted it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the US (for sure in the current political climate), and I doubt we need this in the US?” wrote one frustrated employee. The message received more than 50 “+1” emojis.
> “Wether [sic] we acknowledge it or not, this impacts us all personally,” another worker wrote on Monday. “I’ve already had multiple friends reach out and ask what the hell did we post.” This message received nearly two dozen “+1” emoji reactions.
> “Yeah it turns out that short-form summaries of the book’s long-form ideas are easy to misrepresent. It’s like we taped a ‘kick me’ sign on our own backs,” a third worker wrote. “I hope no one who decided to put this out is surprised that we are, in fact, getting kicked.”
entirely possible they're phrasing their concerns on the corporate slack to be 'pro-company' so they don't worry about getting fired for their views but it doesn't actually sound like they're wondering anything, they're just bothered that it's being brought to light.
I wouldn't say they necessarily aren't personally concerned as well. I think quite often if people disagree with their employer but don't want to lose their jobs, it's more amenable to phrase disagreement like they have there. Yes it would be braver to just come out and say "I really don't like this", but at least it's braver than saying nothing at all.
Sounds like they're having a 'NSA Moment'. After the leaks, there was a Bunch of high profile stories about employees leaving after their neighbors/friends/normies found out the sorts of stuff NSA was up to....
While I believe it's good that we call it out, there will always be enough people willing to do evil for money. It'll have to be shut down from the outside and that's where our focus should be.
I work at a non-defense tech company, and it's basically a running joke that no matter how bad the job market is, none of us are soulless enough to go looking for work at Palantir, even if the pay is good.
I would have trouble trusting the kind of person who would work at Palantir. It seems like it could be career-limiting in the long run.
That is strange. I work at Cisco and nobody has mentioned the slightest political aside about anything, ever. No one would ever say something like that about Palantir or its opposite.
I would have trouble working at the kind of place with those running jokes in the office.
>Join as skynet developer for EvilOrb corporation run by an actual cartoon villain
>Skynet trained by MoralArmy(tm) in Gaza
>Blows up an elementary school in opening strikes of war
>SurprisedPickachuFace.webp
Weird. I worked near a Palantir office in 2017 and I remember thinking it would be "morally challenging" to work there. 9 years later, it's just becoming apparent?
It's not like these guys have any media literacy or emotional intelligence to speak of. If they did, they wouldn't have gone to work for Thiel and Karp's perfectly named company.
I'm pretty sure this is the same population of people who lost (and may still be losing sleep) over Roko's Basilisk. They're clever but not smart.
When I worked at a company that was using Palantir's software about 15 years ago the average age of a Palantir employee was in the early 20s in my experience.
It was almost certainly everyone's first job.
It's not too hard to think of ways you can get a bunch of young folks do your bidding without them questioning the motives or what kind of moral challenges the job has.
Seeing that type of email coming from a company like Anduril would honestly freak me the frick out, no ifs and no buts about it. Which probably means I'd never be part of their target audience.
I was contacted by Palantir recruiters about 15 years ago. I found the name troubling along with the gov't contracts, as well as learning that spending one night a week at the office was encouraged.
I visited the office near University Avenue, once, many years ago. I found the freezer full of ice cream, the fragrant gaming room, and the heavily used bunk beds very disturbing. I'm not surprised they encouraged employees to spend one night a week there.
Hearing my boss, Muad’Dib, say “There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.” and wondering what he means by all that
Palantir is not wrong that AI diminishes the power of Democrat and more-educater women voters. It will just diminish Republican and less-educated male voters too.
Unless it is being trained and applied to suppressing certain groups. Karp said a not-so-quiet goal out loud.
A lot of things delenda est. The ever-growing length of the delenda-est list and the nonexistent rate at which we're est'ing all those delendas is quite worrisome at this point.
One aspect of my job is that I have a lot of autonomy and the work I do is such that I could push something out to the production environment and cause massive problems. We have processes in place to make sure that doesn't happen, but they're not robust processes, if you really wanted to you could get something out there that is harmful to the company. Now, there are two ways of looking at that - one is that it's really important to have robust processes to make sure that doesn't happen. But the other is you need people who understand that responsibility and take it seriously and whose personal values are such that they aren't just going to carelessly do stuff. At the end of the day the processes are only good if they're followed.
So one of the things I strongly look for when hiring is for people who have a high sense of personal responsibility. They're not going to just throw shit out there because it's easy or quick. They know they are responsible for what goes out and they really are going to own that responsbility.
In the same way, take a look at anything senior management says about their ICE or military contracts. It's not that I think they're doing something bad or that the military shouldn't have access to good technology. It's that at best they seem entirely disinterested in that what they're doing could be harmful or that they have any responsibility if it is.
It's not that I think Palantir is helping the US government bomb Iranian school chilren. It's that I don't think it would bother them if they were.
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.
To quote the Declaration of Independence "...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
When your product is used by a military occupation to target and kill civilians and their families [1][2], it's kind of shocking that there's any doubt. But as Upton Sinclair said:
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I would go further and argue that Palantir employees are just as valid military targets as occupation soldiers are.
It was always really obvious but that recent full-throated-fascist manifesto has left no doubt. One thing Palantir have going for them is this deranged movie-villain-style transparency about their intentions, they don't even care about hiding it.
"a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb"
Desperate for some negative sentiment aren't we? The orbs were not "corrupting" in any way. Can we just have reporting anymore without everything being slanted?
The "manifesto" Palantir posted seemed pretty reasonable to me given their company mission and alignment. I don't get the backlash. It's much less worse than what they're already accused of, I think. It doesn't make me think worse of them at all.
It read like a C- college sophomore dudebro who read some Ayn Rand and Raspail and Yockey and said "I fucking am John Galt", hit a bong, and got to scribbling their 'manifesto'.
All three of these suggestions are likely true. I’ve never done Ketamine but I’ve heard it can seriously degrade the user’s “quality control” of their ideas, meaning that ideas that they have, or ideas they get from others, that are intellectually subpar appear to be quite brilliant. The dissociation is also helpful for overcoming moral qualms if they were ever present.
Combine that with speed and a insular SV culture steeped in the ideology of Ayn Rand and Nick Land (who likely suffered from amphetamine psychosis) and you get something like this Palantir manifesto.
I would feel sorry for them if they weren’t building skynet.
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 just suck, and other types of people are better" without considering the complex and nuanced factors over the course of human history that result with the world we have today.
So you genuinely believe that every culture is exactly equal in value? I don't even see how that's possible to believe. There are cultures where women are subjugated routinely and cultures where gay people are beheaded as a matter of course. Those cultures are not as good as western cultures, sorry. This has nothing to do with "rac[e]" or "types of people".
You just see what you want to see in that paragraph. Without a way to determine 'better' and 'worse' we cannot have a way to determine how our society and culture should develop. That is deeply antihuman. Personally I think it should develop away from beheading gay people; not sure about you.
Mandatory public service is fascism? Deporting illegal immigrants is fascism?
There are ~68 countries with mandatory military service in the world [1]. To say nothing of countries with some other form of mandatory public service. How many of them are fascist?
The U.S., with the backing of widespread public support, passed bipartisan immigration enforcement laws in 1996 with an aim of rapid and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and it was not viewed as "fascism". Those laws remained on the books since that time and were only recently under enforced with dramatic consequences.
I honestly feel like we're increasingly living in separate realities driven by media bubbles and wanton historical illiteracy and dishonesty.
I agree; I don't see how anyone can read that manifesto as plainly fascistic. I am guessing most people didn't read it. I'm also guessing of those who did, they interpret every point as a dog whistle with secret double meaning, as they would with absolutely anything written by their "enemies".
The term “fascist” has been watered down to the point it doesn’t really mean anything the way many people use it now
I think the real standard for “fascist” has to be - how similar is what someone is doing to what Mussolini did? If there’s a genuine similarity there, the term “fascist” may be appropriate; otherwise, it isn’t
Little Eichmanns unable to feel good about themselves now that there's so much bad press? They should've known, in fact, most of them DID know about who they work for and what they do. They just can't handle the pressure. Name, shame and move on, fellas. No words worth listening to from Palantir employees.
I mean it's another case of "Are we the baddies?" where they talk about having the skull on the uniform.
Like your company is literally called Palantir, after the object from the Tolkien universe (if you're living under a rock), which allows the user to see things happening in other places, and allows "A wielder of great power such as Sauron could dominate a weaker user through the stone".
Not only that but your company's founder goes around the world doing lectures about the Antichrist.
And if that wasn't enough, you're working with governments around the world to oppress citizens and have been complicit in a literal genocide by partnering with Israel in the past years.
I mean if you're not the baddies, then maybe Voldemort is just misunderstood, and the Joker is the good guy, etc.
The truth about a particular company is always told in 10 years time.
Palantir now has too many eyes to the average person on the street and its reputation is negative.
We will have the same conversation about OpenAI, Anthropic, Mechanize, Inc. and the rest of all the other AI labs just like we are doing with big tech companies.
As far as I can tell the main crime Palantir commits is actually delivering what it's asked for, instead of just stringing the government along like the other contractors do.
> We're not perfect. We've done bad. But, you won't find another nation on earth or in history who has contributed as much to global progress, stability and well-being.
Ooook... but
> Defending the United States of America is never the wrong move.
is not the correct logical conclusion from that. The correct conclusion would be that it is our ability to reflect on the bad things we've done that have allowed us to make forward progress.
Universally defending something without considering the circumstances and context is rarely ever the correct stance.
OK, well the "circumstances and context" here are that most people commenting on HN live in the United States, so obviously they will be better off if the United States does well. I don't think your "um actually, you can't ALWAYS support something in all cases, sweaty" critique really adds anything to the discussion here.
I know exactly what you’re trying to say and you need to understand that it’s highly counterproductive.
The United States was built on genocide of the natives, slavery of captives from Africa, and multiple unecessary wars that have killed millions of innocent people. This is not a new thing.
It also isn't a unique thing. See (for example) the entire history of, well, pretty much any country. There is a reason Utopia literally means "no place".
* Genocide of the natives? Literally all countries in the Americas, for starters.
* Slavery of captives from Africa? Pretty much everyone with colonies in and around the Caribbean was guilty of that too.
* Multiple unnecessary wars that have killed millions of people? That encompasses more or less all of European history.
By all means, criticize Palantir. But don't pretend US history has anything in particular that would set up the prerequisites for it to exist.
I know it’s not unique. I just assumed the parent was a nick fuentes America First type who wants to transfer all of our guilt and sin onto Israel (and in the parent’s case a specific ethnicity). It’s more common in the US than you would think.
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.
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 frame things in the current meta.
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.
Right but was Booz Allen not dealing in mass surveillance too? There's something that's narratively appealing about Palantir in this context. The name, Thiel as a key figure, the mission statement, the branding. It may even be that they have an image of effectiveness that others don't.
There's never been a single day in history without war. Indeed, there's never been a moment in all of biological life without violent conflict.
In high school, I had a visitor from West Point. My dad (Killing Fields survivor) was so excited. I (16 year old boy who only knew video games, porn and comics) later threw an impressive tantrum that defeated my father.
I threw away a golden ticket to see the world for what it is (instead of from within my cocoon in the suburbs of Los Angeles) and become a man at a more appropriate age.
Instead, I became an overpaid Peter Pan in San Francisco.
Theres some effect, I can't remember the name, where experts in one field (engineering) think they understand other fields (war) because they're so smart at their own field. I think this very much applies here.
If you're at Palantir and think you're the bad guy, first make the honest effort to convince yourself otherwise.
Failing that, leave and make room for patriots.
I don't like hurting others, but you really need to understand there are others that absolutely want to hurt you for basically no reason, and that hurting them first is highly effective, and as both firepower and intelligence (Palantir) improve, it becomes less fatal (clear historical trend).
Their stock is up something like 1500% since IPO. I can't imagine most employees there feeling like they're undervalued with that sort of equity valuation.
If you haven't listened/read it, I think the Ezra Klein interview with Alex Bores (who formerly worked at Palantir) and how he talks about how it was in 2014 vs now.
It's also insane that a PAC campaigning against Bores is funded by current Palantir employee Lonsdale. Their critical ads literally criticize him for working for Palantir.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
Joe Lonsdale left Palantir in 2009 and moved on to Formation 8 and then 8vc. He was vocally pro-Palantir and used his co-founder status in the press a lot, but was off the board by 2010 and operationally had nothing to do with them since then.
> It's also insane that a PAC campaigning against Bores is funded by current Palantir employee Lonsdale. Their critical ads literally criticize him for working for Palantir.
It's life imitating The Simpsons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsCTpREM48M
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, positive company inside Facebook and she just had to navigate the politics to make it known despite all evidence to the contrary.
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 legitimately terrifying. It seems like if it's normal enough people will say something is bad and will happily do it anyway.
It's made me rethink my life and how I do the same thing and was the impetus for me leaving tech.
They are letting perfect be the enemy of good. If they respond with "I love bacon" then tell them to eat plant-based + bacon. It's still a vast improvement environmentally than what they were doing previously.
Yeah there's some kind of absolutism aspect tied into identity.
Also the funny tendency humans have to dislike the people who are most similar to them. Someone who is at least recognizing factory farming is bad and willing to even think that far is more similar to a vegetarian than the people who don't give a shit and never even think about where their food is coming from.
Obviously there's the cognitive dissonance aspect to point out, but we are all doing that to some extent.
>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 individual, abstaining from meat is going to do much to factory farming, while it will make a huge, adverse impact on my life.
Government regulation is how this problem would be solved (the only way it can get solved), and I'm all for voting for bans on factory farming, heavy taxes on meat products, etc.
One's gotta pick their battles.
I pick ones where my participation won't amount to martyrdom.
Yeah but tons of things are awful. For me I couldn't keep doing things I knew caused immense suffering in other beings, be it humans or animals. (Sourcing things from ethical whatever and reducing consumption in general the last two decades, I'm sad my iPhone 6 isn't supported for banking so have to go android 10 etc).
Vegetarian options got cheap, and I still eat locally produced eggs and some milk products.
But like, awful can be coped with. Everyone thinks factory farming is awful. Few give a shit.
Few people can afford to give a shit. Most people are getting the cheapest meat and dairy they can get from Walmart.
It's still not cheaper to have a very meat rich diet then to have one that is mostly plant based; or entirely vegetablebased plus milk and eggs from local production - which wouldn't get you in some of the difficulties vegsns have to desl with, where they need to take some nutrients in the form of supplements if they don't absolutely optimize their diet (which again becomes expensive - would be interesting to be corrected here)
All that is to say: some people act less ethical then others, and should have to accept that fact - instead of trying to produce an image of the self (to themselves mostly but also to others) that conceals it; be it through normalization ("guess we all do that"), rationslization ("if i wouldn't do it someone else would"), or blame shifting (if someone would do this and that i would behave like that, so it's up to them to provide me with xyz)
edit: I apply that to myself. I know that I don't act as ethical as I could regarding the consequences of my diet.
Blessing/curse that meat is so expensive in Scandinavia that good vegan options actually became competitive. I know meat is dirt cheap in the US =/
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 economies of scale.)
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.
Are you sure? What about a stand of trees whose consciousness might just run extremely slowly compared to ours?
About as sure as one can be. It's neither logically nor physically impossible, but the claim that trees are conscious is practically unfalsifiable and is not supported by any substantive evidence. It has nothing to do with "fast" or "slow," no matter how you poke or prod or slice or dice a tree, there's nothing that suggests a capacity for consciousness. I would be less surprised if my friend's dog started speaking perfect Chinese with an American accent.
If anyone cares about plants suffering they should go vegan, as many more plants are consumed to raise animals than would be if there was a direct plant intake in humans for the same amount of calories and nutrients. Ditto for land use, water, CO2 emissions, etc. but let's assume our friend cares strictly about reducing suffering short of starving themselves to death.
Just FYI, the designation "free range" on eggs means essentially nothing. It means the hens have access to the outdoors, but that could still mean a tiny, packed space, just missing a roof.
"Cage free" and "no antibiotics" are probably the only USDA-regulated terms worth caring about, but they're fairly low bars. "Certified Humane" designation is a higher, well-audited bar, but many farms that might qualify forgo it due to the costs associated.
Factory farming is a consequence of a post-industrial economy where 95% of the population isn't directly involved in farming. Few people would want to reset the clock back to where most are attached to the land with limited options. The only reliable source of B12 before the modern era was to consume some animal derived products. Other basic nutrients are hard to attain through plants alone. It is necessary for us to engage in animal husbandry in the absence of technological interventions that we never evolved to depend on.
To the extent that I can, I do try to pick ethical products (like the aforementioned free-range eggs).
It's not an all-or-nothing thing indeed; there's a huge spectrum between veganism and not at all thinking (or caring) about where the animal products come from.
But yes, I, as a consumer, am not responsible for what is already heavily regulated in favor of factory farmers. Heard of the ag gag laws? You can't vegan them away.
It's not a free market, see.
It's as delusional to blame people for eating the availableunethically produced meat as it is to blame them for starving during the Holodomor (..or Great New Leap, or the Irish Potato Famine, or...).
Radium-based snake oil "medicine" didn't disappear because the consumers boycotted an unethical product. It was because we have FDA.
I really do not feel responsible for what would amount to trying to enforce regulation that doesn't exist.
I am responsible for voting, so when it comes to the ballot, ethical farming does get my vote.
> like the aforementioned free-range eggs
I noted this in another comment, but the "free-range" designation means almost nothing. Hens have access to the outdoors, but that can mean a packed coop with no grass where part is missing a roof.
Look for "Certified Humane" or research the farm directly.
Thanks for the actionable advice.
Side note: I've never seen that "certified humane" label. I'll look for it though.
The people who are saying that it's "easier than ever" to be buying ethically farmed products are full of it.
All markets have rules, the "free" in "free market" is just marketing.
(Not disagreeing with you, just mentioning it because your statement inside made me think of it)
Well of course. Free market (even as a theoretical concept) is only possible with regulation that prevents monopolies and ensures some sort of fairness.
The agricultural market is perhaps the furthest thing from it, given the importance of, well, having food. Farmers get subsidies. Nation-states get involved in the circulation of food around the planet. Geopolitics comes into play.
In some markets, individual choices of consumers matter a lot in shaping them.
Agricultural products are as far from that as it's possible.
I am not convinced that not buying unethical meat does any more than not buying unethical weapons of mass destruction, or not using Palantir's products.
Few of us are hoarding stashes of chemical weapons or signing contracts with Palantir, and yet Palantir still thrives.
Perhaps simply not buying it isn't always the most effective way to end something.
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>Government regulation is how this problem would be solved (the only way it can get solved)
My cynical inner pedant compels me to point out that societal collapse will also solve "factory farming is awful". And we're probably closer to that than effective government regulation of it.
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, if we're ostensibly virtue signaling here.)
> 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 conflicted", which means you suffer inside. You could stop that suffering by either 1) going vegan, so you don't have to worry about it, or 2) deciding to continue eating meat and no longer worry about it. Right now, you're picking the strictly worse combination of continuing to eat meat and remaining conflicted indefinitely.
I'm starting to realize that internal moral conflicts are a lot like physical pain - it's an important signal from the body, and you should pay attention to it, but in the end, if you know you're not going to do anything about the underlying cause, then there's no point in continuing to suffer - you just make it go away with painkillers, and carry on living. This does not mean denying the problem - quite the opposite. Constant pain makes it hard to think rationally, and suppressing it puts you in a much better position to address its underlying cause.
You say I'm 'suffering inside', not me.
What is confliction if not suffering?
What is suffering?
Do what you like and as you like, but my two cents: if you want to make something that seems hard, start with one step and continue step by step at your own peace. Big goals are accomplished by proudness of small gaps instead of shame and desires of the missing ones.
During 10 year I gently removed some ingredients of my diets/habits and added others in the meantime. It was longer but way easier than I imagined.
Good luck, you lazy :-)
Hey, at my ripe, old age, I only started learning how to properly feed myself more recently than I'd like to admit. So I take your point about acknowledging one's baby steps once you successfully string a few together.
Thanks for the encouragement!
>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 unethical farming.
I'm well off. You might be. Most people in the US are not.
And in the end of the day, poor people are going to buy the cheapest products in the grocery store.
So, there's always be a demand as long as there's supply.
More than that. We don't really have a choice for where meat comes from anyway. There's no requirement to put that on the label, along with nutritional data.
That, by the way, is another example where legislation can make a lot of difference.
My point is that abstaining from meat is about as useful as that young man setting himself of fire in the US to help children in Gaza.
Same goes about feeling bad about eating meat (while eating it).
The impact on the cause is zero.
Your energy would be better spent fighting the ag-gag laws, requiring disclosures on the labels, making ethically farmed products cheaper (and factory farmed produce more expensive), and so on.
You having morally conflicted feelings doesn't help anyone.
And it's simple, really: you are complicit in doing a bad thing. But the complicity is not in doing the thing, it's in supporting the system where in doing it is the rational choice for the majority of people.
Your choice in doing or not doing the thing has very little impact on whether the thing happens.
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.
>Aren't vegetables cheaper than meat?
Do you even do any grocery shopping where you live?
Not long ago, I could get chicken for $0.99/pound, same as the cheapest tomatoes, whereas quality tomatoes sold for $2.99/pound.
Now the prices for meat are up, but chicken still costs $1.99/pound[1], while decent tomatoes are $3.99/pound[2].
Even if you are thrifty and find cheaper tomatoes, they are incomparable to chicken in nutritional value.
You know the expression "chicken soup for the soul"? There's a reason it's not "tomato soup for the soul" (as much as I love gazpacho).
> I'd assume poor people also like the taste of meat
Try eating on a budget instead of assuming what them "poor people" like.
[1] https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.960014952.html?...
[2] https://www.safeway.com/shop/product-details.184570092.html
The comparaison of chicken and tomatoes is a strawman.
First off: people don’t swap them in their diet, a better exemple would be wheat or soy - which are what the 0.99/p chicken eat [edit: and it's closer in term of nutrients].
Second: the shelf price you mention includes gouvernement subsidies and economy of scale. The grains price should be the one paid by the fermer, adjusted for smaller packaging. Your comparaison may stands where you live because of political choices and societal evolution. It doesn’t in a more liberal and non regulated juridictions, does it?
>The comparaison of chicken and tomatoes is a strawman.
It's a direct answer to the question asked by the parent.
The answer is: no, vegetables are not cheaper than meat in the US.
It is perverse. Which is my point: what enables the low, low price of chicken isn't merely the laws of supply and demand.
>First off: people don’t swap them in their diet, a better exemple would be wheat or soy
Those are not vegetables. Those are grains and legumes, respectively.
>Second: the shelf price you mention includes gouvernement subsidies and economy of scale.
No shit.
Which is my point exactly: the problem is addressed by government regulation, and exists because of government regulation, including, but not limited to, subsidies to particular forms of farming, and ag gag laws.
>Your comparaison may stands where you live
Well of course I can speak about where I live.
And yeah, we're talking in English on a US-based website (specifically, a Silicon Valley one). I am talking about the US, a country of about 350M people.
It's not like I'm talking about a small state few people have heard of with no impact on anything. The situation in the US matters because it influences a lot.
Canada isn't that different from the US food-wise, for that matter.
Ah I might be confused by my low english skills but it seems grains and legumes are vegetable. I was curious and a quick search returned several sources confirming that however I'd be pleased to learn other usages.
> a plant or part of a plant that is eaten as food. Potatoes, beans and onions are all vegetables.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
I'm don't want to argue on definitions though but the chicken/tomatoes comparaison hardly make sense in an answer to satvikpendem: he mentioned vegatable in comparaison to meat in a poor people diet. In that situation one would certainly aim mainly for cheap and nutritious staples AKA grains and legumes instead of tomatoes.
At least we agree on the regulation impact! I wish you a pleasant Californian day :-)
They are vegetables technically speaking, the parent is being too literal and obtuse with their inference of what I was talking about.
If you are going to be that literal then I'm not sure what to say. By vegetables yes I meant a plant based diet (including legumes and grains which are vegetables technically speaking) vs one with meat, not literally tomatoes versus chicken. You might have given a direct answer but it's not what was implied in the context of the thread. I do agree that there is a big problem with the current regulations and subsidies artificially pushing down the price of meat, yet even still it is cheaper to not eat meat. And I say this as someone who does eat meat.
Aside, I'm not sure why you're being so aggressive in your comments, it doesn't make for good discourse when one says things like "you've completely missed the point" or "no shit" or the oft seen pattern of quoting and rebutting each line. If I were to speak to my friends that way I'd quickly lose friends.
Bro you're picking the most yuppy veggies you can find to strain to make your point. "I can't just eat the cheap tomatoes, I demand the finest!"
Quit being such a fruit.
> 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 very cognitively consonant use of the term.
>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
Many individuals independently making the choice has made a difference, both in harm reduction on the demand side and choice on the supply side. It's never been easier or more accessible to be vegetarian/vegan.
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 actively benefit from the factory farming.
>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.
To add a data point, I've reduced my meat consumption from "whenever I can" to "once a day" to "normally once a day, but some days none at all". It's really not that big a deal. I have no idea what this is doing to the environment, but I can confirm that I'm saving some scratch (bacon is expensive!), my hunger and tastebuds are just as sated, and my routine bloodwork has improved somewhat.
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I personally think vegans should consider eating cows. If you care about sentient life and abuse, think about how much meat one cow produces. Killing a single cow can feed you for well over a year.
You say that like it's mandatory to kill sentient life to feed people. It isn't.
I can imagine this poster's chortle thinking to themself, 'they thought I meant the animals!'
aren't plants also sentient?
Isn't all life sentient?
If not, where do you draw the line? "It has eyes and bilateral symmetry and an endoskeleton looks vaguely human-like so I can anthropomorphize it"? "Only members of the animal kingdom are conscious"?
Do you think plants achieve the same degree of sentience as say, a pig? Or would drawing even that line be too arbitrary for you?
honestly, I don't know.
Sentience is consciousness. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a plant, the plants existence is too different from mine for me to imagine it.
It would be like trying to imagine life in a 12-dimensional space - I'm a human, with a human consciousness, living in 3-dimensional space, that makes sense to me.
I can empathize, and to a certain degree imagine what it must be like to be a dog or a cat or a cow, because they're very similar to me in how they work. They move, they eat, they poop, they reproduce sexually. They have similar mammalian feelings and similar DNA (well, more similar than the plant).
But for all I know a plant, say the spinach I had a few days ago, could be just as conscious, albeit in a way that I absolutely cannot comprehend, and my ripping off the plant's leaves to eat them may be, to the plant, every bit as painful as someone ripping out my lungs to eat them.
So you acknowledge the former but can't get past the latter. Got it. I wonder how the judges will score.
sorry for the stupid question, but what is "the former" and what is "the latter"?
Did you mean I acknowledge the sentience of plants but not animals?
I believe that all life might be conscious, but life that is "very different" from me I have a hard time imagining what that consciousness might be like. For animals, especially mammals, I can easily imagine what they must be feeling and empathize with them. I can understand that a cow feels pain when hurt, because the cow is very similar to me. A plant might also feel pain when hurt (even the grass I step on might not appreciate me walking on it), but I'd have a harder time empathizing with that.
It's never stupid to clarify what someone means if they communicate in a way that's unclear to you.
'Former' and 'latter' were in reference to the two questions I posed to you.
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> And it tastes even better when it seems to cause distress to vegans.
Odd flex. Try not to worry so much about what other people think of you. It'll make you a better human.
No, plants, bacteria, mushrooms are obviously not sentient as they lack a brain.
I always wonder what vegans think is going to happen to all the pigs, cows, and chickens if people stop eating meat?
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?
Somewhat. I think we are still quite a long way from ethical practices even in the "good" cases.
I eat meat, but try to limit it to once a week and have replaced milk with oat and soy in a lot of places. I still love cheese but it does give me conflict when I spend even a second thinking about what it takes to actually get cheese. (Cows dont lactate without pregnancy). That said, my own personal philosophy is that we have likely evolved to consume animal products so I cant dismiss it fully, just reduce my own consumption. ~75% of all agricultural land is used to feed livestock, yet livestock produces only 18% of the world's calories and 37% of its protein, which just seems insanity to me.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
> 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.
Demand would go down, so meat companies would reduce breeding to reduce output. Or start an ad & lobbying campaign to increase demand again.
> I always wonder what vegans think is going to happen to all the pigs, cows, and chickens if people stop eating meat?
factory farms would stop breeding animals to kill them? Did you think you had an argument here?
Should pacifists likewise murder one person?
I’m gonna pull a Rogan and mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth?
What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us.
In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.
> mention how many other sentient beings are massacred while plowing a field. Rodents, insects, snakes, birds, etc. Is that a myth?
Loads of small field animals are killed when eating vegan. Loads more are killed when eating omnivore, because you have to plow even more field to also feed the factory-farmed animals.
> In the meantime, the US is overrun by dear and boars, and I’ve been learning archery.
Assuming you stick with it, I think that could be a good idea.
The deer are full of Chronic Wasting Disease and we've half given up trying to stop it. Many states have stopped their targeted culling programs because they're ineffective once incidence is above 5%. You're suicidal if you eat meat that you know comes from an animal with a prion disease.
I've never hunted (yet). Have fished plenty but that doesn't count.
I lived for a year in a suburb of Charlotte NC a couple of years ago, and there were herds of whitetails on my dog walks.
I'd like to learn more about "Chronic Wasting Disease" if you have any resources, because on podcasts or r/Archery and the like, "harvesting your own food" is par for the course. Thank you.
> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times? It can’t be tofu, can it? There are just too many of us.
You are very wrong here by orders of magnitudes. The US produces about 5 billion bushes of soybeans. 1 bushel is around 60 lbs. Having made tofu myself, depending on the type of tofu you make 1 lb of dry soybeans is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 lbs of tofu(remember we are adding water to the mix so we increase weight). If 1 bushel is 60 lbs and we produce 5 billion then we have 136 million metric tons of soybeans which makes 272 million tons of tofu which is enough to feed the entire US several times over.
This doesn't even begin to touch the amount of food you can make from the byproduct of tofu, soy pulp which is itself a food in some countries.
I'm not suggesting we actually do it but to answer your question of "is tofu the answer," it could be. The vast majority of our soybean crop was sold to other countries until Trump tariffs made China switch from us to Russia. I'm not sure what the current status of our soybean production is but we have the crop production to feed the entire US.
Thanks for the math. Obviously not everyone will go for Soyfu, but I'll attempt to integrate it into my diet. I've had it, it's an acquired taste, but what isn't really. I remember hating black caviar growing up in Ua.
I'd recommend checking out Serious Eats for Kenji's "Vegan Experience" recipes. He has some tofu recipes for omnivores that I really endorse. His tofu banh mi is divine.
Tofu is amazing when it's used for things tofu is made for instead of as a sad meat substitute. Miso soup isn't miso soup without tofu, and mapo tofu is one of the most amazing flavors in existence. (It's sichuan, so it's not for people who can't tolerate flavor.)
I just want to chime in and say it's a rather nice to see an earnest and pleasant response like this.
To your first point about the small animals in the fields that are harmed by agriculture, I think that's worth having concern about overall, certainly. But many of the animals that people currently consume are fed large quantities of crops that incur that same cost. The average beef cattle is eating such things for 18 months prior to being slaughtered, breeding sows do the same for 3-5 years, and their offspring 5-6 months on average.
If there are advances in things like cultured meat that can be produced in a sort of industrial setting at a competitive price it might be possible to drastically limit both the conscious and inadvertent harm to animals.
There's a case to be made for wild/hunted meat. But the majority of meat production worldwide relies on feeding those animals farmed plants, and that entails a lot more plowed fields than farming plants for direct human consumption does.
> What is the answer to feed everyone during these budget constrained times?
It's much more efficient to use land to grow food crops for people to eat directly than it is to grow food for livestock and then have people eating the livestock.
It's one of the reasons that I've been pescetarian for a few decades - it's unsustainable for everyone to eat substantial amounts of meat and there's a lot of deforestation just to sate people's desire for burgers.
to be fair, you can get "good" meat - factory farming is awful, but not all meat is factory farmed. You can eat happy animals, for example pigs that spent their lives outside being pigs, hanging out with their pig friends, and near the end of their pig lives had to go be eaten. If you believe plants are conscious too, that's probably more ethical than eating Nutella made with palm oil from forests that were completely massacred to harvest that oil (and even if you don't, the animals in those forests probably didn't enjoy their natural habitat being destroyed).
In fact, I've had the idea floating around my head for a while now for "fully ethical" meat, where you don't even kill the animal, just wait around for it to die of old age. Depending on your views on euthanasia, maybe if the animal gets like cancer or something and is evidently suffering, gently kill it to put it out of its misery because that might overall reduce suffering.
Also, pardon my asking a possibly stupid question out of ignorant curiosity, but if you're vegan for ethical reasons, why not eat eggs? My stepmom had some chickens a while ago, they lived lives that seemed pretty happy, they hung around the backyard eating stuff on the ground + the food we gave them, relatively free to move around (we did put up a small fence to keep them away from the dogs and cats, who did not exactly have a stellar track record of veganism, but they were free to roam inside that safe space) they laid eggs, because there was no rooster around to fertilize the eggs the eggs weren't going to go anywhere... did us eating those eggs hurt anyone?
Veganism is about being pragmatic. It's not a dogmatic mindset. The main goal is to not harm another sentient being. Both factory farmed or 'happy' farmed animals usually end up in the same slaughterhouse. Pigs are being gassed and have a terrible death. And in general, animals feel when they are about to die and then start to panic. In the words of Carl Sagan 'they are too much like us'.
Look up Mike Bisping, someone you would typically class as a tough man. Even he couldn't work in a slaughter house. So imagine what it does to your psyche day in and day out having to kill animals. Slaughterhouse workers suffer from PTSD. In one report one worker described how a pig came up to him and gently headbutted him (like a cat showing affection). He had to suppress his compassion to be able to kill it. How effed up is that?
We can vote with our wallet to reduce or stop all that.
In regards to eggs, I would say eating eggs from chickens you have in your garden is OK. There are folks who rescue chickens and let the roam in their garden and eat their eggs. There are certain vegans who complain about that. That is being dogmatic.
And what you suggested, eating meat from animals who died naturally and didn't have to be killed for you, I'd even class that as vegan, because no animal had to suffer. But it wouldn't be profitable as a business, so I don't see how it can work on a large scale or replace factory farming.
We need cultured meat or simply train ourselves to enjoy plant based foods. Dr Wareham said it will take a few weeks for your taste buds to 'like' other foods. And you get enough of nutrients and protein from those foods. Plenty of top athletes prove that point.
Or folks who eat road kill, I'd say that's also vegan. The animal died by accident. You didn't pay for it to be killed, i.e. you didn't contribute to the demand that keeps the meat & dairy industry running.
EDIT: typos & clarity.
I think we have almost "fully ethical meat" now - engineered from tofu and other plant material.
ps. Im by no means a saint in this regard, but I have moved to soy milk and eat much less red meat generally, both out of self-interest for the health aspects, but also partially as I think its better for the environment generally. I suppose I should give up chicken, but its a habit hard to break in my social circle. My point is a gradual move by degrees is still improvement, when integrated over the whole population.
You don't need to give up anything just reduce. I don't drink alcohol at home but I'll have a few drinks socially. If having a burger socially is what you want to do then do it.
> "fully ethical" meat
Clams. Clams and oysters and such. Sessile bivalves are the plants of the animal kingdom, the "genetically engineered brainless cow" of nature. They're also environmentally friendly even when farmed, and more healthy than any animal meat while addressing the same nutritional needs and more. They're almost comically ethical and healthy (and seafood dishes are great imo), they just don't produce bacon and burgers specifically.
Palm oil comes from palm fruit, by the way, not from "massacaring" the trees. Fruits are, from an evolutionary perspective, meant to be eaten, it is their purpose. If plants are conscious of fruit being harvested at all it probably feels good.
I think you're not reading the comment accurately, they're referring to the environmental harms of palm oil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_and_environmental_impac...
I'm pretty sure a lot of commercial egg farming involves keeping the hens in bad conditions
You can't know out at a restaurant the what eggs they use, but at home you can buy eggs from sources you trust that don't keep hens in bad conditions.
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.
Maybe it's a cultural thing but I've never met anyone like you describe at all (certainly none of the vegans I've met). What you describe is obviously a dumb way to think about ethics but I'm also skeptical any significant amount of people think that way
Everything humans believe is based on vibes- which happen to change with the centuries.
Can we please get back to the topic of palantir? The whole eating meat discourse is interesting but also distracts from the topic at hand: do people working at palantir pose themselves question what it means for them to work for palantir? What do we think should be a proper ethical norm regarding people working at palantir?
I agree. It's easier to change your morals than your behavior, or contort your thinking around your own behavior until you can imagine it fits into the shape that you've decided your morals are, reality notwithstanding. I think that explains a lot of it, for unabashed meat-eaters. The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal. Most acknowledge that animals lead internal lives while a small minority don't, but in both cases humans are the center of the universe around which the earth and the sun orbits, and we and our convenience and comfort is all that really matters.
I have no doubt whatsoever that half the people I know and love would have owned slaves or at least defended slavery if they were born into a time where it was commonplace. They easily would have bought into nonsense science or religious arguments about the intelligence or moral value of this race over that, like they do for animals.
First off, I believe veganism is, probably, morally correct.
However, I lead a morally imperfect lifestyle. I get around by driving or being driven in a car, even when it would only be moderately less convenient to walk or bike or take transit. A few dollars could feed children in poverty for weeks, and I spend on lot more than "a few" dollars on luxuries like travel. By my measure, knowingly choosing not to prevent human suffering on such a scale is massively worse than eating meat, but at the end of the day, I don't consider myself or others in my position to be monsters.
> The other thing I see is casting every human as sacred and every non-human living thing as without value, or, at least less value than a single meal.
While I believe non-human animals generally have greater moral value than a single meal - the most widely consumed animals are clearly capable of suffering and IMO intelligent enough for most to instinctively empathize with - I don't think it's particularly strange for humans to view humans as sacred.
Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.
Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.
I didn't say it any of it was unusual. Your observation that humans place themselves at the center of the moral universe and have the agency to enforce it is in line with my thoughts.
> Many if not most people view morality as rooted in the golden rule, and non-human animals are incapable of making moral considerations the way humans are.
Ironically making us the only animals capable of moral evil.
> Even just considering gut feelings - let's say we presented a trolley problem, on one side one's close friends and family members, on the other side some number of chickens. I would be very surprised at genuine responses opting to save the chickens. Personally, I would sacrifice literally any number of chickens.
Is this due to a internally consistent moral value system apart from a view of humans as sacred? If on the other side of the trolley were some of a race of aliens, smarter, better, faster, younger, and more emblematic of the human ideals by way of virtue than the humans on the other side, would you save the aliens? Probably not. Your preference to preserve other people is very natural and probably hard-wired into your brain. That doesn't mean it isn't human chauvinism.
This very closely resembles my philosophy. I too downplay vegan/veggie because I don't want to cause a stir.
It’s sort of interesting that “I love bacon” turns into “I must have bacon on a scale that can only really be satisfied inhumane farming practices.” I suspect we could raise meat humanely if we had it on a weekly or monthly basis.
I always think that this sort of culture and interaction was exactly was it was like to live during a time when slavery was legal and permitted. I hope in 100 year meat eating will be seen as similar.
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 nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators
> Knowing how the sausage is made does nothing for me.
Considering that this is nowadays a substantially less common background, and probably trending that direction indefinitely, this reads more as you being desensitized. It's not like vegans are unaware that people could have a background like yours.
> But bringing any moral/religious reasons for it always seemed silly to me. There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another. Humans evolved from mostly vegetarian monkeys to predators
Morals and religion aren't about what's natural, they're about what humans desire. Illness, violence, and deception are all perfectly "natural."
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.
Yes he is. "Nothing more natural than one animal eating another" is might makes right. It's also an appeal to nature, but in this case it's both.
Weaker animals can eat stronger animals. Pack animals, carrion feeders, bugs, animals feeding their offspring, etc. So almost entirely an appeal to nature argument.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.
> There’s nothing more natural than one animal eating another
So how do you get from that to human cannibalism == bad?
The naturalism argument has a zillion counterexamples of things that used to be considered natural and now we arbitrarily consider bad.
>the impetus for me leaving tech.
What do you do now?
I started a master's in ecology with the hope of doinh a PhD after. Academia honestly sucks and has pretty bad culture issues (and like 10% of the pay) but I genuinely really like animals and it feels good to have my job be helping them.
Personally I don't think I would recommend it. Not that it's necessarily a bad choice but I think that the people for who this is the right choice will feel compelled to make a change regardless of what I say (I know I had people trying to convince me to stay in tech). Fully changing careers like this and living the poor and overworked grad student life in my 30s has taken more commitment and stubbornness than I had expected but some fights are worth doing.
Eating factory farmed meat is seen as very low-class and irresponsible in my immediate vicinity. I have a hard time imagining any of my work colleagues admitting to eating factory farmed meat, even if they do due to cost reasons.
But farmers also enjoy high societal standing here, maybe that helps.
Have you ever reflected on the legitimacy of your sentinents? As in, you find “terrifying” that people find factory farming bad, but choose to consume its products anyway. But have you considered that perhaps the moral severity that is causing your reaction of horror is actually miscalibrated and unwarranted?
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.
Where did you go after tech?
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 to meet someone who sincerely thinks that what happens in nature is ethically okay (as a simple point, many animals will eat their own family when stressed and sexually assault each other constantly, which are very natural but obviously unethical for humans to do. I've seen animals torture and eat each other alive) so the whole argument is a waste of time. It's weird that the "it's natural" argument is probably the most common when many people will walk it back even before I point out the flaws.
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.
The argument is over whether a certain thing is moral or not. I argue that it is because carnivores need to do that to survive. Humans don't but does that affect whether that thing is moral or not?
Then you would have to argue that an omnivore eating meat is immoral while a carnivore eating meat is moral. I wouldn't enjoy defending that statement.
I like your 6,000 foot view.()
Most people get proseltyzed abt veg before independence. As adults, few reconsider, replaying childhood scripts.
Then, society papers over reality.
() oops just realized that tracks your tall person analogy.
I've never met a vegan as preachy as the average omnivore upon learning someone is vegan. Good luck in all your undertakings, beloved.
Veganism is a terrible example in this context because that community is riddled with all or nothing dogma.
If people were pragmatic instead, and the vegan community would quit alienating people the non-perfect, non-purists the world would be slightly better, too.
For example, in my country licorice is popular. Whether it contsins gelatin or not, not one pig less will be killed because it is a by-product.
10 years ago, I went to a workshop (with DIY) on how to make vegetarian and vegan sausages, and since you mention sausage, I'll use that as another example. A sausage contains herbs and vegetables (to develop taste) and certain chemistry (= cooking) techniques, for example salt and to keep the product together. It is relatively easy to make something akin to that yourself. Heck, one can sauté carrots and build something akin to a hotdog fairly easy.
Comparing it to gelatin is unrealistic, but to say sausages are made from the best meat of the animal? No, minced meat is not since then they wouldn't mince it (as rule of thumb). Frikadel is another example eaten a lot here (NL), the Germans also got their sausage culture.
Meanwhile, there's a much more dramatic example: chicken. There's a lot less meat on those birds per serving, so suffering per human/day on avg omni diet is much worse. But does that mean one should avoid free range chicken eggs? No.
And that is ignoring the environmental impact, since there too a vegan diet (with avocado and almonds requiring a plethora of water and movement of product to market) isn't ideal either (the latter might be less of issue for say Cali).
So in short, we should welcome those people who love bacon to 1) consume less bacon 2) try vegn alternatives. But it doesn't have to be either they're vegan or omni 24/7. Flexitarianism is much more reasonable for a lot of people, and also many situations can arise where such is desirable (such as gifted food, festivities, etc).
Written by someone who follows a pragmatic vegn diet.
Eating meat is normal.
Yes, animals have feelings and are intelligent (to varying degrees, but generally a lot more then most think). Modern meat factories are absolute shit shows and it's outlandishly bad our societies treat the animals like that.
However, it doesn't have to be that way. And killing an animal for food which lived a nice life is perfectly fine. We're all part of the physical reality in which the survival of the fittest reigns supreme. Even if you want to put your head into the sand and deny this, animals eating each other is perfectly normal. And yes, humans are animals too.
I’m not a vegetarian and have no plans on becoming one but.. just because eating meat is normal doesn’t mean it needs to stay that way.
There’s an endless list of atrocities committed by our ancestors or our peers in the animal kingdom that we no longer tolerate. There’s no reason why eating another animal can’t someday become as abhorrent as cannibalism or slavery or whatever.
If eating plant-based didn't make me sick (and I could tolerate gluten and cereals and carb-heavy foods), I'd do it. Now, one might go on a tirade that I'm doing it wrong, but from my research, it's pretty clear the body and the brain evolved for a high-fatty diet; or at least that's how I feel the best.
So here's the conundrum: should I be sick and avoid the food that makes me feel really good, because of ethical concerns? Self-preservation, I believe, should be the top-most concern.
Whenever I hear vegans preaching, I think of the quote "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" — if veganism works for you, I'm glad, but I wish most vegans would be a bit more empathetic and scientifically-minded rather than making people feel bad because, for many reasons, they live their life another way. A way, must I say, that is completely natural.
Honestly I'd rather have a discussion about nutrition with a vegetarian, than a preachy vegan that first insults me, shames me, before trying to hear my reasons.
And a corollary to that: when considering historical figures, before condemning them wholesale, consider how history would judge you if--for example--eating meat is considered in the future the way slavery is considered today
Nowhere did GP say animals eating animals is abnormal.
Right, they just heavily implied it with
> It seems like if it's normal enough people will say something is bad and will happily do it anyway.
I disagree it was implied. Not to mention that in an honest conversation, I shouldn't have to point out that you've cherry picked a quote (which on its face doesn't mean what you apparently think it does) from its actual context.
I do not see that implication in those words. I take it much more literally. People overlook things that are simultaneously bad and normal.
I cannot agree with that interpretation considering the rest of the comment
But let's agree to disagree there
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 becoming an attorney, I ended up in the foreign service because it seemed like a way to change the world, and I wanted an adventure. I ended up at the UN because I genuinely believed it was the seat of global power. The place you go when you want to change the world.
> It seemed obvious that politics was going to happen on Facebook, and when it did, when it migrated to this enormous new gathering place, Facebook and the people who ran it would be at the center of everything. They’d be setting the rules for this global conversation. I was in awe of its ineffable potential.
> The vastness of the information Facebook would be collecting was unprecedented. Data about everything. Data that was previously entirely private. Data on the citizens of every country. A historic amount of data and so incredibly valuable. Information is power.
> After years of looking for things that would change the world, I thought I’d found the biggest one going. Like an evangelist, I saw Facebook’s power confirmed in every part of everyday life. Whatever Facebook decided to do—what it did with the voices that were gathering there—would change the course of human events. I was sure of it.
> This is a revolution.
> What do you do when you see a revolution is coming? I decide I will stop at nothing to be part of it. At the center of the action. Once you see it, you can’t sit on the sidelines. I’m desperate to be part of it. I can’t remember ever wanting anything more.
She sounds horrifying.
Consider that she's one of 'the good guys'-- someone who self-reflected on her ambition, saw the 'evil' in hers and other's, called it out publicly, and assumedly regrets hers, and is trying to do better.
Sadly, terrifyingly, for every one of her, there are hundreds who might also self-reflect - but >choose< to be comix-book villains.
And exactly the type to be in power. Explains everything that is fucked up about our world.
She is but in a way that's what makes the book fun. She is very flawed protagonist.
From what I've seen the focus on a few big companies can have a backwards effect on some people's sense of morals. I've heard a few people justify their work for unethical companies as "At least it's not as bad as what Facebook does".
It can also have the opposite of the intended effect when it encourages beliefs that bad behavior is normalized in the industry. I've heard an executive try to drum up support for a program to sell customer data by saying that everyone does it, from Facebook to Google. When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it. They had read so much about big companies collecting customer data to sell that they thought everyone did it and therefore it was okay.
"When others explained that Facebook and Google didn't sell customer data, they didn't believe it"
I'm not sure there's a significant meaningful difference between direct selling and what they actually do, which is to make it available to target and manipulate people with extreme granularity. This is a huge part of why a person may not want their data to be held much less purchased to begin with, meaning it's "doesn't sell your data... but does or facilitates all of the things you do not want a group, in buying it from them, able to do."
It's a distinction without much practical difference.
Also: They buy your data from other brokers who do sell it, vastly enriching the degree to which customers of their ad platforms can make use of the data you already know they have far, far beyond your ability to know their full capabilities and the profile they have on you.
Again, it's not actually selling your data, but it's worth noting that when "they didn't believe it", that misconception was possibly helped along by Facebook or Google being on of the potential customers for that data either directly or via the proxy of a data broker whose largest customers are companies like that.
Selling your data means that anyone can have access your data forever. On the other hand, anyone can turn off ad personalization and delete their data on Google and Facebook.
A key way people rationalize bad behavior is saying "everyone does it" without distinguishing the intensity or frequency of bad behavior.
Like a guy who has taken home office supplies from work is not on the same level morally as someone doing home break ins.
New Startup idea: Mordor is a company dedicated to doing evil. We actually plan to lay waste to the world, enslave everyone in it, enshittify anything in sight, and maximize the use of AI for the worst possible thing. Just negative externalities, all the way down.
A (covert) investment in us today can make you seem like an angel tomorrow! Also, with this agenda we're probably going to make a fortune so you might as well get in on the ground floor. Why just fall into hell when you could take one of our luxurious express elevators and get there twice as fast?
Indeed. It would be difficult to make person understand something if their salary depends on not understanding it.
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 even considered that." She created this monster and all she could think about was how neat it was technologically.
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.
I took one back in 2018 or so, and I assume it's still a degree requirement. If most are like the one I took, however, very few people seriously engaged with the class, and it's just viewed as a filler class.
It didn't help that the workload was a joke. I believe the entirety of our assignments were 5 single page "essay" responses to some ethical scenarios, and the professor seemed to hand out As just for writing enough. It probably took me less than 2 hours of total writing. I imagine most of the students these days are just having ChatGPT write it for them. We absolutely need to take ethics more seriously though, even if it involves adding more/more rigorous courses to the curriculum.
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.
When I did mine, it was mandatory to get BCS accreditation for the degree to teach some professional ethics.
I don’t know if that is still the case though, I’m not sure how relevant BCS membership is these days, I don’t know anyone who has it.
Took one in my undergrad circa 25
Yeah engineering as a discipline tends to be pretty naïve to the consequences of what they build, and sociopaths take advantage of it. Norbert Wiener [1] observed this about the engineers working on nukes in the 1940s-1950s:
“Push-button warfare... possible for a limited group of people to threaten the absolute destruction of millions, without any immediate risk to themselves.... Behind all this I sensed the desires of the gadgeteer to see the wheels go round.”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener
I'm in the middle of this book right now, and I agree. It's a fantastic read to get inside the psychology of the folks that are making huge decisions about how society works.
This is a really important thing that people on the left in particular seem to consistently overlook: local incentives, emergent corporate behaviors, and the unconscious need to believe you’re “right” have way more explanatory power than “X is actually evil”.
The banality of evil is a well-known idea. That evil is often done by people who are just doing their jobs and see themselves as decent people.
Words are cheap, thoughts are cheap, and voting is cheap. A full-time job, on the other hand, is a substantial contribution towards something, and it comes with a huge opportunity cost. The job you have is a major factor in determining your moral character. Determining what kind of a person you actually are, as opposed to the kind of a person you believe to be, or wish you'd be.
I don't think its reasonable to use the whole "banality of evil" for people working FAANG jobs unless they are on trial for war crimes and genocide. The Nazi officers were not standard grunts but rather key executives of the regime and then they tried to throw Hitler under the bus by claiming they were just following orders. When in reality, they were all pyschopaths and truly believed in what they were doing to minorities was right.
Extrapolating that to Meta or Google is a fundamental misunderstanding of history and insenstive.
Yes, but once you're aware of these factors and leverage them for personal gain anyway, it's evil. It's not like it's impossible to make out the bigger picture on many issues, or to ask oneself if the upsides are really so great that it's worth being responsible for the downsides.
This is equally true for leftist projects. If one is dedicated to the cause of improving the general welfare and creating economic and social opportunities for as many as possible, that's laudable, but you can't use it as an excuse to just ignore the human rights whenever you run into a problem or a tricky ethical situation.
The need for belonging is also really powerful, and companies actively try to fulfill that need. Not, generally speaking, for nefarious purposes, but because people do better work when they feel a sense of belonging.
If you decide that your work is against your values, you're also deciding to separate yourself from the group, even if you don't actually leave the company. That's painful. It's not an excuse, but it is a powerful motivator.
Yeah but keep in mind what Zuck specifically has done. He copied Snapchat multiple times, Facebook overwrote people's public-facing emails, "dumb fucks" in IMs
Zuckerberg is awful person but he alone is not "Meta." It is a company made up of thousands of employees and each of those people play their role in enshittifying the internet. Some of do it gleefully and others do it because they think the battle is better fought in the company than out of it. The large salary also doesn't hurt.
If your incentives and emerging behaviors land at an evil result, it is evil. I’d argue the problem is everyone who constantly generates these “well actually” reasons to excuse the consequences. Marx wrote about people being simultaneously perpetrators and victims of capitalism over 150 years ago, I assure you the left isn’t overlooking this very obvious mechanism.
It’s also a little funny to turn a thread about the blatant failures of a neoliberal “success” story into a weird criticism of the left.
You’re probably right about the book either way, but I think the comparison has an obvious limitation. At best, Meta’s mission is “social connection.” Held up in an equally charitable light, a defense contractor is “protecting American interests.” The positive case is so much more stark that it’s probably easier to convince yourself of.
But I also think that’s partly because it’s actually true. (I concede I work in defense and am biased.)
There’s certainly a necessary debate to be had about whether these companies are doing the right things, whether they’re going about it the right way, and whether the United States’ actions are moral and legal.
But it’s very hard to argue that national security itself isn’t necessary. Whereas you can much more easily argue that a social-media-based ad company has no reason to exist in the first place.
I think Mitchell and Webb sketch is enough. It's not some slow descent to badness in case of Palantir, it's obvious from the PR materials alone
How do you determine if they are mentally convincing themselves they are the good guy, when in fact it is you who is the good guy.
From either perspective, if the roles were reversed, wouldn't it look the same? Both parties thinking they are doing the right thing.
There are a lot of legitimate criticisms out there, they seem to be vastly outnumbered by illegitimate criticisms, no matter what position you hold. It's easy to hold your opinion when you are inundated with a constant stream of invalid arguments that say little more than "I don't like the tribe you chose". Any valid argument is easily overlooked without a sense of guilt in that environment.
Confessions of an Economic Hitman is a book with a similar theme. A guy trained by NSA to be sent to poor countries, making deals through false projections with the goal to extract their natural resources.
I got very far into this book, but didn’t finish it, in large part because the author clearly needed to work through her problems a little more before publishing it. The biggest “I’m not ACTUALLY like them” complex ever.
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 things you should do that you don't have to do. That's what morality is. Sure, for the purposes of doing things about unethical companies, it might be best to view all corporations as fundamentally unethical because that implies that the right place to make society better is by opposing their behavior with laws. But at an everyday human level everyone is responsible for exactly the things that they do and being at a corporation in no way changes it at all.
I’ve seen this time and again. The more money that a corporation or the leaders in there make, the less they’re worried about ethics.
It’s an irritating take. But personally I don’t move in the same circles as those making ethically dubious and partially legal decisions.
Do I want corporations to be ethical? Yes. Will I campaign for that and call my senator and congressman? Yes.
Are corporation lobbyists calling my congressman and senator with boatloads of money? You bet.
I don’t think everyone understands how disruptive privacy violations are. I think the best place to begin is start educating kids in high school about it, like they do for sex ed.
Am I willing to put money on the line and risk unemployment in the current market? Depends.
Thank you for putting into words what I dislike about that refrain so eloquently. It’s a cop out.
An irritating take can still be largely true simply due to how the incentives are set up.
It's not about true or false. The point is that it's true if you're conceptualizing corporations as enemies to be handled and false if you're conceptualizing them as something you're part of that you're responsible for and you're trying to hold people accountable. The truth value is relative to your moral goal.
Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well.
It is ok to harm another group of people financially and even personally because that’s what “business does”. Degradation being a ratchet that calcifies unethical behavior doesn’t help. Companies tend to get less ethical the older and larger they become.
> Being at a corporation normalizes sociopathy to some extent. The phrase: “It’s business, not personal”, outlines it well
The phrase essentially describes subsuming individuality in favour of group interests. You see similar refrains in militaries, monarchies, non-profits and HOAs.
Especially HOAs.
As far as businesses go, I'd say Palantir finds itself somewhere between "extremely ethically dubious" and "overtly, transparently evil."
I mean, this kinda pushes them past the "in between" phase and squarely into "overtly evil" IMO:
https://xcancel.com/i/status/2045574398573453312
Why not?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_Corporation_(certification)
sure.. but there is 'not ethical' and there is palantir...
They would read it and just say to themselves "Wow, how could anyone fall into that trap? Certainly I never would!"
I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields". Over the last 10 years, I also have come away with an intense impression that Silicon Valley is full of the self-delusional type, as evidenced by Sara's book, Palantir's weird advertising and CEO, and the insane Nimbyism.
I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast. I and many others had enough of Silicon Valley.
Side note: I find it illuminating that one of the most popular social apps that birth social trends did not come from Silicon Valley, but China. I don't think Silicon Valley can drive social trends at all (anti-humanity types are too prevalent).
> I have an irrational hatred of someone who believes in "reality distortion fields".
Can you clarify what you mean by "believes in"?
I believe Steve Jobs had a reality distortion field, that he was an expert convincer. Do you hate me or do you hate him or do you hate something else entirely?
That power, today, is expressed through technology, and these overlords hold their control via proprietary software and anticompetitive business practices.
To seize power back, you need to relinquish their shackles by using technology that is designed with user freedom in mind, not "lock-in", and support businesses constituted of that ethos.
We don't need to support business. We need to support political institutions that oppose proprietary software and support people's right to general purpose computing
It's exactly this over reliance on companies to shape society that got us in this mess
Free as in freedom!
> I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast.
Yes, because Wall Street is a paragon of ethical corporate behavior.
The fact that they're at least honest about what they care about (money) makes them far simpler to deal with than these entities (both private and public) that spin complex webs of half truths about how they're making the world better by implementing 1984.
> I believe it is in the best interest of the United States if the center of power shifts back from West Coast "tech bros" to the East coast
I'm not an American, never set foot in the US for that matter, but I'd say I'm pretty sympathetic to the people actually living there. All this to say that I've recently had the same realisation as you when it comes to West Coast people vs East Coast people, by this point the SV automatons are way, way outside of "normal life", maybe that has always been the case but for sure back in those days SV didn't have the same power as it has now (I'm not talking money, even though that is important, I'm talking actual power to have control over people's lives), not by a long shot.
Silicon Valley must be destroyed to save America. Gladly more are waking up to this. There’s been a surge on both the right and left in my state of people wanting to reject the place and it’s disgusting “culture”.
People do anything for money
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
This just another example of Sinclair's Law.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Everybody need to be a hero of their own story. Even concentration camp guards had this mental model, apart from outright sadists (I know I know, Godwin is cheap but it fits so well when talking about sociopathic traits and/or lack of morality when convenient).
To quote Upton Sinclair:
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
But there's something bigger that you allude to, which is that very few peoplel think of themselves as the bad guys. People separate themselves from the harm they contribute to or they dehumanize the targets of that harm and then argue they deserve it somehow or simply that this is necessary for some reason (eg lesser evil arguments).
I eschew the concept of "bad guys" in general because it's a non-argument. Philosophically and politically it's known as "idealism" [1][2]. It's saying "we are the good guys because we are the good guys" and everyone think they're the good guys.
The alternative to this is materialism [3] and historical materialism [4]. There is no metaphysical or inherent goodness (or badness). You are the sum of your actions and their impact on the world. Likewise you are a product of your material world.
So we don't really need to go down the rabbit hole of figuring out if, say, FB/Meta or Palantir is a "good" company or if the employees are or feel "good". We can simply look at the impact and whether that impact was intentional or otherwise foreseeable.
And that record for Meta really isn't good eg Myanmar and the Rohingya genocide [5] or FB's real world harm from spreading misinformation [6].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism_in_international_rela...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
[5]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
[6]: https://theconversation.com/facebook-data-reveal-the-devasta...
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?
I'm sure this is especially true of Palantir employees, but I feel like everyone in big tech is increasingly wrestling with this. (Don't ask me how I know.)
I am paid far less than what I'm worth to work at a company that is as close to ethically neutral as I could find. The next step would be nonprofits, but there aren't many and a lot of times they can't justify my pay, understandably.
Good luck convincing people to not just take the money.
how do you know?
I can understand why. In the 50s-60s, tech was highly military, or corporate. The NASA people came from building ICBMs to the space program and joined a similarly staid, regimented culture. The IBM guys were notoriously square. Silicon valley was also started and funded by these types (e.g. Shockley from Bell Labs), but then at the same time there was the LSD-influenced counter-culture developing around Stanford and Berkeley. Eventually these people, with desires of consciousness-expanding, world-changing, even revolutionary outcomes, started to populate the labs and develop new companies. Apple wasn't alone among companies that thought they were doing something with counter-cultural and utopian ideas. "Digital Research" of CP/M fame was originally called "Intergalactic Digital Research". Many of these types were highly influenced by science fiction and probably had a little adjacent experience with the hippies.
Many people envisioned a future where there wasn't a phone company intermediating a long-distance call, where you could participate in a virtual economy without government interference, and where many more products were not much affected by capital and scarcity. After all, once you have the computer, the software possibilities are unlimited, even if the hardware might not be ready yet. People could extrapolate from dial-up modems to neural linkages and participation in a virtual or holographic universe which was free from physical constraints.
What we have in the 2010s and beyond is people coming to terms with the reality that what they developed is actually a more effective straight-jacket than the previous constraints of physicality, and at the same time it is hollowing out traditional human relationships and social constructs. The fact that things like MAGA, Qanon, Ziz, and 764 are transnational and transcultural now is bizarre. These are all disappointing developments from the dystopian side of 70s-80s science fiction, not what people thought they were building when they were creating the first addictive smartphone apps.
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Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company.
Also Palantir customers should understand that by buying Palantir services/products they are doing business with U.S. defense company.
I don't say that this is positive or negative, it just clarifies the relationships and it should set the expectations.
> They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company.
We should stop using the word "defense". They're war contractors at a war company.
The Department of Defense is the Department of War. They changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries. We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" the country.
On the changes to US military organization and thinking post-WW2 (and the name change):
> […] The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history. Harry Truman and the American leaders who destroyed the Axis, and who now were facing the Soviet empire, realized that national security had become a larger undertaking than the previous American tradition of moving, as needed, between discrete conditions of “war” and “peace.”
> These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies.
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...
The author is a retired professor from the US Naval War College:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Nichols_(academic)
Ah yes, the administration’s love of Axis of Allies, or is it allies of axis? They don’t know, they got distracted by the mustaches and the desire to conquer the world.
You do realize that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan) were attacking everyone with the explicitly stated goal of conquering the world (and subjecting it to the holocaust, we might add), and US stopped them, conquered Europe, North Africa, half the Pacific, and nothing has been able to stop the US military since.
And the US ... retreated.
We might add, the Soviets, the other axis, did not retreat. China did not retreat. Both of them started killing people to keep their conquests.
I mean, there's no shortage of stuff that the US did wrong and US made mistakes. This was not one of them.
The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done.
Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, etc.
US conquest was quiet similar to British conquest. They didn't make their conquered people citizens (that'd make things tricky for exploitation) so instead they make sure the "democracies" they spread elected the right leaders who just so happen to align with US interests.
There's a reason the US has military bases across the globe. It's not because they've retreated from their subservient states.
> The US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done.
As much as I am critical of the US, until now the US did behave very differently from other superpowers. Consider the end of WWII. The US did not inflict reparations on the vanquished nations but rather, invested huge sums in their rebuilding, in the process making stalwart allies of them. These were not puppet governments, they became thriving democracies.
This is not to excuse the many bad things the US has done in Latin America, Vietnam, etc. But there is really no comparison between US behaviour and that of the USSR (or of colonial European countries, for that matter). People in Soviet-controlled East Germany were quite keen to go to the west and did not perceive the presence of US military bases there as evidence of American totalitarianism.
That, of course, has changed and now America is seen as a predatory hegemon. But that has not always been true.
The US did not keep bases in all of West Germany though.
There were different sectors. The US had essentially the South. There were also the British sector and French. The Soviets were the fourth sector but we all know how that one was quite different from the other three.
While the French and British have mostly left, the US stayed. Though to be fair even the British still do have some bases it seems as NATO troups. But no more large garrison in many larger cities.
The US on the other hand is still there with much larger force. Like think back to "Air Force One" (the movie with Harrison Ford) which used Ramstein Airbase in the movie (though they didn't actually film there) and that airbase has come up in the Iran conflict as a conflict of its own. Meaning Germany didn't want the US to use it as a hub for US operations (supply logistics) for the Iran war.
> The US on the other hand is still there with much larger force.
To provide for European security! That’s the deal in terms of Europe and NATO and also specifically to handle Germany. The idea was that America would provide security to Europe including the nuclear umbrella, and one benefit - among many others - was that Germany would not need to have a powerful military.
Can you perhaps guess why people might be concerned about a heavily armed Germany in the postwar period? Those same concerns are bubbling up in European capitals right now, as Germany rearms due to the loss of the US as a reliable partner.
Which is now out the window.
And yes I definitely remember Colbert quite some time ago quipping about exactly that (paraphrased from memory): US no longer reliable NATO partner and nuclear deterrent. So Europe needs to step up. Let's have Germany have nukes. What could possibly go wrong!
The obviously funny thing being, that the US has, for a long time and Trump doubled down, asked Europe including Germany to spend more on military. And the "moderate forces" in Germany are not an issue in that regard. Those are the ones not wanting Trump to use Ramstein airbase in a war he started.
But would you want the AfD to come to power and wield those ramped up, potentially now nuclear, forces? The party that was ruled as "definitely extremist right wing aka neo nazi" in some federal states by Germany's own "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution". Oh and also was that not the party a certain Elon Musk and Trump were trying to prop up? Which is doubly funny because of the AfD's alleged ties to Putin (sometimes more than alleged).
> But would you want the AfD to come to power and wield those ramped up, potentially now nuclear, forces?
Totally! That’s what makes the situation doubly maddening. It would be one thing if these actions were bad for the world and good for the US. But they’re bad for the US too!
I forget who it was that said this, and I’m sure my paraphrasing is bad, but I listened or read something I found chilling. It was something like, ordinary Americans are totally unprepared for the level of danger they will experience over the coming decades.
The only reason Trump is able to destroy global institutions so easily is because Americans take their security for granted. But that security is the result of institutions developed in the aftermath of an utterly devastating war. Now those institutions are damaged and America’s friends are alienated, right when they are most needed to deal with China, Russia, AI, drones, cyber, nuclear, climate…talk about bad timing.
WTF ... this comment, the one I'm replying to is written by an LLM. Look at the last sentence:
> deal with China, Russia, AI, drones, cyber, nuclear, climate…talk about bad timing.
Note the characters used for the "..." in that sentence. I have never seen a human do that, not even once, and LLMs like ChatGPT do it all the time.
The US was preferable to the British who were preferable to the Spanish. Hopefully the next global hegemon is similarly preferable to the US.
> As much as I am critical of the US, until now the US did behave very differently from other superpowers. Consider the end of WWII. The US did not inflict reparations on the vanquished nations but rather, invested huge sums in their rebuilding, in the process making stalwart allies of them.
That is also how Rome routinely dealt with the border tribes that it defeated. It's not a new idea. That's just what superpowers do.
The US treated both Germany and Japan well. It did not and has not treated any other nation whose government it's meddled with well. That's my point.
Edit Actually we probably could throw in South Korea into the nations the US has treated well after meddling.
Spain, France, the entire iron curtain following 1992 dissolution of USSR, Taiwan, Phillipines, Costa Rica, Panama ... and speaking of central America, Venezuela isn't doing so bad either. Perhaps more expansive lists could be produced once the definitions of "meddled with" and "treated well" are more refined.
Vietnam and Korea were technically wars to stop conquest, no?
Conquest from who?
I generally take the word "conquest" to mean some outside force coming in and taking over. That didn't happen in either Vietnam or Korea. You could argue that the USSR used conquest to take over territories for the soviet union. However, that's not something really arguable about Vietnam or Korea. Vietnam, in particular, was the native population overthrowing their conquerors, the french, and then deciding they wanted to be communists. They got support from both the USSR and China, but they weren't ultimately under the umbrella of either regime.
Now, I'd agree that Vietnam and Korea both had civil wars supercharged by the US, China, and Russia. But I disagree that these were wars where the US was stopping conquest. We see that in the modern state of Vietnam and North Korea. Vietnam, funnily, became a closer ally to the US than China after the war.
Cuba is very much the same way. It wasn't conquered by an outside force. Yet they did ally with the USSR once the dust settled. They were still an independent nation from the USSR.
> Conquest from who?
The Communists. Would you rather live in North or South Korea?
Vietnam is interesting in that they're still politically authoritarian but willing to be more economically open; see also China. (Just don't say the wrong thing about the wrong people.)
> Would you rather live in North or South Korea?
Today obviously the South. In 1950, probably the North. Throughout the Korean war, it's a wash. The US obliterated the north, but the south was completely insane towards their own civilian population. The ROK was not a "nice" government to live under during the korean war.
If you lived in the north there was a good possibility that you were getting bombed. It was best to live near china.
If you live in the south, there was a good chance you would be conscripted and sent to the meat grinder as a man.
The subsequent cease fire, the south has rebuilt and become the better place to live. The north has mostly struggled due to international sanctions. They have never fully recovered.
"The Communist" were a faction in a civil war, that's not an invasion. And the split in both cases (Vietnam and Korea) was recent and artificial, in the sense of no tradition of there being two countries. It wasn't one country invading another country, but two halves engaged in a civil war.
Where one wants to live is irrelevant. It wasn't about stopping an invasion, which was the initial claim. The US was meddling.
> Vietnam and Korea were technically wars to stop conquest, no?
No.
For example, the US got involved in Vietnam to help the colonizer (France) stop an independence movement. Yes, because they feared the resulting Vietnam may become communist and USSR aligned (something they helped happen, since Ho Chi Minh quite admired the US and expected them to help him at first), but even if this was the case, it's still not about stopping an invasion, because commie Vietnamese are still Vietnamese.
Something along those lines for Korea, too.
Let's compare with the Soviets and conclude the obvious: the US did retreat.
The US has over 128 military bases in 55 foreign countries.
Russia has 12, mostly in former Soviet countries. China has 3.
> Russia has 12, mostly in former Soviet countries. China has 3
To be fair, you're comparing land powers–that tend to annex their holdings–with a maritime power, who tend to trade with and maintain favourable ports at their conquests/allies. So yeah, China doesn't have any foreign bases in Tibet. But that's because it annexed it in the 1950s.
Put together, America obviously has a larger military than China or Russia. But before Russia became a rump, the Soviet Union could marshall military resources comparable to–and for one decade, in excess of–those of the United States for much of the post-War era.
> The US has over 128 military bases in 55 foreign countries.
Are those 55 countries forced to have US military bases, or are they willing/happy to have them around?
Estonia wants more US troops:
* https://news.err.ee/1609992007/estonia-signals-willingness-t...
The Philippines is also good with the US expanding its presence:
* https://news.usni.org/2026/02/02/u-s-army-quietly-stands-up-...
* https://time.com/6252750/philippines-us-military-agreement-c...
How many "foreign" bases did Russia have a few years after WW2, before revolutions kicked them out? Before Russia annexed countries and destroyed the populations?
Because that's, of course, the real question.
It's literally thousands.
You need thousands of military bases if you're going to do "thought police". Because that's what you'll never read here. Russia HAD a (military) thought police. It was Putin's job when he got started, by the way.
Me looking for the soviet military bases rn
EDIT: I completely misunderstood the context here, nevermind.
I live in the Netherlands. The closest one was about 260 km from where I live.
Of course, not any more.
To be fair, if you stand in the middle of The Netherlands, 260km in any direction and you end up outside of the country. Which base are you talking about?
I completely misunderstood the context of this discussion and revoke my mildly snarky comment. You are correct.
Out of genuine (and goodwilled) curiosity, how had you read it?
Was that on a country that went on a genocidal rampage just before and lost the war after killing millions all around Europe, which was decided to be divided in several parts, of which USSR got to control one, and which still developed into an independent country less than a decade later?
Yes, but you're leaving out the other 9 countries the Soviet Union occupied, and immediately started killing the population to keep their conquests: Poland, Austria’s Soviet zone, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
By contrast, the US retreated. And also didn't start killing any population.
> And also didn't start killing any population.
Except for the populations in the global South. We spent a decade firebombing Vietnam and Cambodia.
"Killing their population" as in executing some Nazi collaborators, of which there was no shortage in all, down to full cooperation? Like the ones involved in the Axis alliance and in the eastern front offensives that caused the deaths of millions of their own people?
>And also didn't start killing any population.
Yes, just Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and anybody who leaned national sovereignity/left in the Latin America and later the middle east.
> Very much the same as the USSR and China have done.
The expressed goal of Communism (USSR, later China) was to spread its ideology to the entire world. The US chose at its goal the containment of Communism:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Article
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containment
This is what drove Korea, Vietnam, Cuba/Castro, and many other countries with left-leaning governments. In many cases this ended up with the US supporting the right-wing people, e.g.:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
> There's a reason the US has military bases across the globe. It's not because they've retreated from their subservient states.
Yes, containment and power projection to keep the sea lanes open for trade (which benefits the US financially and life-style-wise, but also benefits countries who export things, to the US and other places):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSC_68
If you don't think having peaceful sea lanes is useful, see Houthis/Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz. What we're seeing with Trump's worldview is a return to how things tended to be earlier in history:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
US did not stopped Axis alone, Allies did. Even in Pacific Soviet participation was very important in defeating Japan.
And the US did not retreat, it kept its military all across Europe (and the world), brought its nuclear weapons to Europe (not for the Europe, but for the US to be used with Europe as a launching pad).
> and US stopped them
The Allies stopped them. The US was one of the major contributors, but they were far from alone. The Soviets, Britain, Canada, India, Poland, France, Netherlands, Kenya, etc etc all contributed to various extents. The Indian army was one of the biggest by number of men. The Poles and French were crucial in setting the ground work for the British decrypting Enigma, alongside their purely military contributions.
Arguably the Soviets were on par (or more) than the US in defeating Nazi Germany. (Yes, lend lease, etc, this is not downplaying US contributions).
The Eastern Front was the real battlefield were Nazi Germany was doomed.
Stalingrad, Kursk, Bagration, etc.
I think OP is talking about the current administration.
No one reads anymore
Japan did not take part in the Holocaust. Not the goal of Germany nor Italy was the holocaust. Their objective was not to conquer the world. They were empire builders, plain and simple, and they were trying to expand their trade networks, like Britain had done and monopolized. They took over each European state and replaced its leadership with one that benefitted themselves. Their objective was policy frameworks for the purpose of trading. The holocaust was a later addon (1940).
> Japan did not take part in the Holocaust.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataan_Death_March
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women (Japan still ignores complaints to this day)
The Japanese viewed non-Japanese as sub-human. It is no different than Nazis viewing Jews, Slavs, etc, as sub-human.
> The holocaust was a later addon (1940).
At least when it comes to the Nazis, genocide was always the general direction:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
The focus on Jews came a little later:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference
No one calls the japanese persecution of the Chinese a holocaust.
For generalplan ost, “The plan, prepared in the years 1939–1942, was part of Adolf Hitler's and the Nazi movement's Lebensraum policy and a fulfilment of the Drang nach Osten” which still makes it a later development.
They didn’t even retreat from places like Italy because... the communists might be successful. So the CIA backed fascists to sabotage them.
And the US ... retreated. harumph And interferred, and supported right-wing militias, and invaded countries by themselves, and supported coups, and so on.
Most simplistic would be _Divide and Conquer_ (Axis) vs _United we stand, divided we fall_ (Allie). This administration is going down the divide and conquer path.
I recommend _Culture in Nazi Germany_ by Michael H Kater. [0] The current US administration has numerous similarities to 1930s Germany. The way they support banning books and the treatment of the LGBT+ community. Working to take over media organizations with proponent operatives, financial corruption, and _please the leader_ are also present in both. There are more ... read the book for them.
[0] https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300253375/culture-in-naz...
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?
Are you looking for and only accepting isomorphism between the two?
There are no governing bodies in history that have ever been isomorphic. Only similarities exist between them. Japan never assisted with extermination of Jews and they are in the Venn diagram of Axis and authoritarianism.
I have high confidence that Adolf Hilter, Bentio Mussolini, and Emperor Shōwa never were part of a child trafficking ring that catered to the wealthy and assisted them with raping and torturing of youths on a privately owned island. There are simulates though with _human trafficking_ between all parties.
Didn't Donald Trump state that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country? Didn't Adolf Hitler say Jews are poisoning the blood of the country? Aren't both simulates?
There never can be two states that are exactly the same; from policies to events. Iceland and Germany are classified as democratic countries and they have dissimilarities.
> Didn't Donald Trump state that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country? Didn't Adolf Hitler say Jews are poisoning the blood of the country? Aren't both simulates?
That is actually something that is pretty popular with anti-immigration rhetoric before and after Hitler, although there are probably over a hundred such politicians who used that rhetoric, not many have killed millions, that's hardly enough to think you have found Nazism.
> I have high confidence that Adolf Hilter, Bentio Mussolini, and Emperor Shōwa never were part of a child trafficking ring that catered to the wealthy and assisted them with raping and torturing of youths on a privately owned island. There are simulates though with _human trafficking_ between all parties.
As far as I can tell apart from guilt by association, there is no definitive proof about Trump being part of their pedophile ring, nothing that can't be said about Clinton, Chomsky or Gates or many others for example. The relation to Hitler in any case is no relation at all, so this segue is confusing
In any case, this examples are redundant as similarities are not enough to establish a category, as I could establish similarities between Hitler and Gandhi (Vegetarianism, cult following, theatrical rhetorics and meta-narratives) to say Hitler is actually a pacifist. That's of course absurd.
Ignoring the Nazi anti-morality and national scale paranoid schizophrenia which are major missing points, the rapid takeover of a single party of the state, destroying the parliament, making the Executive into the law, creating a party's army and using state violence against political enemies are some of the hallmarks of the beginning of third reich germany. This is simply not Trump USA after 6 years, not close.
I am sorry but these false comparisons are simply a social media convention of getting engagement by turning the volume to 11, and nothing works better than misusing categories through superficial comparisons
My point was that this administration seems to like the axis plan more than the original US/Allied plan. I'm fully aware of which side was which. Tell that to Hegseth and Miller.
> The Department of Defense is the Department of War
No, it is not, at least not technically. That would require an act of Congress, which hasn't happened. Despite what the idiots "in charge" seem to believe.
But those idiots "in charge" are what matters, right? Since they set the tone for the department, and lately they sure are acting more like a DoW than a DoD.
Its quite laughable to pretend that DoD was never on the offense between 1948 and 2025.
Even Hitler's army, which attacked large parts of Europe in WW2, was called the Wehrmacht ("defense force" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht). But, as a famous German who was almost 150 years older than Hitler already knew, "Namen sind Schall und Rauch" ("names are but sound and smoke").
It's effectively the same. The EO declares the Dept of War as a secondary title. Formally it still is the DoD.
> nobody can quite articulate, but it certainly has nothing to do with "defending" the country.
It's not hard:
* They're trying to build nuclear weapons, and they're one of the worlds leading sponsor of terrorism (if not the sole leader).
* The country ran out of water, people started to protest their government, and were killed by the thousands (some say tens of thousands potentially more).
Water is one of the most basic human needs, if they're willing to kill their own people protesting for the most basic human need, what would they do with Nuclear to the rest of the world? I feel like people don't understand the gravity of Iran with nuclear.
Iran having nuclear will not end well for its citizens or the world.
* Their nuclear program was obliterated in June 2026, says even the White house (1)
* The worlds leading sponsor of and spender on terrorism (including financial aid to Hamas) is Israel, by a wide margin (2)
* Claims that “thousands” or “tens of thousands” were killed specifically over water protests are not supported by widely accepted evidence
Now I'm wondering which country is a bigger threat to us and peace in general.
A country on the brink of financial collapse, with a severe drought and one of the last remaining opponents of our greatest ally?
Or a country that "provides funding to both Democratic and Republican leadership teams, often supporting over 90% of targeted caucus members" (3) and constantly wants us to fight their wars?
1) https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_state-sponsored_ter...
3) https://www.trackaipac.com/congress
Can both not be true?
Should also keep in mind the secretary of war publicly stated the department's aim is "maximum lethality, not tepid legality".
Politics aside, anyone in the supply chain shouldn't be surprised they have a role in illegal killings, because that's literally what they said they're doing.
Great point. Labeling it as 'defense' instead of 'war' might be one of the more brilliant marketing tricks in the last century.
No one likes war, everyone loves defense. Something something expanded surveillance under the guise of counter-terrorism post-9/11.
> No one likes war, everyone loves defense. Something something expanded surveillance under the guise of counter-terrorism post-9/11
It was renamed after WWII. In part because smart minds realised that war between industrialised civilisations had ceased to be an accretive endeavour since sometime between Napoleon and the Kaiser.
Have you heard about the Cold War that immediately ensued after WW2 between the world's two leading industrial nations?
Everyone involved was smart enough to realize it shouldn’t go hot.
It went hot in proxy wars. It only didn't go to total war because of threat of nuclear war and even then nuclear incidents nearly happened on multiple occasions.
Except for in Korea, Vietnam, etc etc
> Except for in Korea, Vietnam, etc etc
I originally discussed "war between industrialised civilisations." "Korea, Vietnam, etc" were not that.
The World Wars drove home the argument that direct confrontation between industrialised socieities is a lose-lose proposition. Since WWII, what I think we've been experimenting with is whether industrialised civilisations can wage war by proxy and still come out ahead. ("Ahead" here measured in relative and absolute power and wealth.) The answer appears to be no–unless you can bog down another who was stupid enough to engage without a proxy. But I don't think it was obviously no until somewhere between the Iraq War and now.
Are they war or defense products when they are used against your own citizens?
Neither... it is illegal when used against citizens
What law are you thinking of? Some tools used in riot enforcements would be illegal to use in wars, so it actually seems to be the other way around to me.
> What law are you thinking of?
Posse Comitatus [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act
That sounds like some woke shit that doesn’t stand up to the rights of the President, unless that President is a Democrat.
“Woke shit” signed into law in 1878. Maybe woke was what the world was like most of the time.
I was being sarcastic clanker and/or throwaway account.
It’s obviously the law but this admin doesn’t respect the law, as they believe we’re in a post Constitutional era. It’s looks like they are manifesting their beliefs since so many people support them, both sides them, or decide it’s not that big a deal when the executive branch of the American government starts executing American citizens and trying to EO away the 14th amendment on farcical grounds.
What if you're waging a war in the name of defense?
Then you're waging a war.
What if it's just a "military operation" or a "military excursion"?
It certainly has nothing to do with defending the country the department is located in.
The reason is fairly clear. The king has dementia and has lost the plot. And so far no one has been able to declare him unfit.
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War and defence are the same thing in the US, so the naming doesn't really matter. To go after enemies, real or otherwise, with overwhelming force (to also the scare the ones not bombed this time), is to "defend" the US. That is how they justify it to themselves.
They are war criminals participating in a war crime enterprise.
Quite a few joined when it was a defense contractor, at least in name. They could at least imagine that their jobs were for defense purposes.
The name change is a harsh truth.
The name isn't changed.
the current administration is using the war name, it doesn't matter what it technically is because they are using it to plainly state their ambitions for it
They are calling Gulf of Mexico with a wrong name either, that doesn't mean they are right.
this isn't a discussion about wrong vs right
The U.S. has been taking military action against other countries since its inception, whether it was named DoD or DoW.
I was under the impression the name was not actually formally changed, just like how the “Department of government efficiency” was never actually a department but was just a rebranding of an existing department done totally by mouth (like a lot of nonsense this administration does)
> y changed the name and then immediately started taking military action against other countries
the "department of defense" has been doing military actions against other countries forever.
Regardless of what the Trump administration will tell you, that's not it's name. The executive branch is not empowered to unilaterally change the name of a department.
It’s not empowered to unilaterally declare war without approval from congress, either. But here we are.
It’s not a war, it’s a special military operation.
You're mixing up the propaganda phrases, that's Russia's stance in Ukraine. Trump's is this is "an excursion", totally different things.
He called it a military operation between the comment above and yours at the press conference going on right now.
He didn't call it a special one though.
As a Russian emigrant, I feel this whole war is a severe case of déjà vu. It's as if the US government is going through a stolen Russian playbook, appropriating everything.
"Special operation"? Check. "$EnemyCapital in 3 days"? Check. "We haven't even started yet"? Check. "Goodwill gestures"? Check.
(It's actually a common joke on the Russian Internet. So common, in fact, that it has already stopped being funny.)
“an excursion” is even more mad. He heard the word “incursion” and thought that it sounded cool if he posted it
“an excursion” is even more mad. He heard the word “incursion” and thought that it sounded cool
The president isn't empowered to declare war, but as Commander in Chief he is empowered to send the military anywhere he wants and start whatever "conflict" he wants, for whatever reason he wants, including no reason whatsoever. After which Congress can retroactively declare it a war if they so choose. But the US hasn't fought a declared war since WW2, because declarations of war don't really mean anything when the missiles have already been fired and the bombs have already been dropped.
I hate Trump as much as anyone with a moral core should, but the President's capacity for creating arbitrary military violence and expenditure has always been unchecked.
If that’s true, that’s insane. Forgive me, I’m not a PolSci scholar. Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy? It always annoys me when the headlines are “Trump invaded this …” or “Trump slapped a tariff on…” while effectively it’s the US government that’s doing that, they are letting him to do as he pleases? Then the fault lies not with him. He’s not a king but surely seems to have absolute discretion if you believe the headlines.
There was a widespread belief that U.S. government has an elaborate system of checks and balances but it was not evidence-based. Kind of Flat Earth period of American political science.
The checks and balance are between the 3 branches of government. If congress wanted to stop the war, they could. If the supreme court wanted to hand the power to start wars back to congress they could.
Just because they don't, doesn't mean they aren't able. The real flat earth theory is thinking that unwritten rules and institutions were protected from a president that insists on pulling every lever of power at once, but that's separate from the checks and balances.
If one person in executive position is able to effectively override the nation's rules and institutions it sounds awfully close to saying there are no checks and balances.
Its because the president used to have a modicum of respect for the house and the Senate. So the president did have the sole right to send military anywhere on the planet and even launch nukes without any need for congressional permission. This is by design. But the other presidents were a bit less crazy so we never noticed.
The system relies on people acting in good faith. It is impossible to make a constitution that can deal with people at all levels of power not acting in good faith.
In this case, Congress has completely abdicated their duties.
No it doesn’t. Checks and balances is explicitly setting branches against each other because it is assumed everyone is a greedy abusive MF’er only out for their own benefit.
The challenge is all 3 branches are owned by the same group right now.
> Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy?
Who will be overruling that "someone in the cabinet", when things start going the wrong way again? There is always someone on top, and in the US it's the sitting President.
The diehards that voted last time are having second thoughts when it starts hitting their wallets. Loyalty goes both ways.
The movie "vice" covers this nicely. The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent.
This is simply not true and it's disappointing fear-mongering from Vice (or anyone else who publishes this stuff). The reason you know it's true is because Trump doesn't care about precedent, yet in court case after court case that he or his administration lose they follow the law, even if it is imperfect or later attempted to be argued under a different standing.
The same thing that is true for Donald Trump now was true for pretty much all past presidents. Nothing has meaningfully changed here, yet we did not have these same articles before, nor did we have folks who are so caught up in political fervor that they are happy to go along with any ole' article or reporting that aligns with their current beliefs.
In other words, articles like those are click-bait, and their sole intention or at least their effect is to cause chaos and doubt in the American government.
They're talking about the movie Vice from 2018, not Vice the magazine.
Thanks for the correction. No change in my opinion or writing though.
> Nothing has meaningfully changed here
Legally? No. That's what OP said:
> The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent.
Now if we're talking reality, the realty is that new precedents were set (president acting like a king) which revealed that there are not effective legal checks on US presidents acting like kings (or else we would not have a president acting like a king).
Sorry, I just don't agree with your assessment. Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen". Trump, as despicable and annoying as he is certainly says a lot, but he's not doing anything from what I can tell that isn't at least poorly argued that he has a right or legal justification for doing. A king or queen needs no such justification, and if one is going through the motions and being forced to respect the law (again there are shades of gray here) than there is no "acting like a king".
But if your focus is on whatever he tweets and therefore he acts like a king, sure. Whatever. I mostly care about what actually happens, actual policy, actual laws and rules, not the theater around it which so many seem to want to indulge in instead of watching reality TV.
> A king or queen needs no such justification
Sure they do! Take the king that the US's predecessor governments rebelled against, King George III. He was very much bound to the dictates of Parliament. From his Wikipedia article:
> Meanwhile, George had become exasperated at Grenville's attempts to reduce the King's prerogatives, and tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade William Pitt the Elder to accept the office of prime minister.[45]
Does this sound like something that would be said of an absolute monarch?
Donald Trump is also bound by the dictates of Congress and the courts. If that’s your criteria as to who is “acting like a king” and your reference is yet another king who is constrained by the Congress and Courts, I’m not really sure what point your trying to make here.
He isn’t a king nor does he act like one in the office of the President precisely because he is following the law (generally speaking, I don’t think it’s pertinent to get into specific details else we get into those same details with all presidents) and because he is constrained by Congress.
Your argument just makes “king” George out to be constrained in the way a president is. It’s a bad argument. Don’t let the reality TV fool you.
> Your argument just makes “king” George out to be constrained in the way a president is.
Your placing of King in quotes is bizarre. Like, you see a resemblance between the current president and an actual king, and your takeaway is to try to retcon history and claim the king was not a king?
Your argument that someone can't act like a king unless they're breaking laws is a bad argument (and ignores the fact that this one is doing both). Don't let your reality tv fool you.
If that's your criteria as to who is "not acting like a king", I’m not really sure what point you're trying to make here.
> 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 America) is similarly stymied and frustrated by some act of Congress. Are the presidents kings or are the kings presidents?
It seems like people are so hung up on the Twitter reality TV sports of politics that they've forgotten what a king is.
> 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 seems like people are so hung up on the Twitter reality TV sports of politics that they've forgotten what a king is.
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.
> Ok then all presidents were acting as kings or King George was just acting more like a president.
You're confusing how someone acts with which laws they are subject to, and as a result, you've been reduced to inane wordplay as your only argument.
Previously, even though a US president theoretically had the power to act like a king, they have mostly maintained a precedent of not doing so*.
Now, a new precedent has been set: A president acting like a king*.
Hope that clears things up.
* - I realize you may personally disagree with this. That's okay. I'm open to hearing arguments otherwise, but the ones you've put forth so far were unsuccessful at swaying people from the consensus stated above.
> A king or queen needs no such justification
They sure spent a lot of time and effort establishing it for something they didn't need.
Sorry, but I just can't agree with your assessment:
> Anyone can just say "well so and so is acting like a king or queen".
This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false. If many folks are saying a thing, there is more evidence of it being true than if "anyone" says it. The consensus here seems to be that the current USA president is acting like a king. To alter the consensus, make a successful argument to that effect.
To wit:
- "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."
- "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance."
- "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures."
- "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power."
- "For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us"
- "For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States"
- "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world"
- "For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent"
- "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury"
- "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences"
For someone in the USA, some of this might ring a historical bell.
> This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false.
You're right, it doesn't mean that. But it belittles the accusation. Folks sometimes refer to their children as little tyrants. Conservatives would say Obama or Biden were acting like kings issuing edicts.
If you want to argue about this because you're interested in the mudslinging, that's fine but that's a separate discussion: a discussion about reality TV, not reality in offices of the government.
> The consensus here seems to be that the current USA president is acting like a king.
Current consensus is usually wrong, doubly so in this case. He might tweet a bunch of things, yet he's still constrained by the rule of law and the Congress, and the Court.
>> This does not mean that anytime someone says it, it is false.
> You're right, it doesn't mean that. But it belittles the accusation.
Does it? I don't think so. Like we should refrain from ever saying it when it is appropriate, because there will always exist at least 1 person in the world who disagrees and thus the accusation is belittled in their eyes alone? Pass.
> Conservatives would say Obama or Biden were acting like kings issuing edicts.
Sure, and they can say whatever they want! It's not like people would agree with them if they said it, unlike in this example, in which they would.
> Current consensus is usually wrong
This nonsense sounds like a slogan of somebody who is usually both wrong and against consensus.
> yet he's still constrained by the rule of law and the Congress, and the Court
Yep, totally irrelevant, as we've already covered: someone being theoretically "constrained by the rule of law and the Congress, and the Court" does not mean "cannot act like a king", as we've now seen.
This is demonstrably false. In the case of removing migrants, the court ordered the practice halt and flights get turned around. The court also found evidence of contempt from the federal government due to noncompliance, although another appeals court stopped the contempt investigation.
In the Kiyemba decision, the court identified a pattern of 96 violations across 75 or so cases. Detainees were held despite release orders
In family separation cases, courts have required legal representation reinstated and the government refused to comply.
In the case of NY vs Trump, courts ordered funds to be unfrozen and the administration refused to comply.
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but can you cite the specific court cases or provide an up to date article discussing them so we have somewhere to start? The reason I am asking for this (and no worries if you don't want to dig any of this up) is because each case has specific nuance that is worthy of discussion, and in some cases (pardon the pun) the court order wasn't the final say pending appeal or actual Constitutional authority arguments were pending or legitimate.
Separately, if you want to claim that the Trump Administration is acting like a king because they've refused to comply with a single court case, then of course you have to extend that same categorization to any president who has ignored or circumvented a court order. But why stop there? Why not governors or private persons? Why do some have the luxury of seemingly ignoring Congressional subpoenas?
The Trump Administration has also lost quite a number of court cases and he has failed to prosecute his political enemies. If he were a king he would be ignoring much more than just a few court orders, folks would be in jail, &c.
Peter, the apologist is here.
What has meaningfully changed here is the rate at which Trump goes charging across lines that result in court cases.
As best as I remember, it has always been the case that executives make decisions that result in court cases. I've never seen it like this, though.
The rate is different but at the end of the day they still go through the process and when his administration loses cases they just shut up and lose the case. You mostly don't hear about the, I believe hundreds, of cases that the administration has lost. As long as they follow the rule of law (obviously there are at times gray areas and he is expert at identifying and challenging those) I'm not too concerned. Again the media just whips people up into a fervor because it's really good advertising business.
Why would you think it’s not that way? Virtually all of the power of the executive branch of the US Goverment is in the Office of the President. There are mechanisms in the Constitution to remove the sitting president, but it requires the other branches to act in the best interests of the nation instead of their own personal interests.
Look at the history of every single war we’ve been involved in since WWII, no declaration of war. Korean War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Balkans, GWOT, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Iran.
I’m not a fan of the president, but Trump only started two of those. Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama, and the last two were Trump. That’s 7 total presidents, add in Bay of Pigs and JFK for 8 and the only two presidents who didn’t start a war are Nixon, who fucked up negotiations with the NVA that may have prolonged the war to win an election, and Jimmy Carter, who tried to rescue hostages in Iran with military assets.
> Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama
I think this is at least a little misleading. How many of these conflicts were started by that president/the US (as opposed to "joined")?
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-nothing and frankly regard the President taking unilateral actions as relieving them of accountability and the need to take action themselves on important matters.
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.
> without our say so
The election was our say so. "We" collectively voted for this.
It’s not just one geezer, Congress also agrees with him (at least in the sense that they aren’t willing to take advantage of any of the leverage they have to stop him). The midterm elections will be the people’s chance to express how they feel about it all.
He’s the hate magnet for things they want anyway. Why not let him go crazy?
It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions.
This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civilian commander of the military and regardless of whether it is a Democrat or Republican we, like in other cases, give the President the discretion to make these choices. You may not like their exercise of power, but it is legal, Constitutional, and intentional and even if it is Donald Trump (much to my displeasure) we as a society trust him and his office to use this power responsibly and for the good of the American people. Even in the case of Iran and Venezuela, frankly, I think he has used power responsibly (if less effective than it should be) and for the good of the American people. We can't have a nuclear Iran in the Middle East, nor can we or should we accept thugs like Maduro running a country into the ground and causing mass migration to the US and causing problems here and breaking our laws.
There are folks in the cabinet that can take action, or resign, &c., but as the Executive the president selects his cabinet and they serve at his pleasure, once they are confirmed by the Senate. This is true for all presidents and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
I think sometimes we forget, these are just people. We give them broad authority and they get to, by virtue of being elected, exercise that power as they see fit though ideally if or when a law is broken we deal with it through the judicial system.
What's the recourse when they fall into a natural senile abyss like with the previous POTUS? Wait and see? I naively lived under an assumption there was a system of checks and balances that's not a coup d'état.
It's just up to those that we elected to make a decision or enact legislation. If they decide tat the president isn't senile enough, then that's just what they get to decide. Sometimes I think folks are expecting there to be an ever increasing system of accountability or authority to appeal to, but no it's just those people and they get to decide. If you don't like their decision, outside of the ballot box or whatever other means you have available to protest their decision, then you just have to live with what they say or decide. They are the authority. They decide to invoke the 25th Amendment or not. Not you.
I'll bite. What's in it for them ("They are the authority")? Weathering the weather until the next election? I'm prone to assuming that people higher on the totem pole are smarter, more experienced, more nuanced, better educated, that's on me.
I don't follow the question. What do you mean what's in it for them? They simply disagree with you and they get to make that decision.
Apologies. My premise is this:
The POTUS is funny /s. Read his remarks about Tim Apple, pure comedy if was intended as such. He needs to take an ESL course. "3 or 4 "BIG HELPS". "I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’”
He's surrounded by the creme de la creme of our society, at least in terms of influence. Many of these folks come from old money, West Point, Ivy League, whatever. No matter how egomaniac one has to be to raise through the ranks of our the political system, they are still highly intelligent and connected tribe and should be able to read the future we are leaping into. Am I giving them too much credit? Why isn't their horizon decades long?
> What's the recourse when they fall into a natural senile abyss like with the previous POTUS?
Congress should tighten up the War Powers Act, including but not limited to making the Secretary of Defense personally liable for breaches. (We do this with CFOs under Sarbanes-Oxley.)
previous POTUS? you meant current, right?
> This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world
Yes it is. And it can be done quite quickly in the modern world.
It's not, and the evidence for that at least partially rests in the War Powers Act as Congress itself realized it wasn't enough. Who am I to argue with Congress? :)
If the constitution needs amending, amend it.
Just "doing war" and calling it something else because you find the "right" way inconvenient or impractical is ridiculous, immoral, and illegal.
If the government acts on behalf of and derives its authority from the will of the people then do it according to our shared governance. If not then the people claiming autocracy or oligarchy or techno-feudalism has supplanted our democracy are probably on to something.
Tl;dr - no shit following the law is less convenient than just doing whatever you want
> If the constitution needs amending, amend it.
Is there something about the War Powers Act that's unconstitutional? If so, what specifically? I'm struggling here to understand what is being alleged to be unconstitutional.
Separately, I actually think Congress has been dysfunctional and has been outsourcing its power to the Executive and Judicial branches, but these claims about constitutional breaches seem to be, at best, wrong.
Regardless of what the name legally is, they are in fact initiating war against other nations and Palantir is one of the main players in those wars.
Even by ignoring the name change, that is its function. Even if it was called department of defense, it's actually department of war.
If it's what they call themselves and what they're currently doing, how much does it matter what the official name is?
Because soft power is a real phenomenon and by going along with the illegal name change, we are giving legitimacy to an illegitimate act. Its anticipatory obedience.
Do not obey in advance. It signals to the regime how much power they actually have.
I'd agree in principle, but they're already killing people. The worst-case scenario has been happening for a while; treating this as a procedural stance rather than a description of reality is blinkered.
If we adopt their language because things are already bad we are saying that their power is now the only reality that matters, we are giving up any form of resistance. We killed people under the name of Department of Defense too.
Giving them the name is giving them the legitimacy to continue to justify the violence, and signals to the rest of the population that no one is coming to help and the new order is absolute. Mind you, this is mostly the fault of complicit media going a long with the name change rather than individuals here on HN, but whether its a true description of reality or not isn't important, whats important is any form of resistance to stop giving legitimacy to the regime.
As a non-American, I think that Americans treating concrete problems as less important than linguistic games does an awful lot more to legitimise the violence.
I don't think parent claimed that simply using certain words is more important than dealing with the real problems.
You sound frustrated with the American situation. I am too but that doesn't mean someone saying "resist" is somehow condoning or ignoring the important issues.
I think the message of "don't submit in advance" is a great one and it actually makes sense to me to include that ethos in all things, including your speech. I think we all agree that speech alone is not enough.
Controlling language changes the way people think, and therefore act. Both of the things you mentioned are bad, glossing over real problems and the attempt to control language, they are not mutually exclusive.
Just (re)read 1984 and focus on Newspeak, controlling language controls the way people think and act.
The body of water that borders Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and other states along with Mexico is the Gulf of Mexico. The US cabinet-level department responsible for the military is the Department of Defense.
As a third party to your discussion, I observe that you are both engaged in exactly the same "linguistic game" with each other, if you prefer to use that dismissive terminology, and I'll add that writing is not mutually exclusive with action.
Really makes one think about the "Soft times make soft men" quote.
>linguistic games
it's far more than that. By giving into the television like hyper-reality they create you're giving up base reality. That power and legitimate institutions are derived from the people and due process.
To surrender to the rhetoric is the entire point of the obscenities. War department, thugs with badges pretending to be police etc. The provocations are intentional and the offensiveness is the point, if you're just opposed to the concrete violence you're missing the forest for the trees. You have to reject their entire grammar they're trying to impose on you.
It's as if I put on a robe, went to Rome and claimed I'm the Pope (taking bets on this happening in the US too). You shouldn't then try to argue with me if I'm a good or bad pope or if I'm committing bad acts, but you should reject the entire non-reality circus I'm trying to pull you in.
> To surrender to the rhetoric is the entire point of the obscenities.
No, this is what I am complaining about. The obscenities are the point, the rhetoric is cover. Ignoring the rhetoric does not stop the obscenities, and treating the problem as 'they are using the wrong name' rather than 'they are doing the wrong thing' dismisses the real harm being done.
If you claim to be the pope, rejecting your constructed reality is the way to help you out of your delusion. If you do so while leading a crusade to sack Jerusalem, it's not the priority.
Let's clarify further that they are working for the clown Gestapo known as ICE, and they are enabling them to violate judicial directives and Constitutional protections for an adminstration speed running American anarcho-fascism.
Palantir used to be an effective augmentation to counter-insurgency and international terrorism.
Karp has gleefully pivoted to enabling authoritarian pogroms in American cities, and if you keep working there you have blood on your hands.
> We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate,
As a third party watching I just assumed it was a “dead cat”[1] to get people to stop talking about the Epstein files.
Obviously the Iranian government are not good guys either but the timing of this war… it just looks very odd.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
There's the "hilarity" of Operation Epic Fury. E.F. Epstein Files. It's either someone's private joke or the most clueless name you could imagine (not to mention sounding like it was taken straight from a COD Lobby).
Also trump seems to have this weird thing about Obama. He is obsessed with him. He tore up the Obama Iran deal, and is now seeking a better solution.
Trump is the sort of old school racist whose entire model of the world couldn't tolerate Obama as POTUS.
...and then of course, this didn't help:
https://youtu.be/HHckZCxdRkA?si=axixDO1Cm1i3Su0k
> Obviously the Iranian government are not good guys
I'll believe this when it comes from someone other than the Epstein people. As it stands, the worst people in the world do not like Iran, so they're definitely doing something right.
It's not really a distraction, it's just it's own stupid, horrible thing.
The most sane reason for "why now" would be because Iran was in a relatively weak position (domestic unrest, severely weakened proxies due to Israel) and the hawks saw an opening
That and Trump was more easily moved now that he's developed a taste for military shows of force after the Maduro thing. He probably thought it would make great content.
The Iran hawks and Netanyahu probably didn't have to push him very hard
I think the reason is quite easy to articulate - Israel.
One nitpick, legal name has never changed, it's still "Department of Defense".
Trump has issued an order to call it by "war" name, but it never actually change its name.
The Iran war started to provide a distraction from the Epstein files. Let's not pretend we don't know why, or more absurdly, can't quite articulate. It's very simple.
Why is this getting downvoted? How is this any less ridiculous sounding than the multitude of other, ever-shifting reasons Trump gave for starting the war.
Trump publicly mulled about going to war with Iran for weeks before it started. Iran had been killing its own citizens by thousands, stopping the massacre was a leading factor.
I am aware of one obscure Democrat that spoke out against the action at the time. I believe that man is the only one that should be criticizing the decision, because he didn’t wait on the fence to see how things turned out.
If you know of more Democrats that spoke out—- especially big name ones—- please provide credible, contemporary sources. I’ll be glad to give approval to any that acted bravely at the time.
Right, but Trump has stated he can accept working with the regime without consequence, like in Venezuela, as long as they cooperate on key issues e.g. oil and Israeli security concerns. He couldn’t care less that the regime is killing its own people. Like he couldn’t care less about Israel’s illegal occupation and murder.
To think Trump did this war to save Iranian lives from its own government is hopelessly naive. It was not at all a leading factor.
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 unilaterally start wars without Congress agreeing)
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 crash before opening your mouth is definitely not virtuous.
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.
The US has always used its military for global terrorism. Only just now, it is more in your face. There is no doubt: the US is responsible for some of the most sickening crimes against humanity the world has ever seen, including directly being the inspiration for the Holocaust, as well as US companies providing logistics for the Holocaust!
I hate the idea that it was ever the DoD. It was always a terroristic, offensive force.
"It was always a terroristic, offensive force." Even during WW2?
Yes. Netanyahu has pretended to justify destroying civilians in Gaza by saying the US did it first in Dresden.
I don't care what Netanyahu says. Why do you?
Because in this instance he’s correct.
He is just a scumbag trying to justify his own despicable behavior.
Well if Bibi says it then it must be true!
Sure. The unnecessary nuclear bombing of two civilian population centers is proof enough. Do you know the ratio of civilians to military deaths in those bombings? Nagasaki is particularly bad: 0.25% military personnel, 99.75% civilian deaths, and that's the most generous count. Not to mention Tokyo, or the numerous other cities which were firebombed. The idea that nuking civilians saved lives is a statement so stupid that only an American could believe it.
Let me ask you a question, directly, UltraSane. Is killing 60,000(minimum) civilians in an instant not terrorism?
WWII was won by terror bombings of German cities, and terror nuclear bombing of Japanese cities. That's common knowledge.
Not mentioning the Soviet terror in Germany during and after the war, since the topic is the US.
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.
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?
If those soldiers are in full uniform bringing in an unconcealed bomb, and it's part of a broader campaign that's also going after military targets, I would not call that terrorism.
There is no distinct line between war and terrorism. Even before World War II, leaders would proudly and openly call for terrorism against their enemies and civilians. Most notably communist leaders like Lenin, who didn't shy away from using the word "terror" and "terrorism" to describe their own campaigns.
As for allied bombings, there is a chapter here on the term "Terror bombings":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing#The_term_%22...
The war was won by systematic, deliberate terror bombings, these weren't accidents or rare incidents.
From the great general Patton:
"We then went to the town hall and saw the Mayor, the Chief of Police, etc. I told Truscott to do the honors as he had captured Messina. The town is horribly destroyed – the worst I have seen. In one tunnel there were said to have been 5,000 civilians hiding for over a week. I do not believe that this indiscriminate bombing of towns is worth the ammunition, and it is unnecessarily cruel to civilians."
As for the Germans, they were among other things conducting terror attacks on civilan ships with their submarines, and openly calling their population to "total war".
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Because forcing enemies to surrender has always been a valid tactic in war.
Including the bombing of civilians, for effect. Got it.
Please provide a detailed plan of how the US should have fought in WW2
The allies won the war by conducting terrorism of the largest level in human history. That might have been the only way for them to win. I don't think anybody here is a better general than Eisenhower or McArthur was, to be able to suggest a better way.
All sides of WWII were conducting outright terror attacks on the civilians of their enemies, with the allied terror bombings of German cities and terror nuclear bombings of Japanese cities being the most devastating of these.
Ok then, always in our lifetime, assuming you are < 81
'We' should stop using the word 'we'. :)
'We' talk is how the pseudo-educated talk down to those other people who are the problem.
> for reasons that nobody can quite articulate
I'll say them. The reasons are Trump, Vance, and Republicans.
got two words for you - Netanyahoo :)
Might want to go back and check on the Dems. It bad > it's the ones I don't vote for is easy to say.
Senate Democrats have made at least 5 attempts to stop this. Every Democrat voted in favor except Fetterman. Every republican opposed the attempt except Ron Paul.
The Republicans are entirely responsible for the war in Iran - they started it and have opposed every attempt to reign the administration in. Don't play this "both sides" game when one side is clearly causing the issue here.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/senate-defeats-democ...
I mean. The side voting while knowing they can't stop it that way, the definition of optics, thought this was worth it to not cater to their anti-war voters, no?
Both side bad yeah, you seem to think the solution is still to cling to the lesser of two evils. Hell, dem presidential candidates were praising Trumps Iran policy up until the bombs started falling. There is no evidence they _actually_ care about a war with Iran outside of, just as you do, saying OH this is THEIR doing.
Look, I would love to reply to this but you don't even articulate a coherent position here.
It seems like you trying to claim that the democrats actively opposing and trying to stop the war are somehow just as culpable as the republicans who are actively supporting the war just because the democrats don't have enough power to actually stop it? I want to be generous in my interpretation here, but I can't make heads or tails of your statement.
yea, I don't see any evidence that either the democratic party or democratic voters support the war on iran, secretly or not
sometimes a cigar is just a cigar
No-one supports the war now. But Palestine just had to go? It can't be about _war_ or loss of life, and the people caring can get f-ed we don't need your votes.
But sure one side is extremely against anything like this but unfortunately only get to demonstrate it when in opposition and unable to do anything.
Would you mind rephrasing this post? It's not clear what you're saying in any of it.
Maybe if you tried writing genuinely without sarcasm (I think there is sarcasm there, hard to tell), it would be more comprehensible?
Right, so your argument is that democrats are performative which is just as bad as the republicans actively starting wars?
Is there a more steelmanned version of this that I can ignore once you start making more false equivalencies in its defense?
The difference might be there in regards to Iran, with it's global market impact. But it's not there in regards to human life or suffering. That was made _very_ clear during the electoral campaign. But now it's _very different_ because it's "them" doing it and we can say we were always against this.
We have to say "us good, them bad" because we're voting the same way next time, and we're not planning to vote for something bad, right?
> But it's not there in regards to human life or suffering. That was made _very_ clear during the electoral campaign.
I don’t know what to say but to call this retarded at best or evil at worst.
Trump ran on a platform that included purposefully harming people. He continues with it. Look at his response to Mueller’s death for instance.
Inb4 you mention something about a genocide in Guzah, and ignore how Trump is backing everything Netanyahu wants done in the region compared to the democrats attempts at holding him back.
> We're in a war in Iran for reasons that nobody can quite articulate
(1) Nuclear proliferation.
We once had a deal that looked as though it was holding. Trump's nixing of the deal and the happenings in Ukraine accelerated Iran's desire to have nukes.
(2) Taiwan invasion postponement / CRINK disruption
As I've been reading, this might be a second order play to stall China's invasion of Taiwan. If China has to dip into strategic oil reserves to smooth out impact to its economy, it may forgo its Taiwan invasion plans for a bit longer.
It's also throwing a wrench into the CRINK alliance.
There's a lot of retrofitting going on here.
Those are incredibly thin justifications that don't really hold up to scrutiny.
1) The deal was holding. And even if we take Trump's word for it that it wasn't, he told us that he destroyed their nuclear capability a year ago. So either he was lying about that, or there was no serious nuclear capability in the first place. Regardless of how that shakes out, there's no reason we should believe this justification today.
2) This is incredibly speculative, and no serious intelligence analyst or military strategist would suggest "war with Iran" as a solution there. And the joke is on us, anyway: China may be feeling an oil crunch, but we're depleting our stock of a bunch of materiel that we'll need if it comes time to defend Taiwan. On top of that, China's military leadership is seeing how incompetently the US is prosecuting this war, and is likely feeling a lot more confident about their ability to fend off a US defense of Taiwan.
The US military is prosecuting the war just fine, US losses of materiel and personnel have been minimal (not zero, but close enough). China's takeaway from this is not going to be that the US military is incompetent.
The fundamental problem is that the declared objectives of regime change and securing control of the Strait of Hormuz cannot be achieved through air power alone. And this is the fault of the president, not the military.
Achieving the declared objective falls directly within the category of "prosecuting the war", and "the US" certainly includes the Commander in Chief.
What?
How many is the right number of personnel and materiel to lose for this war that isn't war and seems to have been either purchased for a few hundred million by political bribes or is just a distraction from the administrations involvement in a monstrous child sex ring? Also didn't we already win this war last year, last month, and last week? It is really easy to wave away our fellow dead citizens (and Iranians, including a school full of children!) from an internet comment form but damn, real people are dead here and it's an actual tragedy.
For me, zero deaths seems like the right answer for these objectives and anything else is egregious abuse of power.
I'd love it if everyone stopped being happy with people lying to them. When you catch people lying to you, be angry and stop trusting them!
I hate to interrupt a good rant, but we actually agree on this. To spell it out: the abject failure of the war is not a failure of the US military, it's a failure of its executive leadership, meaning Trump and his coterie of yes-men.
> the abject failure of the war is not a failure of the US military, it's a failure of its executive leadership
It's a bit of both. Our lack of mine-clearing and anti-drone technology is a legitimate weakness, as are our defence-production gaps. The damage done to our system of alliances, moreover, directly weakens our military standing.
Are you one of those that claim the US won the Vietnam war?
Even if we destroyed it, RU would be happy to resupply. What has this war that nobody wanted cost just at the gas pumps all over the world and who stood to benefit? I really do think I’d be better off having had been born a century or two ago reading books under a candle and digging outhouses when needed.
The reasons are very clear: Bibi owns Trump, Israel will unlikely have a US president as supportive again, they want as many facts on the ground as they can get whilst they have him.
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I don't know if Trump could walk and chew bubble gum at the same time, but he sure seems able to screw Ukraine and bomb Iran at the same time. He just finished sending Vance to Hungary to stump for Orban, too. The love affair between far-right authoritarian leaders is not a 2 person relationship.
I'm sure Ukraine is really disappointed that the Shahed supply has dried up
I'm sure China is really sad that the US is using up all its critical missile supplies in a senseless war
Is he doing anything that is hindering Putin? That theory still very much holds. Both Putin and Netanyahu can realistically have kompromat on him, seeing how incredibly brazen and stupid he is.
Only decimating his biggest allies. Putin prob loves that
Do you mean the replacing of the old Khamenei with a younger, more vigorous and extreme Khamenei? Utterly destroying the world economy (as well as the environment, but who cares about that) for what gain specifically? Or do you mean decimating the US allies in Europe and the West?
As a right-winger, I miss the day when Jew haters were just on our side.
> for reasons that nobody can quite articulate
They were articulated many times, maybe you didn't want to hear.
The action itself was poorly planned and executed, it's a different question.
Yeah, we didn't want Iran to have nukes, so we rugpulled the JCPOA and murdered the guy who declared a fatwa against nukes.
We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence) so we butchered 170 school girls and didn't apologize.
We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon and directly induced Iran to close the Strait.
Yeah. Articulated.
> We wanted to save the Iranian people from the regime that murdered 100,000 peaceful protestors (don't ask for evidence)
At least 20,000 according to Amnesty International, other independent sources claim 40,000.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2026/01/what-hap...
That says Iran clams 3,000, UN claim 5,000 and other sources claim higher.
I don't Amnesty putting their name behind any of those numbers but even the 20,000 is very hand wavey.
I don't see 40,000 claimed anywhere.
Can we agree on "thousands"?
> We wanted to stabilize the region, so we greenlit Israel's rampage in Lebanon
Consider this hypothetical situation. Iran funds a terrorist group operating in Tijuana to fire rockets across the border into San Diego. Assume the Mexican government is not organized enough to stop the terrorists from firing rockets.
What do you think the response of the US Government would be? Please recall what we did after 9/11 before answering.
Israel isn’t invading Egypt and Jordan, I wonder if it’s because there’s no Iran-funded terrorist groups firing rockets from those countries or if there’s some other reason.
Israel definitely has blood on their hands, but how do you suggest they deal with terrorist groups funded by Iran operating in lawless areas of neighboring countries that are firing rockets at civilians in Israel?
Israel has been invaded by all of its neighbors simultaneously more than once, it’s a pretty complex situation that spans over a hundred years. Europeans and Arab nations (aside from the Ottomans) treated Jews like shit for centuries, pogroms and holocausts and expulsions and forced migrations. No wonder they want to keep the nation of Israel around, everyone else has tried exterminating them. Just try not to be so reductionist and polarizing about it, it’s a complex historical situation with many shades of gray.
I know my opinion is probably unpopular around here, but it’s how I see it. Israel has done some horrible shit, but they aren’t just rampaging against any non Jew in sight, there were Hezbollah operatives constantly firing rockets into northern Israel for years. What’s happening in Lebanon (and Syria and may other places) sucks, and that massive pier explosion certainly didn’t help.
> Israel definitely has blood on their hands, but how do you suggest they deal with terrorist groups funded by Iran operating in lawless areas of neighboring countries that are firing rockets at civilians in Israel?
What they do is stop raping and murdering people, settling on their land and then acting shocked that the country they are taking over is reacting in a violent way in response.
Israel are the terrorists who invaded Palestine and have committed crimes against humanity all across the Middle East. Your hypothetical situation is nothing at all like what's going on in reality. Iran is our ally against Zionist occupation of our own government.
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Yes, an aggressive regime that develops nuclear weapons (otherwise why all this enrichment?), stockpiles missiles and drones that, funds terrorists like hezbolla, hoothis and hamas, should be stopped.
Yes, when you apply military force, civilians die. Nobody is happy about it, at least in US.
Yes, Iran closed the strait, because Trump taco'ed again and can't use force against it.
Yes, Israel bombs hezbolla, because what else should they do to people that shoot rockets at Israel? Send them fresh water and electricity? They tried it with Gaza, didn't help.
What was your point?
> Send them fresh water and electricity? They tried it with Gaza, didn't help.
yes, one cannot imagine why keeping millions of people in an open air concentration camp doesn't work out well
What made it "open air concentration camp"? Do concentration camps have car dealerships and jewelry shops?
Funny it's not even your phrase, you heard it somewhere and keep parroting ever since.
> open air concentration camp
Nitpick: the analogy is an open-air prison. Because prisons usually have ceilings. Open-air concentration camp is just a concentration camp, which doesn't really appropriately describe a siege.
It's (was) neither prison nor concentration camp. It wasn't even "occupied" by Israel. Last Israelis were forced to move out 20 years ago, and never came back.
That piece of land could be heaven on earth with all support that they received.
Is that how you rationalize Native American Tribal Reservations as well? Heaven on earth? A privileged gift from the white man?
Many reason were articulated, including the threat on an immediate attack on the US. That reason ran counter to defense assessments. Also, the reasons and goals stated by Trump (“President of Peace” and inaugural awardee of the FIFA peace prize), Rubio, and Hegseth have not been consistent.
Was the reason to open the Strait that was already open, prevent an attack, to prevent Iran from making a nuclear weapon, or to change a regime?
I believe Rubio stated the reason at the very beginning of the war. The US learned that Israel was going to attack and jumped in. Everything after that is bullshit.
The reasons this administration gave to justify this war are mostly lies though
The reasons given were complete bullshit. So maybe it's not true that they weren't articulated, but the reasons that were articulated don't hold up to scrutiny.
And, yes, on top of that, the action itself was poorly planned and executed, which just adds insult to injury.
> Palantir employees should understand that they are not regular employees at a regular company. They are U.S. defense contractors at an U.S. defense company
I can't imagine any of them are confused about this. I'd expect most are proud to support our military.
The line that's been crossed is the military being turned against Americans. Palantir helping ICE surveil and round up folks who turned out to be, in many cases, innocent American citizens, seems to be what's prompting–correctly, in my opinion–the crisis of faith.
They're defense contractors the same way IBM and Oracle are. Palantir has a huge USG business, but they're also widely used across the Fortune 500. From the coverage of Palantir online you'd think the company actually manufactured Palantirs, but they are in fact a database consultingware company; one person described them to me as "Oracle but with the benefit of the Web 2.0 technology stack".
People read things like this and a switch flips in their brain, that they're being told to be more charitable to Palantir, and that's not at all where I'm coming from. Rather: the attention paid to Palantir does a very effective job of running cover for Oracle, IBM, and Cisco.
Obviously, the ludicrous marketing/communications operation Palantir is running doesn't make any of this any simpler to reason about. Imagine getting a manifesto from AWS alongside your S3 bill urging you to reconsider Apostolic succession in the traditional Catholic church; that's the vibe they've managed to create.
Palantir also deliberately choose a name with sinister overtones, they're just short of calling themselves "torment Nexus builders Inc" or something. I used to think their logic was that someone would build it so it might as well be people who saw the moral hazard, but now I think they're just going all in on the evil overlord brand. Summer kind of pied piper thing maybe.
We all get that Oracle has literally the same naming provenance, right? Actually more so: they took the name from the Central Intelligence Agency project they started the company with.
Every time this comes up, I find myself asking, "what do you think a secret phase conjugate tracking system is for?" Maybe it's just that I'm older than the median here, but when I was a kid, the mere concept of a relational database was something that stirred disquiet in the press; people were worried databases were going to take over society. It was not a completely crazy concern!
One throughline of history is database-ization. Some of our older writings are records of ownership and tax liabilities. We keep moving information from the real world into a database. We have done it so much that the database is sometimes more important than the real world. Someone marked “dead” in a database can have a hard time living!
"You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like seventeen computers a day." Seventeen. How quaint.
There's at least one company that straight-up reverses a pacifistic cultural reference: a Ukrainian autonomous weapons company called The Fourth Law, as in Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics to prevent humans from coming to harm.
Apart from my own thoughts on the Ukraine war and autonomous weapons, that name makes me feel like the company's founders either haven't engaged with the moral questions of their technology, or want to mock them.
A reference to "The Fourth Law" in that context is quite ambiguous, because not only did Asimov introduce a "Zeroth Law" that is sometimes also called the Fourth, but also subsequent fanfic introduced "Fourth Laws" that had different texts and different objectives, including one by a Bulgarian author. So there is no singular or canon "Fourth Law of Robotics".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Laws_of_Robotics_in_...
(Interestingly, neither of those articles mention Ukraine)
https://thefourthlaw.ai/
It's a U.S. domestic surveillance operation, disguised as a defense contractor.
Or really, it's not disguised at all. The company is named after Tolkein's palantíri, so they weren't being shy about it.
It's a company that exists solely to exploit a loophole that shouldn't have been upheld, effectively eliminating the fourth amendment.
The way I see it is that sousveillance is the correct response to surveillance.
If people feel threatened by this organization and the people who make it up they should start doing to them what they're doing to everyone else.
Who specifically works at Palantir? What do they look like? Where do they live? What kind of vehicle do they drive? How do they spend their free time? Who do they associate with?
These are all very interesting questions.
Questions that can be answered and answers that can be distributed online, forever.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
No secrets.
Wrong. It does surveillance for multiple countries militaries. And also for private companies.
Also wrong. Palantir itself does not do surveillance. It sells software to government agencies, who use that software to conduct surveillance.
If the IRS uses Excel, that doesn't mean Microsoft is actively catching tax evasion. Microsoft is selling spreadsheet software, and one of the users of that software is the IRS.
Yeah, for sure. Defense contracting is as good or bad as the policies of the government which is going to change over time. All else being equal, if we want to live in a safe and successful society we want good/talented people working in defense. The trick is holding the government accountable for its policies and profligate defense spending.
> Defense contracting is as good or bad as the policies of the government which is going to change over time.
This is true sometimes. But many times the companies and the government get together to kill people for money (The dead people's money or the taxpayers money - they don't mind which, money is money)
> The trick is holding the government accountable for its policies and profligate defense spending.
I don't agree with this. Just because the DOD says it is ethical doesn't mean it is so contractors have a duty to maintain ethical standards in the face of changing DOD standards. To me this means a DOD contractor decides before they go in that they will have limits and sticks to them. I think anyone working for Palantir right now should be considering the limits they have and if the company is going beyond them or not. I know that I for one do not consider their work ethical and would not work for them even though the DOD says it is ok. Understand before you sign.
To a large degree you can't choose how the DoD or other letter agency uses what they buy from you. Obviously you can set some contractual guardrails but realistically if you build drones that can mount hellfire missiles you have to know that it can be misused by some 22 year old. Its tempting to believe that software is different, but once its on-prem its out of your hands.
The difference is scale and accountability. Surveillance tech is impacting everyone and is part of every kill chain but its not what people see so there is very little accountability for it. Building a drone that launches something has far less scale and far more accountability since its effects are visible. I personally think there is a big difference between being part of something with at least some accountability and limited scale compared to unlimited scale and no accountability. Of course many people would disagree and set their levels lower (mine are actually lower than this now) but I think that DOD contractors can think in at least this level of terms and decide to be apart of some things and not others in a meaningful way. No matter what though, a problem being hard isn't an excuse for throwing your hands up and saying 'I'm good because the DOD says it is ok'
Defense is good
Offense, killing is not good.
Current department understands that and hence renamed to department of war
In isolation your clarification is right, but considering that US department of War actually kills hundreds of thousands of people, there should be no question about negativity of that department
Still minimal compared to DOGE.
I have had an active hand in designing weapons at a defense contractor (I was at one time an expert in external ballistics simulation) and I'd feel uncomfortable with the morality of working at Palantir.
How do you reconcile having worked in this capacity mentally? Not being snarky or judgemental, genuinely curious as to the mindset of someone who has been in this position.
> How do you reconcile having worked in this capacity mentally? Not being snarky or judgemental, genuinely curious as to the mindset of someone who has been in this position.
I don't work at defense contractor, but it would probably help to imagine the situation Ukraine is in. If no one in the West was comfortable working in this capacity, it would all be Russian territory now (and more besides).
Reading this, I was surprised to learn that I now consider the idea of working on old-school conventional weapons almost, like, quaint.
What with all the ways our new military/techno-industrial complex is working to automate murder, surveillance and terror at scale ... it makes me nostalgic for that old-fashioned artisanal state-sanctioned murder, made in small batches by real humans.
That reminds me of a sci-fi quote, where one of the main characters is discussing a murderous antagonist, putting their evil into a broader context:
> "He was just a little villain. An old-fashioned craftsman, making crimes one-off. The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real."
-- Shards of Honor (1986) by Lois McMaster Bujold
You may have gotten caught up in the hype. It's still intelligence, logistics, bullets, missiles, and airplanes (etc.)
The beginnings of "automated murder" were anti-aircraft weapons that implemented a kind of mechanical computer that beat humans in predicting where aircraft were going to be (you have to shoot at where the plane is going to be when your bullets get there). Look up Norbert Wiener.
For a century it's been automation assisted, none of this is new, it's just been improving consistently. They had UAVs in WWI for gods sake. (flying things without people in them, used in war)
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As an Army veteran, I try to be accountable for the role I played in an imperial occupying force and use that to inform my decisions in life.
People have a hard time admitting they’ve done bad things that caused pain. I’ve done bad things and I try to not do bad things now. Reconciled.
I have been in the same position. Maybe I was naive but I believed that weapons design wasn't the most moral thing in the world, but sadly necessary, and I actually trusted the military to .. I guess act in legitimate and legal ways. That if those weapons were used in a conflict, it would be defensive and defendable morally.
Of course that was before the inexplicable adventurism in the Middle East.
There's usually a bit more accountability in using a missile than using palantir systems. At least legally, a missile could only be used in defense or in a war authorized by the congress.
Until recently, most of the population believed that the vast majority of America's military actions were somewhat just and legal, for noble reasons.
Dark stuff like Palantir was never like that.
> At least legally, a missile could only be used in defense or in a war authorized by the congress.
Some Iranians might disagree with you on that point. They can't, though, as they're dead, killed by missiles used not in defense and not in a war authorized by Congress.
> Until recently, most of the population believed that the vast majority of America's military actions were somewhat just and legal, for noble reasons.
That's naive. The US has been using its military for unjust actions (of dubious legality, often "made legal" after the fact) longer than I've been on this Earth.
Please not that I qualified both statements.
"At least legally" It doesn't matter if this is true for this situation, as an employee you only need to have been convinced this is true.
"Most of the population believed" - Again, even if they were mistaken, if they believed it, and let me tell you, a lot of the people STILL believes it, that belief is enough to enure you'll have a good night of sleep after a shift in a Lockheed office or factory.
Pragmatism. We live in the real world, one where threat of violence and actual violence is indeed sometimes necessary. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was peaceful and we could all get along happy and free? Sure, but that's not the world we live in and sticking my head in the sand and leaving the necessary dirty work to other people would bring me no more peace than helping do the necessary things as well as possible.
The most weaponlike thing I worked on was a sniper rifle program, and to me precision weapons are one of those best you can do in an imperfect world kinds of things.
"If we do not design better weapons, those countries who do will subjugate us. I'd rather that not happen."
Edit: I honestly and directly answered the question and am getting downvoted for it? Lovely
Don't they work for the same government you did?
Under the name of the* same government. You can’t equate 1940s US govt with today’s government. Different people different priorities different actions. Not necessarily saying good or bad one way or the other. But ‘same’ is reductionist way of interpreting the situation. There’s plenty of nuance.
I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at? (of course the literal answer is yes but that's obvious)
> they are doing business with U.S. defense company.
any time you're flying on a Boeing 737, 787, 777 etc you're doing the same. Just like every time you turn on a GE light bulb.
I'm unsure of how this information is being presented. But it's entirely possible for the majority of people on Earth to avoid all those things. And it's entirely possible for many people who are (perhaps unwittingly) funding U.S. defense companies to stop doing so.
To pick some nits, the GE who does US defense sold off all their consumer products decades ago.
Boeing is a US defense contractor. Yet there are plenty of Boeing employees who can have a high expectation of ethics in their jobs.
You may think you are being even handed and neutral in some way. If you are actually, find me that part of Palantir that's doing good.
https://www.palantir.com/interoperability/
looks to be a computing tool used for purposes currently popular and not warcraft
A "multimodal data plane?" Popular? Jargon heavy middleware for linking kill chains?
> Palantir was founded—with initial venture capital investment from the CIA
This was obvious from the start. Not sure why people "are starting to wonder", which I don't believe either.
This makes it sound as though doing business with Palantir is akin to doing business with Lockheed Martin, RTX Corp (Raytheon), Northrop Grumman etc. This ignores important, qualitatively different ways that Palantir is worse: eg intentional white supremacist goals from Karp (Oswald Mosley fan) and Thiel (dismantling of multiculturalism), as well as Palantir's role in the surge of surveillance capitalism that treats US citizens as the opponent, rather than the more classic statist-aligned goals of US Govt/US Capital whose contempt for human life and human rights was pointed externally - so, while harmful, was still esstentially compatible with democratic principles.
If they can look at their leaderships statements as positive or neutral then they are part of the problem.
I believe they're called war companies now.
Until the next administration, at least
> U.S. defense company
Uh... don't you mean U.S. attack company?
Seems analogous to employees of a missile manufacturer being upset that their missiles were used for their intended purpose.
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.
'"That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.'
As I said in another comment, I think it’s important to debate what these companies are doing, how they’re doing it, and whether the United States’ actions are morally and legally justified.
But I also think we need to get more smart people interested and working in national security. That’s the way you get the best balance between effective security and the minimum negative side effects to civil liberties or collateral damage, by having the smartest people inside these companies coming up with the best tech while also shaping the conversation from the inside.
It’s easier to just dunk on the big bad company (and maybe they are bad!) but I don’t think that solves anything. National security should be something more people participate in, not less.
We had a few smart people in national security, but they're getting fired. The Navy Secretary was just forced out. There's nothing that can help when the problem is upper management.
Yes, and the same can be said for the civilian workforce. The Pentagon’s labs and technical expertise are being hollowed out, and I worry we’re being left with an acquisition corps that’s incapable of holding its own in technical conversations with profit-maximizing contractors.
“Would you like the undercarriage coating for your new Abrams?”
But FYI, Phelan was just a private equity guy installed by Trump. The reason he was fired is because he wasn't building the "Trump class" battleships Trump wanted. Which were supposed to have WW1 era appearance because Trump is an "aesthetics guy" and doesn't like the look of modern stealth ships.
I kid you not.
> Which were supposed to have WW1 era appearance because Trump is an "aesthetics guy" and doesn't like the look of modern stealth ships.
Wait, that's actually based as fuck. The 20th-century battleships were the pinnacle of human architecture, let him have this one.
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Not autistic, but if that's what autism is I certainly wouldn't want a cure for having a personality. God forbid somebody find something visually appealing, wouldn't that be a crime against the raw efficiency of making everything on the planet a drab grey box. It's a stupid vanity project with no practical purpose, if billions are going to be wasted on it anyways why not let it be eye-pleasing?
> by having the smartest people inside these companies coming up with the best tech while also shaping the conversation from the inside.
The smartest people don't get that choice. Oppenheimer, Teller and Ulam were all ignored in matters of policy, the Manhattan Project was not designed to integrate their political feedback. Conversely, the scientists at Peenemünde never got to question the effectiveness of V-1 bombs with a CEP measured in miles. Their participation in policy was deliberately severed, ultimately to the detriment of the Wehrmacht.
When you start seeing technologies that affront humanity - warrantless surveillance, civilian terror weapons, chemical/biological agents - that's when normal people step out. No amount of sanewashing will fix the underlying administrative issue, it only exacerbates the underlying moral dilemma.
Fair point. I don’t think that simply working at a defense-tech would or should give someone sway over political decisions.
Which might be also good: von Neumann advocated for a U.S. nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.
In the context of this thread my claim is simply that smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier. The choice to use those weapons still lies with our elected leaders.
I guess that's what I'm confused by, then. Americans don't have a duty to prevent their government from descending into crony capitalism. As long as the Fed undervalues intelligent labor, the smartest Americans are incentivized to go the private ownership route and extort the defense industry themselves. Protecting DARPA and preserving valuable Pentagon assets is the federal government's job - nobody else is paid to care about it, nobody else can fix it.
> smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier.
That's conjecture, as far as I'm aware. Again, the earliest researchers of spacecraft were being forced to design a pitiful terrorist weapon. Those same scientists wouldn't meaningfully progress peaceful space exploration until decades later. There is no balance inherent to having good ideas or executing them well, the procurement process can (and frequently does) excise intelligent thought when tensions run high.
FWIW, I bear little ill-will towards the defense industry or US service members. I just think that "shaping the conversation" is a fool's errand when "the conversation" is warrantless surveillance, and "shaping" simply means finding the best way to do it. An intelligent humanitarian would be fired long before they instill an ounce of ethical change.
> that's when normal people step out.
So Oppenheimer Teller and Ulam were not normal/sane people. In other words, they had the choice, and made a decision. Everything is political.
The trendy SV defense companies (Palantir, Andruil) seem to be all "killing is fun and good, actually" with an underlying current of white nationalism. We might need defense technology, but not like this. Super fucked up.
At first I thought their marketing was some sort of tongue-in-cheek satire of themselves. But no, they are genuinely white supremicists.. odd since their CEO is a black-ish Jew
can you be more specific about what you mean by "smart people"
like what are some examples of the kinds of people you mean -- what degrees are they getting, what causes are they applying their intellect to right now that are _not_ national security, etc.
> As I said in another comment, I think it’s important to debate what these companies are doing, how they’re doing it, and whether the United States’ actions are morally and legally justified.
I think it's sometimes hard to debate these issues in tech circles. In my experience something like 5-10% of techies are vocally critical of these companies or anything National Security related. This article headline is a great example, a serious debate is difficult when you compare people who disagree with you to Nazis
I was discussing resume screening with a jr engineer and unprompted he mentioned he would filter out anyone who worked at a defense contractor, not knowing I had worked at one. I tried to make sure he was removed from interviewing as he obviously wasn't mature enough for it.
Not wanting to work with people who are ok with the MIC is not a sign of immaturity.
Thank you for demonstrating my first point while trying to contest my second.
Whatever helps you sleep at night...
> This article headline is a great example, a serious debate is difficult when you compare people who disagree with you to Nazis
You know that the Nazi comparison isn't because of the disagreement, but because of what that disagreement is based on?
It's really not hard to compare ICE to the Gestapo or SA, core Nazi institutions. They're kidnapping people off the streets in brutal manners, targeting them based on immutable visual characteristics, sending them to camps from where many are never heard of again. Including people who are citizens and thus not even "guilty" of the crime which is supposedly being targeted.
Palantir as a company enables that. In the same way we legitimately call out Dehomag (IBM's German subsidiary) for them enabling all Nazi atrocities, we can call out Palantir for enabling the current atrocities.
It's not "disagreement", it's "if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a fucking Nazi duck".
> ...about working for a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb.
Wasn't the the problem that Sauron had one so he could corrupt the other users through the orb, but the orb itself was not corrupting?
It was, which is why it makes such a perfect analogy.
Surveillance has lots of good and bad uses, and is morally neutral itself. Powerful but neutral. The problem comes when the users use it for bad purposes, and in fact it is so tempting that they can't help using it for more and more bad purposes. If every palantir (either one) user was a "good guy" who refused to use it for bad purposes, it would be a potent force for good, and that's why they were created in the first place.
I thoroughly disagree. Surveillance is an invasive tool of control, and as such intrinsically immoral. Just like a slew of other immoral actions, it may be a net positive when applied for a greater good, but if not used for anything, it's evil.
This is trivially true to most common moral understandings. If my neighbor installs a camera pointing through my window and into my shower, applying some fancy technique to see through clouded glass, most of us would justly think that was immoral of him, even in complete absence of any other immoral actions facilitated by that surveillance.
That depends on the definition of "surveillance". Should a foreman not pay close attention to his workers? Should a hospital not track its patients' locations and vital stats while within the hospital? Are cameras in a jewelry shop morally wrong?
Your neighbor's surveillance of you is bad because they're violating your privacy, and using the tool of surveillance to do it. If you lived in a foggy area and they were monitoring their front walkway with a camera that was good at seeing through fog, and they happened to get a corner of your property in the camera's field of view, then you might have something to complain about but I wouldn't call it morally wrong.
I agree that surveillance is a tool of control. So are fences. It's ok to control some things.
I also agree that surveillance gets into sticky territory very, very quickly. I definitely don't have a clean dividing line between what I'd like the police to be able to see and what they shouldn't. (Especially when the temptation to share that data is so strong and frequently succumbed to.) I would probably say in some useless abstract sense, mass surveillance is also morally neutral. But given that it's proven to be pretty much impossible to implement in a way that doesn't end up serving more evil than good, I wouldn't object to calling it immoral.
IMHO surveillance is a problem when it is asymmetric ; which is obviously the case here. Governments for example are watching everyone inside and outside, but the people that are being monitored simply cannot really watch the people watching them. Don't you agree ?
In this view, maybe an ultra radical solution to privacy issues is : no privacy at all, for no-one. Complete and total transparency of everyone to everyone. Now the question is how to implement that ? That's obviously impossible, because someone in power will always have something to hide. So maybe if true democracy where everyone holds exactly the same amount of power that could work ? Same issue, because it is impossible to implement too. Oh well.
That is a "justifies extreme violence to prevent" type suggestion. Privacy is a basic human right. The problem is power. No one should be in a position to spy on everyone.
if its ok for the foreman to control the workers, you would then say its ok for the foreman to hold the workers at gun point while they work?
id say the control is immoral, in all forms. Voluntary agreement and consent are fine but then its not surveillance, its people saying where they are. the patient wants the doctor to know where they are and what they are doing, and not just letting the doctor decide on their own what to know.
the worker wants the foreman to know that they are present and working, in fulfilment of their contract together. its not surveillance either.
the jewelry store itself is immoral, but private property and control thereof is a tradeoff we've made
> So are fences
Good fences make good neighbors... If I could put a notion in his head: Why do they make good neighbors?
Again, there are plenty of instances where enough good comes from surveillance that it outweighs the intrinsic negative, but denying that it is, in of itself, intrinsically negative suggests that some creepy dude monitoring everyone's every move is just fine, as long as he's not doing anything else.
A more obvious parallel is violence. To trip over Godwin's law, shooting Hitler would have been a moral action, but not because "shooting people" is amoral. Shooting a random person is definitely immoral. We constantly do immoral things for the greater good, but it is a mistake to thusly assume those actions are amoral.
the palantir weren't created for spying, they were created so that the various kingdoms of middle earth could stay in contact with each other. The palantir are a party line. It just got real sketchy when Minas Ithil fell (and became Minas Morgul) and Sauron got possession of the orb. After which the kings of gondor stopped using them.
So should the US simply not pursue any tax evasion cases? Because catching tax evasion necessarily requires surveillance.
It’s not morally neutral, the very existence of surveillance has a chilling effect on dissenting opinions.
There are morally neutral technologies, but the unique quality of surveillance data containing PII (and tools to correlate across time and space) means that it's only morally neutral until it is used in any capacity. Which is to say, it is not morally neutral.
You've already made a pretty big leap from surveillance to storing surveillance data persistently, and another to the tools. I'm not going to argue that mass surveillance is morally neutral.[1]
Tolkien's Palantirs let you see and communicate and influence across vast distances. That's no more immoral than a videophone. Of course, that's also not surveillance; that'd be a telescope. But surely telescopes aren't immoral?
[1] I mean, I would, but (1) you can't create a mass surveillance system from a morally neutral or positive place, and (2) it seems nearly impossible to implement a mass surveillance system without creating more harm than benefit. So it becomes a boring semantics argument as to whether mass surveillance is fundamentally immoral or not.
The palantiri were created by Fëanor. The kinslayer whose pride, rage, and desire for vengeance drove most of his people to their doom. The potential to corrupt was always present in them.
In the LotR, Aragorn bends a palantir to his will and uses it for good with great difficulty. He manages to do that, because he is (in addition to everything else) the trueborn king and the palantiri are his birthright. Denethor, on the other hand, succumbs to corruption. While he is a powerful lord with good intentions, he is only a steward, not a king. The right to use the palantiri is not inherent in his being, because he only wields power in someone else's name.
I think that's also one of those problems in stories like this, that there's a powerful tool with the power to corrupt but only those chosen few by right can wield it without becoming corrupted.
It implies that there will always be people ordained through some manner which are incorruptible and therefore can use these things to "fight evil". The usual suspects in our world are people in Government, and by extension in military and law enforcement.
One example of someone actually destroying such a device after they finished using it rather than letting themselves be corrupted by it was Batman after he finished using it to locate the Joker. But of course this was in a fictional movie, and in no way represents the real world.
surveillance creates leverage over people. its not neutral if it creates a power imbalance, especially since its used by the wealthy on the poor.
you can't do surveillance and not learn the bad knowledge, and once youve created the bad knowledge its just a matter of time before it gets into nefarious hands.
a "bad guy" could still hack the "good guys" or palantir itself, and get access to all the bad data the "good guys" have created.
If Palintir itself gets hacked, all the data and analysis will be stopped up by others.
> he could corrupt the other users through the orb, but the orb itself was not corrupting?
Interestingly enough, the stones could not lie. They only showed real things. Sauron's corruption was achieved through a lack of context. Just like Palantir (the company) can do with data. A dataset can be completely truthful, but lead to a false or manipulative conclusion.
But to the original point, yeah, the name Palantir is spot on for what the company intends to do, anyone who even has remote knowledge of Middle Earth wouldn't dare touch that company with a 10 foot pole.
Sauron is the reason the palantiri are dangerous, yes, because his influence causes them to mislead and delude the viewer. That happens even when Sauron is not directly influencing the visions. Essentially, when the forces of evil are present, the seeing stones may show the truth but in such a profoundly misleading way that even those with the best intentions will misinterpret their visions and fall prey to misunderstanding. This even happens to Sauron himself.
It's worth noting that by the War of the Ring (the Lord of the Rings story) Sauron had possessed a palantir for around 1000 years. Anyone who knew what a palantir was should have known that they were not to be trusted.
As for how that relates to Palantir the real-life corporation, I'll leave that up to your interpretation.
The Elephant Graveyard video that went viral a while back, that was a comedic troll of Rogan, Musk, Theil, etc (also a half-serious commentary) - had an entertaining sequence at the end about Palantiri/LOTR
https://youtu.be/ewvRS3NwIlQ?t=4629
That was also my interpretation from reading LotR as well.
Nope. Sauron could just radicalize by making the palantir show what he wanted them to see, but it was always true.
https://archive.is/veTal
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.
they fuckin should, since most legit engineering schools have an "ethics in engineering" course
Unfortunately, "If I don't steal your house, someone else will" at scale, will lead to a very dark place for humanity
But you didn't have to start working there, is the thing. That's what always confounds me.
If you are capable of being hired at Palantir, there are thousands of non-evil companies who would be happy to have you.
I’m not being facetious when I say: are they that slow or really suffering from Messiah Complex?
I have no problem that they are doing what they’re doing. Someone was going to do it. But to be so oblivious to it is a problem. One would argue that it’s a national security problem.
I remember seeing postings for "Forward Deployed Engineers" and thinking that this naming convention targets folks who don't like to work out but still have a military fetish and want to feel important.
It's self-aggrandizing egos all the way down/up (to Alex Karp).
I watched the James Bond movie Spectre recently and came away feeling like the Spectre organization and Ernst Stavro Blofeld were modeled on Palatir.
Palantir is definitely “on our side”.
Hey, it could have been worse; at least they're not working in ad-tech.
Ads can generally be blocked, NSA agents on the other hand...
pretty sure they slurp up ad tech data for their all seeing eye.
Or shipping locked blootloaders.
I look forward to all of these comments being Hoovered into their autonomous surveillance machine in short order.
Also, yes, they are.
The anti Palantir / anti AI / anti tech / anti billionaire sentiment is just way too strong. Far, far to many people post inflammatory things for the data collection to really matter.
Contrary to Karp’s fantasies, he will not have the capability to send fent-laced piss drones to every single person who’s ever criticized him.
In addition, the more data they have on us, the higher the odds they have something “bad”. So the irony of them increasing the volume of surveillance data is that it becomes pointless for people to “behave” in front of the camera once they’ve “crossed the line”.
Doesn't really matter if you talk shit online, it's just passive aggressive pressure relief. What matters is you not being able to effectively protest or do anything about it.
Well actually it does make a difference. Precrime only works if they can separate signal from noise. Much like how the more users there are on the Tor network, the easier it is to blend in, overriding the system with “threat signals” just adds noise to their predictive models.
And in addition to that, talking shit online lets others know they’re not alone. It increases the odds of coordinated action.
The best propaganda trick up the CIA etc.’s sleeve right now is the illusion of inevitability and learned helplessness. Online voicing of opinions is critical to fighting both of these tactics.
> Precrime only works if they can separate signal from noise.
IMO a lot of these debates depend on implicit assumptions about the threat and how it operates. For example:
1. Lawful Evil: They care about good data and going after the "worst" offenders, even if I might disagree about what is "bad".
2. Lazy risk-averse evil: The data needs to give them something to justify the existence of the program, they'll go after whomever is convenient.
3. Cover-your-ass evil: The data archive exists to let them make a plausible case for someone they've already decided to persecute for other reasons.
4. Fraudulent evil: The data archive is just to make it easier to fabricate a fake reason to go after someone.
5. Blatant evil: The data doesn't matter because they can just do stuff to you by fiat.
Some of those groups would be hampered by noise, some would benefit from noise, and the last just won't care.
> I'm going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don't get distracted by that; I didn't know at the time. — Caleb Hearth
1. https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBdBoWAtLNI
Starting to wonder?
Everyone know what Palantir was. The name is a dead-give-away.
I think it is really time that the superrich are downsized. Certain companies that are working against the people also need to be removed. Key considerations in any democracy need to be consistent. Palantir (and others) create inconsistencies. Granted, none of this will be fixed while the orange king is having his daily rage-fits, but sooner or later this is an inter-generational problem, no matter which puppet is taking over.
The palantir of the novel weren't surveillance tools. They were a party line, the Gondorians used them to talk to their various outposts throughout middle earth, the three we see in the movies (there may be more in the books, it's been a long time) were at Isenguard, Minis Tirith and the Palantir of Minis Ithil (now Minis Morgul) that Sauron took to Baradur.
When Sauron took Minas Ithil and captured the Palanir that was kept there the Kings of Gondor forbade the use of them. It is shown that Sauron can use them to corrupt and read the thoughts of the other users. We also see him use them for their intended purpose when he conspires with Saruman.
All to say Peter Thiel doesn't understand Lord of the Rings.
Probably thought "Total Surveillance" was too on-the-nose when starting up.
With Facebook laying off 10% employees today, and others following suit soon, I don't think palantir will ever run out of willing people to hire.
https://archive.ph/9UjjI
Only "starting" to wonder does not speak well of Palantir employees.
This is exactly the kind of ethical tension big‑tech workers need to talk about more: you can build “cool” systems, but if the use case is harm, is it still worth it? Wonder how other engineers in the room would act in the same position.
For a company supposedly full of smart people they sure do work hard to turn their brains off
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 don't think, either willfully or because of lack of introspection in general, about these things.
> 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 other hand is an invisible weapon. They could be reading my comment right now and identifying me with sentiment "adversarial" for all I know. What implications that has on my daily life is innumerable...and I'm a US citizen!
> 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."
> 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).
Or it's a lot more complicated and doesn't lend itself to blank-and-white answers. Say you're working on nuclear weapons technology: is your job building weapons to enable the genocidal destruction of another country, or to prevent that kind of thing through a credible MAD deterrent? Both things are simultaneously true.
And then there's no way to predict the future: what's true today when you build it may not be true tomorrow when it's used, because there's a different leader or political system in place.
> Or it's a lot more complicated and doesn't lend itself to blank-and-white answers.
Did I say it wasn't complicated? I'll admit I didn't say it was complicated, but you can't infer a sentiment from a non-existent statement in either direction.
Yes, it's complicated. But I stand by my statement that many people just don't think about it. They want to solve interesting problems or to get paid well, or both, and so they take jobs at places like Palantir without thinking through the consequences.
Many others do think it through and either find a way to justify it, or do work they don't like and live with the emotional consequences of it.
> Yes, it's complicated. But I stand by my statement that many people just don't think about it...so they take jobs at places like Palantir without thinking through the consequences.
> Many others do think it through and either find a way to justify it
Do they not think about it, or just not talk about it to you? I could totally see someone thinking about it in private, accepting some justification or reason, and then moving on to their work and not discussing it.
I'm the sort who asks. Many who answered just didn't think it through, they didn't think about what the thing they were working on actually did within the larger system. I won't generalize this to the whole population (why I won't claim it's the majority of all people in the field) but the majority I did discuss this with had, at best, a hand-wavey "national defense" justification but did not think about what the thing they worked on did. Its effectiveness for its job, or its ultimate purpose.
Though a lot actually just wouldn't even discuss it in the first place. I think, though, that if you're going to work on a weapon or a component for a weapon you owe it to yourself to think deeply about the topic. I've known too many people who thought about it too late and realized that they couldn't live with it. Better to figure that out at the start and change career paths than at the end and either kill yourself or drink yourself to death.
Very well said. I will provide an analogy.
Imagine I came to know that ghosts exist with supernatural powers. My first reaction shouldn't be of fear. It should be of curiosity. What laws are prevailing in ghost realm which provides them with great powers over material world. Does one becoming a ghost suddenly know the truth of Rieman Hypothesis or P=NP?
The same could be asked of people who are supposed to know better by virtue of them close to knowledge and technology. Should they spend their improving lives of others or enslaving them for material gains?
Never underestimate the lengths and depths people will go in the name of a salary.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair
Smart people are very prone to using their intellectual abilities for self deception and rationalisation.
https://archive.ph/loQZu
I think this is a weird side effect of how we portray evil corporations in fiction and in journalism. We imagine that everyone working there is a moustache-twirling villain. And then we get a job at Meta or Flock or Palantir, look around, and don't see any moustache-twirling villains. There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys.
Even if some of the outcomes seem reprehensible, it's not really evil because we're good people. We do it in a responsible and caring way. We're truly sorry that your grandma is now hooked up on endless AI-generated slop, but shouldn't the media be talking about all the other grandmas whose lives are enriched by our AI? We have strict safety rules for the types of cryptocurrency ads that can target the elderly, too.
Let me tell you. I worked at a IRS equivalent service in another country, and a lot of what I did was not very different from spying in our own citizens.
And you know what? there's a pervasive ideology in the place that justifies it all.
One day you wake up, and you realize that you see the tax payer as a cunning and evil adversary that needs to be reigned upon, and you see that all the jokes, the water cooler talk, the general ethos is toward this vision of the tax payer, even if the official documents say otherwise.
And we are talking about Tax Payers here. Now imagine an organization like Palantir that can de-humanize their targets marking them with the Terrorist label. It is easy to convince people that they are on the right side.
> you see the tax payer as a cunning and evil adversary that needs to be reigned upon, and you see that all the jokes, the water cooler talk, the general ethos is toward this vision of the tax payer
Any force employing threat of violence for control does the same. Police presence, military occupation, hell you even see it in the eyes of loss prevention folks.
> There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun". So, it must be that we're the good guys.
It can get pretty close at times. Witness Meta and Zuck being told, in clear terms, that there was clear material threats to Burmese dissidents with some of the asks of Facebook. "The features matter more."
Or like, anything peter thiel says ever.
> There's no one saying "ha ha, we should hurt people just for fun"
Yes, there is.[1]
[1] https://archive.is/ngaj4
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55% Palantir revenue comes from government contracts and 50% from the US govenment.
With this "are we the bad guys" perspective, I wonder how much of the "evil" they are apparently doing is a result of the current view a majority of people globally have with the current administration?
Though we may find it difficult to separate the two, because it seems leadership and the founders of Palantir are supportive of, and in some ways responsible for, Trump getting elected, but with different leadership using the tools in different ways, would we still consider Palantir the bad guys?
personally yes, i've considered them the bad guys from day one. they have always publicly portrayed themselves as enabling mass surveillance so i'm not even sure why this sudden crisis of conscience, unless the trump administration has finally made it clear to even the thickest-headed of them that mass surveillance is not a good thing.
> “I’m curious why this had to be posted. Especially on the company account. On the practical level every time stuff like that gets posted it gets harder for us to sell the software outside of the US (for sure in the current political climate), and I doubt we need this in the US?” wrote one frustrated employee. The message received more than 50 “+1” emojis.
> “Wether [sic] we acknowledge it or not, this impacts us all personally,” another worker wrote on Monday. “I’ve already had multiple friends reach out and ask what the hell did we post.” This message received nearly two dozen “+1” emoji reactions.
> “Yeah it turns out that short-form summaries of the book’s long-form ideas are easy to misrepresent. It’s like we taped a ‘kick me’ sign on our own backs,” a third worker wrote. “I hope no one who decided to put this out is surprised that we are, in fact, getting kicked.”
entirely possible they're phrasing their concerns on the corporate slack to be 'pro-company' so they don't worry about getting fired for their views but it doesn't actually sound like they're wondering anything, they're just bothered that it's being brought to light.
I wouldn't say they necessarily aren't personally concerned as well. I think quite often if people disagree with their employer but don't want to lose their jobs, it's more amenable to phrase disagreement like they have there. Yes it would be braver to just come out and say "I really don't like this", but at least it's braver than saying nothing at all.
Sounds like they're having a 'NSA Moment'. After the leaks, there was a Bunch of high profile stories about employees leaving after their neighbors/friends/normies found out the sorts of stuff NSA was up to....
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No need to wonder
While I believe it's good that we call it out, there will always be enough people willing to do evil for money. It'll have to be shut down from the outside and that's where our focus should be.
But not competent evil people. For example, most of the Nazis were completely inept, and a great aid to the allies.
The Department of Defense is now the Department of War. They've made their goals clear.
You are not in defense contracting. You are in the business of war contracting.
Take from that what you will.
I work at a non-defense tech company, and it's basically a running joke that no matter how bad the job market is, none of us are soulless enough to go looking for work at Palantir, even if the pay is good.
I would have trouble trusting the kind of person who would work at Palantir. It seems like it could be career-limiting in the long run.
That is strange. I work at Cisco and nobody has mentioned the slightest political aside about anything, ever. No one would ever say something like that about Palantir or its opposite.
I would have trouble working at the kind of place with those running jokes in the office.
I suspect the difference is working in continental Europe...?
This is trying to manage their personal image; they know exactly what they are and what they do.
They are just annoyed Karp is breaking Kayfabe
Thought it was an onion article at first glance.
Weird. I worked near a Palantir office in 2017 and I remember thinking it would be "morally challenging" to work there. 9 years later, it's just becoming apparent?
It's not like these guys have any media literacy or emotional intelligence to speak of. If they did, they wouldn't have gone to work for Thiel and Karp's perfectly named company.
I'm pretty sure this is the same population of people who lost (and may still be losing sleep) over Roko's Basilisk. They're clever but not smart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
When I worked at a company that was using Palantir's software about 15 years ago the average age of a Palantir employee was in the early 20s in my experience.
It was almost certainly everyone's first job.
It's not too hard to think of ways you can get a bunch of young folks do your bidding without them questioning the motives or what kind of moral challenges the job has.
<nods> I had that reaction when they mailed me an offer to join a recruitment event sometime around 2013.
Not quite as creepy as recently when Anduril sent an email saying I was "on their radar".
Seeing that type of email coming from a company like Anduril would honestly freak me the frick out, no ifs and no buts about it. Which probably means I'd never be part of their target audience.
A recruiter tried to get me to interview there in 2018. I asked them about their reputation and they went cold after that.
Most high paying companies would do the same, irrespective of their reputation.
I was contacted by Palantir recruiters about 15 years ago. I found the name troubling along with the gov't contracts, as well as learning that spending one night a week at the office was encouraged.
I visited the office near University Avenue, once, many years ago. I found the freezer full of ice cream, the fragrant gaming room, and the heavily used bunk beds very disturbing. I'm not surprised they encouraged employees to spend one night a week there.
The engineering team at Palantir "Are we the baddies?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY
Taking a job at Spy Orbs For Evil Wizards Inc., reading the CEO's addled technofascist manifesto, and wondering if I'm the bad guy
Hearing my boss, Muad’Dib, say “There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.” and wondering what he means by all that
Yeah, the mind boggles how anybody at Palantir can honestly be on the fence about them being the baddies.
Palantir is not wrong that AI diminishes the power of Democrat and more-educater women voters. It will just diminish Republican and less-educated male voters too.
Unless it is being trained and applied to suppressing certain groups. Karp said a not-so-quiet goal out loud.
Yea, the same innovations that enable freedom can also be used for control. What else is new?
Palantir enables freedom in the same way salt water quenches your thirst.
It doesn’t.
Salt water totally quenches thirst if under 0.5%. Sea water doesn't.
Palantir delenda est
A lot of things delenda est. The ever-growing length of the delenda-est list and the nonexistent rate at which we're est'ing all those delendas is quite worrisome at this point.
One aspect of my job is that I have a lot of autonomy and the work I do is such that I could push something out to the production environment and cause massive problems. We have processes in place to make sure that doesn't happen, but they're not robust processes, if you really wanted to you could get something out there that is harmful to the company. Now, there are two ways of looking at that - one is that it's really important to have robust processes to make sure that doesn't happen. But the other is you need people who understand that responsibility and take it seriously and whose personal values are such that they aren't just going to carelessly do stuff. At the end of the day the processes are only good if they're followed.
So one of the things I strongly look for when hiring is for people who have a high sense of personal responsibility. They're not going to just throw shit out there because it's easy or quick. They know they are responsible for what goes out and they really are going to own that responsbility.
In the same way, take a look at anything senior management says about their ICE or military contracts. It's not that I think they're doing something bad or that the military shouldn't have access to good technology. It's that at best they seem entirely disinterested in that what they're doing could be harmful or that they have any responsibility if it is.
It's not that I think Palantir is helping the US government bomb Iranian school chilren. It's that I don't think it would bother them if they were.
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.
There's a saying in Germany: if 10 people are at a table, a nazi sits at the table and they don't leave, 11 nazis are sitting at the table.
To quote the Declaration of Independence "...all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
Did they recently add skulls on their badges and branded swag?
Reminds me of the day I realized that, during my lifetime, my country, the US, caused the death of 1M Iraqis -- for no apparent reason.
Wired used to be a great magazine but has clearly deteriorated in reporting quality and focus since 2017 or so.
I talked with a friend there around 2018 and he dissuaded me from applying, then quit a few months later. He already knew...
The title is likely a reference to a sketch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_We_the_Baddies%3F
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
Although it could be unintentional - the phrase is mainstream now and not hard to produce independently either.
It's clearly intentional, and apt.
Starting???
Yes. The answer is yes.
When your product is used by a military occupation to target and kill civilians and their families [1][2], it's kind of shocking that there's any doubt. But as Upton Sinclair said:
> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I would go further and argue that Palantir employees are just as valid military targets as occupation soldiers are.
[1]: https://www.business-humanrights.org/es/%C3%BAltimas-noticia...
[2]: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
It was always really obvious but that recent full-throated-fascist manifesto has left no doubt. One thing Palantir have going for them is this deranged movie-villain-style transparency about their intentions, they don't even care about hiding it.
Are we the baddies?
https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?is=ncWhlGOB3l721Lri
Hmm, Wired Magazine. Isn't this the same publication that said that Firewalls were bad?
Hint: you are and always have been
"a company named after J. R. R. Tolkien’s corrupting all-seeing orb"
Desperate for some negative sentiment aren't we? The orbs were not "corrupting" in any way. Can we just have reporting anymore without everything being slanted?
The "manifesto" Palantir posted seemed pretty reasonable to me given their company mission and alignment. I don't get the backlash. It's much less worse than what they're already accused of, I think. It doesn't make me think worse of them at all.
They are, in fact, the bad guys.
Yes, the answer is yes they are.
Alex Karp is a fascist. The whole company should be ended.
That manifesto was antihuman.
I’m sure a copious amount of ketamine was involved in its production.
It read like a longtime adderall addict who switched to clean meth a while ago.
It read like a C- college sophomore dudebro who read some Ayn Rand and Raspail and Yockey and said "I fucking am John Galt", hit a bong, and got to scribbling their 'manifesto'.
All three of these suggestions are likely true. I’ve never done Ketamine but I’ve heard it can seriously degrade the user’s “quality control” of their ideas, meaning that ideas that they have, or ideas they get from others, that are intellectually subpar appear to be quite brilliant. The dissociation is also helpful for overcoming moral qualms if they were ever present.
Combine that with speed and a insular SV culture steeped in the ideology of Ayn Rand and Nick Land (who likely suffered from amphetamine psychosis) and you get something like this Palantir manifesto.
I would feel sorry for them if they weren’t building skynet.
I feel sorry for them because some of them will never wake up to experience life
And that's deeply sad to me
Most of this tech oligarch group seems pathetic in this way. It's tragic, yes, but they're making their own bed.
Which part specifically?
Pick one.
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 just suck, and other types of people are better" without considering the complex and nuanced factors over the course of human history that result with the world we have today.
So you genuinely believe that every culture is exactly equal in value? I don't even see how that's possible to believe. There are cultures where women are subjugated routinely and cultures where gay people are beheaded as a matter of course. Those cultures are not as good as western cultures, sorry. This has nothing to do with "rac[e]" or "types of people".
You just see what you want to see in that paragraph. Without a way to determine 'better' and 'worse' we cannot have a way to determine how our society and culture should develop. That is deeply antihuman. Personally I think it should develop away from beheading gay people; not sure about you.
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Mandatory public service is fascism? Deporting illegal immigrants is fascism?
There are ~68 countries with mandatory military service in the world [1]. To say nothing of countries with some other form of mandatory public service. How many of them are fascist?
The U.S., with the backing of widespread public support, passed bipartisan immigration enforcement laws in 1996 with an aim of rapid and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and it was not viewed as "fascism". Those laws remained on the books since that time and were only recently under enforced with dramatic consequences.
I honestly feel like we're increasingly living in separate realities driven by media bubbles and wanton historical illiteracy and dishonesty.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
I agree; I don't see how anyone can read that manifesto as plainly fascistic. I am guessing most people didn't read it. I'm also guessing of those who did, they interpret every point as a dog whistle with secret double meaning, as they would with absolutely anything written by their "enemies".
The term “fascist” has been watered down to the point it doesn’t really mean anything the way many people use it now
I think the real standard for “fascist” has to be - how similar is what someone is doing to what Mussolini did? If there’s a genuine similarity there, the term “fascist” may be appropriate; otherwise, it isn’t
Wired does sanewashing now?
Oh please. Were they really so willfully ignorant not to know who they are working for and on what?
Eyes without the E
Little Eichmanns unable to feel good about themselves now that there's so much bad press? They should've known, in fact, most of them DID know about who they work for and what they do. They just can't handle the pressure. Name, shame and move on, fellas. No words worth listening to from Palantir employees.
Is the morality different from being a citizen or tax payer of USA?
It’s all moral relativism
“Starting”… hmmm
Starting?
Starting?!
Am I the only one that thinks that naming your company after a magical device that was corrupted by evil might be a bad look?
I mean it's another case of "Are we the baddies?" where they talk about having the skull on the uniform.
Like your company is literally called Palantir, after the object from the Tolkien universe (if you're living under a rock), which allows the user to see things happening in other places, and allows "A wielder of great power such as Sauron could dominate a weaker user through the stone".
Not only that but your company's founder goes around the world doing lectures about the Antichrist.
And if that wasn't enough, you're working with governments around the world to oppress citizens and have been complicit in a literal genocide by partnering with Israel in the past years.
I mean if you're not the baddies, then maybe Voldemort is just misunderstood, and the Joker is the good guy, etc.
Another case where "starting" is the ha-ha-sob part. There's never been anything good about Palantir.
Honestly doesn't even look like they pay that well compared to other major tech companies.
Like why justify it if it economically isn't even that advantageous? Ya'll are laughable.
'no shit sherlock' comes to mind.
now? what took them so long??
stock price hit an ath and have been falling since
Every True Capitalist knows to use the golden rule as their moral compass.
The company is named after the evil telepathic orbs from lord of the rings. Wasn't that the first clue that everything might not be hunky dory?
A real "Are we the baddies?" moment for them
Sounds really late, honestly. It's been apparent from people outside the company for years, and employees realize it just now?
Now it's in the news where their normie friends and family see it
The truth about a particular company is always told in 10 years time.
Palantir now has too many eyes to the average person on the street and its reputation is negative.
We will have the same conversation about OpenAI, Anthropic, Mechanize, Inc. and the rest of all the other AI labs just like we are doing with big tech companies.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
...now it is complete
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As far as I can tell the main crime Palantir commits is actually delivering what it's asked for, instead of just stringing the government along like the other contractors do.
> We're not perfect. We've done bad. But, you won't find another nation on earth or in history who has contributed as much to global progress, stability and well-being.
Ooook... but
> Defending the United States of America is never the wrong move.
is not the correct logical conclusion from that. The correct conclusion would be that it is our ability to reflect on the bad things we've done that have allowed us to make forward progress.
Universally defending something without considering the circumstances and context is rarely ever the correct stance.
OK, well the "circumstances and context" here are that most people commenting on HN live in the United States, so obviously they will be better off if the United States does well. I don't think your "um actually, you can't ALWAYS support something in all cases, sweaty" critique really adds anything to the discussion here.
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I know exactly what you’re trying to say and you need to understand that it’s highly counterproductive.
The United States was built on genocide of the natives, slavery of captives from Africa, and multiple unecessary wars that have killed millions of innocent people. This is not a new thing.
It also isn't a unique thing. See (for example) the entire history of, well, pretty much any country. There is a reason Utopia literally means "no place".
* Genocide of the natives? Literally all countries in the Americas, for starters. * Slavery of captives from Africa? Pretty much everyone with colonies in and around the Caribbean was guilty of that too. * Multiple unnecessary wars that have killed millions of people? That encompasses more or less all of European history.
By all means, criticize Palantir. But don't pretend US history has anything in particular that would set up the prerequisites for it to exist.
I know it’s not unique. I just assumed the parent was a nick fuentes America First type who wants to transfer all of our guilt and sin onto Israel (and in the parent’s case a specific ethnicity). It’s more common in the US than you would think.
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literally none of this is true
Anti-tech sentiment is completely the tech industry's fault. Nobody likes tech because tech sucks to use. End of.
Yes. Yes you all are.
Thats all.
yes
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?
Truly. People are calling for Palantir employees to be targeted by foreign militaries right here in this comments section!
I'll ride this thread with you to the bottom of the page.
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 frame things in the current meta.
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.
Right but was Booz Allen not dealing in mass surveillance too? There's something that's narratively appealing about Palantir in this context. The name, Thiel as a key figure, the mission statement, the branding. It may even be that they have an image of effectiveness that others don't.
Nerds are ruining this great nation.
There's never been a single day in history without war. Indeed, there's never been a moment in all of biological life without violent conflict.
In high school, I had a visitor from West Point. My dad (Killing Fields survivor) was so excited. I (16 year old boy who only knew video games, porn and comics) later threw an impressive tantrum that defeated my father.
I threw away a golden ticket to see the world for what it is (instead of from within my cocoon in the suburbs of Los Angeles) and become a man at a more appropriate age.
Instead, I became an overpaid Peter Pan in San Francisco.
Theres some effect, I can't remember the name, where experts in one field (engineering) think they understand other fields (war) because they're so smart at their own field. I think this very much applies here.
If you're at Palantir and think you're the bad guy, first make the honest effort to convince yourself otherwise.
Failing that, leave and make room for patriots.
I don't like hurting others, but you really need to understand there are others that absolutely want to hurt you for basically no reason, and that hurting them first is highly effective, and as both firepower and intelligence (Palantir) improve, it becomes less fatal (clear historical trend).
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The company also chose to name itself after a fantasy scrying device corrupted by evil. There might be an ounce of self-fulfilling prophecy here.
Their stock is up something like 1500% since IPO. I can't imagine most employees there feeling like they're undervalued with that sort of equity valuation.
Nerds that did not get love in high school or college are ruining America.