Reflections on Palantir

I'm amazed there's no discussion in the article about Palantir's role in Gaza and their development of Lavender and "Where's Daddy". That goes beyond the gray areas that the author mentions.

Given that it's a site run by a startup incubator with opaque moderation and a strong American bias, I would imagine that most things that make "line go up" are ok.

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

Some other opinions go back even further and more criticize Great Britain for their mishandling of Mandatory Palestine. There are a lot of opinions that develop as both sides adjust their strategy and the borders of their theater. Writing off any development of opinion (particularly in the wake of Lavander) is a counterproductive and insular habit.

If you don't want to discuss the behavior and morality of the IDF, nobody will force you to steelman them. But some of us would like to call that into question, and dismissing our conversation with "that's immature" is a thought-terminating cliche.

This is an extremely myopic take. I don't think I have seen many -- let alone "most" as you prescribe -- comments in any forums that resort to "war bad". Even on HN what I've seen is people with a strong sense of justice and ethics actively speaking out against atrocities being committed using US taxpayer dollars.

As for your line about people not knowing the history -- partially fair enough. Though that's also a propaganda line spread by Israel to keep people out of the metaphoric town hall. If you really believe that to join a movement you must first learn the entire history of all concerned parties first, shouldn't the same apply to any comments about Israel, or the US? I don't see pro-genocide commenters being told to shut up because they don't know the completely history of the Ottoman Empire.

The nihilism you see in a lot of nerdy spaces in this vein is so upsetting. Tech workers are so unbelievably critical to the functioning of the modern world that if we collectivized and made demands, we could utterly bring the global system to a halt until those demands were met. But so many are so well sold on this "rockstar programmer" horseshit. Like by all means, get your bag, we all need to, but personally I sleep better knowing no software I've made is helping target guided rockets.

Going back just to the Mandate seems like a very arbitrary point. It forgets about Egyptian colonisation of Palestine in 19th century, as well as treatment of Jewish communities across the whole Arab world, which explains a lot about the conflict and it's history.

Funny how lot of conflicts can be traced back to "Great" Britain:

- Israel Palestine. - India Pakistan. - Apartheid in South Africa. - .. anything else?

Generally speaking I think it’s unhelpful to develop patterns of thinking that suppose you are the main character in a sort of worldwide video game instead of just another one of billions of humans living on the planet who all have relatively similar wants and needs.

There is no such thing as birds. Winged creatures? Utter fantasy. There, I said it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren%27t_Real

It's not a nuanced political situation people need to spend time teasing apart, it's just bloodthirst being perpetuated generationally. There's no subtext to this conflict that won't sound absolutely insane to an outsider.

This reeks of "just following orders", combined with a healthy those dehumanising others.

Do you care if your code is used to kill literal children? Kidnap suspected terrorists (suspected based on detailed information such as their first name, their watch type, or them driving a car at the wrong time in the wrong place) and torture them to death? Where is your moral line?

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

https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192

Case in point. It's hard to value life when you are willing to contribute to the loss of it. I hope that the price of your morals is at the very least high to be sold so easily.

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

Is everyone in Gaza a terrorist, in your opinion?

That's the kind of products Palantir develops, but is it confirmed that they developed Lavender and "Where's Daddy"?