Reflections on Palantir

I worked there in the weird era. A couple things.

1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things.

2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from typical sv talent.

3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd

4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it's impossible to figure out who you actually needed to talk to.

Let's hypothesize that a would-be administration in a Western country would like to accomplish full Russian-style autocracy relatively quickly. Let's say they have stated publicly that their plan is to go after immigrants first, opposition leaders second. Numerically, these are two small categories, relatively speaking.

The first question is, what about the third and fourth categories? Would they be dissenters in general, or specific kinds (judged to be riskier for the autocratization process) and which?

The second question is, how would they go about identifying them? Are there products and services at Palantir that may have been designed for this goal?

> The Biden administration had authoritarian, Russian style COVID policies.

During the pandemic I read various descriptions of what disease outbreaks were like during various times. Including descriptions of the plague of 1665. What is interesting is that the approach to managing outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases hasn't really changed that much. Because we discovered relatively early on what helps. (Though we no longer nail houses shut with infected people inside them and post armed guards outside).

What policies would you suggest to manage outbreaks of infectious diseases? How many deaths do you think is acceptable? Can you pick a number?

It will be interesting to see what happens during the next pandemic. Because there will be pandemics in the future. Do you think that a population disinclined to act cautiously in a situation where correct information will be scarce for months, possibly years, is a good thing or do you think it might represent a problem.

The most sinister thing a government could possibly do would be to do as little as possible and just accept loss of human life.

Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct. The virus was still there and does not care about presidential edicts and speeches.

Given the the world still exists, I think the pre-2022 policies were a gross overreach and the cancellations of the likes of Malone are an eternal shame for the U.S. that is comparable to what happened in the Soviet Union.

You should really take into account the advent of COVID vaccines, the evolution of the disease (it appears that less lethal variants), and how human immunology works (people create antibodies if they survive the first round of a disease).

There's a tendency amongst folks who have strong opinions on covid measures to create false dichotomies and ignore how context changed over time. Lockdowns appear to have been a good idea during some of the disease (i.e. before we knew how to treat it, and before vaccines became readily available), and became less important as the context changed.