Reflections on Palantir

Could you please help us better understand the work or at least let us know what is missing in nuance from the above poster’s usage?

The usage you are criticizing is the common understanding of the term “Faustian bargaining” but it seems that you have a better understanding and it would be nice to be better informed.

Sure, it's not so much "nuance" as being read into the Western literary tradition. We should hate to be controversial. So, bargaining for money as it's attainable in principle, doesn't constitute a Faustian: you can make more money, you may even make lots of it, & mechanics of it are pretty well-understood. Needs no intervention. The reason why the Faustian transcends human experience is precisely because what's transferred in the process is unattainable. In other words, you don't need a superhuman entity to make a buck or gain some power. That's inconsequential, really. And otherwise quite boring, too, even as far as "evil" goes. The Faustian involves trading something essential and irreplaceable (like one's soul) for something that is otherwise impossible for a human to attain, such as unlimited knowledge. It's never about personal gain, but about transcending human condition in a way that comes at an ultimate, irreversible cost.

I don't know if Thiel or Andreessen ever made morally questionable decisions, and indeed I can only laugh at the notion that whatever decisions they have made would appear consequential in somebody's eyes. I find this obsession with famous men in commerce—pathetic, and ultimately indicative of a lesser mind. But to bring Goethe here—reduce great art to a tool of envy and true impotence—now, I find that deeply offensive. I say: Don't pollute the beautiful things with your petty personal politics and fixations. If the beautiful is not important to you—doesn't mean it's not important to others.

Otherwise, the Faustian in your mind might cheap-skate into uselessness when it comes to reading/understanding the truly exceptional acts.

Die Tat ist alles, nichts der Ruhm!

Thanks for responding in such detail, I appreciate it.

So because of the supernatural elements of acquiring the unattainable would you say that it is unusable as a real world metaphor or analogy?

Or is there a real life example that you believe would fall under the category of a Faustian Bargain?

No, not at all it's not! The most beautiful thing about the Faustian is that it's very much applicable. You know what they say: the virtual is just as important as the real, if not more important. Like any device in language, the very application thereof is what defines, attracts, multiplies its meaning. (To risk being exactly philosophical about it: see Wittgenstein.) For something to be real, or indeed for a device like the Faustian to be useful—it must be rooted in reality, not supernatural. And yet some Acts are so exceptional, the thoughts that make them so–are so elegant, it helps to read them as divine so as not to risk colouring it mundane!

I'm sure you've come across acts and thoughts like that.

If you eliminate the mundane like "power" and moneys, what remains? Well, plenty remains in fact. Imagine a scientist that would try and test dangerous experimental new drugs on themselves—to save their dying daughter—disregarding the established process, in spite of conventional wisdom. There have been cases like that, and sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they don't, but it's not the outcome that makes it interesting but the act itself; this theme is explored in the second act of Faust.

I'm personally fascinated by modern-day AI researchers who have clearly made the deal, and might as well succeed in it someday to build something truly godlike with no actual regard to the contemporary ontologies of human well-being. The poetic quality is beautiful in its simplicity: as long as the irreplaceable is bartered for the divine, the Faustian applies. The distribution of moneys as well as boring ideological presuppositions need not apply.