Reflections on Palantir

> The combo of intellectual grandiosity and intense competitiveness was a perfect fit for me. It’s still hard to find today, in fact - many people have copied the ‘hardcore’ working culture and the ‘this is the Marines’ vibe, but few have the intellectual atmosphere, the sense of being involved in a rich set of ideas. This is hard to LARP - your founders and early employees have to be genuinely interesting intellectual thinkers.

This mythical idea that certain successful tech founders are successful because they are highly contemplative intellectuals is so exhausting to me. The amount of self-aggrandizement engaged in by people who merely _interacted_ with these founders is also insane. I can no longer take seriously the "I make software and then sit and think about ancient political philosophy" trope.

When you onboard at meta (circa 2020) the execs like to make vague references to this rare out of print book on media studies that they say presaged everything and explains a lot about how they think about their role in the media ecosystem. They liked to lift quotes from it to justify certain decisions or whatever. They encouraged you to buy the book “if you could find a copy”.

I like reading old books and philosophy so I found a copy. It was basically completely unfollow-able, and at best tangentially related to anything they were doing.

I think having some biblical text to appeal to, in order to justify what is otherwise completely self-dealing, self-serving behavior is some foundational principle of the VP lizard school in Silicon Valley.

It’s a sleight of hand. People will come up with brilliant illusions to distract you from the convenient hand that’s wrist deep into your coin purse.

Not to say there aren’t interesting or valuable intellectual ideas in these books — in Girard, or what have you. But ultimately you have to judge people objectively on the sort of behaviors they exhibit, not on the “illusions” of the intellectual or philosophical explanations they give for those behaviors.

That's fascinating, and yeah it's just the kind of thing I was thinking of—the concrete example is nice. There is indeed something quite perverse about the fusion of philosophy and unfettered laissez-faire capitalism in the information age.

I wonder if it's more of an adaptation or coping mechanism than a foundational principle. I think these people cannot bear to actually digest the cynical view of what they are doing in the world so they grasp for something more esoteric and hold that up as guiding principles.

If they were actually doing something good, they wouldn't have to find a book that explains why what they're doing is good in some indirect way. If you look at Jimmy Wales' guiding philosophy, for example, it is clearly and directly correlated to the work being done at Wikipedia. There's no jumping through hoops, because most people agree that Wikipedia is a good thing.

Any idea what the book was?

I agree, that it can be a coping mechanism. You find something that's esoteric enough that you can project your goodwill onto it and use it to justify your weird behaviors.

I also agree that if you're doing good, your work speaks for itself, and does not need to be justified. I think Rockefeller, for example, struggled with this a lot later in life when he tried to pay for the cruelty his career with a later devotion to philanthropy. But I don't think it worked. Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos will need to wrestle with this, too, regardless of how much they "donate" to "charity". I don't envy them their positions in life.

The book was "Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man" by McLuhan, Marshall. You can find it pretty regularly on biblio for ~$150.

Marshall McLuhan was the most famous and influential intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century, and the one whose ideas are probably the most obviously relevant to Facebook. He’s not some sort of obscure figure at all. I’m sorry if he wasn’t your cup of tea and it’s totally possible that Facebook execs weren’t understanding and applying his ideas correctly but frankly I would be a lot more worried about the company if the top leadership wasn’t reading McLuhan.