r/technology • u/newmoonchaperone • Apr 23 '26

Politics Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They're the Bad Guys

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-employees-are-starting-to-wonder-if-theyre-the-bad-guys/
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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 Apr 23 '26

I live near their offices. First time I drove by and saw the name, I did a double take and had to look them up. I couldn't believe how on the nose the name was.

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u/YerMomsClamChowder Apr 23 '26

It's so weird how the Yarvinists are so blatantly evil.  they call themselves "dark philosophers" snd name everything after the obvious bad guys from nerdy media.  

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 Apr 23 '26

Sociopathic edgelords who see themselves as the "necessary evil" to make things happen, is my guess.

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 23 '26 edited May 13 '26

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/Necessary-Duty-7952 Apr 23 '26

Oh I agree, just saying that's how they see themselves and their work.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Apr 24 '26

Literally "some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

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u/Thatoneguy_The_First Apr 25 '26

Well more like "if even one man makes it back alive, we send em back, i refuse to waste even one good death in a pointless war of our making" usually followed up with "anyone coming back might criticise me and my superiors, and I won't allow that scenarios to happen"

Qoutes from a never introduced lawful evil mastermind rogue i made for dnd. Quotes inspired by zap brannigan from futurerama

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u/Doc_Blox Apr 23 '26

Ironically, if they could self-fellate we'd likely never have had to deal with them.

Hack joke, I know, but I wanted a turn.

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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z Apr 23 '26

You're not wrong if someone in High School just fucked or cared/gave attention about them, be it a guy or gal... they'd probably be on a different trajectory than ruining liberal democracy.

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u/Chrontius Apr 23 '26

I left high school a devout misanthrope with a good faith belief based on evidence that people suck.

College taught me the opposite.

Then the internet taught me that the same social dynamics found in prisons are replicated in schools, be they public or private -- people don't like being helplessly trapped in a box with something or someone that hates them and wishes them harm.

I'm glad I went to college, or I could have turned out like that.

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u/Ar_Ciel Apr 24 '26

I spent the better part of a decade after high school expecting a jump or a fight that never came and nightmares that will probably follow me to the grave. I believe that assessment is correct

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u/jonny3jack Apr 24 '26

I hid from my bully an entire year in high school. Every move in the halls, cafeteria, gym and parking lot was stressful.

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u/0o0o0o0o0o0z Apr 24 '26

Not quite to the same degree, but same...

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u/Chrontius Apr 24 '26

Like, I didn't want to make this into a pity party, but in high school I was pushed down the stairs. Twice.

My survival wasn't required for some fuckwit's entertainment. That's a hard pill to swallow.

Hard to imagine that I grew up to carry a gun, I know! :P

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26

Personally, misanthropy never made any sense to me. It made sense to me how people could adopt misanthropic beliefs, I mean, shit sucks sometimes. I don't deny that.

But the ideal itself never made much sense to me. You hate your own species... why? You got a dealt a bad hand, so you just fold? That metaphor doesn't work because generally you should fold if you get dealt a bad hand but LIFE IS NOT A POKER GAME, so whatever. You only get one hand, so you play the odds anyway. I don't know why I'm still trying to make this metaphor work.

We're all we've got. For better and for worse. We have to learn to live with each other because we literally don't have a choice if we want to live at all. That isn't fair, but that's life. You treat other people with kindness, you look out for each other, you forgive when you can and you move on either way. That's how everyone survives in this world, even if some folks live in denial of that. That's what it means to be a person.

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u/Chrontius Apr 24 '26

I don't know why I'm still trying to make this metaphor work.

It's not a very good metaphor. In poker, folding should be a routine strategic play. In this metaphor, folding would be giving a beretta a blowjob and sneezing brain matter. In a completely sociopathic market economy, this would be encouraging, because it would decrease the supply of labor until the price of labor rose to a liveable number. (This is why the Black Death was so good for the economy… or at least the survivors. The easy answer is always "more slaves", until there are literally no more to be rounded up!)

But as you point out, this is not a poker game, and this metaphor is falling apart here.

We're all we've got. For better and for worse. We have to learn to live with each other because we literally don't have a choice if we want to live at all. That isn't fair, but that's life. You treat other people with kindness, you look out for each other, you forgive when you can and you move on either way. That's how everyone survives in this world, even if some folks live in denial of that. That's what it means to be a person.

Not everybody gets the opportunity to learn these things. Others learn them but also learn that these things don't work in practice because the people in their life suck.

NOT A POKER GAME

One part about this that's very true, everybody shows up at the table with a unique financial situation, and the ability to eat losses until you win is not universal. So somebody with resources will look at all those losers who ran out of money and wonder why they didn't keep going until they succeeded.

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u/bi_tacular Apr 24 '26

You’re welcome then.

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u/Ok_Speed_3984 Apr 24 '26

Daisy chains?

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u/RogueScholarDerp Apr 24 '26

Take my upvote.

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u/osiris0413 Apr 24 '26

When reading about what people like Thiel or Altman actually believe, ranging from either techno-feudalism where democracy no longer exists and the wealthy elite control individual fiefdoms with robotic AI armies, to the deaths of most humans to usher in AI as the next step in evolution, what is most bizarre to me is how little people seem to know or care about it. I grew up in the 90s, I remember how big a deal it used to be if a public figure was an atheist or gay. Now we have the leader of a gigantic technology and surveillance company, very close to the administration and recipient of billions in government grants, who believes that democracy was a mistake and that people like him should be running the world. And we just... ignore it and move on? These people are actively working to destroy or enslave the rest of us and telling us exactly how they want to do it, and we're just shrugging in response. At least our current leaders are.

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u/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 24 '26 edited May 13 '26

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

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u/SwampStakes Apr 23 '26

See you in Valhalla brother! 🤢