[Calavar]

I still don't understand why Theil and Karp decided to name their surveillance tech company after a device that is best known for being used by an evil dark lord to decieve and corrupt. It's like the Mitchell and Webb skit "are we the baddies" except they're the ones who designed the uniforms with skulls on them.

[thatguy0900]

Because it's funny and they genuinely don't care whether or not they're bad guys

[0x3f]

Well, it's not inherently any more evil than Fanta, is it?

[ljm]

I don't think you have to understand why they made that decision, you just have to understand who they are and what they believe in. Just have a look at what they talk about, and what they are quoted as saying.

Then it will start to make sense.

[Manuel_D]

It'd help make your point to actually share the ominous quotes you're referring to.

[ljm]

You know what? It's all on the public record, and if someone wants to defend these guys or challenge my opinion they can do better than asking for sources of well reported behaviour.

Prove me wrong by contributing more than I did.

[Manuel_D]

How am I supposed to prove a negative here? Post a transcript of every statement Thiel and Karp have ever made?

You're the one making an assertion about Palantir. Apparently whatever you're referring to is well reported, but not quite well reported enough for you to actually point out the statements you're referring to.

[ljm]

This is just being absurd.

If I was to say "Musk is an asshole just look at what he did at the presidential inauguration in 2025" and you said "you'd make a better point by giving a source for that ominous reference", I would think you were acting in bad faith because of how widely reported Musk's nazi salutes were at the time, and I would feel completely fair in saying "go and find out for yourself, you have all of the necessary information to do so."

I would actually think that you were in a position to defend that person but weren't ready to express that yet. So here we are with Thiel and Karp where 5 minutes of using Google or something would bring up various reports of Karp's recent conference statements. And I could have done that myself originally but "source?" is quite an irksome reply to deal with.

[Manuel_D]

In your example with Musk, you actually gave a concrete reference: doing a Nazi salute. You've yet to do even that with Thiel and Karp.

> 5 minutes of using Google or something would bring up various reports of Karp's recent conference statements

And for the third time, you couldn't even be bothered to actually share those statements.

This is the first result from googling "Alex Karp Conference":

> “And so these disruptions are gonna disrupt every aspect of our society. And to make this work, we have to come to an agreement of what it is we’re going to do with the technology; how are we gonna explain to people who are likely gonna have less good, and less interesting jobs.”

What does this demonstrate about Karp's beliefs, besides the fact that he thinks AI is going to disrupt large parts of society? That's a pretty normal belief, is it not?

Perhaps you can't actually find quotes to match your rhetoric, and that's why you repeatedly fail to actually share any statements from Karp and Thiel.