Thread

1. 63 · 1790106616 · focus · HN ↗

   It's easy to blame the military and the higher-ups, after all they made this choice. But more relevant to HN, this couldn't have happened without technology professionals working for Palantir.

   > A Palantir spokesperson told Bloomberg the company “is not responsible for the underlying data nor identifying intelligence deficiencies” and that there is no evidence its software was at fault.

   If you work for Palantir, you are writing software that kills people. Software that, in this case, killed 123 children. What salary is worth that?

   I encourage others who work in the public sector, whether directly or through a contractor, to read and internalize Don't Get Distracted by Caleb Hearth [0]. I think about it nearly every day.

   [0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;calebhearth.com&#x2F;dont-get-distracted" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;calebhearth.com&#x2F;dont-get-distracted

   1. GuB-42 · 1790109548 · focus · HN ↗

      Of course it could have happened. You don&#x27;t even need targeting for this to happen. You can drop bombs at random and kill whoever is unlucky enough to be in the wrong place. The US has a long history of doing it (Japan, Vietnam, ...).

      So yeah, the military and whoever decided that a war was a good idea are to blame.

      People working at Palantir are as much responsible for the killing of these 123 children than seatbelt manufacturers are responsible for the people who died because their product failed. That is, because they didn&#x27;t do their job correctly, people died, definitely worth feeling bad about. However, should people stop working in seatbelt manufacturing because of it? Absolutely not, we need seatbelts, because without them, things would be worse.

      Palantir, or whoever does target identification, is like the seatbelt of the reckless drivers of the militaries, who, for the lack of precise information, would just carpet bomb the place. It is not a hypothetical, it is how the US has worked before they had precision ammunition.

      This is essentially a trolley problem. The war is the trolley, people who work for Palantir are the ones pulling levers. And if there is no one to pull the lever, the trolley is gong on a track with a lot of people on it.

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