I think it can be difficult to relate to such abstract concepts and consequences that you don’t feel directly. After all, it’d be much easier to press on a button that’d kill 10 000 people living 10 000 km away from you than to stab one person to death. Out of sight out of mind.
My point being that I don’t think he’s indifferent to people that he doesn’t know, he’s simply not able to process all the ramifications of this particular thing. The effects of data collection and manipulation is quite subtle, after all, like the frog in the slow burning pot
You just described that he is in fact indifferent.
It is not like we don’t have easy to access knowledge about authoritarianism and how it plays out. It is not like we lack information about the criminal and murderous stuff Palantir is involved. FFS the company is owned by a guy who lets himself be “refreshened” with the blood of younger people.
Anyone who does a minimal level of due diligence in looking up his employer knows what kind of company it is. And it is an intelligence company, so the type of people working there must bring a higher level of research and diligence skills.
They know exactly what they are doing and they are fine with it.
He was a pretty smart guy, so I’m pretty sure he understood the ramifications. This isn’t like a plumber working in a building that happens to house an evil company. This was directly working as a high ranking software developer at a shitty software company.
I think it can be difficult to relate to such abstract concepts and consequences that you don’t feel directly. After all, it’d be much easier to press on a button that’d kill 10 000 people living 10 000 km away from you than to stab one person to death. Out of sight out of mind.
My point being that I don’t think he’s indifferent to people that he doesn’t know, he’s simply not able to process all the ramifications of this particular thing. The effects of data collection and manipulation is quite subtle, after all, like the frog in the slow burning pot
You just described that he is in fact indifferent.
It is not like we don’t have easy to access knowledge about authoritarianism and how it plays out. It is not like we lack information about the criminal and murderous stuff Palantir is involved. FFS the company is owned by a guy who lets himself be “refreshened” with the blood of younger people.
Anyone who does a minimal level of due diligence in looking up his employer knows what kind of company it is. And it is an intelligence company, so the type of people working there must bring a higher level of research and diligence skills.
They know exactly what they are doing and they are fine with it.
Aside from the moral aspect, did his AI tell him that would work?
He was a pretty smart guy, so I’m pretty sure he understood the ramifications. This isn’t like a plumber working in a building that happens to house an evil company. This was directly working as a high ranking software developer at a shitty software company.
That could be the result of our training. After all, people die for our way of life and we have to cope.