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did you know that going “well they didn’t say those exact words did they” might feel like media literacy but is actually the exact opposite of that
part of reading and understanding news and events as an adult is reading between the lines
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@davidgerard “uhm can i have some nuance please” where the nuance is a fantasy version of palantir that doesn’t have “are you comfortable with your work being used to kill” as an interview question
if an extremely high ranking executive officer of a corporation well-known for doing immoral shit states that their employees are all doing something weird and immoral, it’s not in fact a leap at all to read the “or else” into that
the executive officer didn’t just mention the weird and immoral thing his employees are doing, on the record, during an interview with a journalist, because he thought it was cute and funny
he did that to normalize the weird and immoral thing his company is doing because palantir, a tech company with a long history of enabling fascism, is very certain they’ll get away with it
the CTO of Palantir mentioned, in front of a journalist and on the record, that his AI researchers are taking up smoking to put their bodies on the line to bet that AI will cure cancer for the same reason that Peter Thiel mentioned, in front of a journalist and on the record, that his goal is to enable a return to fascism.
this is how you normalize weird immoral shit, and this is how you recruit other people who want to normalize weird immoral shit.
all cults do this shit.
I realize a lot of people don’t need to be told this in 2026, but holy shit did someone ever just tell me I was taking a big leap when I read the palantir CTO’s words and concluded that their employees are being pressured into taking up smoking
and again if you’re an adult you might realize that social pressure inside a corporation takes many more forms than official company policy, though that’s of course exactly where the guy in my replies went
“our AI researchers are all smoking because they bet their work will cure cancer” is social pressure, and the CTO mentioning it means it’s coming from the top level of the company. otherwise he probably wouldn’t be aware of it, and he definitely wouldn’t be talking about it in front of a journalist on the record.
he did that so he could attract more (almost invariably) young extremely impressionable kids to throw into the AI research mill, who hear about the smoking thing and think it sounds like the coolest bet ever. he wants more people who are very naive, who are very unlikely to complain when they’re asked to design a system to cover up war crimes (this is what palantir does for money), who are very likely to cave into peer pressure and shackle themselves to palantir and palantir’s mission with the cancer bet.
like, this is all a bit obvious, right? it’s not just me?
@zzt not if it's from the ingroup (vibe coders, Palantir, nazis), then you are ethically required to contort a new context where the bad claim isn't true or you are being intellectually dishonest, zzt, you sneerer