5 ms·

PalanThiel: The Uncola

68 points by rfreytag 6y ago

nickdothutton 6y ago
Palantir, and others, are what I call Strategic Software, and as such are here to stay. Why? Because most of the worlds solvable problems are now information problems of one kind or another. I tried to write a bit about it here: https://blog.eutopian.io/an-idea-whose-time-has-come/ https://blog.eutopian.io/an-idea-whose-time-has-come/
- ihinsdale 6y ago
  Thanks for this excellent food for thought!
seesawtron 6y ago
The relation to immigration issues seems to be related to another front page thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551712
motohagiography 6y ago
Is there anything that Palantir does that is not a subset of what Facebook does, and then some? One of these companies monitors you everywhere in the world, anticipates your behavior, and attempts to direct you to other outcomes. Trusting tech is dangerously naive, but trusting values is all we can do. For people concerned, I'd ask, which company is going to effect your life outcomes more?
- gfodor 6y ago
  I see the companies as wildly different not on what they do but their ethics. That's not to say either is a noble cause, but certainly one could imagine a fairly evenly distributed 2x2 matrix of people who find the actions of either company ethical or not. If you work for the government, there is a theoretical chain of accountability to the public. But if you work for the government, you are working for the largest lever of power and abuse. If you don't work for the government, your only accountability is your shareholders and customers (in Facebook's case advertisers.) However, Facebook's "mission" is defensible insofar as they're able to disentangle themselves from the conflict of interest between their users and customers. Truthfully today I think both companies have immense moral hazard. But I think Facebook is the one of the two which theoretically could dig itself out of it if they start better aligning their own incentives with the ones society has.
  - ljw1001 6y ago
    The problem with Palantir is that when you combine their business model with the inherent drive of capitalism for growth at any cost (witness the ethical breaches from Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook - all already epically successful), you end up with a monster. Especially with Thiel calling the shots.
- mandevil 6y ago
  Based on publicly available stories, Palantir doesn't actually gather data on its own: they are purely an analysis platform for data that their customers already have (or have separate contracts to buy). It sounds like their secret sauce is somewhere in the ETL/dataviz/ML space. That makes them fundamentally weaker than Facebook, because Facebook collects and owns the data.
cblconfederate 6y ago
A bit off topic but i find appeals to evolutionary psychology wrong, or to put it bluntly a lot of the evopsych is unproven conjecture. > we’re also drawn to people from different places, That's just not true, historically. Migration was for resources, not women. Up to 80% of marriages historically have been between cousins or closer relatives. Incest could be more of a cultural taboo than genetic. Our species went through some very narrow evolutionary bottlenecks not very long ago. And what s our evidence that symmetric faces are healthier? Other than that i don't get the point of the article. I'd rather have a quasilibertarian nationalist like Thiel who is conscious of government overreach in charge of data processing than an authoritarian nationalist.
m3kw9 6y ago
They provide the “analysis” part of the equation. Like an algorithm or black box, you don’t know why it is recommending, and I bet there is a lot of AI involved in most of those analysis modules they offer.
netman21 6y ago
"Coke and Pepsi, who had the good judgment to put an addictive substance, caffeine, " Ha! The addictive part of soft drinks is the sugar.
- kyuudou 6y ago
  It's both, really.
- xenospn 6y ago
  So Diet Coke should be a flop, right?
- sjg007 6y ago
  Coke actually had cocaine in it once upon a time. It still uses coca leaf extract in some form.
ErikAugust 6y ago
"Since Tim Cook told Kara Swisher “Privacy is a human right; it’s a civil liberty,” the firm’s stock has tripled, adding $1.3 trillion in value." To imply that has anything to do at all with Apple's stock value tripling is so dishonest. I get that Scott Galloway has a desire to persuade you of something about brand strategy, but I feel bad that there are people out there that might believe that any sort fluffy privacy marketing has caused a tripling of market cap for Apple.
- rmrfrmrf 6y ago
  Alternatively, readers can improve their comprehension skills so that they can better recognize satire.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- freddieoduks 6y ago
  This is my intepretation, but I didn't conclude that privacy marketing added $1.3trillion to Apples market cap, what I did take from that statement is that brand strategy IS very important though. I say this because Apples privacy marketing has definitely impacted me, I was already an Apple fanboy but I've become more resolute in not buying and persuading people to not buy non-apple hardware since their privacy marketing tear. So maybe it hasn't added trillions in value but it has indeed added something!
- lalos 6y ago
  Not saying it should be attributed solely to that, but having a marketing message that your main competitor (Android) cannot repeat or rephrase with a serious face is one heck of an advantage to have. Just remember PC vs Mac ads and all those "we take better photos than _ phone" ads. I think their best try has been 'privacy shouldn't be expensive' in some opinion piece by Pichai but still weak. PS. I have friends who have no idea how the internet works at all but they do have the intuition that Apple makes money from the hardware and not from exploiting their privacy as Google. That's their reason to sticking with iPhones.
- 6y ago
rmrfrmrf 6y ago
A frenetic but enjoyable piece. I think the biggest counterpoint, though, is that the fundamental, supposedly-earth-shattering contradictions, hardly matter in the current tech/finance economy. Tech stocks at the worst are essentially savings accounts, so a viable business model has become optional.
- raziel2701 6y ago
  I think he acknowledges your counterpoint, if Trump stays in office and we continue our economic policy of issuing more debt to finance zombie corporations then yes, the current dislocation of fundamentals in the stock market will continue and Palantir's stock will rise. As he says, the only opposing forces to Palantir is capitalism and math, since we currently operate in a crony capitalism system full of "too big to fail" bailouts then reality will not matter and this company's valuation will increase provided the status quo is maintained.
dmode 6y ago
Even though Prof Galloway sometimes says not so smart things, this was enjoyable read. I was hoping someone who take down Palantir's virtue signaling CEO and S-1. You know they are an empty suit company when they focused their S-1 on wrapping themselves with the flag rather than core financials

68 points by rfreytag 6y ago

Palantir, and others, are what I call Strategic Software, and as such are here to stay. Why? Because most of the worlds solvable problems are now information problems of one kind or another. I tried to write a bit about it here: https://blog.eutopian.io/an-idea-whose-time-has-come/ https://blog.eutopian.io/an-idea-whose-time-has-come/

ihinsdale 6y ago
Thanks for this excellent food for thought!

seesawtron 6y ago

The relation to immigration issues seems to be related to another front page thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551712 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24551712

motohagiography 6y ago

Is there anything that Palantir does that is not a subset of what Facebook does, and then some? One of these companies monitors you everywhere in the world, anticipates your behavior, and attempts to direct you to other outcomes. Trusting tech is dangerously naive, but trusting values is all we can do. For people concerned, I'd ask, which company is going to effect your life outcomes more?

gfodor 6y ago
I see the companies as wildly different not on what they do but their ethics. That's not to say either is a noble cause, but certainly one could imagine a fairly evenly distributed 2x2 matrix of people who find the actions of either company ethical or not. If you work for the government, there is a theoretical chain of accountability to the public. But if you work for the government, you are working for the largest lever of power and abuse. If you don't work for the government, your only accountability is your shareholders and customers (in Facebook's case advertisers.) However, Facebook's "mission" is defensible insofar as they're able to disentangle themselves from the conflict of interest between their users and customers. Truthfully today I think both companies have immense moral hazard. But I think Facebook is the one of the two which theoretically could dig itself out of it if they start better aligning their own incentives with the ones society has.
- ljw1001 6y ago
  The problem with Palantir is that when you combine their business model with the inherent drive of capitalism for growth at any cost (witness the ethical breaches from Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook - all already epically successful), you end up with a monster. Especially with Thiel calling the shots.
mandevil 6y ago
Based on publicly available stories, Palantir doesn't actually gather data on its own: they are purely an analysis platform for data that their customers already have (or have separate contracts to buy). It sounds like their secret sauce is somewhere in the ETL/dataviz/ML space. That makes them fundamentally weaker than Facebook, because Facebook collects and owns the data.

cblconfederate 6y ago

A bit off topic but i find appeals to evolutionary psychology wrong, or to put it bluntly a lot of the evopsych is unproven conjecture. > we’re also drawn to people from different places, That's just not true, historically. Migration was for resources, not women. Up to 80% of marriages historically have been between cousins or closer relatives. Incest could be more of a cultural taboo than genetic. Our species went through some very narrow evolutionary bottlenecks not very long ago. And what s our evidence that symmetric faces are healthier? Other than that i don't get the point of the article. I'd rather have a quasilibertarian nationalist like Thiel who is conscious of government overreach in charge of data processing than an authoritarian nationalist.

m3kw9 6y ago

They provide the “analysis” part of the equation. Like an algorithm or black box, you don’t know why it is recommending, and I bet there is a lot of AI involved in most of those analysis modules they offer.

netman21 6y ago

"Coke and Pepsi, who had the good judgment to put an addictive substance, caffeine, " Ha! The addictive part of soft drinks is the sugar.

kyuudou 6y ago
It's both, really.
xenospn 6y ago
So Diet Coke should be a flop, right?
sjg007 6y ago
Coke actually had cocaine in it once upon a time. It still uses coca leaf extract in some form.

ErikAugust 6y ago

"Since Tim Cook told Kara Swisher “Privacy is a human right; it’s a civil liberty,” the firm’s stock has tripled, adding $1.3 trillion in value." To imply that has anything to do at all with Apple's stock value tripling is so dishonest. I get that Scott Galloway has a desire to persuade you of something about brand strategy, but I feel bad that there are people out there that might believe that any sort fluffy privacy marketing has caused a tripling of market cap for Apple.

rmrfrmrf 6y ago
Alternatively, readers can improve their comprehension skills so that they can better recognize satire.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
freddieoduks 6y ago
This is my intepretation, but I didn't conclude that privacy marketing added $1.3trillion to Apples market cap, what I did take from that statement is that brand strategy IS very important though. I say this because Apples privacy marketing has definitely impacted me, I was already an Apple fanboy but I've become more resolute in not buying and persuading people to not buy non-apple hardware since their privacy marketing tear. So maybe it hasn't added trillions in value but it has indeed added something!
lalos 6y ago
Not saying it should be attributed solely to that, but having a marketing message that your main competitor (Android) cannot repeat or rephrase with a serious face is one heck of an advantage to have. Just remember PC vs Mac ads and all those "we take better photos than _ phone" ads. I think their best try has been 'privacy shouldn't be expensive' in some opinion piece by Pichai but still weak. PS. I have friends who have no idea how the internet works at all but they do have the intuition that Apple makes money from the hardware and not from exploiting their privacy as Google. That's their reason to sticking with iPhones.
6y ago

rmrfrmrf 6y ago

A frenetic but enjoyable piece. I think the biggest counterpoint, though, is that the fundamental, supposedly-earth-shattering contradictions, hardly matter in the current tech/finance economy. Tech stocks at the worst are essentially savings accounts, so a viable business model has become optional.

raziel2701 6y ago
I think he acknowledges your counterpoint, if Trump stays in office and we continue our economic policy of issuing more debt to finance zombie corporations then yes, the current dislocation of fundamentals in the stock market will continue and Palantir's stock will rise. As he says, the only opposing forces to Palantir is capitalism and math, since we currently operate in a crony capitalism system full of "too big to fail" bailouts then reality will not matter and this company's valuation will increase provided the status quo is maintained.

dmode 6y ago

Even though Prof Galloway sometimes says not so smart things, this was enjoyable read. I was hoping someone who take down Palantir's virtue signaling CEO and S-1. You know they are an empty suit company when they focused their S-1 on wrapping themselves with the flag rather than core financials