5 ms·

Palmer Luckey's latest company is a defense contractor. Comparatively, this is performance art.

by Scaevolus 4y ago

moralestapia 4y ago
Not only your regular kind of defense contractor, of all things, Anduril is in the business of automated weaponry.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  I should apply for a job there, sounds kind of awesome. I used to work for Lockheed and didn't do cool stuff.
  - jasonmp85 4y ago
    Thank god the sort of people who mindlessly seek “cool” stuff to work on in the absence of any kind of ethics seldom have the intelligence, skill, or charm to realize any of their dreams.
    - systemvoltage 4y ago
      It is far more ethical than ostensible moral superiority and thin ethical postering by SV crowd, Palmer addresses it quite well here: https://youtu.be/nK0NfL2M5L4?t=820 https://youtu.be/nK0NfL2M5L4?t=820 and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q95LjvFdoAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q95LjvFdoAQ
    - PostOnce 4y ago
      Is it better to addict children to gambling in mobile apps, or to build hopefully unused tools to defend those same children from invading rapists and murderers should the need ever arise? Ukraine wouldn't exist if not for modern weapons systems. If you love your peaceful life, you have war machines to thank. America is secure, as is Western Europe, due mostly to terrifying war machines. Keeping us all safe and at peace is something some might regard as truly noble. I don't build weapons systems, but I would if I had the opportunity. It'd beat the shit out of predatory adtech and addicting kids to algorithms. Moral questions aside, inertial navigation and guidance, fuze design, radar, multispectral optics etc are wildly more interesting problems to solve than "how do I hook whales for $700 in this shitty iOS game?" Maybe we'll see an influx of new minds in defense now that Facebook and friends seem to be falling apart and firing everyone. Maybe it'll make us all safer, happier, and richer (because war destroys wealth, and weapons can avert it entirely).
- nytesky 4y ago
  So what is it with right leaning tech guys in defense going for LOTR? Palantir, Anduril. Does PL work in Thiel’s orbit, maybe connected at FB? Was Tolkien right leaning himself, I would be surprised by that but I honestly don’t know.
  - hither_shores 4y ago
    > Was Tolkien right leaning himself, I would be surprised by that but I honestly don’t know. Yes, but the small-c conservative Catholic sort of right-wing. He would have hated reactionary modernists like Thiel.
    - inawarminister 4y ago
      Indeed, but from the other way around. Tolkien hates industrialization, he hates technology as a whole. He hates GRRM-esque "Does Aragorn have a tax policy that make sense?". So he would hate Thiel and Luckey for their technology and control, who is like Sauron and the Orcs. Maybe more on Luckey, since Virtual Reality would be a horror show from a traditionalist mind, anyway. But it's fine, since the entire point of the Sagas for Anglo culture is for the people in it to twist it the way they want to, after all.

Palmer Luckey's latest company is a defense contractor. Comparatively, this is performance art.

moralestapia 4y ago

Not only your regular kind of defense contractor, of all things, Anduril is in the business of automated weaponry.

systemvoltage 4y ago
I should apply for a job there, sounds kind of awesome. I used to work for Lockheed and didn't do cool stuff.
- jasonmp85 4y ago
  Thank god the sort of people who mindlessly seek “cool” stuff to work on in the absence of any kind of ethics seldom have the intelligence, skill, or charm to realize any of their dreams.
  - systemvoltage 4y ago
    It is far more ethical than ostensible moral superiority and thin ethical postering by SV crowd, Palmer addresses it quite well here: https://youtu.be/nK0NfL2M5L4?t=820 https://youtu.be/nK0NfL2M5L4?t=820 and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q95LjvFdoAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q95LjvFdoAQ
  - PostOnce 4y ago
    Is it better to addict children to gambling in mobile apps, or to build hopefully unused tools to defend those same children from invading rapists and murderers should the need ever arise? Ukraine wouldn't exist if not for modern weapons systems. If you love your peaceful life, you have war machines to thank. America is secure, as is Western Europe, due mostly to terrifying war machines. Keeping us all safe and at peace is something some might regard as truly noble. I don't build weapons systems, but I would if I had the opportunity. It'd beat the shit out of predatory adtech and addicting kids to algorithms. Moral questions aside, inertial navigation and guidance, fuze design, radar, multispectral optics etc are wildly more interesting problems to solve than "how do I hook whales for $700 in this shitty iOS game?" Maybe we'll see an influx of new minds in defense now that Facebook and friends seem to be falling apart and firing everyone. Maybe it'll make us all safer, happier, and richer (because war destroys wealth, and weapons can avert it entirely).
nytesky 4y ago
So what is it with right leaning tech guys in defense going for LOTR? Palantir, Anduril. Does PL work in Thiel’s orbit, maybe connected at FB? Was Tolkien right leaning himself, I would be surprised by that but I honestly don’t know.
- hither_shores 4y ago
  > Was Tolkien right leaning himself, I would be surprised by that but I honestly don’t know. Yes, but the small-c conservative Catholic sort of right-wing. He would have hated reactionary modernists like Thiel.
  - inawarminister 4y ago
    Indeed, but from the other way around. Tolkien hates industrialization, he hates technology as a whole. He hates GRRM-esque "Does Aragorn have a tax policy that make sense?". So he would hate Thiel and Luckey for their technology and control, who is like Sauron and the Orcs. Maybe more on Luckey, since Virtual Reality would be a horror show from a traditionalist mind, anyway. But it's fine, since the entire point of the Sagas for Anglo culture is for the people in it to twist it the way they want to, after all.