4 ms·

Palantir CEO Alex Karp calls his company the first to be 'completely anti-woke'

50 points by zzzeek 1y ago

zzzeek 1y ago
I dont even know what "anti-wokeness" means. For me, "woke" means when I, as someone who has lived in NYC / LI his whole life, learned that all the highways were built in such a way as to intentionally exclude poor and especially Black people from participating in society: https://transalt.org/blog/repeal-robert-moses https://transalt.org/blog/repeal-robert-moses and about LI's nasty history of redlining that prevented Black communities from gaining generational wealth: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/segregation-real-estate-history/ https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/segregation-real-es... Despite growing up in these places, I had no idea about any of this - Black people, to me as a youngster, just seemed to be these people who all seemed to live in other neighborhoods and were seen in 1970's Long Island as people to be wary of. "Woke" to me meant, holy shit look how badly these people have been treated, no wonder things are this way. So then WTF is "anti-woke"? is it the claim that none of that documented, well known systemic racism for decade after decade, after 300 years of slavery, actually matters and the real reason for racial disparities is genetics or something? I mean what else could that mean ?
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  > I dont even know what "anti-wokeness" means. It's the Current Thing you're intended to be mad at so that your attention won't be on other things.
- marstall 1y ago
  totally. woke means awareness, being aware of unfairness based on race, gender, sexual preference, being different, etc. So if you're "anti-woke" - you what, want to maintain all the prejudice and inequality in our country? This guy is smart on so many levels but maybe needs to check himself out on this one.
- testing22321 1y ago
  > is it the claim that none of that documented, well known systemic racism for decade after decade, after 300 years of slavery, actually matters and the real reason for racial disparities is genetics or something? Yes, exactly. “Anti-woke” is racism, homophobia, misogyny and a whole lot more vile attitudes repackaged with newspeak.
- Jonovono 1y ago
  Woke is more the opposite of what you point out. This is a better example: https://www.reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/197gid8/segregated_blackonly_student_space_opens_at_ubc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/197gid8/segregated_bla... It’s weaponizing people emotions and instinct to want to “be a good person” to push policies that are actually harmful to the people they claim to care about. All this to say I still think Karp is corny.
  - marstall 1y ago
    It's not the opposite, it's kind of both. It stands for good things (awareness of inequality) - but it has landed in a place where it is perceived by people as having a prescriptive or condescending tone. This is largely because of the way the right has twisted and co-opted it.
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    That's the new, corrupted, propagandistic form of the term. It's not what it really means at all.
- hnuser123456 1y ago
  Yes, that's before the term got corrupted. If you've spent any time in the depths of brainrot mass social media (or know anyone in bigcorp HR), you'll find that there are some large cohorts out there who have taken this to an extreme that looks exactly like that type of racism but "flipped." The masses are struggling to imagine a more fair society rather than seeking revenge.
- jalapenof 1y ago
  [flagged]
- bko 1y ago
  I don't think that's what woke means. Woke to me in the simplest sense if a form of extreme egalitarianism, collectivism with some blank-slatism. Let's take your example: poor and Black people don't live on LI with equal representations based on other groups. Let's unpack that: 1. You have some definition of "Black" that's very broad. What does someone from Sub-Saharan Africa whose ancestors came here on a slave boat have to do with a 0 generation Nigerian immigrant who is significantly better off than the median American? Then you have the whole "Brown" category which is equally ham-fisted. 2. Ignoring any differences in group preference and autonomy. There could be no reason that the proportion of said group would be unequal in that area if not for some force outside of their control. You ask why aren't there enough of [group] in some extremely competitive professional field, but you don't work backwards. For instance, federal judges -> prestigious law school graduates -> prestigious undergrad graduates -> high school graduates -> parents in home. Woke ignores the chain and usually just jumps to the end result. Of course this is ignored in some domains. No one argues that prisons are overly harsh (lenient) on men (women) when it comes to criminal punishments relative to each other. Or why are there so many central / South Americans in MLB. It's uncritical. 3. Groups are the organizing force (collective guilt). [Oppressor] group did this to [oppressed group] so we need to change the balance of power of [oppressed group] in relation to [oppressed group], when in reality there are only individuals. Overall, things are simplified to oppressed vs oppressor. It's an oversimplification and leads to bad things like shutting down accelerated math programs because we don't like the makeup of the student body
  - zzzeek 1y ago
    OK, so you reject the claim that systemic racism had any effect that can be meaningfully attributed (I guess sort of like how you cant blame climate change for the exact nature of a specific hurricaine). I see you carefully sidestep the instantly-disqualifying claims of "genetic inferiority" as the cause of racial disparity and instead claim..... "group preference"? or "what does Black really mean, anyway?" (what was the Civil Rights movement about, exactly? What does "Colored" mean in this sign? https://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/22/opinion/greene-racial-signs https://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/22/opinion/greene-racial-sig... who really knows, right? ) Black people "preferred" to live in poorer neighborhoods and to not buy houses in Levittown back when everyone was doing so?
techblueberry 1y ago
According to communication studies scholar Gordana Lazić, woke refers to "a heightened awareness of social inequalities and injustices". "If Fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads, instead of 60,000 working class people, we'd be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America," Karp said. "At Palantir, we are on the side of the average American who sometimes gets screwed because all the empathy goes to elite people, and none of it goes to the people actually dying on our streets. And that's why, when you have an open border, it means that the average poor American earns less." Not quite there yet, are we?
- marstall 1y ago
  What twisted logic from him. A woke perspective on Fentanyl would be to be aware of its effects on marginalized people, and try to do something about it. Which it sounds like he would be in favor of? So he's woke?
- aids_bomb 1y ago
  [dead]
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  Brian Karp calling himself and his companny anti-woke while spouting wokisms is the funniest thing I've seen for a long time. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Lord-Jobo 1y ago
“Palantir CEO Alex Karp deploys the most obvious slight of hand. in this hand, vocally performing lewd acts on the president and his base to distract from the other hand, performing illegal violations on the masses and the 4th amendment.”
Marshferm 1y ago
Maybe it's "completely blinded to everything except aggregating short-term value."
eeasss 1y ago
At the end of the day productivity gains and ROI will determine the best corporate culture (as long as Profits is what continues to be measurement of business success)
- gyulai 1y ago
  Profits as a measurement of success, at this point, seems like a meme from yesteryear. The left is perfectly happy to burn money to save the environment, feed the poor, educate the stupid, whatever. The right has joined the money-burning party, pushing for deglobalization, propping up dying companies and industries, re-establishing industries that haven't been viable in a long time. Who still cares about profits? Surely investors do? No, not really, certainly not in tech. Investors will happily throw money at tech companies who never make a dime, as long as they are vaguely saying the right kinds of things, being attached to the right kinds of hypes, and fitting in with the right kinds of herd dynamics. Generating or destroying money is not going to help or hurt anyone's career these days. Being on the currently-career-promoting side of the "woke" issue. Now there is something to take seriously.
  - eeasss 1y ago
    I don’t understand why this got downvoted
cheesecompiler 1y ago
Military company flourishes under a military investing regime. Not the accomplishment they tout it to be. Who needs the market?
cafard 1y ago
Has anyone in the last five years heard anyone describe himself or his friends as "woke"?
- Yizahi 1y ago
  "Woke" is currently an euphemism for the N-word. Replace it in every right-winger speech or text, and the message won't change at all :)
  - nathanaldensr 1y ago
    That's not true at all. The term indicates adherence to progressive-leftist ideology no matter what one's skin color or ethnicity. The vast majority of woke people are actually white people who often exhibit suicidal empathy (a common European genetic trait). The issue is that progressive-leftist ideology itself is rapidly changing as its adherents purity-spiral, but that's separate from what woke means.
  - palmotea 1y ago
    > "Woke" is currently an euphemism for the N-word. Replace it in every right-winger speech or text, and the message won't change at all :) No it isn't, and to say so is some hyper-polarized bullshit. For instance: if you were to call someone "woke" I'd be far more likely to picture a white person than anyone from a minority group.
    - Yizahi 1y ago
      You and me are both correct. In a singular case so called wOkE would be a white person most of the time. But I was talking about word usage, and rightwingers are very often using it as a catch-all term for everything they are afraid of, kinda like N-word a few decades back. And saying wOkE is socially acceptable, so they can do it openly on TV and radio. And since it is catch-all term, these xenophobes also include in it all other non-white groups, non-straight sexual orientations, women, disabled persons and so on. The usual xenophobe list of enemies.
- Simulacra 1y ago
Yizahi 1y ago
Oh, come on, of course they are narcissists, but not even their spiritual predecessors have called them "the first". This ideology spans millennia and there is nothing particularly new about it, just good old xenophobia and ultraviolence.
cheesecompiler 1y ago
Why was this flagged? This is factual reporting by a trusted outlet.
- testing22321 1y ago
  The owners of Palantir paid to get it buried, so the hoard showed up and did their thing. Most HN posts about anything controversial are flagged to death until nobody can learn about a given topic
  - mingus88 1y ago
    I’ve come to realize that HN doesn’t actually represent any facet of actual hacker culture It’s by and for established tech VCs and the types of startups that get funded In today’s political climate, HN is ultra-conservative in terms of what ideas are welcomed for discussion and that couldn’t be further from what hackers really stand for
    - testing22321 1y ago
      Yup, without a doubt. I wonder if they’ll feel any guilt or responsibility when it all burns down for not letting hackers talk about things that very clearly need to be talked about.
bdangubic 1y ago
“the year is 2029, President AOC is sworn in, Palantir CEO announces the company will be celebrating 2029 as Pride Year because Month is just not enough for Palantir…”
drivingmenuts 1y ago
He says "anti-woke" but I read it as something far more sinister. If that's personal bias, I'm fine with that.
0xRake 11mo ago
my man

50 points by zzzeek 1y ago

I dont even know what "anti-wokeness" means. For me, "woke" means when I, as someone who has lived in NYC / LI his whole life, learned that all the highways were built in such a way as to intentionally exclude poor and especially Black people from participating in society: https://transalt.org/blog/repeal-robert-moses https://transalt.org/blog/repeal-robert-moses and about LI's nasty history of redlining that prevented Black communities from gaining generational wealth: https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/segregation-real-estate-history/ https://projects.newsday.com/long-island/segregation-real-es... Despite growing up in these places, I had no idea about any of this - Black people, to me as a youngster, just seemed to be these people who all seemed to live in other neighborhoods and were seen in 1970's Long Island as people to be wary of. "Woke" to me meant, holy shit look how badly these people have been treated, no wonder things are this way. So then WTF is "anti-woke"? is it the claim that none of that documented, well known systemic racism for decade after decade, after 300 years of slavery, actually matters and the real reason for racial disparities is genetics or something? I mean what else could that mean ?

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
> I dont even know what "anti-wokeness" means. It's the Current Thing you're intended to be mad at so that your attention won't be on other things.
marstall 1y ago
totally. woke means awareness, being aware of unfairness based on race, gender, sexual preference, being different, etc. So if you're "anti-woke" - you what, want to maintain all the prejudice and inequality in our country? This guy is smart on so many levels but maybe needs to check himself out on this one.
testing22321 1y ago
> is it the claim that none of that documented, well known systemic racism for decade after decade, after 300 years of slavery, actually matters and the real reason for racial disparities is genetics or something? Yes, exactly. “Anti-woke” is racism, homophobia, misogyny and a whole lot more vile attitudes repackaged with newspeak.
Jonovono 1y ago
Woke is more the opposite of what you point out. This is a better example: https://www.reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/197gid8/segregated_blackonly_student_space_opens_at_ubc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UBC/comments/197gid8/segregated_bla... It’s weaponizing people emotions and instinct to want to “be a good person” to push policies that are actually harmful to the people they claim to care about. All this to say I still think Karp is corny.
- marstall 1y ago
  It's not the opposite, it's kind of both. It stands for good things (awareness of inequality) - but it has landed in a place where it is perceived by people as having a prescriptive or condescending tone. This is largely because of the way the right has twisted and co-opted it.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  That's the new, corrupted, propagandistic form of the term. It's not what it really means at all.
hnuser123456 1y ago
Yes, that's before the term got corrupted. If you've spent any time in the depths of brainrot mass social media (or know anyone in bigcorp HR), you'll find that there are some large cohorts out there who have taken this to an extreme that looks exactly like that type of racism but "flipped." The masses are struggling to imagine a more fair society rather than seeking revenge.
jalapenof 1y ago
[flagged]
bko 1y ago
I don't think that's what woke means. Woke to me in the simplest sense if a form of extreme egalitarianism, collectivism with some blank-slatism. Let's take your example: poor and Black people don't live on LI with equal representations based on other groups. Let's unpack that: 1. You have some definition of "Black" that's very broad. What does someone from Sub-Saharan Africa whose ancestors came here on a slave boat have to do with a 0 generation Nigerian immigrant who is significantly better off than the median American? Then you have the whole "Brown" category which is equally ham-fisted. 2. Ignoring any differences in group preference and autonomy. There could be no reason that the proportion of said group would be unequal in that area if not for some force outside of their control. You ask why aren't there enough of [group] in some extremely competitive professional field, but you don't work backwards. For instance, federal judges -> prestigious law school graduates -> prestigious undergrad graduates -> high school graduates -> parents in home. Woke ignores the chain and usually just jumps to the end result. Of course this is ignored in some domains. No one argues that prisons are overly harsh (lenient) on men (women) when it comes to criminal punishments relative to each other. Or why are there so many central / South Americans in MLB. It's uncritical. 3. Groups are the organizing force (collective guilt). [Oppressor] group did this to [oppressed group] so we need to change the balance of power of [oppressed group] in relation to [oppressed group], when in reality there are only individuals. Overall, things are simplified to oppressed vs oppressor. It's an oversimplification and leads to bad things like shutting down accelerated math programs because we don't like the makeup of the student body
- zzzeek 1y ago
  OK, so you reject the claim that systemic racism had any effect that can be meaningfully attributed (I guess sort of like how you cant blame climate change for the exact nature of a specific hurricaine). I see you carefully sidestep the instantly-disqualifying claims of "genetic inferiority" as the cause of racial disparity and instead claim..... "group preference"? or "what does Black really mean, anyway?" (what was the Civil Rights movement about, exactly? What does "Colored" mean in this sign? https://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/22/opinion/greene-racial-signs https://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/22/opinion/greene-racial-sig... who really knows, right? ) Black people "preferred" to live in poorer neighborhoods and to not buy houses in Levittown back when everyone was doing so?

techblueberry 1y ago

According to communication studies scholar Gordana Lazić, woke refers to "a heightened awareness of social inequalities and injustices". "If Fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads, instead of 60,000 working class people, we'd be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America," Karp said. "At Palantir, we are on the side of the average American who sometimes gets screwed because all the empathy goes to elite people, and none of it goes to the people actually dying on our streets. And that's why, when you have an open border, it means that the average poor American earns less." Not quite there yet, are we?

marstall 1y ago
What twisted logic from him. A woke perspective on Fentanyl would be to be aware of its effects on marginalized people, and try to do something about it. Which it sounds like he would be in favor of? So he's woke?
aids_bomb 1y ago
[dead]
bryanlarsen 1y ago
Brian Karp calling himself and his companny anti-woke while spouting wokisms is the funniest thing I've seen for a long time. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Lord-Jobo 1y ago

“Palantir CEO Alex Karp deploys the most obvious slight of hand. in this hand, vocally performing lewd acts on the president and his base to distract from the other hand, performing illegal violations on the masses and the 4th amendment.”

Marshferm 1y ago

Maybe it's "completely blinded to everything except aggregating short-term value."

eeasss 1y ago

At the end of the day productivity gains and ROI will determine the best corporate culture (as long as Profits is what continues to be measurement of business success)

gyulai 1y ago
Profits as a measurement of success, at this point, seems like a meme from yesteryear. The left is perfectly happy to burn money to save the environment, feed the poor, educate the stupid, whatever. The right has joined the money-burning party, pushing for deglobalization, propping up dying companies and industries, re-establishing industries that haven't been viable in a long time. Who still cares about profits? Surely investors do? No, not really, certainly not in tech. Investors will happily throw money at tech companies who never make a dime, as long as they are vaguely saying the right kinds of things, being attached to the right kinds of hypes, and fitting in with the right kinds of herd dynamics. Generating or destroying money is not going to help or hurt anyone's career these days. Being on the currently-career-promoting side of the "woke" issue. Now there is something to take seriously.
- eeasss 1y ago
  I don’t understand why this got downvoted

cheesecompiler 1y ago

Military company flourishes under a military investing regime. Not the accomplishment they tout it to be. Who needs the market?

cafard 1y ago

Has anyone in the last five years heard anyone describe himself or his friends as "woke"?

Yizahi 1y ago
"Woke" is currently an euphemism for the N-word. Replace it in every right-winger speech or text, and the message won't change at all :)
- nathanaldensr 1y ago
  That's not true at all. The term indicates adherence to progressive-leftist ideology no matter what one's skin color or ethnicity. The vast majority of woke people are actually white people who often exhibit suicidal empathy (a common European genetic trait). The issue is that progressive-leftist ideology itself is rapidly changing as its adherents purity-spiral, but that's separate from what woke means.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > "Woke" is currently an euphemism for the N-word. Replace it in every right-winger speech or text, and the message won't change at all :) No it isn't, and to say so is some hyper-polarized bullshit. For instance: if you were to call someone "woke" I'd be far more likely to picture a white person than anyone from a minority group.
  - Yizahi 1y ago
    You and me are both correct. In a singular case so called wOkE would be a white person most of the time. But I was talking about word usage, and rightwingers are very often using it as a catch-all term for everything they are afraid of, kinda like N-word a few decades back. And saying wOkE is socially acceptable, so they can do it openly on TV and radio. And since it is catch-all term, these xenophobes also include in it all other non-white groups, non-straight sexual orientations, women, disabled persons and so on. The usual xenophobe list of enemies.
Simulacra 1y ago

Yizahi 1y ago

Oh, come on, of course they are narcissists, but not even their spiritual predecessors have called them "the first". This ideology spans millennia and there is nothing particularly new about it, just good old xenophobia and ultraviolence.

cheesecompiler 1y ago

Why was this flagged? This is factual reporting by a trusted outlet.

testing22321 1y ago
The owners of Palantir paid to get it buried, so the hoard showed up and did their thing. Most HN posts about anything controversial are flagged to death until nobody can learn about a given topic
- mingus88 1y ago
  I’ve come to realize that HN doesn’t actually represent any facet of actual hacker culture It’s by and for established tech VCs and the types of startups that get funded In today’s political climate, HN is ultra-conservative in terms of what ideas are welcomed for discussion and that couldn’t be further from what hackers really stand for
  - testing22321 1y ago
    Yup, without a doubt. I wonder if they’ll feel any guilt or responsibility when it all burns down for not letting hackers talk about things that very clearly need to be talked about.

bdangubic 1y ago

“the year is 2029, President AOC is sworn in, Palantir CEO announces the company will be celebrating 2029 as Pride Year because Month is just not enough for Palantir…”

drivingmenuts 1y ago

He says "anti-woke" but I read it as something far more sinister. If that's personal bias, I'm fine with that.

0xRake 11mo ago

my man