Palantir is clearly a mind-boggling on-the-nose, but terrible name to those familiar with the book.
The Palantiri consistently provided their users technically accurate intelligence that lead to disastrous strategic decisions.
Denethor committed suicide out of despair, after a palantir showed him the black fleet approaching, but he did not know that it was actually Aragorn who had captured the fleet and was coming with reinforcements.
We don't know specifically how the palantir deceived Saruman, but it's pretty clear it was one of the key factors in his corruption and downfall.
And even Sauron himself was misled in this way! The palantir showed him, correctly, that a hobbit and Aragorn were at Helm's Deep, and he concluded that Aragorn had the ring. So he prematurely moved his armies out of Mordor and left the plains and Mt Doom unguarded, which permitted the destruction of the ring.
I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides intel for strategic decision making.
Well, Aragorn used the information he got from the Palantir of Orthanc to make a correct and very important strategic decision, to take the Paths of the Dead so that he could stop the Corsairs in time to save Minas Tirith.
So the lesson is that you have to use the intel you get wisely, or else very bad things will happen. I'm not sure if that makes the name any better for the tool it's applied to, though.
I've pointed this out before, but there's an interview clip of Alex Karp saying that Trump won the election in a landslide[0].
If you look at the actual numbers, no one, with any idea of mathematics or statistics or even just basic analysis skills, would call Trump's election victory a landslide.
It calls into question the fundamental raisin d'etre of Palantir. It makes Palantir look like a pure propaganda tool.
Therefore, also entirely useless for strategic decision making.
Its cellphones ? They show the rulers accurate predictions of human behaviour after the the fall of the towers proofed that the left only had enbarassing cofabulations to explain behaviour at scale. Thats the most valuable thing you can gain out of social network sensor data.
>I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides intel for strategic decision making.
Yet the choice is very effective at telling those with eyes to see that the one who chose the name possesses only a surface-level understanding of what appears to be his favorite piece of literature.
Or he's broadcasting his intention to destroy world governments and institute a new global order under technocratic control. He's banking on a US General not understanding the deeper lore behind of the name.
Indeed. The corporation name is literally (in literature!) an example of all-seeing surveillance tools causing harm when (not if) they fall into evil hands.
except of course that Tolkien, as a Catholic was quite adamant that he didn't write a story of Western chauvinism. The sword is not a metaphor for industrialization, which is quite literally the villain of the story, it's a symbol for restored kingship and hope.
tolkien largely copied the nibelungsenlied and accidentally inherited western chauvinism and many other ideas from that lore, including especially a great amount of racism
Right, and his concept of nobility and just kingship was about mercy love justice and a love of nature, good food, merriment, harmony, and treating others with respect. His works are full of cautionary tales of people who reached for immortality, power, self-aggrandizement, and control over others and fell as a result.
(Though he was obsessed with lineage and blood quotients and pale skin)
It's very difficult to judge the attitudes and held values of people who lived in the past - I mean the parentheses.
We don't know how much of it is real flaw or corruption and how much is just the zeitgeist they lived in.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if Musk's capital T today would end up becoming the beginning or turning point of a cautionary tale in the future. And, for better or worse, I know a lot of otherwise great and talented people who are still his fans.
To all investigative Journalists: Thank you for your hard work, and for being an inspiration and beacon of hope in these dark techno-feudalistic times.
Then I'd have to ask of publishers please don't use subscription oriented paywalls. I'd be happy to pay for an article here and there. I do not want to understand your subscription model, compare benefits between "tiers" of subscriptions, or think about how to cancel when I eventually realize I'm not getting the value I hoped for.
This is the price of that dark pattern. These sites wouldn't exist if they acted like publishers instead of retailers.
> Palantir, whose software is widely used by US defence and intelligence agencies, has faced growing scrutiny in parts of Europe as governments reassess their dependence on American technology companies.
I think it's great. Europe and other regions will be building out their own tech stacks, decreasing global dependence on big US players like AWS and Palantir, creating lots more jobs for programmers and much broader ecosystems for doing things.
I wonder which Danish official they are talking about. Lots of voices against it, but not from officials. The danish state is going full steam ahead. Just yesterday the Greenlandic police was integrated with Grotham from Palantir.
The Palantiri consistently provided their users technically accurate intelligence that lead to disastrous strategic decisions.
Denethor committed suicide out of despair, after a palantir showed him the black fleet approaching, but he did not know that it was actually Aragorn who had captured the fleet and was coming with reinforcements.
We don't know specifically how the palantir deceived Saruman, but it's pretty clear it was one of the key factors in his corruption and downfall.
And even Sauron himself was misled in this way! The palantir showed him, correctly, that a hobbit and Aragorn were at Helm's Deep, and he concluded that Aragorn had the ring. So he prematurely moved his armies out of Mordor and left the plains and Mt Doom unguarded, which permitted the destruction of the ring.
I honestly can't think of a worse name for a company that provides intel for strategic decision making.
reply