Palantir’s God’s-Eye View of Afghanistan

Re:Palantir’s God’s-Eye View of Afghanistan by sifar on Friday January 22, 2021 @12:01PM (#25873448)

>> Don’t blame those that build the software they use. To me that makes every open source project a potential ethical minefield since they could all be getting used to do immoral acts without even knowing about it.

This is a slippery argument.

There is a difference in building a car that people can drive and one that is specifically to be used as a weapon.

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Re:Palantir’s God’s-Eye View of Afghanistan by bhupy on Friday January 22, 2021 @03:36PM (#25876049)

> There is a difference in building a car that people can drive and one that is specifically to be used as a weapon.

This sounds like an equally slippery argument: one whose premise is that weapons should never be built, and that there is no justified use for them. The unfortunate reality of the world is that we do have and require militaries with intelligence agencies.

Based on the premise of your argument, the only non-slippery, internally consistent framework is that building weapons is universally and unambiguously bad.

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Re:Palantir’s God’s-Eye View of Afghanistan by sifar on Monday January 25, 2021 @12:37AM (#25899681)

The original argument was all open source projects were ethically immoral. I didn't say all weapons were evil.

It is a matter of degree which becomes a matter of kind. There is a difference between a bow and an arrow, a semi automatic and the atom bomb.

This is something I keep pondering over, for all the brilliant minds involved in the Manhattan project, did they ever think about the effects of what they created.

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