Grievance Poisoning in the First Degree

Hamilton Nolan: Anyhow, today, Palantir has gone mildly viral by posting on Twitter, “Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief.” Followed by 22 bullet points that sum up the book’s arguments. At last, a version of the book that tech people can read! The instant reaction to this bullet point list among non-tech people was “Wow, this is some fascist shit.” Which is true. But I want to make an even more rudimentary point that is, I think, a very important piece of context: This is not a coherent set of arguments at all. It is not a philosophy. It is not a set of intelligible ethics. Rather, it is a list of angry reactions to being yelled at — given a somber voice and dressed up as some sort of wondrous work of intellect. One of the “popular highlights”, sourced from Kindle users, on the book’s Amazon page is the phrase “[t]he result is a culture in which those responsible for making our most consequential decisions — in any number of public domains, including…